Australia

Clare flew out to Australia in March to do her medical elective. For those of you unfamiliar with medicine, it seems that part of the course involves jetting off to some exotic location to relax on a beach, drink a few cocktails, and occasionally pop into the local hospital.

I joined Clare at the start of April, and we spent three weeks working our way down the east coast, from Cape Tribulation to Sydney, with a few stops in-between. I was amazed out how diverse Australia is. Having been educated in the culture by watching 'Crocdile Dundee' and 'Neighbours' I had always assumed that the country was a dusty, arid place with a housing estate in one corner. In fact we found rain forests, miles of beach, coral reefs, modern cities, extremely friendly people, perfect weather, and abundent wildlife. I highly recommend a visit, and I can't wait to go back.

We took 850 photos in total, there are a small selection in the following web albums:

Newcastle
The Blue Mountains
Port Stephens
Armidale
Melbourne
Cairns
Cape Tribulation
Magentic Island
Fraser Island
Noosa
Sydney

Things to do before you're 30: Task 6 COMPLETE

The final task to achieve before turning 30 was to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. As you can see from the above photo, I did it (thanks to the sponsership from my parents as an advanced birthday preset). All I need to do now is wait two weeks and complete the greatest challenge of them all: becoming 30 - argh...

[yes I know it's a terrible photo, but they made us do the pose before letting us off the bridge]

Things to do before you're 30: Task 5 COMPLETE

I was worried that I wouldn't be able to achieve this one. For the last couple of days I have been feeling under the weather, with a sore throat etc... and I couldn't do the training schedule I had planned. I decided I would give it a go anyhow, so I eased off from Kenilworth Castle at about 4pm on Saturday. Josh accompanied me, taking photos and videos, and being generally encouraging. I also had my secret weapon, the Radio 1 essential mix by Pendulum playing on my MP3 player.

So I arrived at Warwick castle sooner than I thought, it took me 45 minutes and 40 seconds, and I'll be honest, I could have gone further. Bring on the next challenge!

Photos and videos to come...