33! And travel plans...

My birthday was ace, including a wander through rainforest and beaches and unexpected drinks (cheers, Hazel!), and I want to thank everyone who adopted koalas to mark the occasion! I was interested to note that Nick and Lib both adopted Hill Wrigglepot. What a name!!! Cheers, everyone. I'm happy to be 33; it's an easy age to remember!

We leave Port Macquarie tomorrow (2/5), and I can't believe that April is over. We've had such a wonderful experience at the Koala Hospital. The koalas are gorgeous, and the people working/volunteering there have been so lovely to us. They've welcomed us as a part of the team, and some of them have really taken us under their wings (namely Mary, Joyce and Brian -- thanks for the Sunday parties!), having us over for dinner or drinks and showing us around the area. We will really treasure our Koala Hospital memories and hope to return there someday!

Although I'll miss it here, I'm looking forward to seeing some new stuff. We've bought 10,000 km Greyhound bus passes to get us around Oz (plus we'll take a train at some points). We're going to work our way clockwise around the country, with a stop in Adelaide to go inland to Alice Springs and back. Here's where we plan to be during the next three months:

Katoomba in the Blue Mountains
Sydney and surrounds
A 3-day train journey from Sydney to Perth (in pieces as we stop along the way)
Adelaide
Alice Springs, Uluru and everything else around there
Coober Pedy
Perth, Rottnest Island and Margaret River area
Nambung National Park (stromatolites!)
Kalbarri National Park
Shark Bay
Coral Bay and Exmouth (whale sharks!)
Broome
The Kimberley
Darwin
Kakadu National Park
Litchfield National Park
Devil's Marbles
Townsville
Queensland (will see what all we've got time for once we get there)
Anything else in New South Wales that we have time for
We'll wind up back in Sydney to get a ship to New Zealand in early August.

That's the plan for now...we'll see how it all winds up. It'll be cool to get back into travel and hostel mode. We've had a whole month in the same place, staying in a wee cabin. We've saved a lot of money during our time here, so now we get to see our bank balance shrink rapidly! It's all good, though. We're loving it all!

More soon,
Trace