Back in UK now, but here are those last photos. (N.B. Not same bit of water for these two pics!!).

This is the Thomas's last post on this blog. Hope you've enjoyed seeing what we got up to.

Over and out.

Pete, Trudy, Alaastair and Kez.

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Here we are at Darwin airport ready to leave australia. All very sad. Our holiday has gone amazingly quickly. Just purchased our last two 'flat white' coffees with our last Ausie money!

Here are some pics from the last week.

G'day from Kakadu National Park in Northern Territory. Been touring arround in our Winnebago for several days now up here. Very hot. Air conditioning in van a godsend. Seen a very different face of Ausie up here. Very laid back. Very rural. Tourism only just getting off ground. Did go croc spotting. Amazing. 5 Metre croc leaping out of water next to our very flimsy little boat! Health and safety not an issue here! (Would never be allowed to do it in UK). Seen some Aboriginal culture too - went on bush tour last night and cooked fish and goose over open fire. (Alastair not impressed). Have swam in water holes / waterfalls. Very refreshing. (Not same water holes as crocs).

Will post more pics when we can. Pete.

We had a nice morning in Brisbane, we walked round the city a bit - the river runs through the city and there is a man made beach there which is beautiful. We then went to the airport and flew for 2 hours to Cairns. We picked up a hire car and drove to Port Douglas for dinner, then on to Crocodylus Village, which is about 2.5 hours north of Cairns and in the Daintree national park - which is the oldest rainforest on the planet. Crocodylus is basically a youth hostel and the accomodation is a tent on stilts - quite civilized in that it has a loo and shower, however the first night Kezi and Trudy were a bit squeemish - there are lots of 'things' lurking. Anyway we survived the night and the next day we set off in kayaks (with a group and 2 great guides) to spend the day and night on Snapper Island. We had a great time and everyone got on really well. It was very relaxing and the weather was just amazing. The best bit of all was lying on the beach after dark and looking at the trillions of stars in a totally dark sky - very humbling!
The next day we did more kayaking, sun baking and snorkelling then back to crocodylus about 4pm - for an early night - we were all knackered.
Up early next day for boat trip to the Great Barrier reef. Another awesome experience - we have never seen anything like it - the coral and turtles and the fish...... Having a snivel into your snorkel mask at the sheer wonder of it all is not to be recommended.
Anyway we are back to Crocodylus for our last night and like every place we have visited we don't want to go.
We can't add a photo as we are having to use the communal internet. We are also not sure how we will get on communications wise next week as we are going to be in our camper van from tomorrow as we fly to Darwin in the morning.

6/8/09 we set off for 4 hour drive to hervey Bay which is north of Brisbane. We stopped off at the beach then a koala centre on the way. Beautiful appartment in Hervey Bay. We went out for nice dinner. After bracing dip in pool the next morning we got ferry over to Fraser Island. This 80 mile long island 30 minutes by ferry is made ofr sand blown by the south easterly prevailing wind. The Kingfisher resort is gorgeous. We have a villa. They have rangers here and we went on a night walk and saw a scary spider and our first bandicoot. In the morning we got up early and went on a bird walk and joy of joys after 43 years of waiting I saw a kingfisher. We saw loads of other good stuff too. We then went on a 4WD bus through all the sand dunes and over rocks nad through the water on a tour of the island (well bits) with Dave the mad driver who was fab and had us in fits. We saw 3 dingos along the way. In the evening we also had a talk on dingos so we know everything about them now - ask away!

9/8/09 - P&T up early for 2 laps of the resort (a dingo friendly run I can assure you) then pool and off island to go whale watching. Hervey Bay is Australias whale watching capital and this time Pete fulfilled his ambition as saw loads of whales and dolfins. It was glorious! - see the picture. After that back to Brisbane for night before we fly to Cairns tomorrow.

Hey people!

Today we went to a theme park on the gold coast. It was called 'dream world' and there were many large and exiting rides, for instance 'the Big Drop' which dropped you from one hundred metres in the air. Mum's favourite ride was Dorethy's spinning tea cups, although she found it very scary.

We are now in Broadbeach which is down the road from Surfer's Paradise on the east coast about 40 minutes drive from Brisbane. We flew here yesterday after another night in Adelaide. Our highlight of Adelaide was visiting the zoo yesterday morning.

The 2 days prior to this we were on kangeroo Island. This amazing place is pretty big (about 70+ miles from end to end). We went there by plane from Adelaide and then were taken by mini bus to our appartments. The place was fab and we had a super dinner under watchful eye of Richard originally from Stafford. Trudy had a starter consisting of kangeroo, crocodile and emu. (avoid kangeroo is my advice). We had a full day's 4by4 safari with a very knowledgeable guy called Fraser. He took us round and showed us eagles, roos, koalas, sea ljons and seals.

The weather is getting warmer as we go further north. Just off now for swim in our resort pool.