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Australia
This is an edited version of our travel log. This fifth page is about Australia.
October 13, 2005, Sydney
I've left Gemma at the hostel reading a book. We arrived in Oz yesterday, Gemma is still limping a bit with her ankle and I've had a dodgy stomach for the past few days so we pretty much went straight to bed and slept for about 12 hours. We went on a walk round the city today and saw the sights; opera house, harbour bridge, old quarter, shopping bits and all that stuff.
Glenn McGrath out stared me. 
We were wandering past the Four Seasons hotel and saw a bunch of blokes in the same tracksuit standing outside, they seemed a bit too much like chavs to be in a nice place so they caught my attention. Then I realised one was Glenn McGrath. The street was fairly empty and I had been staring for a while as we walked past, just to make sure it was him, and as I result he saw me and started staring back, so I swiftly looked away. 
I saw Adam Gilchrist out of the corner of my eye and he is a very ugly man. Looking back, I WAS wearing a cricket sunhat, so Glenn (we're on first name terms) might have been thinking 'I wonder who the "Warwick e C oty rick club" are and what the "benso & dge Cup 02" was?' I should get a new hat. Rather weirdly I had said to Gemma about half an hour before that it would be really good if we saw Flintoff walking round the streets, so I was slightly disappointed to only be outstared by McGrath. 
It was cloudy yesterday and it rained today for a while, so frankly Aussie weather isn't all its cracked up to be, I was thinking they should have included a genuine swing bowler in the side for the test tomorrow.
Sydney seems really cool from what we've seen of it, its more like a European city than most of the other big cities we've been to. It even smells (and feels) quite a lot like London in the summer at the moment.
Forgot to say; in New Zealand we drove through a town called "Alandale" otherwise known as the guy who played "Jim" in Neighbours (And now some fella in the OC for people who watch T4)
October 14, 2005, Sydney
Good first day at the cricket today. The weather was overcast for a lot of the day, but it was still warm and was a good day for cricket.
It was worth getting there on time for Harmison's third ball of the match that swung slightly and ripped Langer's off-stump cartwheeling out the ground. Great stuff.
The small contingent of English fans were probably the loudest over the course of the day; the Aussie's seemed quite reserved and, although I hate to admit it, far more seemed to know what they were on about than at a test in England.
The Aussie police got a bit bored after tea and started throwing people out at random. One of my favourite moments of the day was a group of about 10 English blokes near us that did the 'd-i-s-c-ooo lets all have a disco' song. Two policemen came down after they had finished, in combative mood, and demanded to know what they had been singing and a northern bloke said, 'we were having a disco'. The police looked a bit confused ', then the northern chap said 'we're going to have another one in a minute, you can join us if you want'. Thankfully they didn't get thrown out and went on to sing 'you fat sex pest, you fat sex pest, who ate all the pies?' at Shane Warne.
We're both looking forward to the third day on Sunday and hopefully we'll get to see some of the World XI bat.
Gemma has already gone to bed (8pm local time), beer and sun in the afternoon is a potent combination.
One last thing I forgot to mention about Sydney, which we also noticed in Santiago, is the vast number of people in suits wandering the streets on a weekday (at all times between 9-6), seemingly with nowhere to go. Really puzzling.
October 19, 2005, Freemantle
Flew out to the West Coast today. We met up we my friend Kate for the last night in Sydney, the 1st person we have known on the whole trip. Was really good to catch up, and find out what living in Sydney is really like- good by the sound of it. She also filled us in on how great SE Asia is, and now we want to go everywhere.
The weather in Sydney was pretty rubbish, so it was good to arrive here and see no clouds in the sky. We have taken a quick walk around Freemantle, which looks very nice, lots of fish & chip shops on the harbour so off there in a minute. Also have now seen a new ocean- the Indian for those of you (like Si) who couldn't work it out.
Hopefully will be doing a tour into the desert in the next couple of days, as well as some lazing about on beaches and meeting up with Jason & Kate- the 2nd lot of people we know in less than a week.
Will try to post pictures maybe at the weekend.
October 20, 2005, Freemantle
Just been planning what we're going to do in Western Aus, thinking about going whale watching as its meant to be good here.
The hostel we're staying in is OK here. I think its the sort of place Tony would enjoy (possibly never leave), they have a free pool table and a free table-footy table, a courtyard with a 20000 song juke box (I've heard Mr Jones twice in less than 24 hours, now I'm a fan of the counting crows early work, but 20000 songs people!!) There is also a nice curry house downstairs and you can knock on the back door of the kitchen (in the courtyard) and the chef will sort you out with a really cheap takeaway curry (2-4 quid).
I had one of the most important experiences of my life in Sydney. I spotted an old-school Adidas shop, selling trainers and bling apparel and I got respect from one of the shop assistants for my white and red Forrest hills, which weren't released in Aus.
(at this point in the story I've possibly lost everyone but Darren). He talked to me about Adidas trainers as an equal and I felt like a fashion god. I was going to tell him about the limited edition blue Adidas Kicks (Mexico '70 world cup - El Salvador) that I got in Chile (they're a suede version of the samba), but I thought we could be there for a long time. I love that no-one knows what I'm going on about 
Next time I'll post something more sensible, or I'll make Gemma write something.
October 23, 2005, Perth
Congratulations to the Brakes!! 
And Tim for going to the match.
And me for scouring the internet for odds on the match and having a £5 pop at 9/2 collecting myself the tidy sum of £27.50.
I'm thinking of spending the lot on one night in a really swanky hotel in Thailand.
I expect everyone who is not in another country to be at Colchester on 4th November. Its in Essex isn't it? You should stay with Andy.
I hope there was plenty of this going on yesterday evening..
Sorry gone a bit smile mad
NB: Leamington FC beat Ossett Town to get into the first round of the FA Cup for the first time since they reformed. – They went onto lose 9-1 to Colchester, the highlights were on Match of the Day
October 26, 2005, Cairns
Ok, we're long over-due for a sensible post about what we've actually been up to in Australia, so here goes.
Perth - First few days on the West coast we stayed in a port just outside of Perth, called Freemantle. It was a fairly laid back place with loads of pavement cafes, restaurants and art galleries etc. Weather was about 20-22oC during the day and mostly sunny, so it was fairly pleasant. Unfortunately we had a bit of bad luck with what we planned and had our first attempt at whale-watching called off due to bad weather, and it was too late to do much else, which meant we lost a whole day.
The last day we got the train up to Perth and stayed there. During our 4 days on the West-coast we managed to go to the WA shipwreck museum, which had the stern of a wrecked sailing ship in a gallery and other interesting stuff, we also went to the WA museum and saw lots of stuffed animals and a megamouth shark preserved in ethanol. We also managed to go whale watching at the second attempt and saw a pair of humpbacks. Although they only stuck their backs and tails out the water a few times, no back-flips or leaps. We got a few passable photos (which we will post eventually!), but I only figured out the sport mode on the camera after they'd gone.
We did manage to meet up with Jason and Kate [Gemma's relations] and they took us to the park above Perth with really good views of the city and swan river and then out for some food. Really nice to meet up with people that we (Gemma!!) knows and have a chat.
Cairns -We flew out to Cairns on Sunday night at 11pm and landed at 4.30am local time. Ouch.
The word cairns means two or more burial mounds. 
The humidity is about 300% and its something like 57oC. In the shade. At night. (ok, its only about 30-35oC during the day). I'm of the opinion that humans were not meant to live here and although you do marvel at the strength of human endurance and air conditioning, it does make you wonder why they bother, apart from tourism.
Interval: They are playing pusher man by Curtis Mayfield in the internet cafe. What a song, I seem to remember asking the DJ to play it at the wedding, but don't recall hearing it. Anybody?
Back to our feature presentation:
The first day here was a bit of non-event, after we had finished sweating and waiting for things to open we slept for most of the morning and then went to a place called "Reef Teach" in the evening where a marine biologist gave a 2 hour talk on the animals/Eco-system of the great barrier reef and what you can see on it while snorkelling and diving. It was really interesting and well worth the 5 quid admission.
Yesterday we went out for a day on the reef and did some snorkelling, but we passed up on doing an introductory scuba dive. The snorkelling was really cool and we did it for about 75 mins the first time and Gemma did it for about 45 the second time.
I did it with a floatation aid as it takes enough of my concentration not to drown in water let alone breathing only through my mouth through a pipe while trying to identify different kinds of fish and coral underwater.
We saw loads of the stuff the guy had mentioned the night before, and as they didn't tell you much on the boat it really made it a much better trip to know vaguely what we were looking at.
Unfortunately I got really bad motion sickness while snorkelling (yes, I know I'm crap). The slight magnifying effect of water and the mask made me feel really odd.
When we got to the second reef (we visited two) Gemma went out snorkelling again and I stayed in the boat with some old people and an Irish guy who couldn't swim either and was even paler than me!!
We took a disposable underwater camera and are going to pick the pictures up later so they should be interesting!!
We also managed to get sun burned and our backs look/feel like this little fellow 
It's no where near as bad as it could have been though.
Tomorrow we are taking a 7km cable car into the rainforest to look at that and then we fly to Brisbane in the afternoon.
Gemma doesn't have anything to add at the moment.
p.s. Tony, if you happen to read this, the stupid phone card was a rip off. It charged 70c to talk to my mum for 45 mins, and about 80c for gemma to talk to her mum for the same time. But $2.90 to talk to your mobile for 3 minutes. Congratulation on becoming a doctor if I didn't get to that bit before it cut me off.
October 28, 2005, Sydney
We're now back in Sydney. We couldn't afford to drive anywhere. The amount of money we would have spent in a week was the amount it would cost for the whole of India, so we bought a new flight from Brisbane to Sydney and skipped it. Flight was cancelled due to a massive lightning storm, so the airline put us up in a motel, which was not great by normal standards, but was easily the nicest room we've had since we left Brazil!
Our last day in Cairns we decided to take a trip to the rainforest and we took a train ride up to it. We visited a zoo there and saw kangaroos, wallabies, wombats and crocodiles and I got to hug a koala! We then rode a cable-car back, which went over the roof of the rain forest.
We are going up to the Blue Mountains this afternoon and then we fly to Singapore for a couple of days on Monday.
October 30, 2005, Katoomba
We have just spent the weekend in the Blue Mountains near Sydney. It has been a really nice relaxing time, doing stuff we like to do. Which we probably should have realised from the start...everyone comes to Australia for hot weather and beaches, neither of which we particularly enjoy!! Which is just as well because we haven't seen too many after I lost my temper in Cairns with everything here, and demanded we leave early. In hindsight it was a bit silly, but it follows our rule that we have so much money per continent, and if we run out we have to leave. I have really enjoyed the time we have spent here, but a week of driving may have made me not like it anymore.
But anyway the weekend has been really nice, the town is on top of the plateau, with a big cliff at the edge. It is kind of like the Grand Canyon, but filled with rainforest. Yesterday we did a walk along the ridge, as my ankle is still not up to doing hills. We saw lots of parrots, and got some very good views. Today Si was always going to do some writing, but it was pouring with rain, so I also had a relaxing day reading next to a big log fire. It felt like England on 30 October, especially when the rain stopped and it got really foggy. It kind of made the town more interesting, as most of you know we prefer cold weather to hot anyway.
Off to Singapore tomorrow- back to the heat! Bangkok on Thursday then on to Cambodia and Vietnam- we bought a guidebook so have decided on a plan, can you tell? After returning to Thailand for Christmas we are going to see how the budget is going and probably head to the north of Thailand and Laos, before India if we have time (bombings and train derailments today putting us off a bit, as well as England not touring there 'till March).
Hope you like the new pictures