Panic mode ON

Why.  Why did I think I could do this???? I'm reading my guide to Australia and every time I get excited thinking 'I get to GO THERE!!!', the joy is followed up by immediately panicking and being hardly able to breathe.  I barely 'backpacked' around Belize/Guatemala for TWO WEEKS.  Two weeks.  On a trip already planned out from start to finish by Sarah, and with 2-3 other people.  So of course it makes purrfect sense to then plan a solo, six-week tour all alone, and to buy my ticket as a way of forcing myself to actually do it.  Yeesh.  Gawdammit!

One kind of sucky thing is that there WILL be some things I really won't have the balls to do.  Like a six-day Overland trek.  Def can't do that alone.  I'm not an experienced hiker at all, and the thought of sleeping in a little tent alone outside makes me want to cry.  That's something I wish I had a partner for, because it would be amazing.

So far, plan is: (without adding the smaller stops that I haven't looked in to yet)
Fly into Melbourne.  Stay in Melbourne about 4 nights.

Begin heading west.  Probably stop in Victoria and Adelaide, but want to look into whats available deeper inland.  Want to read more about Lake Torren and Flinders ranges.

Unless I find something I really, really want to do along the way, from here I'll probably head straight to Perth, to see my friend Lisa from Toronto.  Hopefully the dates line up for her.  She said her boyfriend can help me surf :D

Then I'll start heading north but probably along the coast, I see both Shark Bay and Carnarvon on the map, might look at doing SCUBA certification here if its available, and def stay for some outback coast tours.

From there, heading inland to Uluru.  Def dont' want to skip that.

From there, heading up to Cairns  This will be end of March, and Tom and Tara from Ottawa will be there.  Surf with them a couple of days, then dive in the Great Barrier Reef.  Get scuba if haven't done so already.  I have a feeling my longest stay will be in this area, anywhere from 1-2 weeks.  Want to spend a lot of time in Atherton.

From there, I'll start making my way down to Sydney.  Its just awful whats happenign in the rest of Queensland right now, I may look into some short-term volunteer opportunities if they're available and if I can make any difference in just a few days.

Spend a few days in Sydney, then depending on timing may just have to head back to Melbourne to come home.

This is a very, very loose idea, I haven't looked into any transportation things or anything yet.  This is just from viewing the map.  Also there are possibilities of meeting up with a couple of somewhat familiar faces in and around Melbourne, so this may change my plans a bit.   One is this dude Mark I went to high school with, but he's leaving Aus mid-march I think so it may not happen, and that cute Brit J should be kicking around somewhere when I arrive.

I really, really want to visit Tasmania.  But it's where the things that scare me the most are.  I've been saying for YEARS that my dream vacation is to hike through Australia.  Tasmania seems like th best place to do it, but I can seriously see me losing my mind and crying myself to sleep a few times.  I dunno.  And it would take up at least a week of my time there and I don't have a whole lot of it.

Planning planning planning.   Hopefully I'm not just planning my own brutal death by surfboard and shark bite.