"An Around-the-World-Ticket for Two, Please."

So, it has been a long time since I last blogged for lots of reasons, bad signal and being busy mainly! So, now that we are stationary for a little while I thought it was about time to catch up! I'm hoping to keep up-to-date from now on!

So, from the lovely campsite at Lake Hume we headed through Canberra to Bateman's Bay. We stayed on another lovely campsite that was right next to the beach and the rainforest, it was beautiful! There were a group of wild kangaroos that frequently visited the campsite and were very tame and friendly! The weather wasn't great while we were there, but we did manage to visit the beach when it wasn't raining and Ben kicked my ass at beach boules, or 'bocchi' as it's called here! Being between the beach and the rainforest meant we didn't get any phone reception or signal for our USB modem, so we couldn't get online, which was when I started to slip writing the blog! However, I did make notes each day to jog my memory, thank goodness! We went into the town each day to check Ben's phone as we were desperately waiting to get news of a job. It was not looking good as there was nothing around in Queensland. However, he did get a call about a job in Armidale, New South Wales, which was perfect as it was a 3 week locum post that came with accomodation. The problem with this was that he did not have a licence for NSW, only Queensland. He also didn't have originals of some of the documents he needed to get one, and the process in QLD took over 6 weeks, time we didn't have. We told the guy with the job all of this and said he could get Ben a licence in 48 hours, which we didn't believe, however, he put Ben forward for the job and we waited to hear. We both thought that was too much of a long shot, so started to think of other ideas. We looked into fruit picking, however, there were waiting lists of backpackers for jobs and the money was terrible, but it seemed like our only option!

So, we decided to continue travelling north as there would be cotton picking work in north QLD in March, so we decided to aim for that. We drove to Jervis Bay which is a place with amazing beaches and beautiful national park. We went to the information centre and they told us we could camp in the national park and they had good facilities including hot showers, so we rang up to book, but as it was the weekend, they had no spaces, which was a real shame! We ended up in a campsite next to the beach, which was nice enough, but had no camp kitchen which was a bit disappointing. The weather stayed dry for us in Jervis Bay, but sadly was not amazing, so beach days weren't great, but we went anyway! The best beaches were in the national park, so we headed there for the day. It was beautiful, but there were lots of jellyfish washing up on the sand so I would not go in the sea! After a couple of days at Jarvis Bay we headed onto Kiama.

Kiama has a blow hole which is usually very spectacular, however, the sea wasn't very rough when we went! We did climb up on the cliff and took in the amazing views which was lovely! We found a great campsite right on the beach, and with an amazing pool so got our pitch and then headed up the mountains to do the rainforest boardwalk. When we were in Bateman's Bay the man camping next door to us told us about the best pie shop ever in Kiama, up the mountain, so we decided to take a detour there first for lunch. It was a bit of a trek, but the views were great as we drove! Sadly Ben ran over quite a large Water Dragon, which looked to both of us to be a tree branch, then as we got closer and realised what it was and it didn't move, we both said drive straight over it - but you can imagine what happened next - yep, it moved and we ran over it, the noise was awful! We found the pie shop and enjoyed 2a world famous" pie! We then drove to the rainforest to do the boardwalk. There are two routes, one is shorter and suitable for wheelchairs, and the other does an extra loop that is hardcore to see a waterfall. We put our trainers on and enjoyed a very tough walk to the waterfall, and a good rest admiring it, before heading back. We enjoyed some time on the beach and in the pool back at the campsite. We were still waiting to hear about the job, and while lying on the beach I thought of one more solution, that we come home 3 weeks early, bringing all our flights forward by three weeks, which would save us a lot of money as 3 weeks in Australia is expensive! We decided that this seemed like the best plan and started to look at changing our flights. However, the very next day we got a call to say he had the job and this guy was going to sort out the licence. We both still didn't really think it was going to work out, after our experience in QLD, so we didn't let ourselves get excited. We were driving to Sydey that day and Brian (the guy with the job) told us to ring him when we arrived to sort it all out!