Been a very long time since I updated here – but that’s because I’ve been so busy! Incoming massive update: –
Mid May I was invited to stay at Liam & Kate’s with Ben & Tilly up at Kate’s parents’ house. Nice to see how the other half lives 
Was a fantastic weekend with copious amounts of beer and good food. Pictionary was excellent – as were the bacon & egg rolls on the BBQ at the sea front the next morning. Kate & Liam are moving back to the UK for a while since Liam lost his job here. Will be sad to see them go! Hopefully we can all meet up in the UK around Christmas time.
The Monday after was the day Mum & Small arrived for their four week visit to Australia. Ben & Tilly have been great and kindly leant me the car to pick them up. Typically I immediately contracted a nasty cold (swine flu?) which put me out of action for the first few days, but Alexandra went off to Sydney on the Thursday and mum & I joined her and Esther there on the Saturday. We only had 3 nights and two full days in Sydney but we fit quite a lot in. The evening we arrived, after checking in to our little hostel room, we had some awesome Japanese food and then ended up watching Angels and Demons (not too bad). The next day we spent doing the Sydney tourist stuff – opera house, harbour bridge, and caught a ferry out to Watsons Bay where we had some pretty good fish & chips. Esther was a great help finding our way around so many thanks go to her! What I really loved about Sydney was seeing loads of the set locations from The Matrix – maybe that’s because I’m a nerd, but either way it was cool On our second day we decided to take a train up into the Blue Mountains and got a hop-on-hop-off ticket around Katoomba and the surrounding area. We started off with quite a lot of fog early on which made it hard to appreciate some of the scenary but it cleared up by the afternoon. I think the highlight of the trip was taking a ride down the mountainside on the “52 degree incline train” which had mum shouting all sorts of profanities because she was scared Excellent fun. We also managed to get her around a cliff-side walk through the rainforest which took a bit longer than it should have done but she managed it and was glad she’d done it so that was good too. All the pics from Sydney can be found here.
Back to Brisbane and I was back at work for the rest of the week so Mum & Small entertained themselves until the last weekend in May where we hired a car for 2 days. On the Saturday the three of us made a trip to Australia Zoo via the Glasshouse mountains. The mountains are an awesome sight – volcanic things that just stick out of the surrounding scenary. I’d like to go back there and have a better look sometime. Australia zoo was incredible – the place was just so clean and tidy and the animals in such good condition it was incredible. It’s sad that Steve Irwin isn’t still there because I bet it was even more awesome then, but it was still a great day. We did all the classic feeding the kangaroos, stroking the koalas, and watched a crocodile show. I can highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t been – I thought it was great. There’s plenty of pics from our trip there too (click here).
On the Sunday we went a little further north up to Noosa on the Sunshine coast – unfortunately the weather wasn’t on our side and it was raining most of the time we were there but we had a walk along the beach front, looked in some shops, and had a nice fish & chips lunch at the surf club before making our way home. Stopped off briefly at The Ginger Factory which looked really interesting but we didn’t have a chance to look much further than the gift shop. That evening Mum & Small moved in to Ben & Tilly’s flat for the week. Can’t thank them enough for taking them in and giving me my bed back for a bit! Haha. I spent that week back at work again, but we spent the evenings going out for dinner and stuff which was nice. And Queensland won Origin 1 (the first of the three-game series of rugby league between Queensland & New South Wales that happens this time every year)! QUEENSLANDER!!
Finally last Saturday the three of us took a flight up to Cairns to visit my relatives Fenella, Matz, Magnus & Sofia. Fenny & Magnus’ girlfriend Laura kindly met us from the airport and we spent 4 full days in and around Cairns having an awesome time. Magnus is a guide for a white-water rafting company so the first day we spent the afternoon riding the rapids of the Barron river. He managed to get a boat with him guiding and just me, Alexandra, Laura & Matz in the boat so that was great fun. The pics from their photographer can be found here. The next day Fenny took me, Sofia, mum & Alexandra on an organised boat trip out to Michaelmas Cay – a tiny sand island in the great barrier reef about 2 hours sailing off the coast of cairns. I’ve never really done any “proper snorkelling” before and when I was little I even had a bit of a phobia of swimming in water that had fish in it – but snorkelling around the reef and seeing all the fish, starfish, and turtles was just unbelievable. It was so cool to see all the wildlife there and I’m so glad I did it. The boat trip itself was pretty impressive too with loads of great food. Pics from this trip (bought at great expense due to the professional photographer with the underwater camera) can be found here. On the third day Magnus & Laura took me & Alexandra to Crystal Cascades where we swam in a little bit of the river and had fun climbing up & sliding down the rapids there which was awesome if a little colder than the other parts of the holiday! We also watched the new Terminator movie that evening which was surprisingly not that bad. Finally on the last day Matz hired out a little pontoon boat in the afternoon and we went into the mangroves and found some wild crocs sunning themselves! The whole trip to Cairns was brilliant and I can’t thank my cousins there enough for having us – was good to meet up with them all again because I don’t see them enough. There’s plenty of Cairns pics here.
That’s about it for now – we got back from Cairns this morning (6 am flight!!) and I’ve spent most of the time since then sorting through my photos and writing this update. Mum & Alexandra leave on Sunday and it will be sad to see them go. At least I can get back into the old routine and start hitting the gym again!
NOTE: As well as the aforementioned pictures (which can all be found under the “Australia Pics” page) there are also two sets of panoramic photos that are well worth a look, especially those from Sydney. Some of these can be found on the Panoramic Pics page and the rest on a special Sydney Panoramic Pics page.