Elizabeth Platts’ travelling - 2nd instalment
The girls completed their tour of New Zealand including the helicopter flight to and from the glacier and after a ten day rest in Fiji they flew to Australia to begin three months touring, starting and ending in Sydney.
Having landed in Sydney they started travelling the east coast planning their route from Sydney to Brisbane to include a visit to Palm Beach, the set for ‘Home and Away’ where pictures were taken with some of the cast.
They continued to head north via Surfers’ Paradise towards Brisbane, meeting Claxton the koala bear and many kangaroos en route, where they stayed for several days.
Continuing north towards Cairns they stopped at Fraser Island which involved taking it in turns to drive the 4WD they were travelling in. It is mostly sandy terrain and they went to swim in Lake Wabby on the east of the island but this did involve a two hour trek to get there. This is a small freshwater lake with steep sides leading down and one of the group decided to ignore the warning of the guide and ran down the side diving into the lake. He shattered vertebrae in his neck and base of his back but was extremely lucky not to have ended up paralysed. As he didn’t have insurance he wouldn’t let them call the air ambulance and proceeded to walk back the two hours to their starting point, much against the advice of Liz and one of her friends who is also a nurse. An ambulance was waiting but the crew would not transport him because of his injuries and in the end the air ambulance had to be called. Unfortunately once he had been taken to the specialist hospital where the diagnosis was given they were unable to find out how he progressed.
After this little adventure they boarded the yacht ‘Siska’ for two days sailing the Whitsundays. The crew made them beds on deck so that they were able to sleep ‘under the stars’ which Liz described as stunning. Prince Charles crewed this yacht to victory in the Cowes regatta some years ago so you can imagine it is ‘posh’. Next stop Mission Beach for a tandem skydive over the Great Barrier Reef (dvd available) and finally having arrived in Cairns Liz did a day scuba diving. She hired an underwater camera so hopefully she will have captured the fabulous colourful fish.
From Cairns they flew to Alice Springs to embark on their outback trip to visit Ayers Rock. This involved sleeping out at night, once again seeing many shooting stars. She describes Ayers Rock as a large rock coming out of nowhere but having a spiritual feel to it and it did annoy her when people were climbing to get the best picture as she felt is was disrespectful to the local aboriginal inhabitants. This is part of her trip she has said she would definitely do again although I think she may go for the more luxury version of travel next time!
I hope I have got the next part of the tour correct and I think it involves travelling from Adelaide to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road.
Completely exhausted they arrived in Melbourne: here they met up with family friends, Julie and Richard who were visiting Charlotte their daughter and sister respectively. A great time was had by all and this was confirmed by Julie when I met her recently for a catch-up.
Following this the girls moved from Melbourne to Sydney on a long bus journey: here they celebrated Christmas and New Year.
Unfortunately the weather over the Christmas period meant no BBQ on Bondai Beach on Christmas Day and they struggled to find anywhere to eat that was within their budget. The weather improved to sky high temperatures and they were able to see all the sights in Sydney including climbing the bridge and doing a tour around the opera house. Finally the long awaited New Year’s Eve arrived and it exceeded all expectations. It is a family orientated celebration with everyone taking picnics to the park next to the bridge. The first fireworks were set off at 9pm and then the big display at midnight. Liz said it was spectacular and not to be missed so this made up for the disappointment of Christmas Day.
They left Australia on 2nd January very short of money and are continuing their travels taking in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before flying to China and then onto India.