Our first two house swaps

Welcome to Phil and Claire Down Under, which is intended as a travel log that we can enjoy in the future. It also doubles as a way that our friends and family can follow our adventures to Australia as it happens, and if it is of any use to others that intend to visit Australia or just enjoy reading about travel it will be a bonus.

Claire and I have been living together for over 10 years but have known each other for much longer. We finally got married last year whilst on a cruise on the Queen Mary II around the Caribbean (I'm Phil, the fat one). For reasons that will become apparent over the next few entries we have just arranged our very first house swap for our very first holiday in Australia; in fact, not one house swap but two. When I first joined the website http://www.homexchangevacation.com/ on my birthday in August, I was doubtful if anyone from Australia would want to swap houses with someone living in Milton Keynes during the height of our winter. For this reason I emailed over 100 people from the website that listed England as one of their favourite swaps. To my surprise I had a fantastic response, mostly for swaps in our summer but two enquiries continued into fruition. Our first is in Melbourne, Victoria where we are swapping with Arlene and her son Leon for 6 weeks. We are also swapping cars and I think that Arlene will be making more use of our car than our house as she will be staying mainly with her mum in Stoke on Trent. They may be visiting a few weekends for some MK Christmas shopping if they can park anywhere near the centre. Milton Keynes has some of the best parking in the country but around Christmas time it gets ridiculous. We will leave a couple of residents parking booklets just in case.

Our second swap is with Geoff and his wife Denise from Townsville, Queensland where we will be swapping for 3 weeks. I think it is also Geoff and Denise’s first swap as well, whereas Arlene has done a couple already. These two swaps aren’t exactly coincidental, we have a week in-between them so intend to fly to Brisbane and catch the coach up to Townsville stopping off on the way where the mood takes us. I guess that this will be a very pretty journey as it tracks the Great Barrier Reef. We are also swapping cars with Geoff who has a satnav fitted to his car which should help when travelling around this area. We are leaving our satnav for our guests as it doesn’t have Australia maps anyway. I did look into buying an Australian map for it but it was very expensive. Instead I searched on ebay for a second hand one with Australia already loaded. I found a real bargain for £59 that has Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada, Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Amazing, they have come a long way since I bought my first one. It’s great; it switches from a 3D view when you have a driving decision within 2 miles to a map when you stay on the same road for over 2 miles. It also doubles as an MP3, MP4 player and ebook reader. It is new and comes with all the chargers, carriers and instructions; what a buy, especially as we intend to spend the last 3 weeks of our holiday touring around South West America in a hire car.

Geoff sent an email last week to show me just how vast Australia really is. Europe is almost lost inside it. We hope to drive the “Great Ocean Road” from Melbourne all the way to Adelaide and also along the coast the other way to Sydney. We will see the coast line from Brisbane to Townsville on the bus and intend to drive along the coast from Townsville to Cairns while we are there so the only bit of coast between Adelaide and Cairns that we miss will be between Sydney and Brisbane. Shame really as we have some friends that we met whilst in Goa three years ago that live on the Gold Coast and my mums best friend from school also lives in the same area. Maybe we can fit them in at the end of our stay by flying from Townsville to the Gold coast then catching the bus to Brisbane ready for our flight to the USA but I suppose that Claire will have the final say.

Because of the long flight and cost to Australia we decided to go for a round the world ticket with 5 stops rather than a straight forward return ticket. This gives us chance to see some places that we have never stayed in close to Australia along the way. We have 3 nights in Hong Kong followed by 1 week in Bali before commencing our house swaps. I desperately tried to get a stop in Fiji but failed miserably as it increased the cost so much; maybe next time? As I said, we then have 3 weeks in the USA to do as we wish. Claire has family that she has never met in Los Angeles so hopefully we can catch up with those guys while there. I do intend to book a few nights in Las Vegas and if I can convince Claire a few days skiing at Lake Tahoe as it will be February when we get there.

For yours and our information, here are the time differences in the places we are staying;-
Hong Kong, Bali +8 hours
Melbourne, Sydney +11 hours
Townsville +10 hours
California -6 hours
We will have to remember these for choosing a time to ring home now and then. Not as easy as when in India as they are 5.5 hours ahead of us and all you had to do to know the time either way round was to turn your watch up side down. Just thought; I guess we will gain a day somewhere between Australia and USA so I need to make sure we arrive at airports and hotels on the right day.

Anyway, I hope you manage to follow us on the biggest adventure holiday we have ever had. I will try and keep each entry much smaller than this one and include more photos to keep it more readable. Not long now; it’s so exciting!