I’m starting to get there with the process of uploading photos. Originally I had wanted to do it as the journey went along, but lack of internet connectivity along the way meant it was difficult.

About to leave Australia in a few days and I’m faced with 5000 photos and sorting through them. You can see some of the photos on my Flickr page (big thanks to my Aunt Pamela who gave the gift of a Flickr Pro account).

Here’s the latest set of photos I’ve uploaded of our trip to the Whitsundays:

More photos and some back logged blog entries over the next week. Promise.

The thing about Australia is, it’s huge. You could fit the UK into it 32 times and yet it’s population is only 22 million (the UK is 62 million). The result of this is there are massive, huge, enormous, gigantic areas of… nothing.

Now, we couldn’t really come all this way and not visit Ayers Rock could we? But there presents a problem.  Ayers Rock is right slap bang in the centre of this nothingness.

So  just how do we get to Ayers Rock on our road trip?  We had no option but to drive through this big country.

We had read many times, and met many people who told us just how long and bleak drive it is, but we thought it was all a bit of an exageration until we saw it with our own eyes.

We drove about 5 days to get to Ayers.  This journey was split up between the occasional large town where we’d sleep at night.  During the day we’d stop for fuel whenever we could. These fuel stops were in little villages which were about 250km apart. And by little I mean tiny. Villages of about 50 where the majority of the residents are Aboriginal with 2 white people, quite often English, running the shop, pub and petrol station. They’re all in the same building.

At first it’s quite exciting. Then it becomes quite relaxing. Just us and the open highway cruising at 130km/h. Then it becomes unnerving. What would happen if we broke down, or run out of fuel? (which nearly happened once). There’s no mobile phone signal in the gaps between villages and, having watched many horror movies, the idea of flagging down a truck isn’t one I’d want to have to do.

There’s one other aspect of this area that’s quite daunting and it’s a bit of a sensitive subject. The Aboriginals. There’s a huge alcohol problem in these areas. In some places they are banned from buying it.  When you stop to fuel up sometimes you are faced with 50 Aboriginals staring at you. That’s quite nerving for two pasty small white Scottish kids who didn’t half stand out in their big green camper van.

I like to think that they just get a bad reputation from outsiders and there was really nothing to worry about, but it’s difficult to think that given everything we’d been told, mostly by scaremongering Australians.

We spent most of the time in the Outback saying “come on, pedal to the metal and lets get out of here”.

The price of fuel in the Outback is something we hadn’t really prepared for. It hammered our daily budget. I remember one day we spent more than double our days budget on petrol.  The speed limit is 130km/h which isn’t too good for fuel consumption. But there’s a fine line. We could drive slower and save fuel, but take considerably longer to get there. Did I mention there’s nothing to see along the way?

But you know something, once we finally got to Uluru (the native name for Ayers Rock) it all paled into insignificance and we realised that it had all been worth it.

Uluru is just a big barren rock in the middle of no where. It has become a bit of tourist trap where prices for food, petrol and accommodation are all inflated.  But it’s beautiful. And that makes everything alright.

We watched sunset one night and sunrise the next morning. We took a walk around a bit of it too. The Aboriginal’s believe it has massive spiritual significance. If you should take a bit of the rock home to keep you will bring with you eternal bad luck.  Whether or not you believe it, you can sense the rocks eeriness.

So after 5 days of driving Ayers was over in a day and we hit the road again. A couple of more days got us out the outback and back into civilisation. There was a massive sense of relief when we made it to Port Augusta and we saw water again.

The Outback isn’t somewhere I’d rush back to. Once you’ve seen Ayers Rock there’s probably never a need to see it again.  But I’m glad we visited and don’t regret any moment of it. It’s a must see for everyone at some point in their lifetime. I’m just glad we got out alive.

Sitting north of the tropic of Capricorn, Emu Park was where the climate changed. We left “winter” in the south and drove into the dry season in the north. I put winter in inverted commas because the Australian winter is better than any summer I’ve ever experienced. Forget what I said about the bugs in Australia not being that bad, in the tropics they are big. Huge. And they look like bugs I’ve never ever seen before.

At Airlie Beach we went on a day cruise around the Whitsunday Islands. A tropical paradise where the water is a shade of blue that you only ever see in postcards. We spent the afternoon on Whitehaven beach where the sand is 98.5% silicon. It’s so pure. It felt more like baking soda than it did sand. Because it has so much silicon in it, it reflects all the heat so it’s perfect for walking on. No feet burning on this beach. We just had to be careful not to drop our cameras here. The pureness of the sand would make it almost impossible to get it out of anything we dropped.

We continued up the coast. Another 700 km or so to Cairns. It’s a lot of driving but we’re seeing so much. Cairns is an interesting town. Like many of the towns we’ve stopped in, tourism seems to be Cairns only industry. And tourists only head to Cairns because of its proximity with the Great Barrier Reef.

We only had a day in Cairns and we spent it on a Great Barrier Reef cruise. Early in the morning, just after the sun had risen we boarded the Ocean Freedom, a 20ft catamaran skippered by a Glaswegian called Gordo. He realised he was a fellow Scot before we did because Emma was wearing her Aberdeen Uni hoodie.

We headed about an hour out, around 20 miles off the shore, where we dawned wet suits, snorkel masks and fins and entered the relatively warm 25 degree C water. As we swam around following the brightly coloured fish and turtles we suddenly realised what a privileged position we were in. Sure lots of people have swam the Great Barrier Reef before, but lots of people haven’t. And never will. This area is slowly dying and it wont be around forever. A shame as it is beautiful, a totally different world and I urge anyone to see it before it is too late.

The crew of the Ocean Freedom were amazing. They did guided snorkel tours which allowed us to see parts of the reef we’d never see on our own. We held sea cucumbers, found Nemo and even saw a reef shark. It was out of this world, an experience we will never ever forget and will probably bore you with for years to come.

We went another 100km north of Cairns to Cape Tribulation. Situated in one of the oldest rain forests in the world, our camp site was a haven for wildlife. Sitting outside our camper van we watched a lace monitor lizard slowly moving around as it tried to bask in the sun for 30 minutes. This lizard must have been about 4 ft long. There’s lots of rain forest walks in this area, but there’s also a lot of crocodiles. A fine line is needed between experiencing this world and not getting eaten.

This was as far north as we could go on our road trip. Any further would take us onto unsealed roads where we’d need a 4×4. Lots of our camping neighbours were preparing their vehicles to head up to Cape York but sadly that would be too much for poor Sheila to handle. After leaving Cape Tribulation we headed south again saying goodbye to the ocean.

That’s the first part of our journey over. 3500 km done in 2 weeks. The next stage will see us drive through the outback. It will be the most gruelling part but also the part that will probably be the most exciting and the most different to anything we’ve ever experienced or likely to experience again.

Stay tuned. And follow our map to see how we’re getting on, that’s if there’s even any mobile phone signal in the outback for it to update

We’ve now been in Australia for a week and a half, a week of which we’ve been on our road trip and so far we have clocked up around 1800 kilometers. We are now in Emu Park, just north of the tropic of Capricorn.

I’m not really sure what exactly I was thinking Australia would be like, but I certainly never thought for a second how quickly I would fall in love with the place. Australia had never been somewhere I’d ever thought I’d travel to, it’s so far away from home. I also had places on my list I’d much rather see beforehand. When Emma and I first thought about travelling we both agreed on America and Canada. It was only later that Australia came on the agenda and I was a little unsure at first. Even as late February this year I was still a little bit unsure, funds being the biggest issue.

But then we decided, we might as well. When will we ever have 7 weeks spare to do anything like this again? All I know now is, I’m so glad we decided to go ahead

Sydney is very similar to Vancouver. The same architecture. The same layout. The Opera House and Canada Place even have a striking resemblance. But it’s a little bit more laid back. Drivers aren’t as aggressive with each other and people are friendlier. Maybe it’s just because I’m not working over here so I get to see the place as a tourist rather than a resident.

We only had a brief stop in Sydney. We’ll be back for two weeks at the end of our trip, but in the meantime we had a 5 week road trip ahead of ourselves. It allowed us to see a huge portion of the country, and Emma’s sister who we are staying with a chance to have her baby and get settled in before the scruffy travellers arrive back on her doorstep.

We hired a great big green camper van which we’ve nicknamed Shiela. She’s a bit bigger than anything we’ve ever driven before. She’s also got to last us a bit longer than we’ve ever driven before, 10,000km in total, more when you add all the little detours we take. She looks like she’s been through a lot so will hopefully be used to the gruelling drive. Surprisingly she’s very comfortable to sleep in. In the week we’ve been on the road I have slept like a baby pretty much every night.

Like a true Australian lady, Shiela liks a drink. She’s a little bit heavy on fuel. Australian’s work in kilometers and litres, but I’ve done the conversion and she does about 22 miles per gallon. Across America we were getting 36 miles per gallon. Fuel was also dirt cheap in America compared to Australia. $1.40 per litre seems to be the average at the moment, but that could hit $2 in the outback.

There’s a huge difference between what we did in America and what we are doing here. America was a luxury holiday in comparison to this. Yes we did camping in America, but we also did hotels, lots of hotels, including 4 star in places. Here we’re trying to do this as cheap as possible. A combination of hostels and campsites. Our average accommodation cost at the moment is about $10 a night.

We’ve so far spent our time driving up the coast, stopping in quaint little surfer towns. It’s as close to a hippy lifestyle as we will ever get. Lots of beaches, lot’s of kangaroo’s and koala’s, lots of sunshine (even in winter) and the occasional beer thrown in for good measure. Better not get too used to this, the UK and working for a living is only 6 weeks away.

I’m writing blog posts as we go along, however due to lack of connectivity in places there is a delay in uploading them. And as for photos, that’s a real struggle. Best place to check for updates is my BlipFoto page.

When most people are ever faced with the idea of a trip to Australia I’d imagine the one thing that puts them off is the flight (or flights) there. Unless you’re travelling from Asia, it’s pretty much the other side of the world for everyone. But I can tell you this now, the two flights of a combined 23 hours from Vancouver was pretty much painless.

Our first flight from Vancouver to Hong Kong was the long one, 13 hours. This was almost pain free except for when we boarded at 2.45am Pacific time, the crew of the plane were working on Hong Kong time. So while we were ready to sleep, the air hostesses were ready to serve curry. I can only deal the prospect curry at that time of the morning if I’ve been drinking heavily, which I hadn’t.

Hong Kong airport seemed nice for the 2 hours we spent there. Big and spacious. A little on the hot side, but that’s Hong Kong for you. 30 degrees when we landed at 6.30 in the morning. We have a habit of spending the cost of the air ticket again at the airport through magazines, books, bottles of water and food. Impossible at Hong Kong airport, everything is so cheap. If I hadn’t needed every penny I had, I would be a proud owner of a new Apple Mac at this point – half the price than in the UK.

The next flight was 9 hours to Sydney. This again flew by, mainly by watching countless episodes of the Simpsons on the head rest entertainment system. I can’t imagine what flying was like in the past before these devices were installed.

When airlines get around to installing wi-fi, which our airline of choice Cathy Pacific are apparently doing next year, flying could almost be fun.

I’m not going to lie and say flying to Australia was enjoyable and something I’d like to do on a regular basis, but it was bearable and managable because of the excitement and anticipation of spending 7 weeks down under. So don’t be put off by Australia because of the flights. Be put off because of the snakes and spiders, and I’ll report back at a later date on how those go.

The road trip has begun. The next 39 days and nights will be be spent in our camper van.

We’ll keep you updated along the way.

So that’s that then. I’ve been thinking about what I’d say in this post for quite a long time because I always knew our year in Vancouver would be over far too soon, but I never thought for a minute just how quick it would be.

It would be easy for me to write what everyone wants to see, how it was the best year of our lives, bla bla, but just to add some balance to this post I will come out and say that it wasn’t all rosy all of the time.

The average wage in British Columbia is one of the worst in Canada, and the living costs in Vancouver is one of the highest. We also lived in a great, therefore pricey, location in the downtown area. Half our wage every month went on rent which is just not viable long term.  We had so many things we wanted to do but had to be realistic at the same time.

Before we left home a little bit of us thought that we would maybe move there and end up staying forever, but in reality once the honeymoon period was over and we realised just how far away from home we were, that idea was pretty much dead.  While loads of people around us were getting their visas extended to stay another year, both of us quickly agreed that once our year was up it would be time to leave.  You could have given me the visa papers to sign there and then and I would have politely said “no thank you”.

That saying, “The grass is always greener on the other side”, well that’s rubbish. All the things that made life in Scotland depressing were all there in Vancouver. The weather wasn’t the best, We never had quite as much money as we wanted and we had to get out of bed to go work every morning when really we’d be rather sleeping.

We’d headed to Vancouver Island for a long weekend in November and it had been our first time away from work and our first time back on the road since we’d arrived in Canada.  After returning back to work it suddenly hit me that my job wasn’t the best and really I loved travelling and not working all the time.  For a few months after that I really felt a bit down.

That said however, it was by far one of the best years of both our lives and I don’t for a minute ever regret giving up life in the UK. We did some so many amazing things, Vancouver Island, dog sledding in Whistler and our cruise up to Alaska being some of the memories that will stick with me forever.

I mentioned that our jobs weren’t the best, but they were pretty much perfect for the year.  I had thought several times that maybe I should have got, or at least looked into getting, a job in the media, but I said all along that I wanted a job that I wouldn’t love too much and wouldn’t be sad to leave at the end of the year.  Our jobs were also perfect as travelers as we both pretty much got as much time off as we wanted allowing us to make the most of our time in the country. Kids if you are reading this, work in the food service industry once and never again.  I never ever want to make another latte or grill someone else’s sandwich for as long as I live.

Saying goodbye to the people we met was pretty hard. It’s strange that within the space of a year we had gone from arriving in a country where we knew no one to making, I hope, some life long friends.

Everything’s pretty blurry for us at the moment. Leaving Canada and going to Australia all happened very quickly so neither of us have had time to think too hard and dwell on our year. I’m sure once we’re back in the UK and have far too much time on our hands we will be able to sum up our year much better.

But for now, thank you and goodbye Canada, we miss you and we’ll be back sooner rather than later.

So here we go. The time has come. We are about to leave Canada. I can’t quite believe this moment has arrived.  We’re sad to give up a city we love and some great friends we’ve made. This sadness is made a little easier with our plans for the next seven weeks however.

We’re sitting at the airport now. As ever here far too early. It’s 1.10am and our flight doesn’t leave for another 1 hour and 30 minutes.  Hong Kong is 13 hours away. There we have a 2 hour gap before catching a 9 hour connecting flight to Sydney.

All going well, in just over 24 hours from now we should be on the other side of the globe in the southern hemisphere.   I’m not even sure god will know what day or time that will be. The jet lag will be fun.

Apart from sleeping and watching movies, over the course of the flight I need to write 4 blogs which I will post on here over the next few days.  1 blog will be summing up our time in Canada and the other 3 will each be about our 3 favourite moments in such a great country.

Will update you on the other side.

David

It embarrasses me to say that my last blog post was in March. In it I said we were about to head to Vancouver Island and that there was the threat of earthquakes but not to worry I’d update you when we got back safe and sound.  But there was no update, so you’d be forgiven into thinking we had fallen foul to some seismic activity.

I can confirm that there was no plate shifting and we had a rather fantastic time on the island. But what happened to the blog in particular is thus:

When we went across America it was useful to have because we were doing so much every day for six solid weeks.

When we got to Vancouver we slowed the pace right down. We both got jobs, we settled into life and I naturally got lazy. As a result my updates of what we were up to shifted away from here and onto BlipFoto. For Blip to work effectively it has to be updated every day, and I didn’t have the patience to update Blip and this blog, so Blip won.

While this blog was being left unattended it somehow broke itself. Plugins and software became outdated, photo galleries stopped working and it became a bit of a hassle to maintain and update, so it was left festering away looking like we weren’t up to much.

In reality we were still up to a lot, and I’ve got a few posts I need to back date. Mainly whale watching in Tofino, dog sledding in Whistler and excessive eating on our cruise to Alaska.

This blog will see a lot of activity over the next few months. Our year in Vancouver is nearly up and before we head home and face reality we need to have one more go at doing something budget breaking, out of this world and something that we’ll most likely never ever have the chance to do again…  so we’re going to road trip around Australia.

In a month from now this blog will become home to our daily Australian round up. Lots of blogs, lots of photos and I’m going to attempt at posting some videos.

To get this all back to life again, I’ve spent a few hours this weekend re-installing everything. I still have a few pages I need to get back online, mainly the self updating journey map and the photo gallery, that’s on the way.

And in 3 months from now we’ll be back in the UK and this blog can start to collect dust, but for now there’s still a lot to happen.

Devastating. The Japanese earthquake that took place last Friday was just incredible and heartbreaking to watch. I’ll admit however, I’m one of those people who’ll be a bit shocked at the time, comment how terrible it is and then move on. I’m one of those people who thinks “that sort of thing will never happen to me”, “it only happens to people elsewhere in the world.”

But here’s the thing. At the moment, I am elsewhere in the world. Back home the UK is relatively safe from earthquakes and tsunamis,  but Vancouver is in the Pacific Northwest, a region that sits along the so called “ring of fire”. Guess where else sits along this ring? Japan… and New Zealand.

I work with a gentleman who is part of the emergency response team to these sort of events in Vancouver. He says people in this part of the world are very unprepared for a natural disaster striking. We should all have escape routes planned. We should all have meeting points picked with our loved ones. We should all have an emergency bag packed and in a safe place. The land and the buildings over here aren’t as safe as they could be, something that undoubtedly saved lives in Japan.

I’ve been doing some research on this since the Japanese earthquake struck. At first I was looking into what effect the tsunami triggered by Friday’s events would have over here on the other side of the Pacific. The threat was quite real, in fact a warning was put in place on the west coast of Vancouver Island.  And in California a man was killed as he tried to take pictures of the slightly larger than normal waves.

But my internet reading changed from the threat of a tsunami caused by an event thousands of miles away to the threat of a local earthquake and it seems quite likely. Scientists think that there’s areas of California, areas that we travelled along last summer, that are “long overdue an earthquake”. These same experts think there will be an earthquake of substantial size on Vancouver Island at some point in the next 50 years.  Maybe tomorrow, maybe not till 2060. But at some point in the next half a century.

An earthquake of the same size as Japan would cause a tsunami that would have a devastating effect on areas of Vancouver Island like Ucluelet and Tofino. And coincidentally enough, that’s where we are heading to this weekend coming.

But I’m very much the sort of person who, while a little bit freaked out about these sort of things, I wouldn’t change plans based on the threat of a disaster. If we decided not to do anything in case an earthquake struck, or a terrorist blew the place up then life would be pretty boring.  If you were scared about every potential threat on your own life, like being run over by a bus, being held hostage at a bank or getting salmonella from a hot dog then you’d never leave the house.

I guess the only way to remain truly safe is to lock the doors and stay in bed.  And even then I’d probably trip on the way through the bathroom door and hit my head on the sink.