As much as we like to complain about it, Britain’s public transport system is amazing! We can probably get to 90% of the country any day we choose, more often than not at a choice of times throughout the day or night. For many years I have contentedly (or occasionally grudgingly) used this brilliant service [...]
“It’s a dangerous business, going out your door” Bilbo Baggins said. “You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling where you might be swept off.” I love that sentiment that where you end up has a lot to do with chance, and so I sometimes like to add [...]
I don’t know how many of you have come across prickly pears before. Certainly they’re not the kind of fruit you see growing by the side of the road in England. But in Australia they’re not particularly uncommon – they were introduced in the late 1800’s and caused widespread ecological damage and undoubtedly pissed off [...]
After a couple of weeks in the Blue Mountains; drinking, barbecuing, walking, swimming, and meeting plenty of new people – I had the urge to go and meet some familiar people again; Friends that had become the most significant aspect of my memories of my first year in Australia, but who I hadn’t seen in [...]
It was with an air of confidence and a strangely undeserved sense of belonging and homeliness that I stepped off the plane at Sydney airport after an uneventful flight from Bangkok. I was back! The familiarity of Sydney was comforting as I made my way through this city I had only briefly lived in. I had been [...]
When it came to extending our stay at the hostel ‘Bungalow Bay’ we found out they had a seven night maximum stay policy, so we sadly accepted that we would have to get back on the road and leave behind the tropical paradise of Magnetic Island. We were returning to Townsville later that day anyway [...]
Townsville is one of the bigger cities in Queensland with a population of 120,000 who mostly serve in the armed forces or work in the mines in the outback and use Townsville as their base during their time off. The town itself is a sprawling mass of houses and bars, and the main attractions are [...]
It is just over 1300km from Brisbane to Townsville, and much of that stretch has been described as ‘famously uninteresting’ in at least one guide book we have with us. So we were lucky that we travelled in a shit-heap of a van which made our journey far more remarkable! The van had been ‘affectionately’ [...]