I’ve been enjoying seeing some of rural Australia on this trip, one feature of which is bridges over small rivers, most of them have been well maintained and sturdy looking, some, like the one below however have made me a little nervous…

You know you are in a small town, when the main tourist attraction is a giant banana.

Today we are staying in Yamba, a small surfing town, with absolutely perfect beaches. We were due to stay here two days but we might be heading up to Byron in the morning instead…

Today we went to Dorrigo a national park sporting some awesome rainforest land, I would love to write more but tomorrow is a travel day (next stop Yamba about 50km North) and I need my beauty sleep…

There were trees, and waterfalls and even more trees…

We also stopped off at another set of waterfalls whose name escapes me…

Tomorrow, tales of scary bridges and Yamba (I might also tidy this post up so it isn’t such an ungodly mess)

Shortly after our road trip started we wound up back in Sydney due to a castestrophic mechanical failure of our rented camper van. I have pictures to prove this but they are still on my partners camera. I had more pressing concerns, like how to get the van off the freeway, which stopped me from unpacking my camera case…

Our replacement vehicle however seems to be behaving much better and has got us as far as Bellingen a small market town just south of the Queensland border. I’m looking into some kind of live updating google map to plot our journey from this point forward.

We are staying at the Bellingen YHA which is surprisingly relaxing and frankly I’m not sure I want to leave. The whole hostel has this communal vibe with views overlooking fields, Dorrigo mountains and the recently flooded river with not another building in sight, totally relaxing which I definitely needed…

We spent this morning exploting the Bellingen markets which are held monthly and had a great selection of local crafts and produce on show. I’m sure that we would have bought far mre than we did but space is somewhat at a premium so we limited our purchases to some lovely hand made soap and some assorted gifts for friends and family.

Tomorrow we are planning on heading into the rainforest, so unless I get eaten by something big and scary, expect to see plenty of trees.

I’m coming to the end of my time in Australia, and frankly I’m no closer to finding the answer to the “what am I supposed to be doing with my life?” question.

I might be a bit closer to finding out who I’m supposed to be doing it with though…

We have been attempting to dig up the small potatos we planted in the garden last year. From the looks of things it was hardly worth the effort really…

We are slowly but surely getting things packed for the roadtrip, I’m almost excited about the whole thing…

Well it would appear my lease is almost up and frankly I’m getting a bit bored with Sydney and working a day job and so forth. The result of which is a road trip from one end of the east coast of Australia to the other. We will be hiring a camper-van and aiming to be completely self sufficient, but I expect to spend a fair number of the nights at hotels/hostels, if only to have internet and non-solar electricity…

Hopefully the trip will give me the chance to make some great pictures and see a bit more of Australia than I have so far.

Some details:

Start: Sydney
Finish: Cairns
Milage: 1645 miles
Start Date: 19/02/09
Finish Date: 14/03/09
Time it would take if were riding a giant turtle: 6.3 years…

The itinery is pretty rough at the moment but the general idea is to follow the coast as much as possible, probably only doing any serious driving 2-3 days a week.

Stay tuned for more updates and possibly a very special offer…

If there is one thing that both Australia and Japan have in common, it’s their love of barbequed meat, something we don’t really do in England. The best part about it is that grilled meat fits perfectly onto my diet on which I’ve managed to lose 12kg so far, with another 4-5 to go (yes I got fat in Australia).

Not too long and my “barbie” will go back to being “yakiniku”, and the chicken skewers seen above will be “yakitori”…

It’s summer time here in Sydney and it has been nice to just go out for a bit of a stroll. Seemed rude to not take pictures while I was out. I’ve been trying to tidy up the site a little bit, part of which is the new wider blog layout, if nothing else it will let me post even bigger images. If anyone has any problems with the new layout, do drop me a line in the comments.

I have a new project comig up which is exciting me greatly, so check back soon for more details…

This past weekend saw me at a wedding, which in and of itself isn’t all that strange. This time however I had an invite, a place at dinner and noone was expecting me to organise the formals. Suffice it to say a great, if a little hot and sweaty, time was had. I quite enjoyed being able to actually talk to people and be sociable and I even went home with one of the bridesmaids, how very lucky…

Obviously I had a camera with me and took a few photos, mostly at the reception as I didn’t really feel the urge during the ceremony (that and I was stuck at the back without any long glass), click the picture or here for a slideshow of the day.

Congratulations to Jodie and John, may every day of marriage be as happy as your wedding day.