Marc & Nora ROUND THE WORLD 2005/2006 - Join us!

So after 4 days in Sydney over new year and following a disasterous start to our trip North with Andre's van breaking down we decided to take a flight from Newcastle to the Gold Coast to visit my relatives Hazel (My Dad's Cousin) and Tony in Helenvale. Well in short we were spoilt rotton! We stayed there for just short of a week in which time we purchased our new travelling companion...a 1986 Toyata Hiace Van. What a beauty...POSH is long forgotten now! Lucky for us - Tony is a mechanic so he helped us find a 'good little runner'.

We bargained hard (well, in fact it was Nora who did) and instead of the 3500 dollars advertised we got our new home on 4 wheels for a grand less - so 2500 dollars!)

I'd previously only met Hazel & Tony once before when I was about 8 years old but we really couldn't have been made to feel anymore welcome! It was great! We were treated to some SLENDID English style home cooking by Hazel & Tony never let our glasses get empty. So with lots of time and the luxury of a driveway we got the van or 'Tony Toyota' kitted out and headed North on the A1 (the main North-South QLD highway).

First Stop......Australia Zoo.....CRIKEY!!!!

Of course, as I'm sure it is with most people, we were really there to see Steve Irwin himself.....but of course he wasn't there! But aside from Steve it is a pretty impressive place and we got to see our first Croc in Australia...this thing was scarilly big at about 6m long. Checked out the most dangerous snakes in the world enclosure and saw them get fed dead rats...we had no idea that these snakes could move so quickly....if they want to bite you - they WILL catch you! Having missed most of the scheduled animal shows for the day we checked out as much as we could before the park closed and we hit the road once again.