Ian's top travel tip for being away for weeks on end is...




Book accommodation which has a laundry!

Why can't they make automatic washing machines with the door in the front? Is it something southern hemisphere? They had these very 50s looking top-loaders in New Zealand as well.

Or is it us that's got it wrong...?

Another 400km done today, which doesn't seem a lot, but Route 1, the Pacific Highway, bears little resemblence to what we would call a highway in the UK.

Actually, we don't call them highways at home anyway, so that's not a good comparison. Think a badly maintained country A road and you're getting there.

Never mind, we had been promised fabulous views along the entire route. Again, not so. Occasionally you get a glimpse of coast, but for the most part, it's dense forest with the road cutting a path between the trees.

Starting at Coffs Harbour bright and early, a slight detour led us to the town's most famous tourist attraction. Not, as you might think, in a prominent position on the sea front but tucked away a couple of minutes drive along the highway back the way we had come. Had totally missed it the night before because of (a) concentrating on route, (b) not expecting it to be there and (c) it being dark.

However, Tina and Chris had said that I should definitely make sure I saw it...



Good, isn't it?

Apparently the coast is littered with these huge plastic monstrosities and, indeed, we have seen a prawn and an oyster and maybe a couple of others which I've forgotten about. Anyway this is the most famous. Not sure why. I wouldn't make the effort to ever see it again...

Onwards to Port Macquarie for a brief (very brief as it turned out) stop...

Again, a nice beach...



...and an information board telling you how most of the town used to be a prison of some sorts. You're probably best reading about that yourselves...

And back in the car for another few hours down to Maitland - stop chosen because it's a good base to have a look round the vineyards of the Hunter Valley.

Despite not being the tourist mecca of Coffs Harbour or Port Macquarie, it was actually surprisingly pretty. River side walks...



...and Ye Historic Buildings...



...and a really great fish and chip shop - Froggies - just over the bridge.

I spent a while typing this entry the other day and then the computer crashed and I lost it all.

Never mind - here's what I think I was going to say...

The drive to Sydney down the Pacific Highway is a long one, taking us three days with a couple of handy stopovers on the way. The first is at Coffs Harbour and the second at Maitland, in Hunter Valley Wine Country...

On the first stretch, we stopped in at Byron Bay, which is slightly hippy and surfy...



...but has about 1001 places where you could have lunch (but only one where we did) and, it goes without saying, beautiful coastline...



Nearby is the fantastic Byron Bay Lighthouse...



...and - didn't know this until we got there -





Of course, if that particular point is only several hundred metres down a path, then you have to go there just to say you have...

And on the way, we saw Australia's Most Easterly Monitor Lizard...



...which I think they should have added to the signpost.

Not long now, then.

(Fortunately, it's over three days...)

I am booked to do the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb on Tuesday and, while not particularly afraid of heights, it is looking like an increasingly stupid thing to have committed to do.

In Brisbane, The Story Bridge is a vast web of metal...



(apparently "The Symbol of Brisbane" said the guide, although I notice the City Council have wisely eschewed this ugly Mecanno in favour of "Picturesque Town Hall and suntopped palm tree"...)

Anyway, in the best traditions of jumping on the bandwagon and fleecing tourists, you can climb this one as well...



Don't those people look small?

And vulnerable...!

Places always look great from high-up.

You get such a wide, expansive view and see the city in its place in the environment, between the bay and the hills. All flaws are ironed out - you can't see the building sites, the cracked pavements or the graffiti.

And it's also really quiet - you're well away from the noise and from the busy business of people's daily lives.

In Brisbane, Mount Coot-Tha is the place to do that. Fifteen minutes by bus and a great place to have lunch with a view.

Against my better judgement, here is a picture of me doing just that...



This is one of very few "This is me in front of..." pictures from the entire holiday. I can't be doing with them in the main. I know I was here, I'm presuming everyone else believes I was, so "This is me in front of..." just spoils the view. ("This one is me in front of the pyramids, this is me in front of the Taj Mahal..." - Yes...!! Now get out of the bloody way...!!!)

When you arrive in a city late in the day, as we did in Brisbane on Sunday, there's not enough time to get your bearings and explore properly and you might be left with a less than flattering opinion of the place. (viz Hereford...)

So I apologise to Brisbane for my earlier comments comparing it to Birmingham (and to Birmingham for using it as a benchmark for badness) and am thankful for the full couple of proper exploring days before leaving for Sydney.

Brisbane is called the River City and so, in addition to the normal ways of exploring which give you the flavour of anywhere new (by walking, by public transport, eating and drinking, from somewhere high up, etc), this city has to be explored by river.

You can do this fairly easily in Brisbane, because the river is an integrated part of the public transport system. The River Cat...



...darts happily up and down the river from very early to very late. The ticket for the sightseeing bus includes unlimited river travel, so we did some unlimited river travel.

And it turns out that Brisbane is actually very nice...

Lots of desireable, and very expensive, waterfront properties...



(This one, it turns out, is not as old as it looks. It was built in 1980 by a member of the Lloyds Insurance family. He spends most of the year away on business so, as the guide told us, the live-in housekeeper and the gardeners have the whole place to themselves for much of the year.)

Brisbane has an industrial history...



(Brisbane Powerhouse: Now an arts centre à la Tate Modern)



(Now swanky apartments)

And it has old Coloninial buildings a-plenty...



...nestled in between the very new, very high and, apparently, very secure office blocks...

(Thanks to Peter, who has helpfully commented on some of my Brisbane photos to tell me what they are...!)

In the words of Madonna and Justin Timberlake "We only got four minutes to save the world... (Wikki Wikki Wikki)"

In the words of the Queensland Hotels Association, "You only got four minutes to take a shower..."



This is because...



I always like to read the papers when I am on holiday (national and local; and try to get The Guardian when I can - Nancy Banks-Smith withdrawal symptoms...) In The Australian, the debate about the water shortages continue.

Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland all share what's called the Murray-Darling basin - the two main rivers which provide water to the major east coast cities. Victoria and NSW have introduced stringent irrigation regimes to prevent the water being wasted, while Queensland has not. This is pissing Victoria and NSW off as they suffer for Queensland's decision. This means there is mounting (water) pressure for control of supplies to be taken under federal control.

In the meantime, huge billboards in cities and along the roads remind you about the state of the supplies and give you advice about how to conserve water. All the water features in cities bubble and gurgle and fountain without worries, but proudly display signs telling you they operate on reclaimed water.

Anyway, that would be fine, but there is a compulsion in hotels to use all the mini shampoo and conditioner and shower gel goodies that you've paid for, which takes way longer than four minutes..!

When we were all in New Zealand, we travelled round in a hire car and, although most of the accommodation was sorted in advance, on a few occasions we just arrived in a town and asked the people at the information centre where was good to stay. It all worked out well and most times, we ended up with high-end, luxury apartments for peanuts as it was winter and they weren't going to get filled otherwise.

While this was all very fine and wonderful, it's the closest I'm likely to come to an adventure holiday. I like to have it all organised in advance. I like to know where I am going when, how, when I am likely to get there, all in the knowledge that there will be walls and a roof (to keep the birds out), a comfortable bed and something to make some coffee with when I get there. I like to have pieces of paper to consult, phone numbers to phone.

Every last day of this holiday has its travel and accommodation documented in this way and I had expected the problem to be with JetStar out of Melbourne on the way to Brisbane. JetStar is FlyBe. It's the budget wing of QANTAS. This is worrying on several counts:

1. Last time I flew on anything similar, EasyJet stranded me in Berlin Airport for nine hours with no chair and a voucher for Bratwurst.

2. JetStar fly from Avalon airport which, continuing the Arthurian theme, is about as difficult to find as The Holy Grail. When you get there, it's like the "Let's Play Airports" Airport. For example, it has one security scanner for all passengers, which looks like someone made it out of a DIY electronics kit you get free with a magazine. "AUSTRALIAN BUDGET AIRPORT MAGAZINE: Week by week, each part gives you all the basic services and facilities you'll need for your OWN international travel gateway. 96 parts with a FREE BINDER which you won't use. First part $1.99. Subsequent parts $9.99. Next week - REAL Duty Free shop with Baileys miniatures, travel socket adaptors and a kangaroo keyring..."

3. QANTAS seem to be having difficulty keeping their full-priced wings attached to their planes, never mind the budget ones....

As it happened, that bit all went off without a hitch and so it was that the first travel problem turned out to be waiting in Harvey Bay for Dave-O and his Bus of Danger and Intolerence back to Brisbane.

Well, he didn't turn up and four of us were left sitting on our suitcases.

The Kingfisher woman explained that they didn't use that firm anymore. There had been some complaints, and what Dave-O had said about them going out of business was true, although not because the boss was terminally ill. Because the boss had been pulled over by the police and the whole firm was in some kind of financial, organisational and, possibly, criminal mess. Our journey up to Hervey Bay had been their last.

How were we supposed to get back to Brisbane, we asked. Admittedly, my suitcase had wheels and made a good emergency seat but, when I gave it a cursory once-over while packing it earlier that morning, no engine.

"No worries," said desk-woman and she sauntered off in search of an email about just this matter which she seemed to remember seeing. She returned clutching Greyhound tickets for the luxury coach leaving Hervey Bay coach station, fifteen minutes drive away, in ten minutes. Pointing out the glaringly obvious problem this posed led to our suitcases being quickly loaded onto a bright Kingfisher-blue tourist shuttle bus and a driver as mad as Dave-O, but safer, hurtling us towards the town centre, tuning his short wave radio into the frequency used by the STOP-GO lollipop turners at the roadworks, while desk-woman got on the phone to Greyhound to ask them to hold the bus.

Did we make it?



Of course! Like I would be relating this in such an easy-going, light-hearted manner if we hadn't...

The coach was only half full, and bliss compared with the theme-park ride which had been the journey north. We pulled into Brisbane right on time...

As we left the Kingfisher Bay Hotel and Resort Center Parcs Experience this morning (I added the last bit...), we finally got a look back at where we had been staying.

It's on the shoreline and hidden by the trees from further inland, so you can't get a good view of it from anywhere really. This was the best I could manage...



...and that's on the zoom limit of the camera.

You have to fill in a little survey card when you leave to say what you thought. (When I say "you have to...", I don't mean they feed you to the dingoes if you don't, or anything like that - it's just suggested.) Most of the stay was brilliant and so got ticks in the far left boxes (or the far right ones...) and the food in the Seabelle restaurant was the absolute best of the holiday so far, but I did find myself mentioning the birds in the breakfast room.

Swooping down from the rafters to pick at anything that was left on tables, or stealing bits of croissant from the servery, (of which unsuspecting guests then selected the remainder and ate), occasionally chased by waitresses with those hand-held plant spray things, I assume full of irritating bird poison fluid guaranteed to cause agonising death, but I suspect full of water. How water will deter them, I'm not sure, given that it sometimes rains...

Indoor birds seems to be a common phenomenon here. Lots of coffee shops have them, they are rife in shopping centres. No-one seems to give it much thought, nor pay any atention when they dive-bomb some scrap of dinner nearby, narrowly missing taking your ear off with their outstretched, gliding razor-wings. And perhaps it's only me that's bothered.

Fraser Island is just beautiful.

It's made entirely of sand; in fact, it's the largest sand island in the world. This means that nothing should grow on it, as there's no soil, and no water should flow on it and there should be no lakes, because sand is porous.

But as Alan, our guide, pointed out. "Mother Nature finds a way..." (I think this was also Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park...) First, let's do plants. The island is virtually covered with forest...



Here's the primary school geography: this happens over thousands of years because very hardy salt-water loving plants colonise the dunes closest to the sea. They die and leave decomposing plant matter, which we all know becomes a thin layer of soil. A second wave of plants uses this to grown and so on... Eventually, the whole island is covered in many different types of forest...



Eventually, sand blown in from the eastern shore creates enormous, mile-long dunes which reclaim the forest and bury the trees...



Then we have lakes... There are two types on the island. One is formed because all the rain water which has ever fallen on the island soaks through the surface and forms a gigantic aquifer beneath the surface. Where the sand levels off to the top of the aquifer, water emerges. These are called window lakes, because they are a window on the water stored in the sand - 40 times more than all the water in Sydney Harbour.

The second type of lake is called a perched dune lake. There are only about 80 of these in the world and Fraser Island has 42 of them. The most touristy is Lake Mackenzie...



The sand is so white and the water so clear. (The sky is so blue as well, but I didn't want to start writing poetry by accident...) Perched dune lakes are high up and are formed when a sand bowl is lined with plant debris and effectively becomes waterproof. (Mr Miller, my secondary school Geography teacher would be so proud...)

All the roads on Fraser Island, or to give it its Aboriginal name, K'Gari, are sand roads and are hard going even in a 4WD. But the eastern shore, Seventy Five Mile Beach, is for all purposes, a motorway. Vehicles bomb up and down it, and legally, the rules of the road still apply - you have to drive on the left. Overtaking allowed...



The beach is also the final resting place of the SS Maheno - an Edwardian cruise liner built in Dumbarton. No-one died when she ran ashore in the thirties, but she was even more severely damaged when the Aussie Air Force used her for bombing practice...



For the moment, the wreck is stable and you can explore it close up, at least with eyes and cameras. The likelihood is that it will disintegrate and become dangerous within a few years and may have to be taken away or dismantled and buried completely. Enjoy it while you can...

OK, finally, streams - or creeks. Again, these form because of the pressure of the water held inside the island forces water out at sea level. They look strange because they have sandy river beds, but are beautifully clear. And the water is perfectly safe to drink, having been through the biggest and most effective sand filter in the world over a period of thousands of years.



There's so much to say about the island - no kangaroos, wallabies or koalas; but dingoes and monitor lizards and wolf spiders (2cm long and can kill you) in droves - all of which we saw. In the case of the spiders, on a night ranger-guided tour where you spot the spiders by shining a high-powered torch into the bush and look for the eyes shining back.

Creepy...

If you are undertaking a long journey such as this one, north of Brisbane on the Bruce Highway, quite a large number of kilometres along roads with those "This is a High Incident Area" signs up the sides, I suggest strongly that you don't do it driven by "Dave-O" of Suntours.

"Dave-O" is the only driver on the road who is any good at driving. Certainly no-one female or Aboriginal is better than he is and he demonstrates as much by pretending to shoot them with gun-fingers if they overtake him or sometimes even if they are just travelling in the same direction as him.

"Dave-O" is unhappy because he might be out of a job. Apparently, the boss of the firm is terminally ill and needs to spend time with her family. Thus all the drivers are being made redundant. He is hopeful that he might get a driving job somewhere else, but if he doesn't I imagine he could find a niche in the more heavy-handed, under-the-radar branches of the private security/protection racket industry.

Travelling about 3 metres behind the traffic in front at 120kph, he delivered us safely, but slightly shaken, to Hervey (pronounced "Harvey") Bay marina for the catamaran to Fraser Island.

More about Fraser Island tomorrow, and more about "Dave-O" the day after...

We have obviously not found the picturesque and touristy parts of Brisbane yet.

This is forgiveable because it's a very brief stopover of just a few hours - overnight, in fact - before it's the foray futher north to Fraser Island. We're back here on Thursday for a proper look around and it might all look a bit more rosy then.

Highlights so far appear to be the Riverside Expressway...



...which despite being new and looking relatively clean, is still a six-lane urban motorway cutting pedestrian access to the river bank.

The tower blocks...



...which seem not to have any architectural merit.

And the groovy hip'n'happening Southbank, which is where we are staying...



...all fountains and paving and cafe terraces. Lots of people jogging and cycling. You know the thing.

Sign shows you that you either have to be in a car, or a member of the Bangles, to use this bit. Think about it.

Sunset over the western skies as we say Goodbye to Nessie (flying back to NZ...) and to Melbourne (staying where it is...)



The star you can make out is a bit of the Southern Cross. Don't ask me which bit. Look it up.

Next Stop - Brisbane.

I haven't watched Neighbours since I was a student and everyone watched it.

Charlene, Scott, Clive Gibbons in his garish shorts leaping out of his Ute to perform an emergency tracheotomy on Lucy Robinson on the kitchen table with a bread knife lest she die of a bee sting.

Even when I did watch it, it was always the same episode. Helen Daniels had had a stroke and Jim Robinson was pacing up and down a hospital corridor wondering if she would be all right. Or Jim Robinson had had a heart attack and Helen Daniels was pacing up and down a hospital corridor wondering if he would be all right. Only not very fast, on account of her stroke.

Now it's got jazzed up theme music and widescreen titles. There are really no old people in it anymore, just Hollyoaks-style teenagers. It's not even on BBC1 and Bouncer, alas, has bounced his last.

And of course, no-one to speak of really watches it. Not least in Australia, where they never really did anyway.

But it carries on relentlessly and it's Christmas...



All the houses on Pin Oak Court...



...in Vermont South have the sort of naff blow-mould santas and snowmen and reindeer in their front gardens. They get paid a lot of money for their houses to be (ab)used in this way. They even have a security guard on duty 24 hours a day paid for by the TV company...



So many of them have made so much money that they don't actually live in the houses anymore, just rent them out and relax on their private beaches somewhere.

The Alistair Mc Gowan look-a-like guide gives you the run down of who lived and died where and you can grab the sign and have your photo taken with it.



Then it's round the corner to Lassiters...



...which looks so crap in real life! And to Lou and Harold's general store, which I'm pretty sure used to be Daphne's Coffee Shop.

Erinsborough High is just around the corner. The guide turns it in to Erinsborough High by the simple addition of a sign which he hangs on the railings...



And then you get to see Janelle in a meet'n'greet...



Janelle Timmins? You know...? Her? (Nope, means nothing to me either...) Anyhow, she happily signs autographs on her Sunday morning and chats about her happy, happy times on the show. I guess it's either that or Panto. And it's not really Christmas. Only in Erinsborough.

(Note: they do tell you that "Erinsborough" was so named because it's an anagram of "Neighbours" without the extra O and R. Which is a bit like saying "good" is an anagram of "crap", but with different letters.)