The last entry was talking about our big hols to Australia.  This was absolutely fantastic.  If you get the chance, go.  You won't regret it.  Jane, Emily, Georgia and I spent nearly 3 weeks there, and only saw a limited amount of the country, but everything was magical and well worth the agony of the stupidly long flights in Economy.  Just to recap our itinerary, we landed in Sydney and spent 5 nights with some friends in Dee Wye (the next bay up from Manley on the Northern Beaches).  After this we drove to the Blue Mountains and stayed there for 4 nights, before going up the coast to Cairns in Queensland for a week.  After this we flew back down to Sydney finished off with a few more nights staying in an apartment near Darling Harbour. 

So that's the nuts and bolts of it, but in reality we did a whole load of things that you can't do anywhere else which made the trip so worthwhile.  The girls having their photos taken with Koalas, wandering amongst kangaroos, swimming over the great barrier reef and seeing sharks swimming underneath, seeing very big scary crocodile prints in the sand, going up a cliff backwards on the steepest railway in the world, climbing up into the canopy of the rainforest...I could go on

The only downside was that on our way back, the whole airport security kerfuffle kicked off, and so we had the completely laughable  - and pointless - situation of people having various quantities of carry on baggage on the same flight depending upon when they checked in or if they were in Transit.  We were unlucky enough to have to check all our stuff into the hold - fortunately the airline was a big help in providing boxes and padding - but when we got on the plane all the business passengers had their stuff with them (surprise surprise ), as well as all the people joining the flight from elsewhere with their five bags each.  Anyway that didn't spoil what was a fantastic holiday, just made getting home a little less fun that it should have been.