Sorry, sorry, sorry. I haven’t been updating the English readers for quite a while now. Internet access is quite hard. So try to do a lot in a short period of time. Will give you all a quick update on what we’ve been doing the last couple of weeks.

Fraser Island was really beautiful! We did a tour in a huge 4×4 truck and saw a lot of the island. From Rainbow beach we went up further north to Bundaberg. From there we went to Mon Repos. This is a beach where turtles lay their eggs from November-January. We were in group 3 so it took a long time before we were able to see a turtle laying her eggs. It was incredible! She layed 119 eggs. Fortunately she didn’t go high enough on the beach and therefore we could help to move the eggs a bit higher, in the dunes.

From here we went to Eungella National Park. This is a rainforrest high on a hill. From the site we parked the campervan for the night we had a stunning view of the valley.

We then headed further north to Airlie Beach. From here we planned to go sailing to the Whitsunday Islands. Unfortunately for the coming days the trips were fully booked, so we had some days to relax! The sailing trip was great. We did a 2 day trip, so stayed one night on the boat. During the trip we stopped at some coral reefs where we could snorkel. This was great, all the different colours from the fish and the coral.

From Airlie beach we headed further north to Cairns. Here we spent a day diving in the great barrier reef! Ruud made 3 great dives. Lonneke first did an intro dive as it was a long time ago she had been diving. We saw a big turtle and Lonneke saw a reef shark, of course amongst all the other beautiful fish and coral landscapes.
Cairns is a very nice city. The esplanada is very spacious with some public BBQ’s and also a big openair swimming pool. This due to the fact you’re not allowed to swim in the sea as there are some saltwater crocodiles… So didn’t try that either.

From Cairns we’re now heading south back to Townsville. From here we go inland to the outback.

Hopefully I will keep you more updated next couple of weeks!

Check out:
Roadmap with where we have been so far
Pictures

Monday 16/11/09

We arrived in Australia Monday morning 6.20. We picked up the camper straight away; a Toyota Hiace, more spacious than we expected. There are two 2-personbeds. Little kitchen with refridgerator and stove. Lots of cupboards, so we still have plenty of space left.
Monday we drove to Caloundra gereden. After 45 minutes on the road, Ruud noticed that his credit card was still in the office from the rental company. So we had to get back to pick it up. So after another 1.5 hour we could commence our journey.

Tuesday 17/11/09

From Caloundra we went to the Australia Zoo from Steve Irwin. It’s spring in Australia but it was an exceptional hot day; 35 degees Celcius! The Zoo was worth the visit with crocodiles, kangaroos and koala’s.

Woensdag 18/11/09

Wednesday we drove further to the North to Rainbow Beach. We wantd to visit a lake near Boreen point, but regretted that after a while. The satnav sent us via 3 gravel road. So we had to drive very slowly in our campervan, unfortunately there wasn’t another possibility.
After booking a daytour to Fraser Island for tomorrow, we went to the swimming pool and afterwards had salmon from the BBQ on one of the many public BBQ’s over here. It’s getting dark over here quite a early; 19h, so we’ve been in bed early the last couple of days until we’ve found a lamp for outside somewhere…

Hi all,

Here a short message from Singapore. We arrived Thursday evening after a 12 hours flight. This actually went quite fast!
Yesterday and today we’ve been exploring Singapore. Today we had more luck weatherwise as we had quite some rain yesterday afternoon.
All week several streets are blocked over here due to a APEC meeting. Today security is slightly higher as Obama is visiting Singapore today.

Also we’ve done a bit of shopping here already, Ruud bought Teva sandals and 2 shorts, Lonneke Croos (fake Crocs), t-shirt, bag en we bought two flash lights today.

Tonight we’re going to enjoy the Asian cuisine. Tomorrow we’re going to take it easy as we have to go to the airport late in the afternoon as we’re flying to Brisbane tomorrow evening. We’ll be arriving there around 7am Monday morning.

I’ll also try to upload some pictures to the website.

All the best!

Lonneke & Ruud.

Australia, here we come. Most important things have now been booked, flights and campervan..

Planning is to fly to Singapore on the 11th of November. We’ll stay in Singapore for 3 days and from there we then fly to Brisbane.

In Brisbane we can pick up our campervan, so we can finally start our roadtrip. Route we’re going to drive in big lines is as following, we will start in Brisbane, from there we take the coastal route north to Cairns (great barrier reef etc). From there we’ll be heading to the outback in the direction of Alice Springs (Ayers rock). From there we drive south again to Adelaide, then via coast and cities Melbourne, Sydney back to Brisbane. Very short, but it’s a roughly 3 months trip (approx. 9000 km).

We’ll be back in the Netherlands on the 11th of February 2010.

Best regards,

Ruud.

Last weekend we’ve been to Galway, have a look at the pictures here.

Regards,

Ruud.