The three girlies hit OZ!!!!

Hello everyone!!!!

Hope you are all well and that you all had a lovely Easter!! So us three girlies are back together again, and are now experiencing the wondeful world of OZ!!! We arrived in Oz on the 17th March in Alice Springs as all four of us had booked an Ayres Rock Trip for two days one night!! Nat and Rob arrived slightly before us but we all met up at our first hostel Heavitree Gap! This was a really nice hostel and our first hands on experience of the 'real' outback!!!!! Had a really early start the next day 4:45am!!!!!!!!!! We travelled for 3 hours to our first stop which was called Kings Canyon. When we got here the weather was around 38 degrees which was HOT HOT HOT!! We were only allowed to do the short walk round the canyon because of the weather which was a slight dissapointment. Laura got attacked by flies as she cut her leg!! There were sooo many flies all the time and they always buzzed around your ears and nose not very nice at all!!! We all really enjoyed it here and were all looking forward to getting to Uluru (Ayres Rock). We faced another 3 hours from Kings Canyon to get to Uluru and we had to hurry to catch the sunset. We finally arrived at our campsite and the first thing we did was watch the sunset which gives the illusion that the rock changes colour which was really impressive!! We had the best night in our campsite, first we had a proper Aussie BBQ dinner with sausages, steak and salad (veggie burgers just for Nat!!). After dinner we all had the oppurtunity to sleep in authentic Aussie Swags (a mattress attached to a sleeping bag that you can zip completely up!) under the stars. This was a totally amazing night as you could see soooooo many stars and even the milkyway, they were so clear we could almost touch them. Another early start as we wanted to watch the sunrise at Uluru, this was another amazing sight as was the base walk that we did after the sunrise! The rock was so impressive and we all got a little snap happy, Laura got so excited she had to hug the rock! We werent allowed to climb the rock as it was a pretty scary and dangerous route up with only a rope to pull yourself up! we didnt realise how vertical it was and apparantly over 30 people have died attempting to reach the top! Even daredevil Laura decided that she wouldnt be able to do it!! After we left Uluru we visited Kata tjuta which was another huge rock but very different to Uluru as it is made up of 36 different boulders! On the 5 hour jouney home we stopped to look at the salt lakes, this is where Nat decided to swallow a fly!! or it decided to make home in her tummy!! The next day Rob caught a flight to Melbourne (nat was very sad to be leaving him after sooo long :( where he was going to go camping with some Aussie mates and us girlies caught our flight to Cairns!

CAIRNS- Arrived at Gilligans on thursday night and had our first experience of sharing a dorm which was quite exciting!! The next day was Good Friday and the whole of Cairns turned into a ghost town. Everything had shut, we werent allowed to drink or buy any alcohol only if we were having a meal, they wouldnt even let us have a coke!!!!! So quiet night for us!! Saturday night was far from quiet we booked ourselves onto a party bus which was amazing over 150 people were on this double decker open top bus and it took us too 5 different bars around Cairns! We met some amazing people that night. We also saw hundreds of bats that night (Becki was not too impressed) we never new Cairns had sooo many and they were huge!

The next day (sunday) we had booked a Cape Tribulation trip which took us on a river cruise along the river Daintree, a baby croc, a 5 metre croc called scarface, a tree python and some owls. We then did a rainforest walk which was really interesting, we saw some weird looking trees and some massive golden orb spiders which were bigger than our hand!! We also visited Mossman Gorge which was like a waterfall which you could swim in! We then visited Cape Tribulation which is a beach where Captain Cook first landed and lastly we visited Port Douglas, which is a small rich town. Our tour guide for the day was called Lisa and was off her rocker and made the day very amusing! Monday night we had another good night at the Woolshed. This is where we witnessed England actually win something...we came first in GOlDFISH RACING!!!! haha was quite an event! Wednesday we left on the Greyhound ( OZ bus ) our first stop was Mission beach and we stayed here for a few hours. It's a really nice beach and we watched some skydivers which got us all excited about doing our own one! We also saw wild dolphins and swam in the stinger net, the water was lovely and warm (stinger nets are huge nets set up which allows us to swim safely and not get stung by the hundreds of jellyfish that swim in the seas) on every beach they have loads of warnings about the marine stingers and have constant supply of vinegar on all beaches. We then carried on travelling and spent the night in Townsville. We planned to stay here but then saw brochures about Magnetic Island and it sounded a really nice place to visit and we ended up staying here for 2 days!

The island reminded us of Thailand as it was so tropical! Our first night we stayed at a place called bungalow bay where they had a koala sanctuary in the grounds. Here we were able to hold a baby croc called Barbie, a carpet python (which Nat stayed well away from), cockatoos (Becki stayed well clear of these birds), lizards ( Nat became one with the Lizards!) and a koala called Dexter. Laura was the only brave one who held everything!! The next day Laura and Nat had a lovely time riding horses for 2 and a half hours through woodland and the bush and there were lakes, creeks and streams which the horses rode through. They managed to do a trot and a canter (Becks is very impressed). They then rode on to the beach where Becki met them to take photos as they rode the horses right in to the sea (geared up in stinger suits) this is where they did tricks on the horses, like around the world and a back somersault of the horse into the sea! Nat didnt do these tricks but Laura was a pro!! Then we decided to do the fort walk (something to do with world war 2) which is a 1 hour n half trek up to a lookout where you can see the entire island. We did this walk at the totally wrong time of day (midday) it was all up hill and all 3 of us were really really really sweaty!!! (YUK) we did see some wild koalas which made up for some of the sweatiness. That night we went to Australia's own full moon party (which was a total rip off of the famous one in Thailand!) This was another really good night, we even met some ppl we had been on the party bus with in Cairns! We also bumped into people that had seen us in Thailand (Koh Phagnan, Koh Samui) Singapore and now Oz (its a small world). This night Becks decided to get as many pictures of different hats as she could ( I got 24 different hats in total not too bad).

On Saturday after only 2 hours sleep we got the Greyhound to Airlie beach (6 hour journey) at the moment we're just relaxing here. Preparing ourselves for Wednesday when we go on our 3 day sailing trip round the Whitsundays which will be really good!