We spent Christmas Eve in Darling Harbour where there were lots of festivities going on and strange things like huge inflatable Father Christmases floating about on the water, a very intimidating flashing neon 'HO HO HO' christmas tree and carol singing en-mass. We hunted about for a restaurant which proved quite tricky as everywhere was packed, but eventually found a table at Nick's Seafood Restaurant. We had a delicious supper and even were treated to some spectacular fireworks over the harbour at 9pm which were very impressive and got us excited for New Years!
Despite the fact that I had been preparing for a hot and sunny Christmas for about 5 months, on Christmas Day in Sydney, it RAINED. Temperatures dropped down to about 22 degrees and there was a steady drizzle all day, however it strangely managed to make us all feel a little bit more like it was actually Christmas because of the fact that it felt a bit like winter.
Classic Ray Ban Wayfarers in Tortishell with Polarised lenses, thank you very much!
Sunglasses are essential wear in Australia as it is sunny every day here (apart from Christmas, sad face) and Australians are very concerned with sun damage to your eyes and find it strange when you don't wear them. My only pair are crappy and old and cost about £10 from some market stall somewhere in Salisbury, and so these swanky new things are a welcome addition to my face/wardrobe/head.
After a lovely cosy morning we all dressed up in our glad-rags and scuttled out the door and straight into a taxi to avoid the rain and headed to Woolloomooloo Warf for lunch.
Woolloomooloo Warf is a gorgeous place which is basically just a long strip of amazing restaurants by the water, all serving delicious gourmet food in a very funky, lively atmosphere. It's a very cool place to be and is one of my favourite places to eat in Sydney. You can do all sorts of fun stuff like arrive by boat too. Look how pretty it is...!
We went to a groovy restaurant called Criniti's which is an amazing and very rustic Italian with delicious food and hundred of cocktails to choose from. Needless to say, we tried most of them....
It was a bit strange to be in a restaurant for Christmas lunch, but because of the rain they had big patio heaters on along the warf and we were tucked up in a cosy little corner where we stayed for four hours (!) and in the end we felt very Christmassy indeed. The waiters and waitresses were super friendly and didn't mind one bit when we started being very loud and playing charades at our table...! There were loads of families about and it was quite fun to be part of a kind of big communal Christmas celebration with everyone dressed up nicely and enjoying the atmosphere in the restaurant.
In the evening, we snuggled up in the hotel beds and watched a few films to help our food coma along, until my Dad had a random stroke of inspiration to go for a night swim on the beach... cue mass hilarity and girly screaming. I decided I didn't want to swim and would just document the whole event, however I ended up getting almost as wet due to the horizontal rain and general uselessness of my umbrella.
We returned to the hotel all a bit bedraggled and to many a strange look from the hotel staff... oh well, it's just how us Whitmans do Christmas!
Sadly, even though I was 45mins early to the airport, I managed to wait in the wrong arrivals hall and so our reunion was a little disjointed, but eventually we all found each other. Arrivals was packed as everyone was coming to meet their friends and family who were flying out to Australia and there were lots of smiling faces and tearful reunions going on around me.
Once we were finally together again we hopped in a cab to get away from the thronging masses as quickly as possible and arrived shortly at the hotel. They were all very pale and jetlagged and just, well... squishy! You forget how much you body changes throughout the seasons, and comparing their pale English winter skin to my Australia summer skin was absolutely hilarious, no offence guys.
After they had showered and unpacked I took them down to Coogee to let them thaw out a bit. It was a boiling hot day and they just kind of melted onto the beach in the heat. This was Moo's reaction to this sun...
Squinty mole rat
As per my usual routine, I made them do the Coogee to Bondi walk that afternoon too. Sadly, after only about 20mins, this was the state of them... I felt a bit mean.
Ella was dying of heat exhaustion, my Mum was simply just really over tired, my Dad had blisters already, and we'd totally lost Hannah. Brilliant. However, we eventually found some water and some plasters (and Hannah) and finally made it to Bondi where we had an early supper at Lush. Needless to say, they pretty much went straight to bed after that!
The next few days were a little more successful as they slowly acclimatised and got over their jetlag. We explored Sydney and did very touristy things like visit Circular Quay and the Opera House and stuff as my Dad and sisters have never been to Australia before and wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
We beached, and shopped, and visited some family friends and desperately tried to feel Christmassy in the heat! Sadly the weather wasn't all that great for them as it's was quite overcast and muggy some days, but still a hell of a lot better than the English winter.
Finding it very hard to get it into my head that it's the 23rd December....!
After our slightly strange experience at Paronella Park, we headed back out of the rainforest to Airlie Beach on the coast again. Oli drove down as far as Ingham, and then decided he wanted to have a sleep in the back of the van, and for the first time left all the responsibility of driving to Harry and I. We were happily cruising along, chatting away and enjoying the view of the sugar can fields and mountains in the distance, until Oli woke up and yelled at us because we had been going the wrong way for 45 minutes out into the middle of nowhere, to the point where the tarmac road stopped and became a dirt track leading off into the distance 50m in front of us.... whoops. He couldn't believe that we hadn't noticed that we had gone so far into the middle of nowhere that they had even stopped bothering with a proper road! You can see our little tangent from G to H on the map below.... yeah, not quite sure how we got that so wrong!
Oli was spitting poison about us wasting time and petrol, but Harry and I had been having a great time and tried to explain to him that this was what a road trip was all about and that we would cover the cost of our little adventure. Needless to say, he just got even more annoyed with us for laughing it off and banned Harry from driving, who took a handful of selfies in the back of the van to show just how many fucks he gave...
When we finally arrived in Airlie Beach we stayed in the Nomads Backpackers hostel underneath a huge mango tree which was full of possums and fruit bats - a pretty noisy night! Whilst we were in Airlie we realised we each had a lot more money than we all thought and splashed out a bit on some celebratory breakfasts and hit up some of the bars. One of the nights we met this crazy group of people and had one of the strangest but most hilarious nights out of the trip.
Some random guy's tattoo about his love for moustaches...
WHITSUNDAYS
Oli and I also booked to do a trip out to the Whitsunday Islands to visit Whitehaven Beach and do a scuba dive. On our boat we met the coolest couple called Raf and Rachel who we hung out with all day. Big shout out to you guys! We had an awesome day and scuba diving was an amazing experience. We were super lucky as there wasn't a single cloud in the sky and the visibility was amazing. Going to Whitehaven Beach was also an incredible experience.... never seen anything quite like it!
Action man
Rach and Raf
FRASER ISLAND
That night when we got back from our idyllic day, we grabbed Harry and hopped straight in the van and did a loooooooooong 14hr drive down to Hervey Bay where we were to pick up our 4x4 which we were renting for Fraser Island. We took it in shifts to do the driving through the night and it was pretty horrific but we didn't have much choice as we had to get a move on and get further south as we had spent so much time up north. There was nowhere that we wanted to stop between Airlie Beach and Hervey Bay either, so we just zoomed right on down.
We picked up our truck and caught the ferry across to Fraser Island for a two day adventure on the world's largest sand island. All the roads are just sand tracks and everyone just crashes about in their 4x4s. You can do a group tour but we thought it would be much more fun to drive ourselves.
Oli letting the tires down - something you have to do to drive on sand apparently!?
Fallen down tree....
We went to this amazing freshwater lake called Lake McKenzie which has crystal blue water and white sands and was just goooorgeous.
All down one side of the island is a beach called Seventy Five Mile Beach which you can drive up and down. There's literally no rules apart from a 80km/h speed limit and you have to be careful of washouts and stuff (so that you don't end up nose first down some sand cliff thing) and everyone races up and down this huge beach during low tide.
We spent the night at a little hostel with another group of some Germans who were our age and doing exactly the same as us. The hostel was unmanned and we found the master key and so all of us got our own individual bedroom which was great!
There's loads of stuff to do and look at on this island, it's genuinely like a magical forgotten treasure island. It even has a shipwreck and a river which you can get in and float down to the sea! Amazing.
Maheno Wreck
Shipwreck photography
The second day on Fraser was the only day for the whole trip that it rained, and it actually couldn't have been timed better as it made driving on the sand tracks much easier!
NOOSA
After our island adventure we drove on to Noosa which is a beautiful beach town which is very popular as a nice holiday destination with Australians. We just spent some time chilling on the beach here and enjoying some of the nice beachy cafes.
BYRON BAY
We decided to leave Noosa early the next day and drive down past Brisbane to Byron Bay as I felt that I had to take the boys there after we had such a good time on our semester break. We stayed at a hostel called the Arts Factory Lodge which is genuinely just the most chilled out place in the world. Everyone just lolls about in hammocks and befriends the lizards by the lake, and everyone is so relaxed and friendly.
I took the boys on a tour of Byron and we spent a few days just chilling on the beach, walking up to the lighthouse, going for brunch at The Top Shop (favourite cafe in the whole of Australia), befriending some hippies, browsing the amazing little shops and abusing happy hour at Balcony Bar.
Boys being annoying on the beach
Stumpy the lizard
View from the lighthouse
Just before we left to go to Brisbane, Harry had a snooze and Oli and I went and browsed the amazing Artizan Market. We spent ages walking around, buying Christmas presents and trying some of the yummy food and drinks that all the quirky little stalls sell. This is a MUST in Byron, it's such an amazing market!
Another must us a place recommended to us by Raf and Rach. It's a secret lagoon in an old quarry and it is honestly one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. There's a huge cliff which you can jump into the water from on one side, and a big grassy area on the other, and the whole thing is covered in lilypads! It's a real locals spot and not that many people know about it. We stayed there for a nice swim before our last drive and had the whole place to ourselves. Check out the website here.
BRISBANE
Finally, we managed to drag ourselves away from lovely Byron and headed back up to our final stop, Brisbane. When we arrived we stopped for lunch at a lookout and had this amazing view over the city in a yummy cafe up there.
We checked ourselves in to a nice hostel for our last night so that we actually had a proper bed and a shower etc. and headed out to test out Brisbane's nightlife. A local girl recommended a club called Laruche in Fortitude Valley (Brisbane's equivalent of Kings Cross in Sydney) which was very trendy and we had a big final celebratory blow out to end the road trip.
The next day we had to drive to the Wicked Campers depot and drop back our van. After a sad goodbye to our trusty tin can which had been our home for the past two weeks, we headed back into the city to have a wander around their botanical gardens and promptly fell asleep in the shade by the water and didn't really see that much of Brisbane at all!
Bye byeeeee
Eventually, Oli and I packed up our stuff, said goodbye to Harry (who was staying on for a few more days) and caught our flight back to Sydney. Road trip DONE!
Our route
We had such an amazing time and the whole thing FLEW by - I only wish that we had twice/three times as long to do it! We managed to see and do everything we wanted to do, and even found some great secret places, but there's always room for more exploring. So sad to be back in Sydney now - severe travelling blues are kicking in and writing this blog post is not helping....!
If anyone who's reading this want to know some more about the logistics of doing a trip like this then just comment below/message me on Facebook and I'll be happy to give some tips. Driving the East Coast comes very highly recommended as I'm sure you can all tell...!
