A month in Indonesia is nowhere near enough, so i tried to cram in a sensible mix of highlights and diving.
Bali is not the hidden gem it was in the 70's, or the tranquil retreat of your Eat Pray Love. Downtown Kuta is an overcrowded maze of streets lined with hotels, massage parlours, knock off luxury goods, and australians getting pissed. Ubud, the hippy retreat in the hills, is a smog choked maze of narrow streets clogged with mopeds and tour buses trying to visit various temples and yoga retreats full of disilluisioned middle aged white women. Outside of these places, the countryside is a more tranquil network of rice paddies and smallholdings, with kids making kites, and marching bands practicising for the upcoming independence day anniversary celebrations.
After enduring enough tourists at the Monkey Forest and surreal Blanco museum, i escaped to the coast at Tulamben for some macro and wreck diving, before flying east to Komodo.
Komodo National Park is renowned not only for its Dragon Lizards, but also for some of the worlds best diving, as the fast currents bring plenty of nutrients and wildlife.
And indeed the currents were something else - exhilarating on deliberate drift dives, and scary at other times. Some highlights included a swarm of white tip reef sharks hunting moray eel, an octopus and grouper collaborating to hunting something else, many new nudibranch, ghost shrimp, pygmy seahorse, pipefish, frogfish, eagle rays, and more turtles than you could shake a stick at. Still no manta rays or whales though.
The only downside to this trip was being stuck on a boat for a week with the most annoying obnoxious misogynistic all american "bro" i've ever had the misfortune to encounter.
Anyway on the flip side, in the hostel beforehand i met a nice polish lass who was about to go to New Zealand to start Te Araroa!
After the boat, flight back to Bali, and then a bumpy local bus to the western port of Gilimanuk to catch a ferry to Java.
Indonesia seems, as you might expect, to have a two tier economy - local stuff and tourist stuff. This bus and ferry cost about £4, and in Java i crossed the entire 1000km island by first class train for less than you'd pay for a ticket from Nottingham to London. The whole economy seems to run on moped services, through mobile apps like Gojek or Grab. Moped taxis, moped delivery of food, groceries, micro payments, transport tickets etc. So when police ran over a Gojek driver it sparked mass protests around the country.
I digress. I only had a 30 day visa, so was a bit rushed in Java, and found myself on a well trodden tourist schedule - The Blue Flame of Ijen crater, Surubaya, sunrise at Mount Bromo, and the ancient capital of Yogyakarta with its two nearby world heritage temples, Prambanan and Borobudur.
Finally Jakarta, a massive sprawl, and a history lesson about the dutch colonists reluctance to let go of their prize. (with assistance from the brits of course)
Hard to find a pub in Jakarta, as Indonesia is generally a very Muslim country, with Bali being the riotous Buddhist exception (and also bringing in vast tourist income)
Anyway, with so much more to explore, and having mastered the bum gun, i'll put Indonesia on my list of places i would go back to.

The Tip being Pajinka, the most northerly point of mainland Australia, at the top of Cape York, 1200km of corrugated dirt roads from the last proper shops in Cairns, interrupted by rivers, some with fords, some with unreliable ferries, smouldering forest fires, road trains, crocodiles, termite mounds, aboriginal rock art, abandoned farms, and bizarrely, an area of national park marked on the map as Melsonby.

There are two roads up to the top, i was following the Peninsula Development Road, a wide strip of red dirt, with occasional sections of tarmac, which is under continuous repair by a crew of graders and steamrollers to even out the awful corrugations. Every 200km or so there is a "roadhouse", a combined cafe/petrol station/campground/ telegraph repeater station, where weary travellers grab fuel, ice cream and wifi before the next stretch of nothingness. For this i'd hired a 4wd with a roof tent.

The second option is the original Telegraph Track, cut through the wilderness in 1887 by a hardy crew, to bring communications to outposts in the far north.
It hasn't been maintained since, and is now a pilgrimage for 4x4 off road enthusiasts, with a number of notorious vehicle destroying drops into rivers and such like. The road house camps were littered with bush mechanics making repairs, and loud polyester souvenir shirts of conquering heroes returning south.

The tip itself makes the discomfort of the five day journey worthwhile, picture perfect palm fringed beaches, and after a boat ride to Thursday Island, the most northerly pub in Australia. although up here, everything is the most northerly of its kind.

After the obligatary book ending photo at the sign, nothing for it but to turn around and drive 5 days south, although this time detouring to visit the mining town of Weipa, one of the worlds largest suppliers of bauxite, and the geological anomaly of Undara lava tubes.

Returning to Cairns, my three months in Australia was up, so i did what all Australians do, and booked a flight to Bali.

Got one of those people carriers with a mattress in the back.
It's pretty cramped but just about ok when laying down.

Driving north through touristy towns of antique shops and ice creams, stopping at busy free roadside campspots full of grey nomads. Bought a piece of opal off a guy in a car park.
At another stop, met a couple of english lads touring by bike, which made me feel lazy and jealous, although still not convinced that i'd want to cycle in the heat, dust and lack of backroads.

Landscape is all sugar cane, with narrow gauge railways threading through the fields to carry it all to the mills. The biggest of which is Bundaberg. Many years ago the town was swamped in leftover molasses, until some smart alec realised they could use it to make rum. So went on a tour of the distillery. Also the famous ginger beer factory.
Nearby is another tourist trap, the "Mystery Craters", obviously caused by some erosion process but since allegedly no scientist has been able to definitely pin it down, the proprietors propose all sorts of crazy theories, including aliens. all good fun though.

Some detours in land to see nature - the incredible duck billed platypus in Eungella national park, and mighty Wallaman falls, highest drop in the country.

Big stuff. Big Mango, Big Snake, Big Gumboot in Tully, the wettest town in australia, which once recorded 8 metres of annual rainfall (usually average 4m)

I've avoided tourist traps of Fraser Island and the Whitsundays, instead taking a little ferry to go diving on Keppel, which is literally coated in carpet sharks.

Then abandon the car in Townsville for a few days to take a ferry to Magnetic Island, a lovely spot with little coves, ice creams, snorkelling, ww2 pill boxes, blue tongue lizards, echidnas, and a brewery.

Failed to spot a wild Cassowary, but beautiful sunsets on some of the country's 9000 gloriously empty beaches, and then a stop at Paronella Park, an interesting jungle covered ruin of a fantasy palace built by a spanish immigrant.

Before reaching Cairns i have to cross the Atherton Tablelands, a plateau of waterfalls, giant fig trees, tree kangaroos, roadside cheese shops, and nice small towns.

Cairns itself is a strange town, it doesn't really have any attractions of its own, rather serves as the gateway to the barrier reef and the last serious town before heading north into wild country.

I'm booked on a 3 day diving trip, which turns out to not provide guides, so this is the first time i have to worry about underwater navigation. The bits of reef we go to are healthy and colourful but don't provide much in the way of new aquatic species, with the exception of a couple of nudibranch.

Final bit of tourism is the famous scenic railway / cablecar journey up to Kuranda

Treated myself to an airbnb in Brisbane, turned out to be with and interesting host, Dave, a 3d digital animator and AI dabbler, with plenty of cool stories about Burning Man and humblebrags about talking to Jennifer Aniston for two hours in an LA bar without realising who she was.
I had a few activities lined up for my time here though, starting with AFL at the famous Gabba, which apparently the city wants to knock down to build something bigger, because Brisbane is hosting the Olympics??
So many missed kicks. 18 one pointers. That seems like a lot.
And I thought there was a lot of wasted possession kicking long, close to the posts. When all you need is a catch anywhere within 50m and it's a free shot at goal. Although since they missed 18 I guess that isn't foolproof.
Woman sat to [...read the rest]

This stretch of coast has been severely disrupted by record flooding, so I can't rush even if I can wanted to. Decided to take public transport rather than drive, because a) need a break from driving
B) public transport is dirt cheap
And c) not much I want to stop and see

Bus, ferry to Manly, another hostel stay. This hostel turns out to be mainly long term stay working holiday visa kids partying late and working as delivery drivers etc
More miles of beach, Sydney residents flocking over on the ferry for the weekend.
I'm stopping here to do my refresher scuba dive before getting to more interesting places.
Was extremely unremarkable with terrible visibility, but necessary practice

Bus up to Palm beach, aka the famous Summer Bay from aussie daytime soap Home and Away.
A secu [...read the rest]

Australia is famously big, as they love to remind you, although 99% of people live in a tiny strip on the coast.
More interestingly, small towns love erecting "big things" of local interest.
Having already passed by the Big Potatoes/Meatballs, and the Big Moth, I was rather impressed by the Big Merino, which is big enough to contain a gift shop and a small museum of the history of merino sheep in Australia.

Heading for the coast, a tourist sign for a waterfall lured me in, and Fitzroy Falls were worth the stop, an impressive torrent dropping into a lush canyon which stretches off into the distance.
This brought me out on the coast south of Sydney, into surfer territory. I've tried it once and it didn't grab me.
I was heading for Wollongong to see a comedian called Frenchy, [...read the rest]