The total of 5 flights cost us only 925 sing dollars which is considered very very cheap and no one would have booked such a deal. It is cheap because we booked 3 months in advance and most importantly the to and from flights of Australia is by scoot airways. Scoot is a low cost budget airline which was founded in Nov 2011 and had its first flight to Australia only in June 2012, we booked our tickets in the first week of July 2012; now you know how the cheapness was dealt with.
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| From Singapore to Gold Coast - Our first destination |
Well if you are traveling with Maverickz thrill is always guaranteed (Boopathy just crossed us).
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| Behind is our fly scoot to Gold Coast |
Caution; we are still in Singapore and i have to take you through our 9 days journey in Australia, so if you don't have time you may have to bookmark and read the blog in few sittings, the joyous fun is yet to start.
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| This is the controversial Photo |
We were fed up as its almost 2 hours by now and there is no one left in the whole area expect 4 of us, the officer came again after few mins and asked us what color dress is vishal wearing. After hearing us he went inside again and after considerable time the lady came and handed the passport to venki and told we are free to go now. We were escorted by an officer through a private exit like a VIP no checks on us or on our bags. We met vishal and suki outside, vishal told that the officials came and enquired him about us, only then they let us go. We were under the impression that this may be due to racism but later one day in our hotel room we saw a program in tv in which they showed how the Australians were enquired and checked in immigration, seemed like we were treated well with respect. Every time we go for any trip "Boopathy" would travel with us disguised in one of us and this time it was venki.
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| Our Taxi to the Backpackers... nah just kidding |
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| Islander Backpacker |
We were very keen to Skydive at Gold Coast as we got
only half a day. The receptionist was very accommodating she called
few skydive companies for us, but most of them were already booked or
were cancelled due to bad weather as it seemed to rain. We
had to choose some other location not in our itinerary, we checked our
options and found that the wildlife currumbin sanctuary would fit us.
We
went to the room and freshened up, stopped by subway to have lunch(Old English, Swiss, Olives, Lettuce) . Its almost 2pm and we had to take a bus to the sanctuary, bus
arrived and the driver didn't ask us to pay any cash while boarding, we thought that he will collect when we alight.
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| Have you seen a Out of Service bus that ask Sorry... |
After 45 mins the driver stopped by the road side and let us down near the wildlife sanctuary at a non bus stop location, he didn't even get fare from us for the ride . We were amazed at the drivers courtesy; who will take you for a free ride which otherwise would have cost you 7 Aud, we happily thanked the driver and reached the wildlife sanctuary. It is almost near to 2.45 pm and the sanctuary closes by 5.30 pm, which means we ideally got 3hrs approximately to visit the whole place.
We took
the sanctuary map and planned to visit the kangaroo feeding bay first, took the internal mini train, got down at wrong stop, walked few meters and
finally found out way to the kangaroo feeding bay.
The feeding bay was large that habitats lots and lots of kangaroos with whom you can stand close, touch them, feed them, take
pictures with them. We took lot of pictures with baby kangaroos, lady kangaroos, macho kangaroos, lazy & old kangaroos. Visiting kangaroos was one of the main itinerary of Australia trip; well we never expected it to happen the first day.
If you want to meet kangaroos and take photos with them then this place is the best place, i can say in the whole of east Australia.
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| Body Builder!!! |
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| Muni Boy as Kangaroo... |
The song brings in energy, here's a preview of it...
Nice cool breeze, clean white sand, elephant rock view and lot more,
we spent 1.5hours at the beach and returned to the hotel. While
coming back also the driver didn't collect money from us, wow such
nice people. One really good thing about gold coast is, time doesn't run, it sits
besides you and relaxes with you, it makes you feel as if the day is very long.
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| This is where we are going tomorrow... |
After
freshened up in the room, we had food at a Chinese restaurant and took a
walk along the streets, by then it was time for muni birthday
and we headed for the beach. It was very chill and the temp was like
below 16°, we celebrated muni birthday at Australia beach and he felt very happy about it. After celebrating muni birthday at the beach under the influence of cool climate coupled with CH3CH2OH, we left at 1pm and slept.
04
Nov; got up early, booked tickets for "Dream World" theme park with help of receptionist. There are few theme parks in gold coast,
we decided Dream World is the one to go a long time ago as it has the 7
most thrilling rides. After packed breakfast we took bus to theme park,
this time the driver got money from us, no free ride today. Reached dream world at 11 am,
had breakfast, we marked which all shows to go on the theme park map. First we went to the
tiger show; 15 min show by Bengal tigers, the guards made the tigers to
drink milk like a baby, to cilmb a tree, to jump in syncro it was nice
to start theme park in a pleasant way. 
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| The Claw... |
Then we moved on to the Tower of Terror 2, when this ride was built it was the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world of its time with 160.9kmph in flat 7 seconds, my favorite.
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| Entrance to Tower of Terror II |
This is how the Giant...drops...
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| The highest inversion ride experience in the Southern Hemisphere... |
Reached surfers paradise at 6pm, since we were only having bread food for most of the time we wanted to have rice and found a Indian restaurant where we had our lunch. Nearby was this 7D experience theater, we went for the cosmic coaster show. I don't know if really there was really 7 dimension, but the graphics and the motion was very good which made the theatrical experience to feel real, worth to give a shot at least once. After the show we did shopping, went to room freshened up and marched towards the beach again. There was M'cd near the beach and it had lamb burger, which was turned heavy for dinner, can try if you are very hungry. Since it was muni birthday each of us was treated with a wine bottle at 10 pm and we started to walk along the shore in such a way that water kisses out feer, it was quite cold and the water was very chill as well. After time passed by, some chemical reaction in the body forced us to remove the T-shirt and walk bare body and sprint a 100m race. No one would have sprint a 100m race there and it seemed like we were the locals, our activities even attracted an Australian girl to sprint with us. We bid adieu to the Australian girl and the beach at 12am as we have flight to cairns at 8am in the morning.
5-Nov; we
reached airport bit early and had our breakfast there. One really good
thing that i liked in gold coast is the time, we stayed just 2 day's
but it seemed long and very relaxed, as i said before time doesn't run in
gold coast it stays with you and embraces you. I have to say this, the receptionist at
Islanders is the best in service of all the hotels i have stayed so far, she helped in lot of things and more importantly the way she spoke was very pleasant.
We reached cairns at 10.05am, 25mins earlier to the scheduled arrival.
The transport from airport to hotel was free of charge which we booked earlier.
The free shuttle came at 10.50am and we reached Nomads Esplanade at
11.20am.
Our main itinerary in cairns is to do skydive and scuba dive. We got our room keys and enquired about sky dive at the receptionist and she helping us to book. As she was trying to book for us, the skydive company driver came looking for us, well that is so fast. We paid for skydive and got only 5 mins to fresh up and put our bags in our room. We only changed our clothes and we were given a ride to the companies office where we did all the paper work. Signed something like i am the sole person responsible for my death :) we did book for the highest skydive; 14000feet. The instructors gave us instructions and played a video for us about the safety precautions. Our tandem masters introduced themselves to us and i was with jacko. The senior most person in their lot has done 17000jumps so far. They took us in a van to the place where flight was ready to board us. With the jackets on us, masters interviewed us for the video and immediately four of us were on board the flight.
The flight journey itself started invoking fear among us as for 20 mins till 14000ft the craft went in almost 40° angle. As the height increased the fear quotient increased gradually as it was directly proportional. Our masters buckled us to them using the hooks and it was time to jump, sujai was the first one to jump. To see him jump was really scary than the actual jump, muni then jumped followed by me and venki. It was a 60 sec free fall, the first 15 seconds was most terrifying and you will rotate in all possible directions then the master will make the fall stable. Just spread out your legs and hands then you will know even man can fly, the next 45 seconds you can enjoy the view of the horizon, the cool breeze at 100+kmph, scream, wave to the camera and if you are lucky you can even pass through the clouds. If you are very lucky you can pass through rainy clouds where you get to enjoy the water droplets, i was just lucky to pass through the clouds. At 4000ft the master pulled off the parachute, if the parachute doesn't come out then you will be fortunate to go to heaven directly. We got our parachute out and i was let to drive the parachute for sometime and it was really an experience to be felt. Then we landed smoothly near a sugarcane field, venki jumped after me and somehow he landed before me and the guys were waiting for me. We did the famous gnangnam style for the video, kudos to us we just did the most extreme adventurous thrilling jump on the earth which mankind has ever invented. Believe me, it is a must to do thing and you can add it to your bucket list if you have one, i just striked it off from mine :)
We had food at M'cd, got our skydive videos, our certificates and returned to our room for 2 hours sleep, a much needed one as we were very tired. Forgot to tell you we reserved a table at a restaurant for dinner where they serve crocodile, emu, kangaroo meat :D. We got up at 6pm took bath and were ready to eat something(kangaroo) which you will get to eat only in Australia. Reached OCHRE restaurant and started to order our dishes, the waitress was really kind in helping us to make our order. We ordered an Australian platter which has crocodile, kangaroo and emu meat, there were few options but this one was the best.
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| Crocodile meat was the best... |
After few mins the food came, crocodile may be one of the fiercest animal in the world but its meat is really soft & tasty; the way it was cooked was really good almost Indian style. Emu was like halwa and kangaroo was given in the form of a piece of cake but it was not tasty slightly bitter may be the way it is prepared was different. After finishing our first serving we ordered another plate of crocodile and the waitress got shocked seems like we ate more than normal. She smiled and served the crocodile for us, it was delicious we thought of ordering one more plate but didn't. The waitress came again with a smile and asked us, "Gentlemen did your enjoy your food" and gave us the bill, we expected the bill to be high but it turned out 30% less than what we thought.
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| Menu card as background... |
The
cruise stopped near a reef, it is time for snorkeling. If you imagine to
stand on the sea with head above the water you would touch the reef with your feet, its
that close.
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| Coral reef, close to the surface of the sea... |
Its time for scuba diving and i swam to the cruise to get equipped with the oxygen cylinders. Venki couldn't breath using mouth so he didn't join us for the scuba dive. One professional diver will take two of us to the bed of the sea; like a water taxi. Muni was alone with a diver, good for a person who doesn't know swimming. We were given training for 10 mins with the oxygen cylinders.
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| Training with scuba dive equipments |
The diver then took us down to the bed, as you go down and down the pressure increases and you get to feel lot of pain in the ears due to pressure. You
will fell very different from normal and uncomfortable, even if you
signal to the diver he won't listen to you, he in turn will take you deep
further. So we had to say to ourselves that we should
bear the pain to witness one of the natural wonders of the world. As you
go down if you are lucky you may get to see baby sharks, we saw lot of
corals, fishes and live reefs. It was a 20 min water taxi ride, when we
were back to the cruise muni was bleeding through his nose and me too a
little. Venki was even more frightened to see us bleeding. It was very tiring and
food was served in the cruise as part of the package.
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| Muni with his water taxi lady... |
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| Great Barrier Reef one of the Natural wonders of the world!!! |
We took tiger airways and reached Melbourne tullamarine airport at 5pm. Melbourne was even more colder compared to gold coast, we reached formula one which was our hotel. The only itinerary in melbourne is one day trip to the great ocean road, which we just booked at the reception after being rejected by few travels. The rooms at formula one is very good for a budget hotel probably the best of our hotel stays in Australia. We came down with the city map and were ready for a city tour by walk, we spotted MCG on the map and started marching towards it. Took some photos along the way, the climate was very very cold.
At 7pm we reached the MCG saw few statues of the
old players, saw Shane warne statue too. We really hoped to peek at the
ground but the front gate of the ground was closed. So we just went
around the stadium and was fortunate enough to find a counter where they
sell tickets for domestic match between states, Victoria vs Queensland.
40 to win of 110 balls that's when we entered the ground that was my
first time to watch cricket in a ground, infact for all of us.
India has numerous cricket grounds but my first experience happened in Australia, it was special and very different from the television view, had it been India against Australia the day would have been complete. We spent about an hour at the ground and took lots of pictures. We didn't plan anything for the day but turned out to be an awesome memorable day.
We headed back to our hotel and on the way we saw an Indian restaurant and filled our stomach with Indian food; that was a good dinner. With the guidance of muni(the walking GPS) we started our epic walk which we named as "The Nights in the streets of the Melbourne city" night 1. We walk walk walked for more than 4kms to feel the night view of the city and interestingly the city is still awake even at 12am. Ended the night by buying some bananas, i forgot to tell you this; actually every night we walk for few kms and buy bananas at the end of the night. Bananas have lot of health benefits and one of it is, it will ease your bowel movement, since we were eating bread/buns mostly with the help of bananas the mornings were smooth.
After breakfast, at 10.30am we reached the official entrance of the Great Ocean Road, stopped by for photos and had a walk at the beach. Great Ocean Road is 243 km stretch road along the south-eastern coast of Australia which took 16 years to built by approximately 3,000 returned servicemen as a war memorial for fellow servicemen who had been killed in World War I; its the worlds largest war memorial. If you ever get a chance to visit this place then you will feel that Great Ocean Road is really really Great.
Stopped by few places to get some snaps along the way, reached the town at 12.30pm to have food. Any place you stop along the ocean road stretch you end up going to the beach. Burgers filled us for lunch, after which we went to the beach nearby and took some snaps.
After lunch break we headed straight to the 12 apostles; its one of the naturally formed structures by water erosion. On the way we spotted some koalas; it must be one of the laziest animals in the world, can be found sleeping most of the time.
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| Helicopter Boarding Pass |
We are yet to go the port campbell park and view the apostles from the boardwalk. We went to the park and had an incredible view at the park, by the time we reached back to the bus it was 4.30 and our bus was missing. We thought the driver would be searching for us, as we thought, the bus arrived. No one was there in the bus, seems the driver took the other people to the next location left them and came searching for us. Good the driver didn't leave us strangled.
We boarded the bus and the next location is Loch and George which is 10 min drive from Port Campbell park. At loch and george there is provision to go to the beach. As we walked along few people of our bus spotted us and were smiling at us, there was an old woman who saw us and said "i found you, did you come by walk". We consoled the old lady that they didn't lose us and our kind driver picked us. We went down to the beach, the climate was very cold yet we were destined to quench our enthusiastic feet in the water and it was freaking freezing, definitely less than 10°c.
That was our last attraction of the day on the way back we stopped at a coffee shop had some coffee and headed straight back to the city. On the way back we saw a lot of cow farms, near to100's of cows in each farm.
By the time we reached the hotel it was 9pm, we travelled for 12 hours and venki was barely awake for only 3 hours in the entire trip, most of the time was found sleeping like a koala. Great Ocean Road was my favourite destination in Australia and it is a strong contender for the bucket list. If you have a chance to visit great ocean road, hire a car so you can stop at any destination as you like along the road. By car it will definitely take you 2 days, so plan for a stay, there are many cottages along the way of the Great Ocean Road.
10 pm we went for the Indian restaurant again and had biriyani. 11pm we started our epic journey again "The Nights in the streets of the Melbourne City" night 2. This night was even more lengthy we covered almost half of the streets on the city map, as usual we ended the day by buying bananas. Kings street, Queens street, Collins street, Little collins street, Flinders street, Bourke street, Swanston street,Elizabeth street were few of the street our eyes witnessed. Reached room and slept as we have flight at 8 am in the morning to sydney. One more notable thing at Melbourne is, the girls were gorgeously beautiful, well vairamuthu was not wrong, "Melbourne malar pol melliya magala..."
Took lot of pictures and videos, as we didn't have much we ended the aquarium at 5pm, the photographer who took our photo at the entrance was waiting for us at the exit with an album which was photoshop'd to perfection and we bought the album the moment we saw it, below are some photos which were in the album.
If you are a lover of sea creatures you could easily spend half a day at the aquarium.
We quickly headed to Madame Tussaud's wax museum which was opened recently at Sydney, a shorter version of the London museum. First few statues we didn't know who they were, the first statue we recognized was our Gandhiji, followed by nelson mandela, obama, hugh jackman, bruce wills, jackie chan, bradpitt and many more celebrities.
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| Best snap at the museum!!! |
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| Romance Unlimitedly Unleashed!!! |
We just spent only 10 mins at the tower after which we headed to the opera house to see night view of the house. We imagined that the opera house would be lit with different colours but it was lit with just single sandal colour. The place was huge and we took some photos but i was not satisfied with the photos as i couldn't get a full view of the house from any were surrounding it. Spent one hour at the opera house and then we took taxi back to our hotel. Immediately we started our journey "Nights in the streets of Sydney city" night 1, covered few streets appx 3-4 kms. As we were tired and have to wake up early tomorrow for 1 day trip to blue mountains; night 1 ended of a short distance.
10-Nov;
7.30am we have to board the bus for blue mountains trip. 5mins late to the bus made our bus driver to make an announcement that he needs everyone to keep time
for the day to be effective, for a moment we thought that the driver is
strict. 9am our first stop was at featherdal wildlife park, its is a
small park and our driver gave 45mins to spend at the park. After been
to the currumbin wildlife sanctuary this seem to be very small for us
and the animals were also the ones we had seen earlier.
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| Don't mess with me... |
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| My best shot... |
Katoomba railway which is 52° steep for 310m is the steepest incline railway in the world.We took the train which goes upward hill. It is not the usual normal sized train but a smaller version, yet its difficult to maintain and power a device at such an angle and to carry 50 people, downward slope ride would have been fantastic. Using the train we reached the summit again, there was a gift shop where we found the gift items are cheap and bought few of them.
2.30 pm we started and reached the three sisters by 3pm. Blue mountains is famous for the three sisters, its three rock structures stacked close to each other called the three sisters(not so fascinating historical story).
By taxi we reached our hotel, got freshened up and left to have dinner. This night is the last night for us at Australia, our sadness level reached maximum. At Sydney city we planned to visit few places but due to time it was missed out, our walking GPS (Muni boy) said never mind we will cover all the places today night which led to our, "Night at the streets of Sydney City", night 2. We covered most of the city this night and it was very very long night of all the nights we spent in Australia. Darling harbour, Elizabeth street, George street, Market street, Kings street, Pitt street, Drutt Street, Kent street, Castlereagh street were many of the streets where our foot made its mark. We slept at 1am, we have flight at 2pm back to Singapore.
10.30am we left the place took free bus to city and alighted at market city for shopping. The market city was fully invaded by Chinese and their products, we shopped at lot of places around Australia and this was the cheapest of all. So if Sydney is in your Australia tour itinerary then hold your money and hand from shopping at other places, market city is the place for shopping; shoppers paradise. Bought lot of things at the market city, after 45 mins we left to our hotel. We set a target to ourselves to leave the hotel at 12pm and we indeed stick to plan. Wheels up at 2pm, we reached airport at 12.30pm. Only 7kg is allowed as cabin baggage in scoot but everyone of us had 10 to 12 kgs each. Not sure how much does each extra kg cost and we certainly don't want to pay anything extra. We stood in the queue and started observing each counter staff as to who is lenient, there was a Indian guy who we thought we can convince without any paying extra charge. Fortunately the queue went as we expected and we went to the Indian guy, the person was very good he let us go without any extra charge for the baggage. Our flight was delayed by an hour, we had food and sat by the chairs. Flashes of the past 9 days started screening through our minds, everyone of us was engulfed with unhappiness as we couldn't accept that our adventurously marvellous tour is coming to an end.
3pm, with no choice we took the flight to Singapore. Venki was very fond of the pongal vada @ anandha bhavan in airport the whole journey of the flight passed hoping that each one can have 2 plates of pongal vada. After reaching singapore airport we found out that andha bhavan was closed for renovation work nevertheless santhosh mom had prepared delicious fish gravy and to have real Indian food after 9 days was really splendid. We were very tired and slept very early, next day i couldn't sleep beyond 6.30am as we were very punctual for the past 9 days in getting up at 6am and my body got accustomed to it. We didn't want to go office but the only thought which made us to go office is, next day its Diwali and its a holiday. :)
P.S - One interesting thing is the entire text in this blog was written using my Nexus mobile while travelling to/from office by train for almost 20 days...
