By Jon Wilkin St Helens and England

I suppose one of the hardest parts about travelling to Australia is the long flight and jetlag.

Some might argue that reduced brain function brought on by years of banging heads doesn't help, but, having travelled to this side of the world before, I found I've settled into a routine very quickly this time around. I'm no longer waking up at 3.30am and staggering around in a daze during the day.

As soon as we arrived at the hotel, which overlooks the beautiful Gold Coast, we all headed for our rooms. In true British style, me and room-mate Paul Wellens quickly assessed the kettle, quantity of tea bags and amount of milk we had, soon figuring out how many cups we could produce before our maid restocked the room.

It was a pitiful total, especially for a tea monster such as Paul. Like all good roomies, I had anticipated his needs and brought a packet of tea bags with me from England.

Everything has been going very well and training has been very enjoyable. We have being training at a stadium close to our hotel and the weather thus far has been very English - warm and cloudy to start with followed by rain and a drop in temperature.

It draws the obvious comment from the local people we come across: "I see you guys brought the weather with you." Now unless Emirates has developed revolutionary 'cloud-dragging' technology on their aeroplanes, this cannot be the case.

Friday marked our first free time of the trip so far. We hit the beach for a while and grabbed some lunch. Bliss. Apologies to Megan, my girlfriend, who is sat in a prison cell studying how steel changes under temperature fluctuations for her degree. My thoughts were with you as I rubbed sun cream into Wello's back!

Jon will be filing regular reports from Australia throughout the tournament, which kicks off on Saturday, 25 October.