John, Pam & Jules' Travel Blog

Hi everyone,

Sorry it took me so long to update my blog, but I've been having a ball and didn't have time to do it until now.

Our trip started off with 4 days in Singapore..the girls got a bit of a culture shock at being the only european people in the whole city, but once they got over that they enjoyed it. We did all the touristy things in Singapore...went to see the Marina, the famous Merlion, Sentosa Island by cable car etc. The weather was really hot and humid which was a nice change from Ireland! We went to Harry's Bar as soon as we arrived..the place where Nick Leeson of Bearing's Bank used to drink.

Next, it was on to Darwin. We made lots of friends up there because we stayed for 2 weeks. There was Harley, a farmhand and bit of a Crocodile Dundee wannabe, Mike the flying doctor, Jooha the friendly Finn, Ricko, Anto and Niamh from Dublin, Catherine from Tipperary - the barmaid in the local Irish pub Shennanigans, Marguerita - half-Mexican half-Dub, Diarmuid from Killarney, and I also met Mike, a guy I went to school with!! What a small world... We went on a tour to Lichfield National Park which was amazing, and we got to do a Jumping Crocodile tour where the crocs jumped straight out of the water up the side of our boat to grab the bait. It was amazing to see. Have some excellent videos of that, but they're too big to post here :-( We also got to hold a diamondback python called Neil Diamond for a photo opportunity...the girls screamed repeatedly "Hurry up and take the photo...take the photo!!"

Our third stop was Uluru. 4 days was way too long and way too expensive. We went on a tour of the rock itself, but couldn't climb it because the wind was too strong..plus it's disrespectful to the Aboriginals. Our tour guide was an idiot..I think I knew more about Uluru than he did..when asked a question his usual answer was "I don't know". He also made up his own names for the various areas of the rock eg. this is what I call the kitchen..because he didn't know the real name. Anyway, we got our photos taken as we watched the sun rise over Uluru (which was a major anticlimax by the way - in the brochures they say the rock changes through the colours of the rainbow, but in reality it just gets brighter). The highlight of our trip was a camel ride through the desert at sunset, with Uluru in the background. If it wasn't for this, I would have said our trip to Uluru was a disappointment, but this really made it all worthwhile. When we got back in from the trip, we were then given some genuine bush food - camel, kangaroo, bush tomatoes etc...it was so strange eating camel after just riding one, but when in Rome...

Our fourth stop was Cairns...the party capital of Australia! When I first got there, I was not impressed at all and I thought that there was more partying going on in Darwin, but then we met up with a shower of mad lunatics outside P.J O'Brien's one night. There was Dermot who was doing his best Tommy Tiernan impressions before having a flip-flop fight with Baz, Trent and Cabe from Oz who were up for a weekend break, Matt from Cairns and Sam from the UK, Danny Byrne from England, who was quickly rechristened Dinny Byrne. Then we met Baz, Michael and Mark - the boys from the "How Low Can You Go" show on RTE. Their cameraman Gethen was just as mad. We had a ball with them and they were ringing us every morning to go to the pub...hence the next week is a bit of a blur...Jagerbombs are evil evil drinks. It's not good when you have to be told the next day that you were stripping with the Coyote Ugly girls in the middle of a packed bar...no comment on who did that, but it had to be mentioned. One day, Cabe was asked to put some footwear on or he would be asked to leave the pub. He arrived back 10 mins later with lambchops taped to his feet and proceeded to argue the validity of his "shoes" with the barmaid...we never did find out what exactly went through his head to make him do that, considering he had a pair of flip-flops with him....

We left Cairns 2 days before the guys started filming the show despite their insistence that I should definitely be on it. With the madness that was going on in Cairns, I think it may have been a good thing that it wasn't caught on national TV!

After the madness of Cairns, the girls' funds were starting to dwindle, so (despite my advice that it is the hardest possible work you can do in the Australian heat) Pam and Jules decided they wanted to try their hand at fruit picking in Home Hill. After an exhausting bus journey, we got into a sleepy little town that would not have been out of place in Deliverance. All it was missing was the kid on the corner playing a banjo. The hostel was run down and noisy. On our first day, Pam was picking watermelons and I was working on a sugarcane farm. Got to see 3 carpet snakes and 2 deadly brown snakes up close and personal, which was an experience to say the least. I also learned how to drive a Yute (Ozzie pickup truck) and a tractor, which was an achievement considering I've never driven anything but a motorbike in my life! I worked a 12 hour shift my first day, and my legs and back were killing me, as were Pam's. We arrived home covered in mud, which Jules found hilarious. We worked for one more day, and the girls then decided enough was enough (Julieanne after a gruelling total of 3 hours fruitpicking). We got greyhound tickets to Brisbane and were never so happy to say goodbye to a place in our lives.

Well that's about all the news so far...in Brisbane now looking for office work. Probably going to stay here until afer Christmas and then go back up the east coast to sail the Whitsundays and visit Fraser Island.

I've tried so many times to load up photos but the PC keeps crashing..must be one of the Dells I built at some stage ha ha! I will try again soon....

Take care everyone,
Talk to you all again soon!

John