Australia....The big....The beautiful....The dream...

as some of you may be aware my dream is to go to australia. until recently i was unsure if this was a dream of a holiday adventure of between 3-4 weeks by myself to visit my family or a year long working holiday.

i say until recently because the more and more i thought about it the more and more i came to thinking i had nothing stopping me from taking the year to really explore.

since the thought process began i have been saving my hard earned pennies to begin the dream.

talking to people about their own travels has been a great source of advice. the main thing i have been told is to set a date in to travel and then plan for that, otherwise you may never end up going.

originally i was planning on traveling by myself but a close friend has decided she would like to come with me. we went out for a late lunch yesterday and discussed different aspects of going for a year including travel, work, accommodation and things we wanted to do.

here are a few of the things i would like to do....

on previous family holidays i have visited NSW, Queensland and parts of the Northern Territory. the obvious thing is i need to visit Western Australia!

one advantage to having family in Australia is that hopefully i will be able to stay with them for a few days to get settled into new surroundings and get on my feet (jet lag and other wise).

the best thing for me would be to fly into sydney and spend some time with my uncle and cousin Belinda.

one thing i have always regretted is not completing the harbor bridge climb. my uncle got us tickets for christmas when we were there once but because i was young and fooling i decided it was to early and to high to be climbing a bridge.

how stupid am i ?!?

this is certainly on my list!

next on my list is the great barrier reef. on a previous visit the weather was overcast and the sea was extremely choppy, that and the fact that was quite young put me off entering the water.

i would love to return to the lovely area of Port Douglas and visit the great barrier reef.

recently on BBC2 there has been a program called Australia with Simon Reeve. he introduces Australia in 2 ways, a multi cultural country on the edge of Asia and a country with amazingly diverse wildlife.

the thing that excited me most about the first episode was the indian pacific, a train that runs from Sydney to Perth. its the longest stretch of straight track in the world and travels through some amazing sights. the map above shows the route i would most like to travel. this is a very expensive way of getting from one place to another, however i am determined to do part of it at the very minimum.

during this journey i would also like to revisit the red center. in particular Uluru and Alice Springs. when i turned 18 we visited Alice springs and went quad biking, never before had i felt such a rush and been so incredibly dirty! it was like i had visited a tanning salon in Essex... TOTES!

thats all for now...

keep an eye out for more!