In all the years that I worked on cruise ships, I never managed to make it as far as Australia, so a few years after I returned to dry land, I was very grateful to be granted a one-year working visa to live and work there from 2000 to 2001.

We spent six months living in Sydney's Woolloomooloo district. Amongst other jobs, we worked in the athlete's village during the Olympics - delivering fresh towels and linen to the athletes, and then developing athlete's films in a small photo lab at the Paralympics. We then bought a knackered old Toyota Hiace camper van to travel around the rest of the country for the remaining six months.

It was an unforgettable experience, but being a bit daft, we ended up reaching the spectacular landscapes of the Northern Territory right in the middle of the wet season. This meant that the rivers kept bursting their banks, and the only road east kept turning into a a river itself. We would sit for days and nights amongst the convoys of camper vans and lorries (or 'road trains' as they call them over there) waiting for the water levels to go down low enough for us to drive through. At night we could see the eyes of crocodiles in the water reflecting in our headlights. Exciting stuff!

We eventually made it back to Sydney via Queensland, and were lucky enough to be able to spend a few weeks in China on our way back to the UK. Those photos can be seen in the China & Hong Kong gallery.