healths

One year ago today I left the UK with two bags and a one-way plane ticket to Bangkok. Travel was my main goal. I wanted to see and experience as much as possible. I quit my job, my apartment in Manchester, my car insurance, my phone bill, everything I had worked for and lusted after for three years was put on hold. Wanderlust had well and truly taken over. Mentally I had prepared myself for being away from home for at least  one year. Now that year has been and gone (and it's flown by very quickly too) what have a learned from it all? Nothing turns out how you expect it Oh life! You are full of surprises. As much as I try to visit new places with an open mind, I can't help but have a picture built up in my head of how I think it will be. Some things have been more amazing than I could have ever imagined. Some things have been more difficult. It's all a part of the experience. I didn't expect to be blown away, time and time again, by how beautiful and amazing and breatht

I've had a lot of people back in the UK ask me about the Australian working holiday visa, what it is, what kind of work you can do out here, and whether it's worthwhile doing it. The great thing about a working holiday visa is that you can pretty much make your experience in Australia whatever you want it to be and everybody's experience differs slightly depending on where they have lived, worked and travelled during their time in the country. A working holiday visa allows you to legally live and work in Australia for one year. The main purpose of this visa is to allow you to save and fund your travels further, which is pretty awesome. You can work for any one company for up to 6 months, and once the 6 months is up you have to find work at a different company. Australia is a brilliant country to save in as it has one of the highest minimum wages in the world at $17.70 p/h, but I've never worked a job that paid me less than $20. The visa is pretty straightforward to obta

After 6 months in Melbourne working, saving, planning, saving more, I finally, FINALLY set off to travel up Australia's East Coast at the start of April for a 4 week long trip. A holiday from my working "holiday". The East Coast is the most travelled part of Australia and the majority of backpackers will travel up or down starting in Sydney or Cairns either by hiring a van or car or on a greyhound or premier bus. After weighing up the pros and cons of hiring a van (pros - more independence and flexibility, cons - cost, space, fear of breaking down on the road) we decided against it and bought a hop-on-hop-off Greyhound bus pass from Sydney to Cairns, stopping off at: Sydney, Byron Bay, Brisbane, Australia Zoo (day trip), Noosa, Fraser Island (3 day tour), Agnes Water (Town of 1770), Airlie Beach, Townsville, Magnetic Island, Cairns. Australia is an astoundingly beautiful country. This is hard to realise when you're in the midst of a city and only hit me when I really