Out with a bang!

We arrived in Sydney and we were staying in Potts Point, right on the edge of Kings Cross. For those of you who don't know it, Kings Cross is a loud and colourful part to the city. A symphony of cackling drag queens, slurring drug addicts, gruff bouncers and querulous drunks.

The boys took themselves off to a T20 match, while we had a girls night in a quaint, Italian restaurant down a quiet lane, escaping the heady and hedonistic din of Darlinghurst Road. Maybe it is the contrasts that make Sydney such an intoxicating place to be, but I definitely felt its charm, even when walking through Kings Cross.

New Year's Eve was soon upon us, and we didn't have a plan. We could, of course, spend hours queuing to get into the Botanic Gardens, only to be sat with the crowds with no beer for hours. But, as luck would have it, we read a magazine that morning in our hotel room that suggested a couple of BYO spots (Bring your own alcohol) with uninterrupted views.

It was a gamble, we had never been to Balmain, let alone Birchgrove Oval on the other side of the harbour. But at 4pm we caught the bus through closed-off streets and to our relief, we had a perfect view of the Harbour Bridge right from the water's edge.

There were only between 100 and 200 people sat on picnic rugs in the oval, and we enjoyed a few drinks in the sunshine, a picnic tea and the tangible excitement from the crowd. After a few plane flyovers and messages in the sky, at 9pm came the children's fireworks. Brilliant, by even the highest standards.

Then at 10, 11, and 11:30pm there are little teaser fireworks so you can keep your excitement level up, synchronise your watches, and make sure your location is calibrated for optimal pyrotechnic enjoyment. We were perched right on the waterfront, setting off sparklers, drinking wine and eating strawberries. Soon came the countdown, a few eager party poppers and then there was a firecracker party in the sky!

Sydney has nine choreographed fireworks displays lasting about 15 minutes, which are physically close enough together that you can see several of them simultaneously. We had one right in front of us over the bridge, and one directly behind us. It's like 3-D with surround sound. Even the skyscrapers get in on the action, adding the icing to the cake, and the cherry too. Boom!!

After the last burning embers had disappeared from the sky, we wished everyone, including our newly-made friends, a happy New Year. Singing Auld Lang Syne, we toddled along with the crowds, merry, to catch the bus back to our hotel.

To blow out the cobwebs from a incredible night, the next day we headed on the ferry to Manly for an afternoon on the beach. It would seem many other New Year's revellers had the same idea, but we managed to find ourselves a free patch to bask until dinner. Sunshine and seawater does wonders for a hangover.

The next day was our last all together, so it was now time for some serious sightseeing. By serious, I mean open top bus. And by sightseeing, I mean the Opera House, Botanic Gardens, The Rocks, Harbour Bridge and Bondi Beach.

I have, of course, seen photos of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge, but it's not until you're there that you appreciate their gleaming dominance on the busy harbour front. We walked and admired, taking in the sights and sounds of Sydney's finest.

Down by the harbour we listened to the boat horns blaring over aboriginal-meets-trance music, played by hopeful buskers. A few metres away in The Botanical Gardens the soundtrack is one of raucous cockatoos, camera snaps and murmuring lovers. Around Hyde Park, trams tinkle and the great bells of St Paul’s Cathedral clatter over the noise of a passing horse and cart. High on the Harbour Bridge, traffic hums, city workers pound the pavement and tourists point and shout out the names of places they recognise from up high. The sounds of Sydney are ever-changing.

Amidst all this, there’s even, shock horror, a slice of history that stretches back further than 50 years. The bright, white Sydney Opera House rubs shoulders with the redbrick, old convicts neighbourhood, The Rocks – one being the pinnacle of modern architecture, luxury and high-brow entertainment and the other the city’s first European settlement, initially designed to house a labyrinth of cramped lodgings, open sewers and spewing factory chimneys. Rampant disease and rowdy brawls are of course a distant memory in The Rocks today, where original facades have been polished and preened and interiors ripped out to make room for chic Italian restaurants.

After a hectic morning of sightseeing, we were on the bus to Bondi. Despite the crowds (which we'd come to expect after the day before), the beach itself was quite lovely - broad, clean, sunny and an almost painfully blue and bright sea. The air was filled with shrieks of pleasure and a sense of people having fun.

Despite it being a long beach, there were only two small strips of sea marked out for swimming by the flags. The rest of the sea is deemed 'too dangerous' for swimmers, which seemed a bit farcical to us having swam off beaches all over that had no flags or lifeguards whatsoever. But still, the lifeguards at Bondi are the gods.

The Australian media cover beach mishaps persistently, and Bondi has its own international television show: Bondi Rescue. We were treated to a live show, with lifeguards on jetskis providing as much pantomime as the viewer can handle as over-dressed film crews ran up and down in the hope of the next rating-boosting sea drama. As far as we could see, nothing serious happened that day, but I'm sure the TV show will have a different story.

After a fun-packed time in Sydney, the time had come for our last supper together, and I was desperately sad to say goodbye to my family. What an adventure we had on the other side of the world, one never to be forgotten. A big thank you to you all!

Airey Aussie Christmas

Australian summer is filled with dazzling light. It's the kind of pure, radiant light that comes from a really blue sky, with every surface glinting and reflecting. This was our Christmas, and we felt quite lucky.

Christmas was in Tathra, a small town by the sea. We picked up our good friend George and the festivities and beer drinking began. Christmas Eve was spent in the local pub, nothing too different there. Christmas morning started with opening presents, eating chocolate and drinking bucks fizz, pretty normal. But then we togged up, and headed to the beach to play in the waves in our Santa hats. Lathering up with factor 30 on Christmas Day is a completely new experience, but a happy one.

For lunch it was a Christmas BBQ extravaganza, complete with turkey kebabs, turkey burgers, huge king prawns, stuffing balls, roast potatoes, pasta salad and more. We were stuffed, Christmas Day stuffed. And so we snoozed, a Christmas Day snooze.

Then it was back to the beach for cricket, to the pool for a swim and to the jacuzzi for some more bubbly. Christmas bliss!

Boxing Day was much the same, and a chance to walk off some of the BBQ indulgence in the sunshine. We then headed to Jervis Bay, gateway to the Boogeree National Park. Our house backed right onto a golf course, which was filled with roos and so we had plenty of evening entertainment, and choruses of "Skippy, Skippy, Skippy the bush kangaroo!"

We spent a few days exploring the area, snorkeling and swimming off white sandy beaches. Jervis Bay is reputed to have the clearest waters and whitest sands, not only in Australia, but the world. And it must be true: the beach here was like walking on warm snow, which blinded us in the sunshine. On our last day, a pod of dolphins came to the snow-like shore where we sat and they raced around in the surf.

It was the perfect end to our wildlife spotting and to our roadtrip; we were heading Sydney, our final stop.

Great Ocean Road-tripping

My alarm is bleeping at 5am and I've barely slept in the anticipation. But I spring out of bed as I'm off to the airport to pick up my family. I've made my sign (thanks to our friend Damo's supplies - a school teacher is always prepared), stuffed a $2 Christmas hat in my bag and I'm on my way to see Mum, Dad, Beth and Clo after four, long months.

It would be another two, long hours at the arrivals gate, clutching my A3 sign and wearing my Santa hat, much to the amusement of other passengers stepping through the sliding doors, until my lovely family stepped out!

There's something so special about sharing some of our world travels with family; a shared memory is far more powerful and everlasting. And what memories we made over the next three weeks, not to mention the luxury that my wonderful dad had booked for us. Goodbye hostels, campervans and boring pasta meals!

We showed them the Melbourne sights and for Beth's birthday enjoyed the chilled out bohemia of St. Kilda's market and cafe scene followed by the chilled interior of the ice bar. Christmas was coming, and Melbourne was dazzling with electric displays enough to melt the heart of even the biggest bah humbug. St. Paul's cathedral (I have to say, there are not many original structures in Australia; British imitation was the preoccupation in the early years) was the backdrop for a festive projection that left us transfixed.

And then it was on to the reason the Airey family had crossed vast oceans and continents to come to Australia: to visit Airey's Inlet of course. For those of you who grew up watching great 90s shows like The Queen's Nose and The Demon Headmaster, you'll recognise the Airey's inlet lighthouse (there's not much else there, to be frank) that housed the Strange family of Round The Twist fame. We had the obligatory photos, bought out the village shop's paraphernalia and headed on our way to Apollo Bay.

"Stop!" I slammed on the breaks, hit the reverse and waved my hands wildly in the air to signal to my dad to pull over. This is dangerous on the winding, narrow Great Ocean Road, but I had spotted something worth the minor whiplash. Up in a gum tree snuggled a furry ball of marsupial: our first koala.

We would see many more in the coming days, lazily sat up in the heights of a tree, munching on eucaplt leaves. Then there was the echidna, the parrots that landed on us, wallabies, roos, penguins, pelicans, stingray, dolphins, a lost seal...Australia is teeming with wildlife and we were on a lucky streak.

Wildlife aside, the Great Ocean Road is perhaps one of the most stunning drives in the world. It winds past verdant, rolling hills, lush, sub-tropical forests, dramatic cliffs, endless, pristine beaches and the vast, foaming turquoise ocean.

The world-famous coastal highway was built after the First World War as a make-work scheme for veterans. It took fourteen years to construct, measures 187 miles and it barrels around rocky headlands, clings to the edges of sheer and crumbling cliffs and it's got more hairpins than a beauty pageant.

With blue skies overhead, we cruised the coast, stopping off at the endless, picture-perfect sights. We discovered that 'London Bridge' did in fact come falling down: the so-called series of arches was connected to the mainland until 1990, when tons of debris plunged into the surf below, stranding a startled couple on the surviving stack of land. Rumour has it that the couple, who had to be rescued by helicopter, were married, but not to each other. That'll teach them!

This was all a build up to the infamous 12 Apostles. These dramatic, limestone stacks, which at one time formed part of the mainland, stand proud and alone in the deep blue ocean. The contrast between the limestone orange, the cloud-dappled blue sky and crashing waves of the sea was breathtaking. We spotted seals in the surf from the view point and watched the changing afternoon light cascade over these statues of the sea.

After a couple of days on the Great Ocean Road, we made our way to Phillip Island, stopping off on route to pick up a Christmas tree to get us all in the festive mood. Christmas carols in the sunshine with the sea breeze in our hair was a completely new experience, but one that we were all warming to.

Phillip Island is famous for its 'penguin parade', where every night thousands of little blue penguins (that's actually what they're called - they're only about 30cms high and the world's smallest!) swim to the beach in groups, make a few failed belly flops onto the sand, before finally waddling up the shore to their nests. In the dusky light all you can see is these drunken looking white bellies swaying left and right. As we moved to the other side of the viewing platform, we were able to get a closer look as some of them preened themselves, others had a bit of a fight and most headed to their nests.

En route along the coast to our next destination, we struck it lucky once again with our wildlife and encountered a group of greedy pelicans gulping down fish, four or five huge stingrays swimming to the shore, red star fish sheltering in rock pools and then a young, lonely seal at Anderson's Inlet, who had gone astray from his group and was resting and confused on the rocks. Poor thing.

And if that wasn't enough for one day, we then enjoyed some late afternoon sunshine at Wilson's Promontory, one of the few patches of wilderness left in Victoria. The Aboriginal people travelled across this countryside to reach Tasmania before the rising water submerged the land bridge and created the island and not much has changed since. We enjoyed paradise on Squeaky Beach, where the white sand squeaks beneath your feet, before rolling into Port Albert for the night.

'Victoria: The place to be'

Despite almost missing our flight from Darwin to Melbourne because of a huge thunder storm and a spot of flash flooding, I skipped onto Victoria soil with excitement. The Airey clan would be arriving at the very same airport in four days time.

"It's all the best parts of London," we decided as we spent the first day exploring the nooks and crannies of this beautiful city. The hidden lanes, gorgeous architecture, world class museums and quirky neighborhoods all combine to make Melbourne an instant hit. Magnificent Tudor and Victorian buildings and gorgeous iron lace balconies graciously reflect the city’s colourful history, while impressive skyscrapers and other buildings by world-renowned architects boast the city’s prosperous present.

'Victoria: The place to be' is the slogan that festoons the car number plates. I wouldn’t disagree. We lost hours wandering the strange and labyrinthine system of laneways and arcades that make Melbourne so distinctive before heading to the beautiful, beachside Barwen Heads, just south of Geelong, to visit friends we made on one of our treks in Nepal. Damo and Sarah treated us to a delicious barbie, beers and some beach time while we reminisced about Nepal. Thanks guys!

After a sweet taste of Aussie domesticity, it was back to the city to take on Melbourne's greatest challenge: the hook turn. We picked up the hire car that would take us to Sydney, I learned how not to drive an automatic, and took on the 'hookie'. If you want to turn right in the city centre, you have to go into the left lane. Then, it seems, wait for the split second while the lights are changing from green to red, hold your breath, hope there isn't a tram coming down the centre and slam your foot on the accelerator as you swing across to the other side.

Needless to say, from then on, we planned our route so we could use entirely left turns.

Hitting the Northern Territory

The drive from Broome to Katherine (the first town you hit in Northern Territory) is about 1600kms and the road (Highway 1) goes through three towns. So that's like driving from Lands End to John O'Groats and only going through three places the size of English villages on the way, with perhaps two or three petrol stations (or roadhouses, in Australia) in between these. It is an experience we will never forget.

It is a boundless void: inhospitable, oven hot, empty - with threats of cyclones imminent. We saw nothing for miles, just red soil, scrubby vegetation, termite mounds (some with painted faces or shoes hanging off them), the odd mailbox signalling a cattle station, kangaroo corpses, huge skies and the occasional, skeletal eucalpyt tree.

We passed through many primarily Aboriginal towns on the road up to Darwin. I have to say that, although this is something we couldn't fully appreciate or understand, we felt uneasy here. Many Aboriginal people seem to sit around, under the shade of trees or in small shopping centres, quite outcast from modern, Australian society.

Australia's indigenous population (or 'Aboriginal', which comes from the Latin, Aborigines, derived from ab (from) and origo (origin)) have led quite a disrupted life since the First Fleet of British convicts and officials arrived at Botany Bay in 1788. There has been a great deal of conflict and mistreatment since that time, the most horrifying being 'The Stolen Generations'.

From 1869 until as late as the 1970s, children of the Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from their families by the Australian government and church missions, through fear of miscegenation (the mixing of racial groups). A formal apology was only offered by the Australian government in 2008.

There are still huge health and economic difficulties facing Aboriginal people, with both remote and urban populations having adverse rates of lack of education, unemployment, poverty, crime and even child suicide. There is also a big alcohol problem. In towns where Aboriginal people live, bars are scarce and there are strict rules for the purchase of alcohol, including a kind of license system only enforced on the Aborigine people. What's more, jobs in these towns seem to have evaded the Aboriginals, with many foreigners taking roles in roadhouses, shops and tourist information centres (where they sell black dolls painted with Aboriginal markings, and didgeredoos that are made in Indonesia).

We don't know the whole story, and we know that they receive financial support from the Government, but it was quite unsettling to see large groups of people trying, and failing, to fit in with the local community. Of course, there are many Aboriginals who have chosen to avoid the westernisation of Australia and live in much the same way as their ancestors: we saw one man sat on a stool, under a tree, in the middle of nowhere.

We took five days to cross the barren expanse from Broome to Darwin, and they usually went like this.

-Wake up with the sun around 5am, soon be in a pool of your own sweat, so you get up.

- Perhaps bucket-shower off the sweat. Usually not, if we're being honest here. Water was precious and everything we owned was already dirty.

-Hit the road before 6am and have two hours of a fairly comfortable driving temperature.

-Ignore the sweat dripping from the backs of your knees by 9am.

-Watch the fuel guage and continuously keep checking the map to reassure yourself that we weren't going to get stranded in the bush.

-Drink copious amounts of water that started the day cold would be hot and taste like chlorinated soil by midday.

-Lunch would be somewhere nice in the shade, but the sandwiches would be almost cooked.

-Hold your breath as a beast of a road train overtakes you and spews dust and stones at the windscreen.

-Get back into the Beatle wagon and repeat the morning, with the drinking water temperature increasing.

-Find a camp site before it gets dark.

-Hang up the day's clothes to dry off.

-Brave the bush toilet in the dark and hope for the best.

-Wait for the temperature to drop a few degrees before making the bed, all the while trying not to be bitten by mosquitoes.

-Lay in a pool of your own sweat until falling asleep. Attempt to squat said mosquitoes.

-Fantasise about ice and other cold things. Consider ways of getting cool. Sometimes eat some ice from the cool box and place one piece on your forehead.

-Repeat.

We stopped off in Katherine, and then drove to Kakadu - a National Park the size of Israel. It's full of crocs, especially at this time of year, oh, and there are dingoes too! I got food poisoning from some red wine that had all but boiled in the heat (I thought it would make me sleep - how wrong I was!) and had to run in and out the van in 30 degree heat at night to be sick - fearing crocs, dingos, and the electrical storm overhead. 24 hours I will never forget.

But it was all part of an unforgetable journey and to drive on the cusp of the Kimberly region and experience the vastness of the area (twice the size of the UK) and it's remoteness was a true adventure. This was real Australia: remote, wild and free.

Wild, wild west

After a brief stop off in Perth for a night with Mark and Aoife (and our weekly shower), we headed north, and would be heading north on the Great Western Highway for the next three weeks. It was a road trip of epic proportions, armed with just a map, our 'Free campsites' book, one already-overplayed C.D, lots of canned food and a big, emergency supply of water.

Our first major stop was The Pinnacles, in the Nambung National Park. Like eerie figures erupting from a desert wasteland, the Pinnacles are said by those indigenous to the area to be inhabited by evil spirits. And I see why, the creeping shadows of these natural phenomenon follow you around.

These incredible towers of limestone have taken thousands of years to form in this vast, baking desert, made all the more breathtaking as they are surrounded by sapphire blue waters, sunburned sand and perfect blue skies. We followed around the tiny footprints of their inhabitants and then drove the camper over the sand dunes.

The next day saw us on the road to Kalbarri National Park, stopping off on route at coastal view points overlooking incredible cliff formations, each one more breathtaking than the next. Rich, terracotta stone reflected in the raging, turquoise waters at every turn.

This would be a pattern we would follow all the way up the coastline, like a game of top trumps with rocks, sea and sand, and where we were always the winners.

Australia is the driest, flattest, hottest and infertile of all the inhabited continents (only Antarctica is more hostile to life). The road through Kalbarri was the longest, straightest and most barren we had encountered so far and, again, this was a taster of what was to come. We walked to the deep, echoing gorges of 'Hawkshead' and 'Ross Graham' - extending as far as the eye could see.

Next, was a few days in the beautiful Shark Bay, where we got acquainted with our first emus, snakes and sharks. We camped at Eagle Bluff, right where the crystal blue waters lapped the bay of this World Heritage listed area.

In these clear waters we spotted sharks and rays, almost missing the big lizard and even bigger snake at our feet (thankfully, separated by a wooden barrier!). In our secluded spot (except for the emus and roos) with our own private beach, we pinched ourselves at how good life can be as we drank ice cold beer at sun down.

One of Shark Bay's main attractions is Monkey Mia. Some decades ago when Monkey Mia was just a hideaway for locals, families would feed a local pod of dolphins as they camped in the area. The dolphins, realising the benefits of the free food (who wouldn't?), hung around and before long things started to get a little carried away.

Today, Monkey Mia is regulated by the Department of Conservation and Environment and there are regulations in place to protect the dolphins who are still loyal to the beach. We snorkeled and swam and, while I was in the water, a group of dolphins swam over and started having a good old scratch on a boat's mooring rope.

The next morning was feeding time and, true to form, the friendly female dolphins and their young (they stopped feeding the males as they got too aggressive) came into the shallows. There was a one-week old calf in their midst and

we saw her tiny fin breaching throughout the morning. We sat back on the beach to watch them play by the shore. How are you going to trump this one, Western Australia?

The answer was Quobba (so many great place names in Oz!). A smiling Grey Nomad had recommended this little-known camp site by a deserted beach and huge blow hole.

We pulled up in a ghost town of corrugated iron huts (apparently summer houses for locals - as one of them, who called herself 'Spider', informed us) and drove further in to find out own camp spot by the never-ending beach. But the real treat was the snorkeling in 'The Aquarium', where hundreds of fish swam around us, taking us along in their whirlwind. Our new friend, Spider, showed us how to feed them with bit of bread, and they snapped it right out of our hands, both on the surface and underwater. But this was just a warm up to the next page of our adventure.

Coral Bay is at the heart of the Ningaloo Range (of which Quobba is just the start). The Ningaloo Reef, the 604,500 hectare marine of the Ningaloo Coast, is the largest fringe reef in the world and is greatly overshadowed by it's eastern brother, the Great Barrier.

Coral Bay is paradise. On one side, the land is barren and arid cattle country, where cows roam and truckers try to avoid hitting roos. On the other side, the water is the clearest you'll ever see, the beach is white and infinite and the shore-side reef, with its abundance of marine life, is one of the best snorkeling spots in the world.

It was certainly the best snorkeling we had ever experienced. There are so many turtles, fish, sharks and rays and the coral itself is spectacularly vast and beautiful. No matter how far out we swam, it didn't get any deeper or look like it was coming to an end. This was pure, unadulterated bliss. Here's hoping that the Ningaloo doesn't suffer the same perils of the Great Barrier. Nothing that perfect lasts forever.

Further up the Ningaloo coast lies the little town of Exmouth, and the Cape Range National Park. We camped in the park, beside beaches where turtles were in their nesting period. Med spent a day diving the Naval jetty (too expensive and difficult a dive for me, much to my misery), but the snorkeling was still good, seeing big turtles and black and white-tipped reef sharks.

We travelled on, this time heading inland to Karijini National Park, where the temperature was heating up and the flies were multiplying. Both the van and ourselves got coated in the stubborn red dust that is renowned in this remote, mining area of Australia, but it was well worth the scrubbing and rounds of laundry in the aftermath. Sadly we didn't get to climb Mount Bruce and Mount Sheila (real names, I promise!), but we did get to see Weano Gorge, which is dizzyingly deep and one of the oldest rock formations on earth.

When we could bear the heat no longer, we walked down into the depths of Dales Gorge until we found a waterfall and cool, freshwater pool. This was one of many pools in Karijini that are held sacred by the Aboriginal people, who believe they were made millions of years ago by huge serpents, much like the rest of the land formations.

In one of the pools, the fish nibbled at the hardened skin on my feet (caused by 3 months of wearing flip flops) - you'd pay good money for this at home! Hiking through and up the gorge was beautiful (and very sweaty) and we couldn't help but feel some of the spirituality the Aboriginal people cherish here. Now, it was off to the campsite in dingo territory...

Things heated up from then onwards, and so did our engine as we covered some serious ground through the outback over the next few days.

In Broome, we arrived on the world famous Cable Beach at 8.35am, only to call it a day by 9am as it was too hot! Normally, swimming is our salvation, but the waters up here are infested with dangerous jellyfish. In fact, Australia's (and therefore the world's, of course) most deadly sea creature is the box jellyfish - step aside, ye Great Whites.

Talking of deadly creatures, next, we were heading to croc territory. Big, sharp-toothed, man-hunting, salt water crocs, that is.