When the initial email from Celeste at Tourism and Events Queensland came into The Blogcademy inbox asking us if we’d consider an all-expenses paid trip to Queensland I nearly deleted it, assuming it must be spam. I mean, this kind of opportunity doesn’t exactly come knocking on your door everyday. After verifying that Celeste wasn’t, in fact, just playing a rather cruel prank, we started to plan our epic adventure down under!

Skip forward eight months or so and we were finally there. Celeste and her team had pulled out all the stops and scheduled an action packed five days for us including koala cuddles, surf lessons, boutique hotels and snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef! I’m so excited to share some of my highlights with you guys over the next few weeks. This new Honeymoon Travel Guide feature of mine is working out quite nicely don’t you think?

Queensland isn’t somewhere I’d ever really considered visiting before, but after this trip I can say with the utmost sincerity that I will be coming back, only next time I’m bringing Gareth with me – this tropical paradise is just made for lovers!

The first activity on our packed agenda was a visit to Dreamworld on the Gold Coast. I am a big kid at heart and I love nothing more than getting all silly at a theme park so this was right up my alley. I screamed my lungs out on The Cyclone and we got some great shots while riding the Puss in Boots Sword Swing and Mike Doohan’s Motocoaster. 

But my highlight of the day the year was definitely meeting some kangaroos and my cuddle with Brandy the Koala.

What a cutie! Yes, we all wanted to bring her home with us. Shauna and I are still talking about her on a daily basis and Gareth even got into the spirit back home in Reading. Koalas: bringing people together!

After finally handing her back (which was hard, believe me), we said goodbye to our tour guide Sarah (who, the previous week, had shown Angelina Jolie and her kids around the park – talk about being in good company!) hopped back in the van with some delicious organic lunches from The Farmer’s Son and headed on to our next destination, Surfer’s Paradise, which I’ll be sharing with you next week.