Port Douglas is about an hour's drive north of Cairns and is supposedly nicer than Cairns. We wouldn't know, as all we saw of Cairns was the airport. The first thing that struck me about this part of Australia was how tropical it was. It was like being in Bali, except everything was in English and the people are all rich. The drive from Cairns to Port Douglas along the coast is spectacularly beautiful, with jungle leading down to an expansive beach. Filled, according to many signs, with jellyfish.... Read More

When we lived in Australia, we never saw the outback. This was due to a series of circumstances but the dominating factor was that we had a car in Melbourne and didn't want to rent a second one in the Northern Territory. If we'd stayed longer we would have made it up North. Not getting there was one of my biggest Australian regrets... Read More

I've been to Adelaide once before. When we lived in Melbourne, Dan and I adopted an Australian attitude to driving and drove 8 hours to visit my cousin Frances and her boyfriend Rob. This time, as we live in Edinburgh, it was easier to fly. Aforementioned cousin and boyfriend became fiances, so we were going for their wedding. Frances has immense organisational skills. On top of the actual wedding, she had arranged wall to wall activities and barbecues for the guests, as many travelled from pretty far.... Read More

Last year we got a tour bus from Melbourne to the Twelve Apostles via the Great Ocean Road. You can read about it here, when I was a lot less verbose in my blog posts. We really wanted to drive ourselves so told Laura it was an unmissable opportunity, bundled her into the car and off we went.... Read More

When I lived in Galway I'd often drive across the width of Ireland to Wicklow for the weekend. It was lengthy and boring. What I didn't realise was that there's no such thing as a long drive in Ireland. Australians wouldn't think twice about 2.5 hours Galway to Dublin.... Read More

In classic Irish fashion, my friend Laura decided to come to Australia too. Her presence, combined with my rather flexible working hours AND the fact that I'm leaving soon, mean I constantly drag her on sightseeing roadtrips. She's been here about a week and I won't leave her alone. She just wants to sleep but no, there I am, in the car, bringing her on another roadtrip.... Read More

Since arriving in Melbourne, Paulette, a family friend of Dan's, has been wonderful to us. She feeds us, teaches us about driving with the trams, and yesterday brought us to Healesville Animal Sanctuary using two of her family passes. 'Now remember,' she said to us as we approached the top of the entry queue, 'you're Michelle, and you're Rob.' Suddenly I panicked. The woman scanning the passes looked awfully stern. I didn't have an Australian accent. I didn't know my last name. She was going to see right through us and ban us from Healesville forever.... Read More

Since I lived in Melbourne until I was 2, logic would dictate that I had 2 birthdays here already. On my first birthday, my parents brought me for a walk on Frankston beach where I waddled around in a small red jumper. A nice idea, we all agreed, would be that I spend my third (Australian)/28th (real) birthday doing the same. Sadly I don't own a red suit.... Read More

I got this HP620 laptop 5 years ago. The fan makes a lot of noise, the speaker doesn't work, the wireless network adapter turns itself off and sulks for random periods and I've reinstalled Windows 3 times. But we would have been truly lost without it.... Read More

Australia was good because my cousin Frances and friend Marty both live there and know how to work the tram system... Read More