Steve & Char on Tour 2005

Final Thoughts!

2005-10-20T12:22:00.000-01:00

The final whistle has gone, the fat lady has sung, its all over. What an amazing 6 months we've had.

Everyday has been fantastic but the best parts were Broome sunset, camping in Kakadu, Ayers Rock sunset, the whales at Kaikoura, landing at the top of Fox glacier, Great Barrier reef, sailing around the Whitsundays and finally the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb.

We want to say a few thank you's. Thanks to Bloo and Milky for answering our endless questions before we left home. Thanks to Eric & Michelle, Milky's Mum and Vincent for their great hospitality, even though we'd never met any of them before! Last but not least thanks to both our parents for their financial support, we would have been home along time ago if you hadn't have helped.

Have we caught the travelling bug? I think so! We have already got some ideas for a couple of trips closer to home.

So this is it last post, we fly this afternoon and arrive home early hours of Friday morning.

It has been a trip of a lifetime.

Sydney

2005-10-20T12:21:00.000-01:00

Vincent kindly dropped us back to Newcastle station were we got our last Greyhound down to Sydney. On the way into the central city we past over the Harbour Bridge with the famous view of the Opera House. It was really strange seeing these two icons in real life. We got to the hostel, checked in, then booked to do the Bridge Climb on Tuesday and a day trip to the Blue Mountains on Sunday. We then headed down to Darling Harbour where we went to see Sharks 3D at the IMax cinema. The IMax here is nowhere near as good as the IMax at Waterloo and the film wasn't as good as previous ones we've seen. It was still good though!

Saturday didn't get off to the best of starts as when we went to have breakfast we discovered that someone had stolen our milk, yoghurt and fruit from the fridge! This is the second time this has happened, the other being in Darwin. I guess its not that bad going considering anyone can come in and take anything from the kitchens, twice is still two more times then it should happen though. The guy on reception kindly went to the shop next door and brought us some milk from his own pocket. Breakfast over we headed up to Circular Quay to catch the ferry over to Manly.

Famous views from Circular Quay:

Manly is the beach getaway for Sydney residents. On the way over on the ferry we couldn't believe the amount of sailing boats out on Sydney Harbour.

Once we got to Manly we were a little disappointed. The beach rates very low on the list of all the beaches we have visited and there wasn't much else on offer apart from the aquarium, which we have seen too many of! We guess its nice to come over from the city to get away from the hustle and bustle. On the way back I managed to get some nice shots of the Bridge and Opera House as the sun was starting to set.

Our trip up to the Blue Mountains was a total washout, it was such a disaster! The rain didn't stop all day which meant the cloud was low and therefore we got to see nothing and get absolutely soaked at the same time, not bad for $75 each!

We walked down to the first of the 'Three Sisters' rock formations but it looked as if we were floating on clouds when we got to the bottom. The 'Giant Staircase' continued down to the valley below but we didn't feel up to the 975 steps!

We went on the worlds steepest railway but the trip back up in the cable car was through rain clouds!

We stopped at Leura to visit the famous sweet shop which had every sweet you could imagine, all in jars stacked high!

Once back down near the city the rain vanished and we cruised back along the Parramatta River, under the Harbour Bridge and past the Opera House before docking at Circular Quay. We both thought it was the worst trip that we have done but I guess it could have been one of the best if mother nature had been kind.

Monday morning was grey skies and drizzle, not the weather for cricket! We had got tickets to go see day 4 of the test match between Australia and the World XI. By the time we got to the Sydney Cricket Ground the rain had nearly stopped and there was patches of blue sky.

Play started 30 mins late with World XI needing 330 to win with 8 wickets left.

Runs slowly came but sadly so did the wickets, and it turned in to a big collapse. Stuart MacGill got Vittori out so Steve Harmison walked out to the middle, soon he was walking back, after only one ball in fact!

That left Muralidaran the last batsman, MacGill was on a hatrick, he bowled and Muralidaran played and missed. However the next ball he tried to hit out of the ground and made a total mess of it. 2.20pm and it was all over. It was an entertaining morning but disappointing it ended so early. Char wasn't that impressed but she didn't complain and did try to understand what was going on. After a BBQ at the hostel in the evening we walked down through China Town and around Darling Harbour to see what the restaurants were like for our last dinner on Wednesday night. The restaurants looked nice but we'll probably eat somewhere around Circular Quay as we want a view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

Tuesday, Bridge Climb day! We headed up to Circular Quay late morning and walked down through the Botanical Gardens to the Opera House. We looked round and took lots of pictures before heading back round the quay towards the Bridge.

We got some lunch in a little French bakery then sat at the quay side admiring the view across to the Opera House. Time ticked on so we headed up to the bridge to check-in for the climb. To say that we were both nervous would be an understatement, we were wondering what we had let ourselves in for. We checked-in then went through for a breath test for alcohol, t en we went through and got kited up with climb suit, harness, radio, a pack containing a fleece and another containing a rain jacket, and even a strap to hold your glasses round your head. Everything has to be attached to your climb suit so that it can't be dropped off the bridge. Practice climb over we were on our way. We walked out along the catwalk under the road to the South Pylon, these catwalks were narrow and were grating, so you could see the big drop below! When we got out to the Pylon we climbed 4 big ladders to get on to the start of the Eastern arch, from here we walked up to the top of the bridge stopping at points to admire the views. We weren't allowed to take our own cameras so no pictures but we did buy some pictures that Pete our climb leader took of us. Once at the top we crossed over the middle to the Western arch and then climbed back down to the Pylon we climbed up. Back down some more ladders and more catwalks and we were back to our starting point. The three and a half hours was over in a flash but what an amazing experience it was, the adrenaline rush was fantastic. We had climbed nearly 1500 steps on route to the top which is 134m (440ft) above the water in the harbour below, it is the longest single span bridge in the world at 503m (1650ft) and the 52,800 tonnes of steel (which the majority of was shipped over from England) is held together by 6 million rivets. Researchers believe there are 10,000 rivets on the bed of the harbour that were dropped during construction! In the evening we went out for dinner at a really good steakhouse in Darling Harbour. Then we went to see Haunted Castle 3D at the IMax.

Looking like idiots wearing the 3D glasses:

Got back to the hostel at 11.30pm and both collapsed in to bed as it had been a very long but memorable day.

Wednesday, our last day in Australia, we got up late and looked around the shops and we closed our Australian bank account. We went to the Chinese gardens in Darling Harbour, it was really nice and tranquil compared to the city only a stones throw away.

We also got our underwater pictures developed from when we went snorkelling out in the Whitsundays. The pictures are really good, much better then the ones we took up on the Great Barrier Reef. We originally planned to go out to Bondi beach today but the weather hasn't been great and to be honest we've had enough of beaches! For our last night Char treated me to a fantastic dinner in a posh restaurant overlooking the Opera House.

It was a great way to end our trip.

Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie and Newcastle

2005-10-14T21:29:00.000-01:00

This post is all 3 of the above towns, we did it this way as the past 4/5 days have seemed to all roll in to one!

Monday we got the bus from Byron Bay down to Coffs Harbour, stopping at Ballina for some lunch. Ballina is famous for its giant prawn, Char had a dozen big fresh prawns for lunch.

The journey took slightly longer then planned and we arrived in Coffs late afternoon. The YHA moved in to a purpose built brand new hostel earlier this year and it is by far the cleanest one yet and comes a very close second to Melbourne overall. We went to the shops to get some pasta for dinner then caught up with blog and email before walking down to the beach before it got dark.

Somehow Char managed to flush her key card for the room down the toilet, it caused much hilarity in reception. The most noticeable change is the temperature, it is a lot cooler down here, still about 25degrees though so a lot warmer then back at home. It just feels cool for us because we have been used to the mid 30's! Only stopping the one night here in Coffs. Heading down to Port Macquarie tomorrow and then Newcastle the following day.

We spent Tuesday morning lazing around the hostel at Coffs. Our bus left at 2.30pm and we arrived in Port Maquarie at 5.30pm. The YHA here has recently expanded in to a 4 bedroom house across the street. We were the only ones in the house, it was great! We went to the the shops and got some dinner before watching "Super Size Me" on DVD. It is a documentry about a man who ate McDonalds for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a whole month. The effects it had on his were stagering, his liver ended up in a similar condition to an alcoholic's liver!

The bus down to Newcastle didn't leave till 5pm so we went for a walk along the beach and played cards most of the afternoon on Wednesday.

We arrived down in Newcastle at 9pm and Vincent came and picked us up from the bus station. Vincent is a friend of Bloo's (Stuart) who he met on his travels in Hawaii.

On Thursday Vincent took us on a tour of Newcastle which has as Industrial reputation but there are some great beaches and parks within the town.

We counted 15 huge cargo ships stationary out at sea waiting to come in to Newcastle dock to be loaded with coal, the amount of money that must be wasted on them just sitting waiting must be ridiculous.

In the afternoon we went to pick up Vincent's nephew, Joshua, from school taking a detour to look a Lake Macquarie, which is a huge salt water lake here in Newcastle. When we got back to the house Joshua kindly volunteered to take us for a walk up through the bush to a lookout over a lagoon.

The weather was really warm so after the walk, when we got back to the house, it was great to have a swimming pool to be able to cool off in. It was a bit too cold still though so I didn't stay in for long.

We had our third roast dinner since coming away on Thursday night expertly cooked by Vincent's mum and it was fantastic. Jacinda, Vincent's sister, came over with the three boys and we chatted about our travels. Thanks very much to Vincent for kindly offering to let us stay, sadly our stay was so short.

Byron Bay

2005-10-10T16:56:00.000-01:00

Saturday morning we got a lift from the hostel to the bus station in this!

Our stay in Surfers had been really good after the bad start. The bus ride down to Byron Bay took just over two hours and we dumped our stuff at the hostel before heading out to have a look round. We both really like Byron as it has a very relax feeling and is very compact, just want is required after the hustle and bustle of Surfers. Byron is known for its large hippy community and we thought we might not like it because of this but it is not that prominent. After booking a hostel down in Sydney (booked in advance as its very busy) we headed out to the Cheeky Monkey bar that is known for its cheap backpacker meals. We were going to go for the chicken korma at $2 (80p) each but we ended up going for the lasangne at $6 (£2.40). Surprisingly it was very edible so we are going to go back tomorrow to try the $2 option!

After ignoring the alarm for an hour and a half on Sunday morning we eventually dragged ourselves out of bed at about 11am. We decided we'd make the effort and walk up to Cape Byron and the lighthouse. We walked out of town along the edge of the beach then cut up over the headland through some proper Australian bush! It was an extremely steep climb and took us some time to get up to the lighthouse. On the way we saw a couple of huge monitor lizards about 1.5m long, numerous bush turkeys and plenty of snake tracks but no actual snakes. We were glad to finally see the lighthouse and by the time we reached the summit we were exhausted.

We were so glad at this point!!!!

The view once we got to the top:

The views along the coast were stunning and it is Cape Byron that is the most Eastern point of main land Australia.

South:

North:

After standing at the cliff edge watching the humpback whales on their Southerly migration we decided to head back down along the road instead of tackling the rough terrain back through the bush. The walk back was far easier. We collapsed in the afternoon and chatted about all the things that we had done whilst we'd been away. The evening rolled in and we walked down to Cheeky Monkeys to have our $2 dinner. Disaster, Cheeky Monkeys doesn't open on a Sunday. Instead we had to go to a steak house for dinner, shame!

Surfers Paradise

2005-10-08T19:31:00.001-01:00

It was really strange stopping in Brisbane again when we had to change buses to carry on down to Surfers Paradise. When we arrived in Surfers I had a suspicion the hostel wasn't going to be great as the girl who picked us up from the bus station was a backpacker herself and didn't even ask how we were, let alone engage in any conversation. My suspicions were correct, the hostel was awful. The people in 'reception' were so unhelpful, when we eventually found our room we were disgusted. The floor hadn't been hovered in years! Char found a hover further along the corridor so she set to and hovered, then we looked at the pathetic excuse of a bed and there were dead insects and other people’s hairs in it. At this point we looked at each other and knew we were going to leave straight away. We went down and asked for our money back and the guy from West Ham phoned the manager, he said we could have 2 night’s money back but not the money for that night. We really wanted to get out so ended up losing the one nights money. We found a taxi and went to another hostel which is one of the nicest ones we've stayed in. That hostel is a disgrace to the YHA and should definitely be shut down. So our stay in Surfers didn't get off to the best of starts, but once we got sorted and went for a walk round we were quite happy.

Thursday we went to the Holiday Inn to see if Char's Mums glasses were there as she was sure she left them there when they stayed for a night on their trip South. Unbelievably they were there! We then had a walk along the beach and then looked around the shops. After dinner we decided to go for a walk round town to see what the night life was like. We ended up going in the Ripley Museum. Ripley was a man who in the 1930's spent his time traveling the globe in search for the strange but true! These include the tallest man ever who was nearly 9ft tall, but he only lived till he was 22. Also there s a display of the smallest things in the world like the Lords Prayer written on a single grain of rice! It kept us amused for a couple of hours and was very entertaining. Unfortunately we didn't take t e camera out with us but here is a picture of Char next to the tallest man in the world, taken on my phone.

Friday we did washing again, and then we changed our flight home. We have had to move it forward to 20th October, so we arrive back on 21st. That’s 2 weeks early which we both think isn't bad out of 6 months. We then hit the beach. We borrowed a boogie board from the hostel and both had a go on the huge waves here in Surfers. The waves were so strong and by far the biggest I have ever encountered. I ventured a little further out a couple of times to try and catch the big waves just as they were breaking but I just kept getting dragged under, you can see why there are so many lifeguards on the beaches over here.

Famous gateway to the brach at Surfers:

Skyscrapers line the beach:

Stereotypical lifeguard:

After an exhausting day on the beach in 30 degree heat we collapsed in front on the TV in the evening and watched "Back to the Future".

Noosa

2005-10-06T14:42:00.000-01:00

After only a few hours sleep on the bus we were keen to have a couple of hours kip when we got to the hostel. We weren't allowed to check in till 12.30pm so we dumped our bags and went for a short stroll along Noosa's main street. When we did check in we realised we didn't have any clean clothes, so we had to do some washing, it was the last thing we wanted to do! Washing done and after a couple of hours sleep we went out and got a take-away for dinner as we didn't fancy the long walk up the hill to the main supermarket.

Noosa is very posh and is popular for weekend getaways. We didn't realise but it was bank holiday weekend so Noosa was extra busy and the hostel was fully booked, mostly with families. This meant that on Sunday morning there were kids running up and down the wooden floor hallways much to our delight! We decided we'd have to get some food at some point so we walked to the supermarket. I thought I knew the way but after 20 minutes and no sign of the supermarket I decided I'd check the map. We had been walking in the totally wrong direction! We walked back to the hostel and it was so hot so we jumped on a bus up over the hill to the shops, we walked back and our shopping trip had taken nearly 2 hours! We spent the afternoon not doing much at the hostel and the evening was spent chatting to a guy originally from Somerset but now lives near Sydney, a Japanese guy who is studying English over here in Brisbane and a guy from Belgium. It was a multi cultural evening!

Monday we walked round to the Noosa National Park and then did the coastal walk, it was a really good walk but setting off at midday was a mistake as it was soon 33 degrees C. We saw some whales out on the horizon which was good to see.

Tuesday I borrowed a boogie board from the hostel and we hit the beach. A boogie board is similar to a surf board but much smaller, so u lay on it rather then standing on it. It was great fun catching the waves and come racing in towards the beach.

Noosa is very popular with surfers and is a great beach. We both think that everywhere we stop along the coast is going to be beach/surf towns which are nice but it gets very repetitive. Its also very commercialised on this coast and we both enjoyed our time over on the West coast more then over here on the East. We have come to the conclusion that we will be coming home slightly earlier then first planned. We have almost run out of money and we are both a bit fed up with the daily routine of the hostels etc. This isn't to say that we haven't enjoyed ourselves lately.

Happy Birthday!

2005-10-04T02:40:00.000-01:00

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Mum,
Happy Birthday to you!!!!!!

Rockhampton

2005-10-02T17:14:00.000-01:00

The following day we were on the move again, down to Rockhampton. We got chatting to a couple from Ireland and when we had a really good evening sharing stories of our travels. We stayed in a cabin that was originally built for the Sydney 2000 Olympics, it housed either Athletes or Media people.

The greyhounds are now starting to run at really awkward times now we are so far from Cairns. Lisa and Mark decided to get the 5.15am bus the next morning down to Bundaberg, but we could face another bus quite yet so we decided we'd get the 12.55am bus on Friday morning down to Noosa. The bus journey was just over nine hours and wasn't pleasant. We could have stopped at Bundaberg but the only think to do there is the tour of the rum distillery and we could have stopped at Hervey Bay but we didn't want to go over to Fraser Island so there wasn't much point. Bit of a short and not very exciting post but to be honest that sums up Rockhampton pretty well!!!!!

Mackay

2005-10-02T16:56:00.000-01:00

Tuesday we travelled down to Mackay, the sugar cane capital of Australia. Since Cairns the sugar cane fields have been endless. The hostel at Mackay was just like someones house with and extra couple of rooms built in the garden, definitely one of the worse ones we've stayed in.

We booked a rainforest and platypus tour for Wednesday. We drove inland from Mackay up to Eungella National Park where we walked up through the rainforest to Arunella falls. Some of the group went for a swim to cool of but some of us only dipped our feet in as it was freezing!

Lace Monitor (huge lizard about 1m long)

After walking back down to the bus we carried on further inland up to the top of the Eungella range, which is a part of the Great Dividing Range, the mountain range which stretches almost the entire length of the East coast. We stopped at the Sky Window, where we walked up to the lookout for a spectacular view back across towards Mackay and the coast.

On the way up to the lookout we disturbed a snake, it was a 'Brown', the fourth most dangerous snake in the world, it was more scared of us though and made a very quick exit. Next we continued on to Broken River to spot the elusive Platypus. Within minutes of arriving we were scrabling through bushes to get to the edge of the river bank. It wasn't long before one made an appearance, coming to the surface to breathe before diving back under the water to feed.

It is a Platypus honest!

At one point it got really close to where we were and it was then that we realised that they are not as big as we had both thought, they only grow up to about 30cm (12in) long. It was a really good day out.

Airlie Beach & Whitsunday's

2005-09-26T19:30:00.000-01:00

Saturday we got the Greyhound down to Airlie Beach. This one didn't breakdown!!! We booked a day trip out to the Whitsunday Islands for Monday. Saturday was also the AFL (Aussie Rules Football) Grand Final, Between Sydney Swans and the West Coast Eagles. It was held at the MCG in Melbourne where we watched Richmond defeat the Swans back in July. The crowd attendance was 91,800! The Swan's were victorious after a very close last quarter it was their first premiership title in 72 years.

Sunday we were woken by banging on the door, the company that we had booked to go out to the Whitsunday's with on Monday had come to pick us up today! We didn't do much else on Sunday, apart from laze around. We then found out that the boat we were going on had broken down and would not be going out on Monday. Panic stations, we needed to book another trip for the following day as we had booked the Greyhound for Tuesday! We decided we'd like to go out on a sailing boat rather then a motor boat and managed to get booked on Maxi Ragamuffin, an 80ft racing yacht which in its prime in the mid 80's won many races. Unfortunately this meant we'd miss out on going to Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island (meant to be the most beautiful beach in Australia).

We were up early (6.45am!) on Monday to get ready to go sailing. We were both really looking forward to it as it would be our first time out on a yacht. We were not let down, the yacht and sailing were fantastic, and the snorkelling we did at Blue Pearl Bay was even better. It took us two hours to sail out to Hayman Island and Blue Pearl Bay, but it was much more enjoyable on a yacht rather then on a motor boat.

Blue Pearl Bay

From the beach at Blue Pearl Bay

Ragamuffin anchored off Blue Pearl Bay

Whilst snorkelling we saw loads of different tropical fish once again. There was definitely more fish there then at any other place we've been. We saw a Giant Maori Wrasse, a Giant Clam (it was huge, about 2ft across) and the amazingly coloured Parrot Fish.

After lunch on board we sailed back to Airlie Beach through the Islands, the wind picked up and at one point the yacht was leaning over so far you could dangle your feet in the water!

We did come across some rain on the way back but we managed to sail away and miss the worst of it.

Typical beach out in the Whitsunday's

It was an absolutely fantastic day and one of the best things we've done, life is so difficult at the moment!!!!!!!.

Townsville & Magnetic Island

2005-09-25T15:09:00.000-01:00

We didn't think that the breaking down of the Greyhounds would be a regular occurance! However on Wednesday when we got back on the coach after stopping at Cardwell on the way from Mission Beach to Townsville it wouldn't start. The driver got the jump leads out and tried jump starting it from another coach, that didn't work. So the driver turned round and said "I need eight strong lads", we knew what was coming next! So everyone got of and eight of us started pushing this huge coach, we eventually got it to move and when we had some momentum the driver let the clutch out and away it went, much to the happiness to everyone standing at the side of the road. I really hope the next Greyhound doesn't need pushing! We arrived in Townsville late afternoon and got a lift to the hostel. Went and done some food shopping and had a look round town. There really isn't that much to do here and most people just use it as a stop off point before heading across to Magnetic Island.

So Thursday that is what we did, headed over to Magnetic Island. the island is only 12km (7.5 miles) long with half a dozen little bays. It is very dry and not the rainforest environment you'd expect here in the tropics. We hired a mini moke for the day as we thought the $65 was very reasonable.

It was great fun driving round going from one bay to the next.

After lunch Char took over the driving and we were going to walk up to the WWII forts, but at the start of the track was a sign saying you should wear enclosed footwear as the Death Adder is very common on the island, as we only had flip flops on we decided to go and play frisbee at Geoffrey Bay instead.

It was a really good day and well worth the $19 ferry trip.

Friday we done washing yet again, although there were far less clothes now the weather is a lot warmer. In the afternoon we went and got our underwater pictures developed from when we went out on the Reef. They are ok and give a good idea of what it was like but they are a little dark. Then we went to the cinema to watch the Wallace and Grommit film. In the evening there was a free BBQ at the hostel so we took full advantage of that. We spent the evening chatting to a couple from Holland who are here on a 5 week holiday and a guy from Sheffield who is planning to stay here for two years and was heading North in a couple of days to go banana picking.

Mission Beach

2005-09-21T17:10:00.000-01:00

Monday we got the bus back to the Greyhound station in Cairns. The Greyhound had burst a hydraulic pipe so was an hour and a half late in arriving. When we eventually got going we headed South through the sugar cane and banana plantations towards our next stop, Mission Beach. The two hour journey passed quickly and we were met at the bus stop by the hostel bus. It seems as if travelling on the East coast is very easy compared to the West. We drove along the beach, which had both jelly fish and crocodile warning signs (maybe that’s why its "Mission" beach), then we headed up in to the rainforest where the appropriately named Tree House hostel is located. The hostel really is in the middle of nowhere, its very peaceful but we couldn't stay here too long, I think the two nights we booked in enough.

Today (Tuesday) the weather has changed, it was much cooler this morning, still 27 ish though, just right in shorts and T-shirt. Plus it was overcast, and sitting on the veranda this afternoon the heavens opened and in true rainforest style it rained.

It was very peaceful looking out in to the forest watching the tiny yellow humming birds, but tomorrow we have to continue South.

Port Douglas & The Great Barrier Reef

2005-09-21T16:02:00.000-01:00

We checked out of the YHA in Cairns with smiles on our faces, it is definitely one of the worst ones we have stayed in. We were picked up by the Port Douglas hostel bus as arranged. The hours drive North along the coast was very scenic, with rainforest on one side of the road and long beaches with pristine white sand on the other.

View from Rex Lookout on the way to Port Douglas:

Once we got to Port Douglas we drove along the marina (where 44 known crocodiles inhabit) and then along the main street before getting to the hostel. Port Douglas is a very affluent small town, this was shown by the posh shops and the price of staying at the Sheraton Hotel, $500 per night!!! The Port 'o' Call hostel was really nice and we were much happier then we were at Cairns.

Sunday morning at 9am we were on our way out to the Great Barrier Reef. It took us an hour and a half to get out to the outer reef and once there we got our snorkeling gear on and dived in. They even had prescription masks which were absolutely fantastic as we could see just like we had our glasses on. The water temperature was 25 degrees C which was comfortable. As soon as we jumped in and swam up to the part of the reef we were on we were amazed. The coral was magnificent and looked very prehistoric, and the variety of fish was astounding. It was just like being in a gigantic tropical fish tank. We spent about half an hour in the water before heading to another reef.

The tide was starting to get on the low side and some of the coral was petruding from the surface at the second reef, we had another half hour in the water before we had lunch. After lunch we headed across to our last site. When we got there most of the reef was out of the water so we could only swim up to the edge of it, but it meant there were lots on small channels to swim through with the coral on either side like the walls of a valley.

This was my favorite site as there was more to explore and not knowing what was round the corner added to the excitement! Char's favourite was the first sight as there was more fish to look at. I brought an underwater disposable camera which we used up very quickly, we'll get it developed when we get a chance, not sure what the pictures will be like! One of the girls who ran the boat was scuba diving while we were in the water and she was taking pictures of us, so even if ours don't turn out alright we've always got the ones she took. Sadly we didn't see any turtles or reef sharks, but others did. It was an absolutely fantastic day and if the opportunity arises then its something that everybody should come and do. We'd both come back to do it again without any hesitation.

Cairns

2005-09-16T04:53:00.000-01:00

We arrived in Cairns late on Monday evening and the most notable change is the weather, it is really hot up here and getting very humid too, its just over 30 degrees in the day and doesn't drop much at night. It makes a nice change though, we were looking forward to some hot weather. We had booked in the YHA for 2 nights, but we thought later that if we wanted to go out to the Great Barrier Reef then we would need some more days, so Tuesday morning we added 3 extra nights. Next we phoned up the YHA at Port Douglas (1hr30 drive North of Cairns) to book a couple of nights up there, the only reason that we decided we'd head up there before we head South is that the hostel picks us up and drops us back to Cairns free of charge. Then we went and booked our bus tickets down to Sydney, they were $261 each which we thought was very cheap, they last for 6 months and you can get off and on where ever you like, the only hitch is that you can't double back on yourself. We also asked the people who booked our bus tickets about trips out to the Reef, there are so many different companies that do trips its really baffeling! We were advised that we should do a reef trip from Port Douglas rather then from here in Cairns, as Port Douglas is closer to the outer Reef and therefore smaller boats go out. Some of the boats that go from here take up to 500 people, we thought that is a crazy amount so we booked a slightly more expensive trip from Port Douglas on a boat that takes 53 people max. So we have got a full day out on the Great Barrier Reef on Sunday, and we both are really looking forward to it. In heinsight we didn't need to book the extra nights here in Cairns, but we have had a few days relaxing on the Esplanade on the lawns and in the pool as there is no beach at Cairns, its just mud flats! Thursday we took a trip up the mountains to Kuranda, which is known for its markets, the markets were awful and just full of junk, so we visited the butterfly sanctury instead which was really good.

Then we got the scenic mountain train back to Cairns.

Barron Falls

We have decided on the places that we want to stop at on the way down to Sydney and roughly how long we want to spend at each place. Its something that is bound to change as we don't know what each place is like and we might not like somewhere or really like somewhere else, at least it gives us a rough idea though.

Back in Oz (Brisbane)

2005-09-11T11:36:00.000-01:00

Our flight was very bumpy with turbulence over the Southern Alps but the sunrise was absolutely fantastic. We stayed in a motel close to Brisbane airport on Sunday, the weather was warm and very comfortable, it was great to be able to walk down the street in short sleeves again. We didn't do much on Sunday because were really tired as we were up at 3am to get to Christchurch airport.

We were up early again on Monday to get back to the airport in time to meet Char's Mum and Dad. Their flight was delayed a little but eventually they came through from customs. Airport arrival halls are such happy places, everyone is waiting in anticipation for family, friends or loved ones. Char didn't let us down and shed a tear of happiness. We picked up their hire car and after a long detour south of Brisbane (we missed the turning of the motorway!) we eventually found the hotel that they had very kindly booked us in to for the week. The hotel was in a great location and was of a good standard, it felt very luxurious after 9 weeks in the camper! We took the short walk down to the city centre where we had some breakfast and Char and I booked our flight up to Cairns for the following Monday. We didn't do much else apart from catch up on the news back home and talk about our travels etc. Plus John and April were a little tired!!! Went out for dinner in the evening which again felt very luxurious. Brisbane is a lot bigger then what we were both expecting and already its clear to see that the East coast is going to be very different from the West coast.

Tuesday we headed out to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which is the largest in the World. It was quite interesting seeing koalas up close and while they were awake, even though we had seen them in the wild along the Great Ocean Road. April had here picture taken whilst holding one.

There were other animals at the sanctuary including kangaroos, wallabies and sheep!

It was out on the town again for dinner which was really good.

Wednesday we drove out to Mt Coot-tha where we got great views over the Brisbane region.

We took a walk up to J C Slaughter falls but disappointingly there was no water! We wandered around the botanical gardens before heading back to the hotel. The afternoon was spent wandering around the shops in Brisbane then in the evening we headed for out for dinner.

Thursday we got up early to take the trip up to Beerwah to Australia Zoo which is owned and managed by Steve Irwin the "Crocodile Hunter"! It was a really good zoo, probably the best that either of us have ever been to, there is a real emphasis on the animals well-being and not just them being on show for people to look at through cages. We spent five hours at the zoo which shows just how big it is.

Char & John with a Wombat

Harriette the giant tortoise, who is 175 years old, and was taken back to England for research by Charles Darwin!!!!!

On the way back down to Brisbane we took a detour up to the Glass House Mountains, they are really strange mountains as the surrounding land is so flat.

Friday was an even earlier start as we planned to catch the 8.30am ferry across to Morton Island. Things didn't quite go to plan though. The directions we were given to get to the ferry were awful, so that plus the traffic meant we eventually found the ferry terminal at 8.45! Luckily though there was another ferry at 12.45 so we decided we go and have a coffee at Manly then catch that ferry before getting the 19.45 ferry back across. There are no proper roads on Morton Island so the only vehicles allowed across are 4WD's. So we left the car at the ferry terminal and took the ferry across. As we approached Tangalooma, the only resort on the island, it was clear to see why they call the island "Brisbane's best kept secret", it was beautiful white sand, bright blue sea, and the ship wrecks just off the beach gave it a certain charm.

The ferry dropped everyone off on the beach near the ship wrecks, the resort and only shop didn't look that far down the beach, so we started walking along the beach, the distance was deceptive, and the soft sand meant it took a lot longer then we expected, we brought some water then took the long trek back along the beach to the ship wrecks to do some snorkeling. The tide was going out fast which was creating a very strong side current, it was impossible to swim out without any flippers so I gave up. The water was still quite cold as we are only just in to spring. The sun started to decend from the sky and eventually set at 5.45 behind the wrecks, it was at this point we realised that we would have a long wait sitting on the beach in the darkness for the ferry.

You really do need a vehicle on Morton Island! So we sat it out and froze as I only had shorts and a T-shirt on.

John was so cold he tried everything to keep warm, including using his shorts as a jumper!

When we eventually got back to the hotel we had been out for fourteen and a half hours, it had been a very long day!

We had a lay in on Saturday after our ordeal on Morton Island! Then we went and had lunch in the mall and April brought some souvenirs. The evening was spent cruising along the Brisbane River on the Kookaburra Queen paddle steamer. It was a great evening and we wined and dined in style.

We walked down to the botanical gardens when we got off the boat and fed the possums.

Sunday was our last full day in Brisbane with Char's parents. We spent the afternoon strolling round the markets before taking on the task of packing, it was really easy actually as we have given so much of our stuff to Char's mum & dad to take home. We went across to the Southbank for dinner which was the best of the excellent meals we've had all week.

Thank you April & John / Mum & Dad for a great week. Char managed a few more tears again this morning, when her parents drove off heading for Sydney. So its back on the road as we fly up to Cairns this evening, once we get there it will feel like the home straight with just under 8 weeks left, I am sure they are going to fly past which won't be so good, the weeks just seem to be racing past too quickly.

Christchurch

2005-09-03T14:13:00.000-01:00

Wednesday we went to the International Antarctic Centre here in Christchurch. 80% of the people who go to the Antarctic do so from Christchurch, which is why it is called the Gateway to the Antarctic. The only planes which fly to the Antarctic are cargo planes, the Hercules takes 8 hours while the American C5 does it in 5 hours and carries far more then a Hecules. The Centre is home to the New Zealand, American and Italian Antarctic programmes. The visitors centre gives a complete history of the exploration of the Antarctic, it is a fantastic place to visit. We got the chance to experience a storm in the Antarctic in the snow and ice experience, where the temperature got down to -40 degrees C, not that cold compared to the coldest temperature recorded of -89.2 degrees C which is the coldest on Earth and if you were out in that temperature in everyday clothes then you wouldn't survive for more the a minute.

Charlotte on the solid ice slide:

Us not looking our best in -40 degree C winds, it was so cold!

We also had a ride in a Hagglund all terrain vehicle, which was a great laugh. The Hagglund can go up 45 degree inclines and can cope with 30 degree side inclines, its capabilities were shown and it was an extremely rough ride, well worth it though. The Hagglund in the main vehicle used in the Antarctic to travel any considerable distances.

Thursday we got the bus in to the centre of the city and walked down to the Arts Centre which is housed in the old University buildings. The University was built using plans from Oxford and Cambridge Universities back home. The buildings are magnificent.

Christchurch Catherdral:

We went to the Fudge Cottage where we got the chance to watch 30kg (66lb) of chocolate fudge being made.

We tasted the chocolate fudge just after it was poured on to the cooling table! We tasted half a dozen other flavours too. It was the best I'd ever tasted. From the Arts centre we walked across to the Botanical Gardens, which is why Christchurch is know as the Garden City. It was another glorious day and it was so peaceful and relaxing wandering around the huge gardens looking at flowers like these:

I'd definatly like to see the gardens in the height of summer, yet another reason to come back! I decided I'd best get my haircut again as we'd be meeting up with Char's mum and dad in a few days and it was looking a mess, i'll leave it till I get home now though, so 2 haircuts in 6 months isn't bad.

Friday we went back to New Brighton to see if we could have one last go at catching some fish, the fishing didn't go well but we managed to catch a few decent sized crabs! We kept the largest ones and when we got back to the campsite I had to make an emergency phone call home to ask mum how to cook them! I bet it was the last thing Mum thought she'd have to rack her brains about at 7am on a Friday morning! Thanks though mum, they cooked well and Char loved them.

The two smaller crabs, the other 2 big ones wouldn't even fit on the plate.

So tonight is our last night in the campervan, it has grown on us both but we will be glad of a real bed which we don't have to set up every night! We drop it back tomorrow then we have got a cabin on the campsite for the night before we fly to Brisbane at 6am on Sunday morning. Might not go to bed at all Saturday night if I can find somewhere to watch the England v Wales match!

Our time in New Zealand has been fantasic especially here on the South Island. We've asked each othet what was our favourite day/place, Char's is Kaikoura when we were out whale watching, and mine is a toss up between when we flew to the top of Fox glacier or out at Mt Sunday (a.k.a. Edoras). If I had to make a decision then it would have to be Mt Sunday as Fox was spoilt a bit by the fact there was a helicoptors flying up and down every 10 minutes.

Mileage update, since leaving home we have done 20,742 miles (33,381km).

A big thanks to Milky for answering all our questions before we came out here, thanks to the Tanners for the few days we spent at Cedar Lodge, we were in desperate need to dry out, and thanks to Trish, a.k.a Milky's Mum, for a weeks rest in Wellington.

We will be back!

Edoras, Lord of the Rings

2005-08-31T14:19:00.000-01:00

Thursday morning was cloudy but not raining so I decided to take advantage of the free round of golf that we got when staying at the campsite in Timaru. Charlotte agreed to be my caddy and she did a fine job of pulling the trolly around for three and a half hours without a single complaint. The golf didn't start too well but did improve on the back nine holes. I went round in 108 shots, it was a par 70 course, I was happy with my score considering I hadn't hit a ball in over 5 months. In the afternoon we drove up to Methven in the pouring rain and thick fog. We went to the visitors centre to confirm exactly where Mt Sunday is, which is where they filmed the Edoras scenes in Lord of the Rings. Bloo visited when he was over here and I distinctly remember one of his photos making me go "wow". This is the reason we had to go to Mt Sunday and see tehe awesome scenery ourselves. We went to bed with clear skies so we were hopeful for blue sky the following morning.

Our prayers were answered and Friday was a glorious day, not a cloud in the sky. We backtracked towards Mt Somers then turned off towards Mt Sunday. After a long and very bumpy drive we reached the decent to the basin on which Mt Sunday is situated, and our breths were taken away, it was an astonishing sight, Mt Sunday sitting on a huge flat expanse of land surrounded almost entirly by huge snow capped mountains. It was easily recognisable from the films and was a place we both could have spent longer then the 3 hours we did spend there. It was made even more special by the fact that there wasn't another person there, it felt like we were the only people on earth! You really have to be there to get a true scale of the place, its astounding.

Sadly we had to leave as we wanted to get up to Akaroa before the day was out. We did manage to get up to Akaroa just before dusk but it was a really long and twisty drive out on the Bank's Peninsula.

Akaroa:

Akaroa is a French colony and is a popular day trip from Christchurch. Saturday we had a chillout day relaxing with views like this:

We did go down to the town for a look around and there was a football match just about to start. One of the strikers started the game wearing a wooly hat!!!! Then after about 10 minutes he took it off and all was revealed, he had bright green hair, who an blame him for wanting to wear the hat! The football was really bad so didn't even manage to watch it till halftime.

Sunday I had a go at fishing off the wharf in Akaroa harbour, I managed to catch a shark! It wasn't that big approx 8 inches long. Char had gone back to the van and she had the camera so didn't manage to get a picture of it. At least I have managed to catch a fish on the rod i brought, wasn't expecting it to be a shark though! We drove back along the twisty steep roads towards Christchurch via Lyttleton. We had completed a full circle of the South Island by arriving back in Christchurch.

Not surprisingly Char had caught the cold I had several days earlier so on Monday we had a lie in and had a walk around the shopping centre near the campsite.

Tuesday we drove out to New Brighton where I tried some fishing off the pier. Not long after casting out I hooked in to a big Kawahi which had my 6ft spinning rod bent double, at one point I was sre it was going to snap! It didn't though and when the fish tired the problems began, how could we get it up to the pier from the water 7m below? I went to pull the line up with my hands, as the fish left the surface of the water the line snapped, it was so disappointing as it is meant to taste really good and would have kept Char fed till we go back to Oz. There were other people fishing and they kept reeling in sharks like I caught in Akaroa, we later learnt that they were dog sharks and actually taste quite good. On Tuesday evening we discussed whether or not to head back across to Mt Cook for a day before we leave as the weather forecast is really good this week, but we have decided against it as its a long drive and the weather isn't guarenteed. We will definatley have to come back to see Cook.

Dunedin, Mt Cook, Timaru

2005-08-24T13:49:00.000-01:00

The Friday we managed to book our tours for Speights brewery and Cadburys World. We got the bus into the centre of Dunedin and walked up to the brewery. On the tour was us and two others who were friends with the tour guide, so we got a very personal tour. The brewery was established in the late 1800's and Speights Gold Medal ale is the most popular beer in New Zealand today. The brewery is a batch brewery rather than a continuous cycle brewery and so there was not much going on as they just finished brewing the night before. The brewing room was a mass of gleaming copper, it was a fantastic sight.

It wasn't nearly as high tech as the Coors brewery I visited in Denver when myself and Ben went to visit Bloo but the beer is much more interesting. After the tour we went to the inhouse bar to do some tastings, as it was such a small group we were allowed to serve ourselves!

My favourite had to be the limited edition Chocolate ale and Char said that if she had to pick one it would be the Pale ale as it did not taste a lot like beer. We said we would return to the pub next door to sample the Apricot beer at some point as we had to get to Cadburys for the tour of the factory.

The tour of Cadburys was very good too but you had to wear silly hair nets and as I had not shaved for a few days I had to wear a really silly beard net too, thank god you were not allowed to take pictures in the factory so there is no evidence of how ridiculous I looked!!! I was a bit disappointed at the amount of free chocolate we were given to, I seemed to of remembered that when my grandad took me on a tour of the Mars factory in Slough that we were given more chocolate than we could eat, maybe I am just bigger and eat more chocolate now!

In the evening we went and watched the Wedding Crashers at the cinema, it was funny but not as funny as we had expected, it only cost us $9 each (approx 3 pounds) though. Dunedin is a very picturesque city with a lot of grand buildings. Dunedin is actually the Celtic word for Edinburgh and the Scottish history is very evident.

Dunedin Train Station:

Saturday we done the very slow and twisty drive out to the Otago Peninsula to see if we could spot any Albatross, we got to the end and found out we had to pay to go in the Albatross Centre so we walked out to the cliff face ourselves and managed to spot a few flying they are such massive birds they are easy to spot. We drove back to the city and found Baldwin Street, which is officially the worlds steepest street with an average gradient of 1 in 3.41 and the steepest part is 1 in 2.86.

It took us a while to walk up to the top as it took us a while because we kept stopping to talk to people as the street was a hive of activity. The annual Undy 500 was on, were students by a vehicle in Christchurch for no more than $500 then give it a new paint job/theme and drive it down to Dunedin stopping at as many pubs as they can on the way. One of their tasks is to get their vehicle up Baldwin Street, it was fun watching a bus full of students go racing up the hill leaving a trial of thick black smoke only to get half way up and they all pile out to push it up to the top. The most amusing one was a guy being towed up on a child's plastic scooter, the driver had to go slow so the guy on the scooter could keep his balance, this meant they did not get to the top, so we turned around and came racing back down using his feet as brakes!

We drove up to Oamaru arriving early evening, just in time to go penguin spotting. On the way we stopped at the Moreaki Boulders which are huge spheres of rock eroded by the sea. We visited at the wrong time, high tide, so we didn't get to see many of them and didn't find them that interesting, may have been a different story if the tide was out. We were lucky to see the yellow eyed penguin so close at Curio Bay as in Oamaru you can only look at them from high above on a beach below the cliffs. We did go to the Little Blue Penguin Centre which is a man-made nesting sight, it was set up because the penguins were nesting in the harbour where it was not safe for them. Just after dark we heard a noise like a duck as the first few penguins came ashore, they then preen themselves to make their feathers waterproof then waddle up to their nest boxes which are buried in big mounds of earth with little tiny holes in the side so they can get in and out. They usually mate for life and once they have got near their respective boxes they started making a noise like a peacock. They stand at about 30cm (10inch) tall and their feathers are really dark blue, hence the name!!! It was really interesting and we learnt that a group of penguins is called a raft. Sadly we had left Dunedin without going back to Speights.

Saturday we headed inland to Oamarama to head towards Mt Cook, the last of the big things on our list of things to see. The drive wasn't as long as expected so once there we headed up towards Twizel we done some fishing. It was non productive yet again.

Monday we decided to head south back towards Wanaka to fish on the Clutha River were I caught trout before. We have got a few spare days so the back tracking wasn't a problem. Again it was non productive, I think that the rod I brought is curse! It was a nice drive across Lindis Pass, it is without doubt the most sparse of the three passes across the island, it was like something out of Star Wars.

Lindis Pass:

We drove back to Oamarama for the night and the weather was pleasant with minimal cloud, perfect for great views of Mt Cook.

Tuesday we awoke to grey skies and both our hearts sank! We drove up to Mt Cook and the weather got worse as we went, by the time we got to Mt Cook village the rain was hammering down. We went in the visitors centre and were told that the weather was not meant to clear for at least the next 2 days, we contemplated sticking around till it cleared but with only walks to do around the village we decided to carry on and not see Mt Cook.

What the view should look like!

Hooker Glacier:

We have both said that we will have to come back to see it as it was something we were both really looking forward to. We continued on heading East again stopping at Lake Tekapo to see the Church of the Good Shepherd which was built in 1935 and is tiny, the setting couldn't be any better though with the mountain lined Lake Tekapo a stones throw away.

We stopped in Fairlie for the night as we had to do laundry yet again! We said that we'd play a game of golf on Wednesday morning as the course at Fairlie was in immaculate condition and the weather was very fine and mild.

Wednesday we woke to grey skies and rain yet again, so the golf was cancelled. We can't really complain too much though as we have had mostly great weather on the South Island. We drove the short distance to Timaru and done our last shopping trip now that we are down to single figures in days left. Going to look at golf courses again this afternoon so hopefully have a round tomorrow morning before heading North up to Methven.

Te Anau To Dunedin

2005-08-19T15:50:00.000-01:00

After waiting in Te Anau for two days for the road up to Milford to open we decided enough was enough on Monday and we would carry on without seeing Milford Sound. It was a major disappoinment but we couldn't wait for ever.

Whilst in Te Anau I attempted to do some more fishing but lost both the lures that I brought, within 10 minutes of each other!!!! So Monday we drove along the Southern Scenic Route to Invercargill stopping at Monkey Island on the way.

Tuesday we had a domestic day and done our laundry and shopping, then we went and looked at Bluff, the Lands End of New Zealand, not the most Southerly point though, as with Lands End back in Blighty.

We stayed in Invercargill again on Tuesday night.

Wednesday morning we made an effort and got up reasonably early to drive up to Gore to do some more trout/salmon fishing. When we got to Gore after a 45 minute drive we found out that none of the rivers were open for fishing till 1st November, major disappointment. So we drove back down South to the coast to continue with the Southern Scenic Route through the Catlins to Dunedin, on the way we came across this (not for the first time):

First stop along the coast was Frasers beach to do some sea fishing, this didn't go to plan as it was blowing a gale and the waves crashing on to the beach were huge, got in a major tangle and gave up. Next stop was Slope Point which is the most Southerly point of the South Island. To get to Slope Point we walked across a couple of field in what can only be described as hurricane force winds, its was difficult to walk in a straight line and almost impossible to stand still, and cold is putting it mildly, the wind was blowing straight up from the Antarctic.

Next stop was Curio Bay to look at the worlds most extensive Jurassic fossiled forest, from the lookout we spotted a penguin on the rocks below so rushed down to get a closer look, we saw 3 Yellow Eyed Penguins, the second rarest penguins in the world. It was fantastic seeing them in their natural environment and not swimming on the otherside of a piece of glass at Birdworld!!!!

When we eventually climbed back up to the lookout we saw the fossilised tree trucks laying where we had just been walking, it was strange as you could not see them when you are standing right next to them.

Back on the road we came across this:

Brings a new meaning to the phrase "moving house", they had literally picked up the whole house and placed it on the back of a lorry, the width was right across both lanes of the road and when they came to speed signposts on both sides of the road they got a chainsaw out and just cut one of them down, then once the house was past they nailed the post back to the stump they had left, it was true comedy. We stopped at a basic but cheap campsite in Papatowai for the night. We read in the paper that the Milford road opened at 4pm on Monday, hindsight eh!!!

Thursday morning we drove up to Purakaukui Falls which were nice but nothing compared to Whangarei Falls which we visited on our second day of being in New Zealand.

Next stop further up the coast was Nugget Point where we walked out to the lighthouse to see if we could spot any sea lions. We saw some more seals but no sea lions.

In the afternoon we continued North passing the mouth of the Clutha River which is the river that I caught the trout from back in Wanaka and we got to Dunedin early evening, just in time to book our tours of Cadbury World and the Speights Brewery for Friday.

And we thought our camper was cramped!

2005-08-14T07:58:00.000-01:00

Last week Southland Police stopped 3 campers on the road from Te Anau to Milford Sound for being over loaded. In the 3 campers were 36 Korean tourists!

At least they actually got to Milford though, there has been major avelanches on the road and it has been closed for the past 3 days, 80m of the road is under 4m of snow at the moment! If its not open tomorrow morning then we are going to give up and carry on without seeing Milford, it will be a major disappointment, but we can't wait forever.

Happy Birthday!

2005-08-13T07:55:00.000-01:00

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Dad (Char's Dad)
Happy Birthday to you!

Wanaka to Queenstown

2005-08-12T04:14:00.000-01:00

Tuesday we drove South from Franz with the idea of getting to Wanaka, it was a very long drive, it took nearly 5 hours as we kept stopping to look at the stunning views. I think it was one of the most scenic drives we've done so far, better then Arthur's and Lewis Pass. The best part was once we got over Haast Pass and came to Lake Wanaka with mountains rising high above on both sides, truly spectacular.

We got to Wanaka in the dark so didn't do anything Tuesday evening, apart from washing. Wednesday we awoke to sunshine and great views over Aspiring National Park. We done some shopping and wandered round the town, we both instantly liked Wanaka, it wasn't too small but it wasn't really busy, and the scenery across the lake and the mountains on the horizon can be seen from anywhere in town. I fancied doing some trout and salmon fishing but to go out on the lake on a boat was very expensive so we hired a spinning rod and got a license ourselves and went exploring that afternoon and the following morning, we were successful, I managed to hook 4 fish but only landed 1 of them, an adequate brown trout, about 12 inches long, which Char had for dinner that night. It had to be the most scenic place that I have ever fished. After our success I thought I'd buy a telescopic rod set so we could do some more fishing on our travels, only time will tell if we manage to keep up our success.

Thursday afternoon we carried on South to Queenstown, stopping for the obligitory photo at Cromwell, fruit capital of NZ.

Before getting to Queenstown we stopped at the bungy jump on the Kawarau Suspension Bridge and watched half a dozen people do the 43m (141ft) jump to the river below. It made our stomachs churn just watching others do it.

When we got to Queenstown we were surprised at just how busy it was, and by the amount of hotels! There must be a hotel once every three doors. Its really busy as its the height of the ski season and two of the best ski areas are very close to Queenstown. We paid an extorshinate amount to stay at a camp site for 2 nights. First impressions we both are not too keen on it here. Its too busy and everywhere you look its all about extreme sports, not for us!

Friday we walked down to the ton and I decided I wanted to have a go at the luge which is at the top of the gondola ride. Char didn't fancy it so I went up on my own. Once at the top of the gondola you have to continue up to the top of the luge on a chair lift, then you put on a stupid helmet and race down the track, unfortunately the advance run was closed as it was too icy. It was really good fun, but very cold and wet.

View of Queenstown from top of Gondola:

Part of Luge Track:

Me in stupid helmet!

In the afternoon Char fancied Ice skating so I sat this one out and watched as she took to the ice like ducks to water. After an hour she was flying round without grabbing hold of the side.

We heard today that the road from Te Anau to Milford Sound was closed yesterday because of extreme weather, hopefully it will clear tomorrow as that's next on our list and it will be a major disappointment if we don't get to see Milford Sound.

Laura

2005-08-08T07:21:00.000-01:00

Laura I was planning on calling you to wish you well for your big day, however Steve lost all his data on his PDA, which included your phone number. So hope all goes well and you have a fantastic day. All the best Char and Steve.

Glaciers

2005-08-08T00:58:00.000-01:00

After leaving Greymouth on Sunday we travelled South to Franz Josef, home to the Franz Josef Glacier (not a coincidence!). On the way we stopped at Lake Wahapo where the reflections of the mountains were fantastic.

We got to Franz early afternoon so decided to do the walk up to the Glacier face. It was really amazing walking along the dry riverbed with the Glacier face in the distance getting bigger with every step.

When we got as far as you are allowed to go without a guide the glacier rose vertically up to a huge height. There was a group climbing on it and they looked like ants! It gave a great perspective of the size.

When we got back to the township we walked round all 6 of the helicoptor scenic flight companies and eventually decided that we would do a flight the following morning (Monday) up Fox Glacier (the neighbouring glacier 30km up the road), do a snow landing at the top then fly round Mt Cook before heading back down Fox again. Lets talk about the weather for a minute, since the rainy day we had in Nelson on 28th July we have hardly seen a cloud! The days have been bright blue sky and the nights clear and cold. Great weather for helicopter flights! So we woke up early Monday to drive down to Fox and guess what? The cloud was rolling in, typical! When we got to Fox we found out that it wouldn't be possible to fly round Mt Cook but the cloud was still high enough for the snow landing at the top of the Glacier at 1800m (6000ft). If I were to say I wasn't disappointed I would be lying, however it saved us money doing the shorter flight and half an hour later I wasn't disappointed in the slightest. Char was a little nervous about flying but she took a great attitude when we got off the ground and got out of the helicopter with a massive grin on her face. Both the Franz and Fox glaciers are 2 of only 4 in the world that decend so close to the sea.
The flight was awsome and was something that I had wanted to do as soon as we said we were going to come to New Zealand, we flew up the glacier looking down in to the huge crevasses which some are 100m (328ft) deep. The ice has a magificent blue glow to it, this is beacause the ice has no oxygen in it as it is so compact. When snow falls in the huge catchment area at the top of the range it takes up to 5 years for it to be compacted into ice. We then landed on the catchment area or 'neve' were the snow is 100m deep, it was so beautiful looking across the untouched snow to the top of the glacier. After spending about 10 mins walking around on the snow where the temperature was 0 deg C we got back in and flew back down the glacier to a safe landing.

Fox Glacier from the air:

Crevasses:

At the top of Fox Glacier:

On the way back down:

After the helicopter flight we walked up to the face of the Fox Glacier. You can get much closer to the fox glacier then the Franz glacier and this gave us great views of the terminal face, whilst we were there we saw a massive chunck of ice collapse as the glacier moved. Both the Franz and Fox glaciers are currently moving forward at about 1m (3ft) per day, this means the glaciers are constantly changing and bits breaking off regulary.

Terminal Face of Fox:

Both the glaciers are fantastic and have to be seen to take in how big they are, they carve out the valley as the move further down and this can bee seen from when the glaciers were a lot bigger hundreds of years ago.

Overall a breathtaking experience.

Arthur's Pass

2005-08-06T08:27:00.000-01:00

Thursday we left Kaikoura and headed South along the coast to Christchurch. We took a detourto Amberley beach to stop for lunch, we got chatting to a guy and his wife who were fishing from the beach. He came from Essex and emigrated here 40 years ago, he did the journey on a boat which took 7 weeks, the 20 odd hour flight doesn't seem so bad compared! We got chatting because he recognised Fleet FC on my fleece, he used to referee back in the early 50's when he lived in England, see we are world famous! We had a quick drive round Christchurch but didn't want to see too much as we would be back in 4 weeks time to drop the camper off and fly to Brisbane.

The next day, Friday, we travelled from East to West Coast via Arthur's Pass. Arthur's Pass takes a more steep route across the country then Lewis Pass which we had done a few days earlier. Arthur's reaches a height of 924m (3031ft) above sea level. We thought were bound to get some snow along the way but we were dsappointed yet again, the North of the South Island has had a really bad winter in terms of snow for skiing. We'll have to wait till we get further South for our snowball fight! The views when driving over Arthur's were fantastic and we got really close to the snow capped peaks which never get boring, this is the reason why I preferred Arthur's to Lewis.

We stopped just pass the Arthur's township for lunch then done a walk called The Chasm. It was a beautiful walk through Alpine forest to a waterfall.

A little further up the road we stopped at the marker signalling the 924m summit where we came across a friendly Kea, which is a boring looking Alpine Parrot, until it flys, showing its bright red under wings. They are know for having a taste for rubber blades on car windscreen wipers, this one was quite happy eating our bread though.

A little further we stopped to look at one of the huge viaducts (don't know why they are called viaducts as they don't carry water, more like a bridge to me) that make the journey possible, where a Kea was making a nice meal of a rain seal on a BMW!!! We got to Greymouth and found a campsite, which is home to the fatest cat in the world, it was huge!!!!!!

We had a lie in on Saturday morning before heading North up the coast to Punakaiki to look at the famous Pancake Rocks, they are made from hundreds of thin layers of limestone. The view along the coast was fantastic.

On the way back down to Greymouth we stopped at "On yer bike!", a quad bike adventure centre. We opted to do an hours off road Go-Karting as it meant we could go round together, plus it was cheaper. We got very wet and muddy, Char more then me as I was driving so went through the deep bits of water on her side (she took it in good humour). We drove through forests, across fields covered in waist height grass and along full flowing rivers. We both had huge smiles on our faces as it was fantastic. A most enjoyable day.

Kaikoura

2005-08-03T03:33:00.000-01:00

Tuesday morning we carried on along Lewis Pass and had hoped to stop at Mt Lyford ski resort to build snow men and have a snowball fight, unfortunately we must have made a wrong turn somewhere and didn't realise until we got to the coast!!! We will find some snow somewhere else. When we got to the coast we headed North up to Kaikoura. Kaikoura is famous for its wildlife, including Whales, Dolphins, Seals and the mighty Albertros.

When we arrived the sun was shining as it had done for the past 3 days, we really have had beautiful weather. We stopped at the Information Centre and asked about the Whale watching cruises. Thre was a cruise going out 45 mins from when we arrived and as the weather was really nice we thought we would splash out the $125 each and go for it. We were so glad that we did go out as it was one of the best things we've done so far. We saw 8 sperm whales, all between 16-18 meters (52-59 ft), on average they normally see 2 whales per trip so we were really lucky, especially when we came across 3 whales side by side and then a fourth surfaced next to them, it was really special. They sit on the surface breathing for 10-15 mins then dive down to depths of 1500m (4900ft) to feed for up to 40 mins, before surfacing again. Sadly the pictures don't really do the whole experience justice.

On the way back to shore we came across a huge pod of Dusky Dolphins, the guide estimated that there would have been 1000 of them in the area. They are the most playful of all dolphins and would do several backflips and leaps all in a row, even if you looked to the horizon you could see them leaping from the water. It was unbelievable how many there were. They love swimming in the bow wave create by the boat and this gave us great views of them.

View when coming back to shore:

Char said that it was the beast day she had had since coming away, I have to agree it was spectacular. We were so glad we spent the money on doing it as we very nearly decided not to go.

Wednesday we went and looked at the seals in Kaikoura and had a walk along the clifftop with views back over the town with the backdrop of the Seaward Kaikoura Mountains.

The seals came right in to the beach and you could get within 5m of them, it was a lot better then at Westport. They even came right up to the grass beyond the beach to sleep in the hot sun.

Kaikoura is a fantastic place and is so beautiful, I think it has been a major benifit that we have had such good weather. If you ever get the chance then come here!

Westport and Lewis Pass

2005-08-03T03:07:00.000-01:00

From Motueka we headed South towards Westport via the Buller Gorge, luckily you can drive along this gorge so I couldn't fall over the edge! The views were fantastic and with hardly any other cars on the road made it even better.

We got to Westport just before dark and had a short walk along Carters Beach before finding a campsite, we checked in for 2 nights as we wanted a lie in the following morning. We had our lie in and in the afternoon went to see the seal colony at Cape Foulwind just up the road. It was fantastic sitting on the cliff top watching the seals below.

We then went and looked at Westport centre, and I must say what a dump! There was no reason to stick around so the following morning we would head East along Lewis Pass to the ski resort of Hanmer Springs.

Wow! Thats what we can say about the drive along Lewis Pass, I can't do it justice with any words and the pictures certinately don't either, you have to actually see it to take in how beautiful it actually is.

When we got to Hanmer we realised that there was a lack of snow! The ski slopes were shut and the town was very quiet. Hanmer is a really beautiful place and it was fantastic waking up to views like this.

South Island

2005-07-29T03:30:00.000-01:00

The sailing across from Wellington to Picton was very smooth, which was a relief as the Cook Straight is known for its rough journeys.

A women sitting on a table opposite us on the ferry spent the whole 3 hours of the crossing writting postcards, in total she wrote 35 of them!!!! I couldn't sit and write 35 postcards, actually come to think of it I would have 35 people to send them too!!!! After we got off the ferry we headed towards Nelson via Queen Charlotte Drive. The views across the Malborough Sounds were fantastic.

The drive was very twisty and narrow and took longer then we had anticipated so by the time we got to Nelson we found a campsite and stopped for the evening. I think the twisty roads are something that we have got to get used to for the next 5 weeks.

The heavens opened on Wednesday eveing at it was just like our first night in the camper back on the North Island, when we woke the next morning the rain was still falling so we decided to have a drive North up towards Abel Tasman National Park to see if the weather was any better up there. On the way we stopped at Rabbit Island which is a nature reserve with 13km of unspoilt beaches, the rain had eased a little so we took a stroll along the beach but unfortunatly it hadn't eased enough to take any pictures.

When we got to Motueka the rain had stopped and it was a bit early to find a campsite so we decided to carry on towards the national park and have a look at Kaiteriteri beach. The beach was really nice but it had bright yellow sand which is natural but it looks very artificial. Kaiteriteri was completely empty and we had the whole beach to ourselves, I can imagine in the summertime that it is packed with families. We heard the weather forecast on the radio and Friday was meant to be fine and warm so we made the decision to walk a small section of the Abel Tasman Coastal Track (one of the New Zealand Great Walks). The clouds started to clear just as the sun was setting over the mountains and we had a great view from the campsite.

The Track is 51km (32miles) long and takes 3 to 4 days to walk its entire length, we decided we weren't up to walking it all so decided we walk from Marahau (South End of the track) to Appletree Bay, and then back again, 8km in total (5miles). It was a beautiful walk and we didn't come across too many other walkers which was nice as in summer you have to book in advanced to walk the track and it is very busy. We sat on the beach at Appletree Bay and ate our lunch with not another person in sight, we had the complete beach to ourselves. There are no roads in the national park and so the only way to get to places, other then on foot, is by boat. There are frequent water taxis which drop off and pick people up at various places. We did contemplate getting a water taxi back from Appletree Bay but as it was such a nice day we decided to walk instead, we were glad we did and it was a beatiful afternoon. It was really nice having not to pay for something that kept us entertained for the whole day.

Appletree Bay

The weather forecast for tomorrow isn't great so we are going to spend most of it driving down to Westport on the West coast.

Wellington

2005-07-26T19:08:00.000-01:00

If I have to go to the doctors again or have another trip to hospital then I am coming home!!!! My lack of ability to breathe on Thursday meant I had to go to the doctors, he prescribed my steroids and a couple of different inhalers. We didn’t fancy the walk back up the huge hill which is Trish’s road so we decided to drive down to the doctors. When we arrived on Tuesday Trish told us to park on the lawn next to the house. It rained all Wednesday night so when we went to reverse the camper van off the lawn we didn’t get very far, deja vu sprang to mind (90 mile beach). We mad a real mess of the lawn too (sorry Trish). I didn’t feel good for a couple of days so Thursday and Friday were spent doing nothing, lazing around at Trish’s keeping Milky’s cat, Darsha, company.

Saturday I was feeling a lot better so Trish took us on the grand tour, this included the famous Wellington Cable car (Wellington has to be the hilliest place capital city in the world!), lunch at the Chocolate Fish café, made famous by the cast and crew of Lord of The Rings eating there for 3 years whilst they were filming.

Tacky Picture outside Chocolate Fish (Fleet fleece on Bloo!!!):

Then Island Bay, where we got a fantastic view of the Southern Alps across on the South Island, the view has made us so excited about getting across to the South Island as even from this far away they looked fantastic with their snowy peaks.

From Island Bay we stopped at the Warehouse to buy some thermals and an extra heater for the camper, we are prepared for the snow now! Next was a drive up to the top of Mt Victoria to see the views over the city and Admiral Byrd monument (Antarctic treaty).

Saturday night we took Trish out for dinner at a new restaurant in town called Boules. The food was fantastic, Trish and myself had Beef Wellington (a must when in Wellington!) and Char had Grouper (fish). Char insisted I took a picture of her chocolate tart before she destroyed it!

Sunday morning was baking morning, Char decided she wanted to bake White Chocolate and Macadamia muffins, they were fantastic too. She can defiantly cook.

Then in the afternoon we took a trip up to the Wind Turbine on the hills above Brookline.

This is the view of it from Trish’s conservatory:

The view up close:

When the wind is at its optimum, between 50 and 80 KPH it generates enough power for 80 households.

View of the city from the Turbine:

When we got back to Trish’s I decided to have a second attempt at getting the camper off the lawn as we had had a couple of days of dry weather. So with fingers crossed I managed to get it off the lawn it has been parked on the road ever since!

The big mess we left (sorry again Trish):

We decided to go and have a look round Te Papa (national Museum of New Zealand) on Monday. It was really good with lots of interactive displays on native Zealand wildlife and fauna, and many other collections on Maori culture and other New Zealand subjects. It wasn’t as big as we had expected but we both did have the British Museum in our thoughts!

A Holden (Vauxhall) made from corrugated iron:

We came across this article in the modern art section, the artist was obviously all out of ideas when it came to naming them! I can come to a few ideas for naming them but probably best not to say on here!

When we walked back from Te Papa to get the bus back up to Trish’s we passed a shop talked Java Down Under which had a massive chair outside, it was a photo opportunity we couldn’t resist.

It has been really good staying here with Trish, we were both running really low on battery power and needed a bit of a rest. Thanks Trish, you have made us feel so welcome.

So tomorrow we sail across to the South Island, were are both really excited.

Washout!!!!

2005-07-20T06:25:00.000-01:00

From Taupo we headed East to Napier. It was a washout! We arrived in the rain, it rain throughout the night and it rained all day when we were in the town. So Monday night we thought we'd head a little way down the road to Hastings, we found a campsite and decided we'd stay for a couple of nights. The rain didn't let off and a call came from Trish aka Milky's Mum. She suggested that we drove down to Wellington the following morning as the weather was meant to be bad till Saturday anyway, at least in Wellington we could dry off and be in the warm. So Tuesday mornign we set off on the 4 hour drive South to Wellington. We took a long detour to vist the place with the longest name in the world, it wasn't worth the long detour as there was absolutly nothing there apart from the signpost. Its a bit of a mouthful!!!!!

We arrived in Wellington not long after dark and surprisingly found Milky's mum's house really easily, directions were great! We were welcomed really warmly yet again and it will be good to stay here for a few days before heading over to the South Island. This morning I woke up wheezing like an asthmatic after the London Marathon. I haven't got any better all day so a trip to the doc's might be in order if I don't feel any better tomorrow.

Whilst we were staying with the Tanners Michelle asked how far we had actually travelled, neither of us had any idea. So we have worked it out, since leaving home, so including all our flights, we have travelled a total distance of 18,323 miles (29488km).

Huka Jet Boat Pictures

2005-07-20T06:22:00.000-01:00

As promised here are the action pictures from the Huka Jet.

Taupo

2005-07-18T00:11:00.000-01:00

One thing that I forgot to mention in a previous post is that when we were driving from Cedar Lodge to Rotorua we saw a sign for the "Hidden Valley", not very hidden anymore I thought!!!

So Friday we drove down to Taupo, we stopped at the prawn farm and had a go at catching some prawns. They are freshwater prawns and are grown in artificial pools where the water is really warm due to the natural heat from under the ground.

Battle commences:

Char lost the battle and ended up buying some prawns:

Battle recommences:

Victorious:

We booked in at a campsite in Taupo for 2 nights as we thought we would do something for the whole day on Saturday, however we slept in and ended going for a walk along Huka Falls in the afternoon. We even saw a couple of guys kayaking over the falls.

Sunday the weather was awful, I had planned to do some trout fishing as it is meant to be the best in the world here in Taupo, but when we went to the information centre we were told that the fishing would be poor on the lake as it was too windy and the river fishing was very expensive so we thought we'd do some quad biking instead but that was all booked up. So in the end we opted for the Huka Jet Boat. It was fantastic! The boat races along the Huka river weaving in and out of natural obstacles and doing lots of 360 degree spins. It reaches speeds of 50MPH (80KPH) which feels very quick when you are very close to rock walls at the edge of the river. We have got some action photo's of us on the boat but they have not been processed yet, I will post them up when I can.

After the Jet Boat we packed everything up and headed down to Napier. The weather was still bad but the journey was still very pretty, it really reminded us of north Wales. So here we are in Napier, famous for its Art Deco architecture. We are not to sure where we are going today but the plan is to be down in Wellington by the weekend, where we are going to stay with Milky's Mum for a few days before heading over to the South Island.

Lambs, Glowworms and goodbyes

2005-07-14T22:10:00.000-01:00

Wednesday we got up late and had a walk round Cedar Lodge and helped Eric and Michelle move some lambs born in the night in to a different paddock. Michelle had to show us Eric's Range Rover in the barn, he says it still goes and will one day be back on the road, I have my doubts (sorry Eric)!!!!

Then we drove up to Mount Maunganui to take a look at the mount and relax in the hot pools. It was so busy as its school holidays over here, it spoilt it a bit. So we hopped out of the pools and took a walk along the beach instead.

Thursday we went down to Waitumo Caves to look at the glow worms. The caves have been open and running tours for over 100 years! After a 20 minute walk through the caves we got on a boat to cruise down the stream that runs through the bottom of the caves. It was pitch black apart from the spectacular lightshow above our heads, it was truely amazing. Unfortunatly we weren't allowed to take any photos but I doubt they would have come out anyway. The glowworm emmits its light to attract its food and takes nine months to grow from egg to adult fly, then lives for only a few days as a fly as it doesn't have a mouth, which is quite vital for survival. However most of the flys are attracted to the lights above and are eaten by their children!!!!! On the way back to Cedar Lodge we thought we'd go a different way but it was a mistake, it took us ages to find our way back and I am sure we drove half way round the North Island!!!

Friday was they day we decided that we would tear ourselves away from Cedar Lodge. It has been fantastic staying here and the hospitality has been out of this world. We have to leave though as there is so much more to see. Thank you Michelle, Eric and girls.

Back Row: Eric.
Middle Row: Michelle, Harriette, Myself.
Front Row: Alice, Charlotte.

Northland

2005-07-12T06:19:00.000-01:00

Well the weather did improve. Thursday I got up early to see if it had stopped raining and to see if it would be possible to go out to sea and do some fishing, the weather was still bad so didn't even venture outside! Slept in till lunchtime and the weather had changed completely and was sunny and warm, we headed down to Paihia and an hour after getting down to the seafront we were heading out in to the Pacific to do some snapper fishing. The fishing started slowly but soon picked up. Char didn't take to the boat too well and felt a bit sea sick so didn't do much fishing. I managed to catch 12 fish in total, 2 of them being big enough to keep to take back for dinner! We were out on the boat for 4 hours and it was quite rough once we got out of the bay, at about the 3 and a half hour mark even I felt ill, so it was smiles all round when we eventually got back on dry land! The guys on the boat filleted the fish and Char said it was fantastic to have such fresh fish for dinner.

When we got back to the campsite and started to make dinner, using the grill for the first time, we found out that it wouldn't stay lit. I was soon on the phone to Apollo and they said that we would have to find someone to fix it. We weren't impressed with that but looking back what else could they do?

Friday was grill fixing day! We had hoped to find a place up near Doubtless Bay, as it was on the way to our next destination, Pukenui. Sadly we were unsuccesful and were told we would have to head south to Kaitaia. So we eventually found the person who could fix it and after tightening one bolt it was fixed. On the way back up North to Pukenui we stopped, at the South end of Ninty Mile Beach. Ninty Mile Beach is classed as a Highway and is open for any vehicle to travel along.

We were going to stop in the car park to do some lunch before heading on to the beach to have a look. We actually got stuck in the sand in the carpark and didn't even make it on to the beach, luckily a friendly local came along in his 4x4 and pulled us out.

After that we decided it was probably best not to venture on to the beach and instead decided we would get up to Pukenui and book a tour to drive along the beach up to Cape Reinga.

Saturday morning we were picked up to do the tour and we found out that we were the only people that day so it was our own personalised tour. We drove up to the Cape and had a walk down to the lighthouse, which is now automated and controlled from Wellington at the other end of the Island!

We stopped at Tapotupotu Bay for some lunch and had the whole beach to ourselves which was fantastic. Then we drove down towards Ninty Mile Beach via the Te Paki stream, stopping at the giant sand dunes to do some sand tobogganing, it was great fun but was such hard work climbing back up the dune.

Then we headed on to the beach and drove half way along it, and we actually found out that Ninety Mile Beach is only actually 64 miles long, along the beach we saw lots of wild horses and came across a dead School Shark, which was nice!

The afternoon was taken up with driving South for as far as we could before dark, we got to Opononi.

Sunday we continued South in order to get to the Tanner's on Monday evening as we had planned. Just South of Opononi is the Waipoua Forest which is home to some "giant" Kauri trees. We stopped and had a look at 3 trees, the first was Tane Mahuta which is the largest Mauri Tree in the world, it stands at 51m (167ft) tall and is approx 2000 years (yes two thousand) old.

You can just about see me with my hands in the air at the bottom of the picture.

The next was Four Sisters which wasn't that impressive as the others but still worth a look. The third was Te Matua Ngahere which has the largest girth of them all. The circumference of the trunk is 16.41m (54ft), it was really impressive and has to be seen to understand how big these trees actually are. We continued South and ended up staying at a campsite at Parakai which had both an indoor and outdoor thermal pool, the outside pool was 33 degrees C and the inside one was 40 degrees C. It was a bit too hot really, it was like getting in to a really hot bath! We decided we had had enough of the campervan for the evening so went and found a pub to have something to eat in the evening.

Monday we drove back down to Auckland where we stopped at Kelly Tarlton's which is the Underwater and Antartic Centre, it was really good to see the penguins up close.

From Auckland we headed down to Hamilton where I got my first haircut since leaving home. It was a hard decision as I nearly decided that I wouldn't have any haircuts while I was away but one last look in the mirror changed my mind! We left Hamilton just as it was getting dark and made our way towards the Tannners. Once we arrived at Cedar Lodge we were welcomed with open arms and had a lovely pork and apple casserole for dinner. In true "farmer" style Eric was making black pudding as he had slaughtered one of his pigs the day before! For anyone who doesn't know, we know the Tanners through Stuart, Stan and Milky. They emigrated out here from Kent in 2001. They live at Cedar Lodge which is a small farm just outside Matamata. They have cows, sheep, chickens and pigs.

Tuesday we went to visit Wai-O-Tapu pools at Rotorua. Rotorua is world famous for is volcanic activity. At Wai-O-Tapu there are various walks around bubbling mud pools and volcanic craters. Nearly all the craters have steam flowing from them, and the smell of sulpher is sometimes overpowering. The highlight is Champagne Pool which is 70m across and has a surface temperature of 74 degrees C.

On the way back to Cedar Lodge we stopped at Rainbow Springs to look at the Trout and to see if we could get the chance to see a Kiwi. Char expertly tracked down a Kiwi but it was asleep! They are on the edge of extiction with only 200 left in the wild. We also saw a Tuatara which is a reptile from the dinosaur age that can slow its body dow so much that it only has to take one breath per hour!

Back at Cedar Lodge we were made to feel most welcome again and we treated to a Shepherds Pie expertly made by Eric. Its so nice to have home cooked meals, makes such a change to eating pasta or things out of tins.

Happy Birthday!

2005-07-10T22:15:00.000-01:00

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Tim,
Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday Tim, we did phone to wish you happy birthday but you were still in bed, typical!

We should have hired a boat not a campervan!!!!

2005-07-06T04:50:00.000-01:00

We have arrived in New Zealand and its wet! We arrived in Auckland on Monday evening and stayed in the Auckland City YHA which was horrid, it was really dirty. Auckland didn't seem to have much to offer so we decided that when we picked our campervan up first thing the next morning that we would head north out of the city. So that is what we did! After stopping at a supermarket and buying $200 worth of food (this will hopefully last us the week!) we drove north and very soon we were in some very beautiful countryside, we stopped at various places to admire the views and we found a campsite in a place called Whangarei. The campervan was a very comfortable place to sleep (even though the rain was hammering down on the roof). This morning we continued North stopping at Whangarei Falls which were stunning and in full flow, we walked down to the bottom and got totally drenched by the spray, then on the way back up it started raining and hasn't stopped since, and its not just showers its full on rain all the time!

After walking up the Tree Top walk at the AH Reed Kauri park and looking at the 500 year old Kauri trees we continued driving as we need to dry off a bit.

We stopped at Opua for some lunch and when we parked the rain stopped briefly and the Bay of Islands looked fantastic but it didn't last for long and the heavens opened and you could see nothing! Its really good being able to stop wherever we want to have some lunch and even if its raining we can sit in the van and eat. From Opua we carried on just up the road to Paihia, where we found a campsite up in the hills near Haruru Falls. Thats about all we have to report so far. Unless the weather starts to improve we can see some nights in a motel being an option so we can dry out a bit!

Melbourne (Last post from OZ for 2 months)

2005-07-03T04:53:00.000-01:00

Its been an extremely busy eight days, it didn't start well last Saturday with the Lions losing shamefully to the All Blacks, we then headed into the centre of Melbourne on a tram we bought a ticket but it would be our first and last as nobody else seemed to have tickets.

We eased ourselves in to the big city by wandering around the market on Sunday we also booked a day of Neighbours for Monday.

So we were up early Monday for the tour of Ramsay Street which was a bit disappointing as the tour was very short and you did not get to see the studios where they done the filming you just got to see Pinoak Court, aka Ramsay Street. The street is tiny though you do recognise all the houses. In Australia only 1.5 million people watch Neighbours in the UK it is something like 8 million. Appartantley this was the idea from the start that it would be aimed at the UK market.

In the afternoon we went to the Aquarium which was fantastic and had a temporary display of sharks. It was expensive but we both thought it was worth it.

Monday evening saw us heading to St Kilda to the Elephant and Wheelbarrow pub for the offical Neighbours night. This has to be the best night we have had out so far, we got to meet 3 of the neighbours cast they were, Joe Mangle, Steph and Toady who we had our pictures taken with. Karl Kennedy also performed with his band, he was actually very good, which was surprising. Steve won a free drinks voucher by singing the Neighbours theme tune and then our table won the quiz which we got $200 split between the 4 groups on our table meant we got $50 which made the night even better.

Tuesday Steve had a very bad hangover and did not manage to get out of bed till 2.30pm. We headed to the Crown Entertainment Complex which is made up of the Crown hotel, a huge casino, posh shops (Prada, Chanel etc) and a cinema. We watched Mr and Mrs Smith which we thought was a really good film, Brad Pitt never fails to come up with the goods. After the film we wandered round the casino were you could place a minimum bet from $2.50 to $50. It was pretty busy and someone was making a lot of money.

Wednesday - nothing!!! Got up to late to do anything that we had planned such as the MCG tour and the Gaol.

Thursday we took advantage of the free swimming passes that you get with staying at our YHA hostel. After swimming we went to the Gaol which is the oldest prison in Victoria it is made famous for the hanging of Ned Kelly. Whilst looking round we saw a number of men that looked like bodyguards wondering around the prison checking each cell though they were not protecting anyone they had panic buttons and ear pieces, we were going to ask on the way out who they were but they followed us out and then got into waiting cars while another group of them went in - very strange.

Friday we got up and went to the MCG to do the stadium tour. The MCG is one of the most famous stadiums in the world and is home to the Melbourne Cricket Club, in summer cricket is played and in winter Aussie Rules Football is played. It is currently being redeveloped which is costing $435,000,000 to increase the capacity by 5,000 seats, which is $87,000 per seat! The main reason to modernise the stadium, the new capacity will be aprrox 103,000 which is massive. However the record attendance at the MCG was for a religous event held in 1959 which they were 133,000 people in attendance.

In the evening we went to the cinema again to watch War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise. It was an impressive film but for the most of it was typical American dribble! I was always under the impression that every human died in the original but in the film they did'nt, can anyone shed some light on this? Also the original music wasn't to be heard anywhere in the film, very disappointing!

Saturday we went to the MCG to watch an AFL match between Richmond Tigers and Sydney Swans. The swans started and finished well but were terrible in the middle. Final score Richmond 85, Sydney 84. It was a very entertaining finish but I still don't think I could watch it week in week out. Back at the hostel I watched the second half of the second test between the Lions and the All Blacks, another poor result.

View of Melbourne skyline from MCG

Sunday we wrote our blog and going back to the hostel to pack for travelling to New Zealand in the morning.

Summary Time:

So the first third of our trip is over and it has flown by we really hope the next two thirds don't.

We have done and seen so much in 2 months we thought the best way to summarise our thoughts was to pick out the best and worst bits.

Best Location: Char, Kakadu. Steve, Kakadu.
Worst Location: Char, Alice Springs. Steve, Geraldton.
Best Activity: Char, Snorkelling at Coral Bay. Steve, Snorkelling at Torquiose Bay.
Worst Activity: For both of us it has to be climbing down z bend gorge.
Best Hostel: Char, Adelaide. Steve, Melbourne.
Worst Hostel: Char, Perth. Steve, Alice Springs.
Best Hostel facilities: Char, Adelaide. Steve, Adelaide.
Worst hostel facilities: Char, Perth. Steve, Exmouth.
Best night out: Char, Neighbours Night. Steve, Neighbours Night.
Worst night out: Both of us think there has not been one.
Best section of the trip: Char, Perth to Exmouth. Steve, Great Ocean Road.
Worst section of the trip: Both picked Alice to Adelaide (The Ghan) - too long!!
Most scenic hostel: Char, Lorne. Steve, Lorne.
Worst scenic hostel: Both of us picked Alice Springs.

Great Ocean Road

2005-06-26T10:14:00.000-01:00

Well it certinately lives up to its name! It was truly Great in every sense, spectacular scenery, great driving and unique sights round every corner.

Lots of pictures in this post, I tried to cut them out but it didn't do the 4 days justice so I had to include them.

So it all started back on Wednesday when we picked up the hire car and left Adelaide. The Great Ocean Rd doesn't actually go all the way from Adelaide to Melbourne, it actually starts at a place called Warrnambool which is 362 miles from Adelaide. So we weren't going to get to Warrnambool in the first day so decided to stop for the night in a place called Mount Gambier, which is a large town built on the slopes of an extinct volcano. The drive took as along the Coorong National Park which is a 90 mile stretch of salt pans along the coast with huge sand dunes on on side, it would have been a nice drive but unfortunately the rain was probably the worst I have ever driven in! We briefly stopped in Kingston to take the obligatory picture of the giant Lobster!

The rain did stop for a short while once we got to Robe so we had a short walk along the beach before carrying on to Mt Gambier.

Mt Gambier its self doesn't have much to offer and is very average but a short drive out of town there are some fantastic views, all due to the volcanic activity around the area thousands of years ago, the highlight being Blue Lake, which in the summer glows bright blue! The colour could be seen around the edges but it was only a dull grey today.

We took a tour down the Engelbrecht Caves which is right in the centre of town and stretches along the main road through the town. It is very popular for cave diving, the people that go diving down there have to be crazy, there are some gaps under the water that you have to rotate your shoulders in order to fit through! To be permitted to dive you have to be fully trained, the training takes 800 hours!

So the morning of day 2 was spent at Mt Gambier then we headed on further East to get to Warnambool before dark, not long after leaving Mt Gambier we crossed the boarder in to Victoria, so we are now 9 Hours ahead of the UK. The drive on the second day was mostly through pine forests that are planted for wood, these forests seem to go on for ever and on the way we saw plenty of Emu's.

We managed to get to Warnambool just as dark fell and found a hostel and checked in, we near enough had the hostel to ourselves, it was fantastic. Warnambool is a big seaside town in the summer but it was pretty empty for the winter.

Day 3 started on a good note as we managed to see a Southern Right Whale with a calf from Logans Beach. We planned to do the whole of the Great Ocean Rd and get to Torquay before dark. Once we got on the Road and got to the coast the views were fantastic, the limestone stack that rise up out of the sea are stunning. We couldn't drive for more the 10 minutes without having to stop and have a look at something, we saw the Grotto, London Bridge and the 12 Apostles to name a few. At the Bay of Islands, we saw this sign and thought it was amusing.

Grotto

London Bridge

Twelve Apostles

The highlight has to have been going on this:

To be able to see views like this:

For a short time the road climbed rapidly through eucalyptus forests and this gave us great views far over the hills inland. The landscape couldn't have changed much more of the 4 days.

We even managed to see a couple of Koala's in the forests.

When the road descended back to the coast at Apollo Bay it was obvious that we weren't going to make it to Torquay before dark so decided that we would stop at Lorne instead. The drive from Apollo bay to Lorne was amazing, this was the proper Great Ocean Road, it was a narrow winding road clinging to the edge of cliffs all the way. If anyone ever has the change to come here then you have to do this drive, its spectacular.

We finally came to Lorne and found the YHA hostel which was situated high on a hillside above the town, it was a fantastic setting and by far the most appealing hostel so far.

So day 4, destination Melbourne. We headed out of Lorne and continued along the winding road to Torquay where there was a massive sign above the road announcing the end or start of the drive depending which way you are going, there must have been about 50 Japanese tourists taking pictures of the sign, it reminded me of a time when we went to Wales and there was a coach load of Japanese people taking pictures of the Welcome To Wales sign!

We stopped in Torquay to have a look at the beach and then carried on to Melbourne along the motorway. As we approached Melbourne the traffic got heavier and heavier and it was a bit of a nightmare to find the hostel, but Char's excellent map reading skills got us there in the end.

Torquay

It was a fantastic 4 days and we both would come back and do it again if we had the chance. Come here and do this, its fantastic!!!!!!

Happy Birthday!

2005-06-24T10:10:00.000-01:00

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Dazzer,
Happy Birthday to you!!!!

Hope you had a good one mate/bruv!

Adelaide

2005-06-21T17:50:00.000-01:00

So we left Alice Springs on Thursday and once again boarded the Ghan, we decided to use the Ghan to get down to Adelaide as it was only $105. Unfortunately the train was full up this time which meant the journey was a little bit uncomfortable, well actually it was very uncomfortable!

There are so many people doing exactly the same thing as us, when we walked in to the Ghan station we saw the people that were sitting opposite us on the Ghan from Darwin to Alice, when we found our seats on the train the people sitting in front of us were the ones who took our picture of us standing in front of Ayers Rock, and we saw countless others that we had seen in the previous 7 days!

So we arrived in Adelaide 18 hours after leaving Alice and we desperately needed some sleep so we jump in a taxi and got to the hostel quickly. The YHA Hostel in Adelaide is fantastic, its more like a hotel then a hostel, it is by far the best one we've stayed in so far. After a couple of hours sleep we went for a walk to see what Adelaide was like, our first observation was that it was a really busy place, to be honest its probably not that busy but after spending 5 weeks in the outback and up the west coast anywhere with more then 10 people seems busy! The centre of Adelaide has wide multi lane streets, wide pavements and big skyscrapers, with the cold wet weather it reminded us of London. Ah yes the weather! Its been horrid! Maximum temp must have been 18 degrees C and the rain hasn't stopped, apparently its been the wettest June on record. It hasn't really stopped us from doing anything though as we have been glad of the change after such high temperatures prior. We've had a few lazy days over the weekend and not really done much.

Yesterday (Monday) we took a day trip up to the Barrossa Valley for a wine tasting tour. The journey up through the Adelaide Hills was really pleasant, it would have been much more enjoyable had there been a little less mist and fog though. It made such a contrast to be winding our way up through lush green hills rather then racing across barron sandy deserts. On the way up we stopped at a toy factory that boasts the worlds largest rocking horse, it was massive, 18.3M or 60 ft to be precise!

Then we went to the Whispering Wall, it is a dam made to produce a resevior. If you stand at one end of the wall and whisper someone standing at the other end can hear your really clearly, it has almost perfect acoustics.

We visited 4 wineries including Orlando Wineries, which is home to Jacob's Creek. We tasted near on 40 wines throughout the day, we tasted some great wines and some really bad wines (most of the reds, bad to us, but apparently they are some of the best reds in the world!) and some really nice ports. We had a really good day but the headache this morning was awful.

After awaking from the dead we booked our hire car for the next 4 days that we are going to take to Melbourne, then we headed off to the Haigh's Chocolate Factory. They pride themselves on being the best Chocolates in Australia, but they only have 12 shops, 6 in Adelaide, 5 in Melbourne and 1 in Sydney. The factory is very small and only employees around 30 people. Everything is handmade and even the foil wrapped chocolate are hand wrapped. Char said that it would be her dream job but I think the novelty would ware off very quickly. The tour was a bit short and you weren't allowed to take any pictures, we couldn't complain though as it was free!

So tomorrow (Wednesday) we are off to Melbourne, as I said we have hired a car for 4 days so we don't need to rush. We are going to drive along the Great Ocean Road, which is meant to be one of the greatest drive in the world, hence the name I guess! We are spending 9 days in Melbourne as there are quite a lot of things that we both want to do and see, including the Neighbours Tour and watching an Aussie Rules Football match at the MCG, I'll let you guess which of us wants to do which!

A few token pictures of Adelaide, the weather has been so poor for photos and to be honest there isn't much to take pictures of!

Uluru & Katatjuta (Ayers Rock & The Olgas)

2005-06-14T06:37:00.000-01:00

650 miles and 3 rock formations later we have seen Ayers Rock! We hired a car for 2 days and decided that we would drive out to Ayers Rock on our own rather then doing it with a tour, we were both a bit fed up with tours and wanted to do our own thing. Plus we didn’t really have enough time to spend 3 full days out there as we needed to catch the Ghan down to Adelaide on Thursday if we were to keep on schedule for our flight to New Zealand.

So we picked that car up and headed straight for Ayers Rock. It’s a 4 hr 30 min drive so it really is in the middle of no where! Due to its remoteness you don’t really have much of a choice but to stay in Yulara which is the small resort that has been built near Ayers Rock. We imagine Yulara to be just like a ski resort but in the desert! It has 5 star hotels next door to a campground. Everything is expensive but as I say you don’t really have much choice but to stay. We hired a cabin on the campsite as we didn’t have a tent with us, we were very glad we did this as you’ll see below.

Along the road out to Ayers rock there are constant signs warning of kangaroos, emus and cows, yes that’s right cows! We must have seen at least half a dozen dead cows by the side of the road, now I can imagine the mess hitting a cow would make. We presumed that these must have been hit by Road Trains, these are massive lorries that have 4 trailers and can be up to 50m (165ft) long and have 1000BHP, and these trucks don’t stop for anything!

First stop was the view point for Mt Conner. Many people mistake this for Ayers rock and its quite understandable as after you have been driving for 3+ hours through flat desert you don’t expect to see many huge Rocks!

Just over an hour further on along the road Ayers Rock and The Olgas appear on the horizon and it really is an awesome sight. We arrived in Yulara soon after and went and checked in to our cabin. Then drove in to the National Park to have a proper look at the Rock. We both thought that it was a lot bigger then we had expected it to be. We stopped at the car park at the base of the Climb. You are allowed to climb to the top but the Aboriginal people don’t like people doing it, so we decided not to. Plus it looked extremely difficult!!!! There have been a few people that have died whilst trying to climb it, that’s enough to put us off! From there we had a drive round stopping in various place for photos. The sun was starting to go down so we drove back around to the sunset viewing area and found a good spot to get those special pictures.

The Rock goes from this:

To this:

It really is a fantastic sight. You can’t put it in to words how special it is.

After the sunset we headed back to the cabin, made some dinner and hit the sack as I was shattered after the long drive.

We awoke to this the next morning, and this is why we were so glad we hadn’t camped!

We headed straight for the Olgas. These are less known the Ayers rock but I think they are just as interesting, Mt Olga is taller then Ayers Rock but not as large at the base. We had a nice, but cold, walk in to the Olga Gorge.

Then headed back to the car for the return journey to Alice Springs.

Ghan & Alice Springs

2005-06-13T07:25:00.000-01:00

Saturday we were booked on the Ghan to go from Darwin to Alice Springs, this part of the track was only opened 18 months ago, but it is not the smooth ride that we expected! On the way we passed over 2 million sleepers but only 19 bridges in 16 hours of travel. We arrived in Alice early Sunday morning and we went straight to bed as we both didn’t get much sleep on the train.

We have now booked the Ghan again to go from Alice Springs down to Adelaide as it is very cheap compared to the other options.
Nothing was open in Alice on Sunday so we didn’t get up to much apart from doing our laundry. Monday 13th June was a bank holiday in Australia for the Queen’s Birthday so again nothing was open!!! We did manage to locate the Reptile Centre which had a interactive tour starting just as we got there, this was really interesting and we got to handle various lizards and a huge Olive Python.

Kakadu

2005-06-13T05:53:00.000-01:00

On Wednesday we left Darwin on the tour with Wayward heading to Kakadu National Park for three days camping. First stop was Fogg Dam where an artificial dam has been made to create additional wetlands didn’t see much here, although there were a lot of crocodile warning signs around. Next we went to Wetlands Window where there were fantastic views across the northern wetlands of Kakadu. The park only has two seasons, wet and dry, the dry being in the winter i.e. now. During the wet season the park is almost inaccessible due to most of it being under water.

After we went to look at some giant termite mounts these were over 3 metres tall and take around 20 years to do 1 metre.

On route to Ubirr we drove very close to what was left of a big bush fire, it was still burning very well, there were about 50 kites flying around this area as they were eating all the insects that were being driven out by the fire. The kites often pick up burning sticks and drop them in other areas to create more fires and therefore more insects.

We arrived at Ubirr late afternoon and had a look at some aboriginal rock art which was basic but interesting. From Ubirr we drove the short distance to Jabiru to set up camp for the night.

Thursday we went for a hike around Nourlangie rock to see more art, whilst there we saw a black wallaroo (a cross between a wallaby and kangaroo) which are very rare and only found in Kakadu. From the top of Nourlangie rock there were more great views across the park.

In the afternoon we done a 6km walk to Gubara rock pools, we both thought that the pools were not worth walking that far for in the heat of the afternoon.

Later that day we went for a wildlife cruise on Yellow waters which is on the East Alligator River (there are no alligators in oz) we saw 12 Crocodiles, Jabiru, Jakatta and Rainbow bee eaters amongst many other things. We very nearly did not do the cruise as we thought it was a bit expensive at $45 each but we were both extremely glad we did as it was excellent.

Camped at Coorinda overnight. We had kangaroo for dinner which was very tasty.

Friday we took the very bumpy drive to Gunlom falls, which was were part of Crocodile Dundee was filmed. The water at the bottom of the falls rises by as much as 3 metres in the wet season and its totally inaccessible. We started the climb to the top of the falls to swim in the pools though Steve was not comfortable with the climb after what happened at Kalbarri and sadly did not make it to the top though I carried on and was rewarded with the best sight of oz that I have seen so far, it was fantastic.

After Gunlom we headed back towards Darwin stopping at Adelaide River to see the buffalo that was in the Crocodile Dundee films, who is stuffed in a pub.

There are loads more pictures but there are too many to put up here, they'll have to wait till we get home.

Darwin

2005-06-07T05:27:00.000-01:00

We flew into Darwin on Sat 4th June and spent a few days lazing around and organised a tour of Kakadu National Park. Whilst in Darwin we went to the Northern Territory Museum, which was really interesting and showed some of the states most deadliest animals and insects. The most fascinating of which were the Red Back Spider and Box Jelly Fish shown below in a glass tank (both dead!!!!).

On the Sunday evening we went to the Mindil Beach Market. There were more things to eat then to actually buy here but it was a good evenings entertainment with various acts going on around the place. We arrived just in time to catch another great sunset.

Another afternoon was spent at Aquascene which is a small cove called Doctors Gully. At high tide hundreds (maybe even thousands) of fish come right in to the shore to be fed. The fish were mainly mullet and milk fish, some were close to a metre long and they took whole slices of bread right out of your hand.

We didn’t do much else in Darwin as there wasn’t much else to do! We booked on the Ghan to get down to Alice Springs once we returned from Kakadu.

Broome

2005-06-03T01:34:00.000-01:00

Left Exmouth on the early hours of Tuesday morning. The 18 hour greyhound ride to Broome was not as bad as we thought it would be as we both managed to get quite a bit of sleep.

Got to Broome at 7.00 ish pm on Tuesday, found the hostel bus easily and after picking up some other people at the airport we arrived at the hostel unfortunetly it was a little further out of town than we had anticipated but it was the only one that had availability. After getting some dinner we had an early night.

Wednesday we spent the afternoon on the beach. Cable beach is a typical OZ looking beach with pure white sand and azure sea. It is meant to be the best beach in the world to see a sunset. We decided to save the sunset for Thursday evening and caught the bus into town to watch a movie at the sun pictures cinema which is the worlds oldest open air cinema it opened in 1916. It was really strange sitting on a deckchair to watch a film with the stars above your head. Whilst waiting at the bus stop to catch the bus back to the hostel an aborginal women came an introduced herself to us, after some light hearted talk she came to the conclusion that Steve was guilty for the Iraq war, luckily just as the conversation started to heat up the bus arrived and we made an extremely quick exit.

Thursday we went to Broome Crocodile Park we arrived just in time for the feeding tour which was interesting and I found scary but Steve really enjoyed it. They breed the crocodiles for their meat and leather and also house problem crocs. Some of these are over 60 years old though they can live up to 100+.

After the Crocodile Park we strolled down to the beach for the sunset it was a stunning sight.

The evening was spent at the Divers Tavern playing pool on a round table with five pockets, one in the middle, very strange but amusing.

Two random observations that I have made, firstly over the past week I am surprised that Steve has got any blood left in him due to the mosquitoes that have attacked his legs. Secondly the person who created Billabong fashion label must be comfortable financially as every other person is wearing something with Billabong on.

Plans

2005-05-30T07:42:00.000-01:00

Our plan to hire a car to drive up to Broome has not been successful, it was going to cost us just over $1000, which is way to much. So tonight we leave Exmouth on the Greyhound, it takes 18 hours but only cost $186 each. We have booked our flight from Broom up to Darwin for Friday so come the weekend we'll be in Darwin, right on plan as we said we'd be there after a month of being here.

Tour

2005-05-28T06:59:00.000-01:00

Monday afternoon we were back on the tour that we had started a week before. The group seemed a lot more friendly and the atmosphere was really good from the very beginning. It was the third time we had done the 2 hour journey from Geraldton to Kalbarri and it was very strange to be back in the hostel again.

Tuesday morning the group went to the gorge, we decided not to go and had a lay in and had breakfast in a cafe on the seafront instead, then we took a long walk along the beach. Early afternoon the others came back and had lunch on the beach. After lunch we hit the road for the long drive up to Denham which is in the Sharks Bay World Heritage Site, we stopped at Shell Beach for the sunset, this was fantastic, there is no sand at Shell Beach it is made up of hundreds of millions of tiny shells. From there we carried on to Denham where we spent the night at the hostel.

Kalbarri

Shell Beach

Wednesday we took the short drive to Monkey Mia. Monkey Mia is world famous for its dolphins, they come right in to the beach. They have been there for many years and we thought it was all a bit too commercial and found the wild pelicans more interesting then the dolphins! We did see a turtle tho so that was cool. Charlotte took a camel ride along the beach which she really enjoyed. They do feed the dolphins a small amount every day but they say this is not why the dolphins come everyday (last year they didn't make an appearance for only 2 days), we are not too sure about that!

After Monkey Mia we headed back to the main highway stopping at Eagle Bluff to see if we could spot any tiger sharks, sadly we didn't, apparantly the cooler weather has mean they've headed north towards our next destination!!!! Its not coll at all its around the 30 degrees mark!

After eagle bluff we went and saw the Stromatolites, these are the oldest living animals known to man, they live in the sea and are similar to coral but look more like rocks, they produce oxygen and are what put oxygen in to the atmosphere millions of years ago. This is the only place in the world where they can be easilly seen. After the Stromatolite we drove back to the Overlander Road House where we were dropping off the people who were only doing the 3 day tour, on the other bus waiting to take them back to Perth was Alan, the doctor who was on the first tour we were on, it was good to catch up with him and to say my thanks. From there we hit the road for the 6 hour drive up to Coral Bay, we arrived quite late and the hostel was very busy and didn't seem very friendly, we had dinner then we took a load of beers down to the beach where we sat till the early hours talking about anything and everything, it was a really good night. Char turned in to the English teacher for the night for the 2 Japenese girls on the tour! They are fantastic and their "Ingrish" is very good, far better then our Japenese!

Had a bit of a lie in on Thursday morning at we didn't have to drive anywhere, we were down on the beach by 8.30am still though. The whole group decided to go out on a glass bottomed boat to the Ningaloo Reef to do some snorkelling. It was fantastic and this was Char's first time at snorkelling and she really enjoyed it. Before she got in the water she did ask if there were any Sharks around this area and the captin of the boat said there are sharks in all waters around Oz. She still got in though. There were lots of snapper about and some were a good 50cm long, it was really good smiwwing amongst such big fish. Sadly we didn't see any Reef Sharks but there is alway another time. After that we spent the rest of the day laying on the beach and relaxing. We departed early evening to head further North to Exmouth. We spent the evening drinking again and generally chatting.

Friday morning we headed across to the Natioal Park near Exmouth for a walk at Yardie Creek.

Then went to Turquoise Bay for more snorkelling. The Ningaloo Reef is really close to the beach here so you don't need boats. There were some big fish even close to the beach but when I swam out to the reef the fish were fantastic, loads more then on the boat the previous day. Sadley Char couldn't quite make it to the reef as the current was very stong, plus it didn't help that I was leading her in the wrong direction for half the time!!!! We'll get loads more chances though so she hasn't missed anything. After some lunch 3 of the guys on the tour went out and let the current take them right along the reef, half way along they came face to face with 5 Reef Sharks! One of them was 5 foot long! Lucky for them Reef Sharks don't attack humans but they still said they were scared. I really wish I had gone back out with them. Friday night was the last night with everyone there so we had a few beers and and swapped email addresses.

Saturday (Today) was washing day! We had run out of clean clothes yet again! We have tried arranging a hire car so we can drive up to Broome but have not been very successful yet. We'll sort it out Monday I think and probably leave here Tuesday. The plan is to take 2 days to drive up to Broome, stopping at Karattha and Port Headland.

Char wanted to show off her tan, its coming along nicely.

What a nightmare!!!!!

2005-05-23T02:14:00.000-01:00

Where shall we start! At the beginning I guess. We left Perth early last Monday morning, in torrential rain. Perth hadn't had rain for 6 months prior so no one was complaining, apart from us! We were departing on a 5 day tour up the West coast to Exmouth. We were delayed departing as one of the passengers hadn't arrived on time, we left after 30 minutes of waiting for him but he didn't show. An hour into our first long drive our driver (Ben) got a phone call saying the missing passenger had arrived and that we should wait for him to catch us up, this meant we were approx 2 hours behind schedule. An hour later we were on our way again, destination the Pinnicles.

The Pinnicles are interesting but we thought they were not that great to look at. They are limestone columns that protrude from the desert floor, ranging from a couple of centimetres high to 3 metres high. They have been there for thousands of years and unfortunately might not be there for much longer as many are decintergrating fast.

We left the Pinnicles for the long drive up to Geraldton and then out to Kalbarri for our nights stay, we only hit one kangaroo which was good going as they are a menace on the road. We eventually got to Kalbarri at 21.30 after leaving Perth at 7.30, it was a long day. We had a BBQ and had a good chinwag before hitting the sack.

Early rise again this morning for the short drive in to the Kalbarri National Park to go see Z Bend Gorge and Nature's Window. The plan was to spend a couple of hours at the gorge first so the people who wanted to climb to the bottom could and then we would head over to Nature's Window before departing for Denham/Sharks Bay for our next stop.

The view from the top of the gorge was fantastic (above), the river was almost in full flow so made it even more impressive. We had a choice on whether we climbed in to the gorge or not, Char and myself decided we would go as we were told it was not that difficult. An hour or so in to the climb things were getting a little tricky, I decided to do my impression of a lemming and fall head first off a ledge on to bare rock 3 metres below. Luckily there was a doctor on our tour who knew what to do. Ben, our tour guide, went back up to raise the alarm for help. To make a long story short the SES (State Emergency Service) and an RN (Rural Nurse) stretchered me out and I was taken to Kalbarri health centre where a doctor examined me and said I had to go to Geraldton Hospital (a 2 hour ambulance ride back down South) for X-Ray's and CAT Scans. I was immobilised in the bottom of the gorge for about 4 hours so it was a long day again for everyone. At Geraldton the scans revealed that I had been very lucky and not broken any bones. They kept me in for 2 days for observation, then we have spent the past 5 days in a Motel in Geraldton resting. My head and neck are fine and have healed well but my back is taking time to get better but is well on the way to recovery.

We have arranged to be picked up today to continue with the tour, so its back to Kalbarri tonight. Tomorrow we WON'T be heading back down the gorge but will spend the morning looking round the town and might see if we can do some beach fishing.

"Its raining it's pouring, Steve is snoring!"

2005-05-15T20:17:00.000-01:00

I read in a book somewhere that Western Australia is the driest State, in the driest Country, in the Driest Continent, in the World. Not today however, its rained non stop since we got up, this ended our plans to go and see Cottlesloe beach, instead we had a lie in and then went to Bobby Dazzlers for lunch. Tonight we have to pack ready for an early departure in the morning.

A walk in the park!

2005-05-14T22:57:00.000-01:00

Today started with what we thought would be a gentle stroll up to Kings Park, however it was more of a hike!!!! Kings Park is 1000 acres so we decided not to walk the whole thing but to walk along the front part with the views over Perth city.

Then we laid on one of the lawns and soaked up the sun. (Daz, note the smiley faces!)

We got back to the hostel early evening and as it was dark I went to draw the curtains as one does, but unfortunately I pulled the complete curtain rail off the wall, to which Char's response was "Its ok we won't have curtains!". I did manage to attach it back to the wall but someone is going to have a shock when they next touch them! We are leaving Monday so we'll keep it quiet!

Soup and Beer!!!!

2005-05-13T21:23:00.000-01:00

Today I went and found the Fluor office here in Perth, I met up with the HR manager and the Energy & Chemicals (E&C) Salesman. The office over here is a lot smaller then at home, it has approx 100 people in it from what I saw. The E&C business unit is very small over here and most of Fluors work is done under the Mining & Minerals business unit. They are always looking for skilled people (as there is a lack of expertise here in Oz) and as my role at work is not specific to a business unit there could be an opportunity if I wished to pursue it. They also are desperate for Document Controllers so Char wouldn't have any trouble finding work too, the fact that she has Fluor on her CV too is a massive bonus. Enough of work talk!

After meeting up with Char, we finally managed to finalise our bank transfers in to our Oz bank account. Then we took a trip to Woolworths to find some dinner! Woolworths here is a supermarket. Char brought some fruit, so she is eating well April!!!! We decided to buy tomato soup with cheese bread and a potato bake. We thought we'd done the right thing as it was very cheap. However.....

....back in the hostel kitchen we put the potato bake in the oven and heated up our soup which was tasty with the bread. We were looking forward to tucking in to our potato bake after 45mins of it being in the oven. I struggle to open the oven due to the fact there wasn't a handle, then when I looked to see if it was cooked it was still frozen in the middle!!!!! Something wasn't right so Char made the decision to throw it away and that we should go to the pub instead (I've taught her well!). After a few VB's (victoria bitter) and Southern Comfort and lemonade's midnight came round and we left the pub and headed to McDonalds to finish our dinner! That was the end of our Friday.

Fremantle (Freo)

2005-05-12T20:47:00.000-01:00

Today we took the 30 min train journey South to Fremantle (Freo). Fremantle is the major port on the West Coast of Oz on the esturay of the Swan River. We went to visit Fremantle Prison which closed on 8 November 1991 (Char's 10th birthday). We took the guided tour which was really interesting and informative. Took tons of pictures a few are below. After the prison tour we walked down to the harbour and strolled along the coast before catching the train back to Perth. Managed to grab a free dinner at the hostel consisting of sausages and bread with onions, tasted very good as does anything when its free!!! So far we are really enjoying ourselves here but we do feel it is time to move on so we have booked a five day tour North along the coast to Exmouth, we depart Monday morning.

Char sitting by the Swan River

Freo Prison

Fremantle coast (nice pic of us both I think)

Char dipping a toe in the Indian Ocean.

Arrived

2005-05-10T22:30:00.000-01:00

Hello from Perth!!!! We arrived early today in one piece but very tired. Took 26 hours from door to door which was a long time! The flights were good, only slightly delayed but no turbulence. Got the shuttle bus from the Airport to the YHA, its worse then getting a bus from Farnborough to Camberley, I'm sure we went down the same road about 5 times!!!! The hostel is very basic but it will do for a few nights, as Bloo said we should not base our first impressions on this one as most are better. We didn't really do much today apart from sleep and eat dinner. Tomorrow we are either going to head down to Fremantle or look in to how we are gonna head North up the coast. No pics as yet, haven't had the opportunity to take any.

So it all starts from here, we hope we won't bore you all too much, but we are just lazy and don't want to write emails to everyone!!!!!

4 days to go.....

2005-05-04T20:44:00.000-01:00

.....and its all becoming very real!

Our leaving do on Friday was a good night out from what I can remember! I had a few to drink so can't remember much. Sadly no one took a camera out. Sorry Milky's Mum.

Was good to meet H for the first time and was good to see Briggsy again.

Thanks to everyone who turned up.

So only 4 days to go, I started thinking about exactly what I want/need to take with me today and all of a sudden its nearly time to leave. I remember the day back in November when we booked our flights and it seemed such a long time to when we actually left, and now its here.

Leaving Party

2005-04-23T20:13:00.000-01:00

Hi Guys

Steve and I are having a leaving party to celebrate departing the UK for Oz on our six month tour. The plan is to meet up in Fleet on Friday 29th April from about 7.30 onwards. Don't know what pub we will be in first but you won't be able to miss us. Be good to see as many of you as possible. Two weeks left now, bring it on!!!!

Croft

2005-04-18T10:19:00.000-01:00

Sorry in advance for the long post! (H the pictures are at the bottom!!!!!)

This weekend Char and I took the long trip up to Croft to watch Rich race again. Croft is a small place just South of Darlington on the River Tees, very picturesque. As I don’t have a car (no insurance) it was Char who had to do the 5 hour drive up on Saturday morning.

We were a little late leaving home but that didn’t matter as up North they had torrential rain and hail stones on Friday night, that meant that qualifying on Saturday was delayed by 3 hours while they tried to dry the track out a bit. The rain must have been bad as when we got up there just after lunch there was still flooding on some roads and the sheep in the fields were practicing their 100m Freestyle!

We arrived just in time as Rich was preparing to go out for his qualifying Session. He had been hoping for more rain as he seems to go well in the wet but unfortunately the black clouds held back and it was dry all day. He did manage to qualify 14th out of 24. Unfortunately Ian (Rich’s cousin) went out for his qualifying on intermediate tyres (in between wet tyres and slicks) as there was still some wet patches on the track, this was not a wise decision as they just got far too hot and Ian couldn’t find any grip, he ended up qualifying last. Ian and Rich are in different series, Ian races the Super Twins and Rich races in the Mini Twins.

With qualifying out of the way it was a quick turn around for the Sprint Race and then the first proper race (Round 3 of the series). Rich held his own in the sprint race but was never going to finish in the top 4 places (the ones that matter in the sprint race) so he just used it as a practise session. New dry rear tyre for the race and they were soon lining up on the grid. By his own admission he didn’t get a good start, this was shown by the 2 massive wheelies he pulled and he dropped a couple of places!!!!! He battled hard in the middle of the pack and came away with a very respectable 13th place. This meant he got 3 points for the championship. The mood was good on Saturday evening as we all met up back at the hotel for a few drinks.

Sunday morning was bright sunshine and a cold wind. Things kicked off at midday and both Rich and Ian were in high spirits. I actually remembered my camera on Sunday so finally I got some pictures! Rich once again didn’t get a very good start and dropped a place. He did stay with the pack though and was pushing the guy in front very hard, until finally he made a mistake and Rich went flying past, from then on he was out on his own in 14th and had a solid ride till the end. That meant 2 more Championship point. Ian had a hard battle with Chris who shared their garage with them, got some good pictures of them together. Ian won the battle and once again made it to the line before Chris.

Countdown Calendar!

2005-04-11T08:25:00.000-01:00

Just for Milky here is a picture of my Countdown Calendar. Only 3 weeks left at work now, think I may have wound down a bit early tho as I have no motivation what so ever this morning.

Brands Hatch

2005-03-24T08:58:00.000-01:00

Spent last weekend at Brands hatch as it was Rich's first race weekend. He done really well for his first race, the main thing is that he didn't fall off!!!! He nearly got pushed off at one point tho. On Saturday he managed to Qualify 25th out of 34, and in the two races on Sunday he finished 16th and 23rd. Bit gutted you missed out on the points in the first race but can't expect it all. Well done mate, was a good ride.

P.S. Sadly I didn't manage to get any pics of the weekend but have got some of him on a trackday a few weeks back. I'll get some pics when we are up at Croft in 3 weeks time.

My Birthday week

2005-03-14T11:29:00.000-01:00

This is going to be a long post i feel, please be patient, there will be lots of pictures towards the end.

My week pretty much followed my plan, however celerbrations did start a little early last Sunday night! Tom asked if i fancied a drink round the Northcamp so i thought why not, things proceeded and for some reason we ended up in Envy! It was a good night actually we had a laugh. Tom wasn't laughing on the way home tho, he had one too many!!!! I won't go in to details. So i spent most of monday in bed nursing a hangover. Tuesday went to funeral as planned then went to watch the ferrets as planned, we won 2-0, things are on the up. After football Char came round as planned and she had made me a birthday cake, shock, it looked good and tasted even better.

Wednesday i didn't get the breakfast in bed i was expecting but I let Char off as she had made an effort with the cake. Wednesday was spent up at the IMax Cinema outside Waterloo (Excellent, highly reccommend this) and then had a fantastic meal at Malacca (no comments Bloo).

Thursday, nothing to report.

Friday we went to see Hitch at Bracknell, very funny film. Then in the evening went went out to Guildford for a little while as Tom was out celerbrating his B'Day, which was actually yesterday. Had a good night, caught up with some people who I hadn't seen in a while.

Saturday afternonn was again spent at Football, we won again, looks like we will be safe from religation now. Then Saturday we caught the 19.04 train to Guildford, and within 20 mins I had a pint in my hand. From then onwards I don't remember much, might have something to do with the shots of Tequilla, Blue Gin and Absynth, that some "idiot" kept buying me!

I was impressed that i wasn't "ill" on the way home tho.

Sunday was a bit of a blur too, didn't make it out of bed till 16.00 and still not felling my best now!

I've take all the pictures off as they were taking too long to load!

Week off

2005-03-04T16:38:00.000-01:00

Finished work yesterday and got all next week off. Taken the time off for my birthday, I don't need much of an excuse!!! Got a strange look when I asked for the time off what with having 6 months off in 8 weeks time! Plans for the week are:

Monday - Nothing
Tuesday - Got to go to step-nan's funeral. Football in the evening.
Wednesday - Hopefully breakfast in bed (Hint Char!) then not much. Char taking me out for dinner in the evening
Thursday - Nothing
Friday - Nothing
Saturday - football, then off out to Guildford as early as possible!
Sunday - Recovering.

James Bond

2005-03-04T16:34:00.000-01:00

We went to the Casino night at the football club last week, it was a James Bond Theme, I think we pulled it off quite well.

Don't you just hate work?

2005-02-16T16:07:00.000-01:00

Well I do anyway. Had a really bad couple of days, really starting to get me down. Today I have even considered leaving and finding a temp job till we go to Oz, not sure how that would work out so some more thought is needed in that area.

Apparantly Fluor is "The Employer of Choice". Thats a joke, I have asked a few people today why we actually work here and no one could answer it! One even said its certinaly not for the money. The short version of why I am unhappy goes like this, I have been put on to a new project we just starting to set up an 'in-house' Progress Measurement System. Now I have never used this system let alone set it up from scratch before. So I thought to myself "I can do this" and have battled away for a couple of days not getting very far, so it looks like I can't actually do this!!!! I have asked for help from a specific person who is knowledgable about it and all she seems to do is make comments like "You can't just give up" and "Gather a set of questions that I can answer", I am like, "I'm not giving up I am just struggling to proceed any further" and "How can I get a list of questions together until you answer my current question so I can proceed until I get to anthoer point where I need to answer a question".

It really is frustrating me. Just realised that as I am typing this I am hitting the keys harder and harder as I go. Work shouldn't be like this, you should be able to gain experience and knowledge from the people you work with and not having to bite your tongue before you say something you regret.

I have got 39 days of actually being in the office left, can I stick it out and get to Oz with the option of earning money as soon as I get back? Watch this space!

P.S. Sorry for the rant and boring post about work!

My first post

2005-02-15T20:57:00.000-01:00

I thought I better put something on here instead of Steve doing all the work. I just want to say that as the time gets nearer the more I think of everything new that I am going to experience and how exicted I am at the prospect of that. Not long to go now, counting every hour, minute oh and second.

11 Weeks left at work

2005-02-14T08:43:00.000-01:00

Yep its true only 11 weeks left at work, that equates to 43 days of actually being in the office. Time just doesn't seem to be going quick enough for me, although in 11 weeks time I'll probably be running round like a headless chicken trying to get everything organised!

Nearly forgot, HAPPY VALENTINES!!!!!

New Pictures

2005-02-01T08:42:00.000-01:00

New Pictures added!

14 weeks to go

2005-01-31T17:39:00.000-01:00

Well guys not long to go now.....................

First Post Test

2005-01-31T12:35:00.000-01:00

Testing Testing 1, 2, 3!!!! Hope this works.