Hunter Valley to the Blue Mountains

We headed south to Hunter Valley, the premiere wine region of Australia. We spent a couple days cheese, chocolate, beer and wine tasting, then spent the night in a rest stop. Now we are in the Blue Mountains, a region 2 hours west of Sydney. Katoomba is a quaint little village we are staying in, filled with Italian Bistros and local flavor. The vistas are spectacular, with one of the more famous landmarks in Australia, The Three Sisters (above), just at the southern end of town. We slept in a real bed and had a hot shower for the first time in nine days, and enjoyed it thouroughly. We were planning on staying here for several days but rain is hindering our hiking and outdoor activities. The brush fires have changed our plans for heading south to Melbourne, but we will still drive south along the coast where there are more mountain rainforest towns.

Surfer's Paradise to Byron Bay

Our second night in the van was on the Gold Coast at Surfer's Paradise, which reminded us of a very young LA, skyscrapers met beatiful beaches and high priced food. We camped in an alley between some million dollar condos and had the public shower all to ourselves in the morning. We then headed into the Hinterland and Springbrook national park which our Lonely Planet desecribed well as something like Jurassic Park. The Hinterland (pictured above) was a lush landscape that reminded us of a tropical California. Purlingbrook falls (right) was 105 meters tall and one of the most spectacular we have ever seen. We saw many waterfalls that day and headed back through the Hinterland to Byron Bay, buying some local organic produce along the way from a farmer who when we commented on how nice his store was replied "I wouldn't know whether it's good or bad I've been here me whole life", it looked like he had been wearing the same shirt his whole life too. Byron Bay was a very nice place where we camped out for 3 nights in a parking lot, cooking dinner behind our van. Drum circles set the mood at sunset and the surfers outnumbered the locals. Everything here has been reminding us of different places in California and Byron Bay, without a doubt, was a young Santa Cruz. We rented a board and surfed for 2 days straight, but got worked, rashes hurt!

On to the East Coast!

From Margaret River we headed south to Augusta, where we stayed in a hostel and cooked our first meal in two months, steak and beans, mmm. This was a sleepy town where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean. We then drove to Perth to stay with Flavia and Eric, Uncle Nick's friends from Michigan who were gracious hosts who showed us around Perth. We went to Cirque de Soleil and visited the popular Little Creatures Brewery. We flew to the east coast and landed in Brisbane, where we picked up our Wicked campervan. Alix got butt naked to get us one free day of rental, naked special. Our van, pictured above, is the Wicked Pirate Yankee Van, all the wicked vans have quotes spray painted on the back, ours is "women fake orgasms because they think men care...", we get some dirty looks but more laughs. Some of our other favorite wicked quotes are "save the whales, guddle a japanese fisherman" and "death once had a near Chuck Norris experience." We drove north to the Frasier Coast to camp out in our van for the first night, decided not to go to Frasier Island because they were charging ridiculous prices for ferry rides, and we couldn't take our dear new ride with us. We're proud to say that we haven't paid for a campground since renting our van, we've been asking locals where the police don't ticket and finding secluded spots on the beach where we can watch the sunrise! Most recently though, rest stops have been our landing spots, as pictured below (about to enjoy a curry feast in the parking lot!)

Margaret River!

Sam golfing with roos on his 25th Birthday!
Beer tasting at Bootleg Brewery!

We headed further south to the premiere wine and surfing region of Western Australia, Margaret River. It's a cozy little town surrounded by hundreds of wineries, as well as breweries and chocolate and jam factories. We have been sampling our selves silly the last few days. For Sam's 25th B-day we went out for a morning round of golf, Alix was happy to come along because there were Kangaroos all over the course. After that we went to the beach at the river mouth which was beautiful and had a huge surf break where we watched surfers and wind surfers go at it. Then we headed back inland to do some more wine tasting. Now that we have stocked up on wine and chocolate we are ready to keep moving south.

Bunburry...

On our way south of Perth we stopped in a sleepy little ghost town called Bunburry, the beach was beautiful with good body surfing waves which we partook in, but the people in town dissapeared into their hollows at about 4pm. We decided to see a 9 o'clock movie and when we got back to our hotel we were locked out and had to spend the night in our compact Hyundai while fighting off mosquitos and eating left over starbursts all night.

Australia Day!

We happened to arrive in Perth on Australia day (Australia's 4th of July basically). It was a shock to be in a country with level sidewalks and where cars stopped for pedestrians. People were wearing Australian flags as capes and one man painted himself as such and sported only a blue g-string. We were in the central park where 100's of thousands of

people gathered for picnics and eventually a spectacular fireworks show that out-sparked any that we have ever seen in the states. We searched for a beer but there were none! Even after the festival it was hard to find a pub, and when we finally did they wouldn't let us in because we were wearing sandals! Sam went 4 days without shoes, or sandals in Bali!

Our last days in Bali

Our last days in Bali were very relaxed, just hanging out with the community of people we had gotten to know. We didn't mention that Dj is a great singer and Dan is a great guitar and drum player, and we got to see them perform at open mics on a couple occasions, great fun. Sam caught his first wave in Legian as the trash in the water clung to his board and body, disgusting, but good waves to learn on.