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We have finally located an internet cafe! So I shall try and fill you in from a while back.
From Wanaka we headed for Queenstown, stopping at “Puzzling World”. Here we found a ‘village’ dedicated to wierd and wonderful puzzles and illusions, including a giant wooden 3-D maze. We had an enjoyable morning being children again! The journey to Queenstown took us through amazing scenery and the weather continued to smile down on us. Queenstown (an adventure-seeker’s paradise) is a lively town perched on the side of a lake and surrounded by a large mountain range. We decided against Bungee Jumping, Paragliding, Sky-diving or Jet-boating because of our limited budget. As the weather was holding out, we made the most of our summer tent, in order to save money.
Our trip then took us down to Te Anau where we spent two nights staying on a deer farm, in log cabins, overlooking a valley. Te Anau is thought of as the gateway to New Zealand’s ‘Sounds’ (fjiords), which was where we were making our way towards. We had chosen to visit ‘Doubtful Sound’ as this is relatively unspoilt compared to some of the larger fjiords. We were lucky enough to have a new boat, which had comfortable bunks and two friendly Israelis as cabin mates. It was a fantastic experience where we saw spectacular scenery (as used in ‘Lord of the Rings’) and sailed through totally calm waters. Dolphins came and played in the bow waters and jumped playfully in the air. We came close to a seal colony as we reached the Tasman Sea. The Sound was experiencing unusual weather as it had had 5 days of sun, when usually it rains almost constantly. However, when we decided to go Kayaking from the boat, the heavens opened completely! This was fairly enjoyable as it kept the Sand Flies at bay and encouraged the dolphins to swim nearer us. The food on board was really great and we spent the night playing cards with 3 other back-packers.
Our next destination was Invercargil and the Catlins at the very southern end of NZ. The gravel roads made fun driving!!?! More beautiful scenery.
We then headed to Dunedin for our Christmas hostel. Dunedin is a great town which has a Scottish influence. The hostel was very friendly and we enjoyed our Christmas Day having a cold buffet in the garden with all the other backpackers. Each nationality had to bring or make a dish from their country, we contributed a (bought!) Christmas cake. We also checked with a travel agent about areas to go in Fiji, and discovered that our flight had been re-scheduled and been brought forward two days. This meant that we needed to rush up to Christchurch on Boxing Day so that we could sort out returning the car and selling the tent, etc.. A shame.
Christchurch seemed a really nice city, although we didn’t really have a chance to look round as much as we would have liked. The hostel was really nice though.
Our flight to Fiji was only a third full so we could spread out, which was a real blessing. The heat hit us as soon as we stepped out of the airplane, a staggering 33C! We stayed in Nadi for one night (not a particularly nice place as next to the airport) and then made our way down to the Coral Coast on the local bus, which had air-conditioning…..no glass in the windows. The Fijians were very friendly and were talking to us about the towns and places to go, whilst UB40 played in the background. UB40 is very popular here!
The last 5 days, over New Year, have been spent in a dorm (but by ourselves) in a resort called ‘The Crow’s Nest’. The dorm was actually the crow’s nest. We have relaxed by the pool, watched the sea and read. And what a place to do it! Fiji is fantastic and the locals are extremely nice. They have their own time when they do things (”Fiji time, any time. No rush.”) and everything is just very relaxed. The beer is good and reasonably cold considering how very hot it is out here… sure beats the rain! New Year’s Eve was great, we sat and drank our Duty-free Champagne whilst watching the waves break and the locals dancing around (or in) the pool. Fabulous! …Wish you were here, etc, etc..!
We have now moved around the coast to the capital Suva, where we are waiting (Fiji time) for a boat to come and take us to a nearby island where we will be staying over the next three days. Sand, sea, beer and mosquitoes!
Only nine days before we will be back, and we are already wondering where the three months have gone. Never mind.
Hope all is well and that you have had a good break and a happy Christmas.

It has been a while since we last wrote, but we have finally found some time to catch our breath and to get in touch with everyone.
The last time we wrote was back in Rotorua before seeing the geysers and thermal pools. The Lady Knox geyser was really spectacular, as were the bubbling mud pools and multi-coloured deposits left in the thermal pools. We took lots of photos (whilst braving the strong sulphur smell!) which have come out quite well, as it was a sunny day. Unfortunately, the night before we had planned to camp in the Youth Hostel grounds, but it rained so hard whilst we were in the bar (wine-tasting!) that when we went to the tent to go to bed, we found that it was swimming in a puddle of water. It was 11 p.m. so we decided to dismantle the tent and sleep in our car, as it was still raining. Our cheapest night’s accommodation yet! It certainly sobered us up.
After visiting Taupo (a real action place), we drove to Napier. This is a pretty art-deco place which hasn’t been changed a great deal. We decided to give camping another go, although the rain had been coming in heavy bursts, so we stayed in a small village called Havelock North. The camp-site was hysterical! Imagine Benny Hill running around a 70’s type camp-site and you’ve pictured this place. We were fairly pleased to pack up and go the next morning, especially as we missed the rain by minutes.
We felt that it was time to make our way down to Wellington, as we had a ferry booked. Wellington was certainly more interesting than Auckland with a nicer centre and views, but it is just another city and it was still raining. We did briefly visit the national museum there, called Te Papa, which is equivalent to the Millennium Dome but free and permanent. Unfortunately the visit was brief, as every man and his child had had the same idea of avoiding the rain. By this point we were eager to get on the ferry to Picton in the South Island. We hadn’t understood why the ferry had been so pricey, but we soon realised that it was just like going across the Channel. The journey took three hours - it was nice to let someone else do the driving for a change!
The South Island is very pretty and there is more to see and do here. We are definitely enjoying this island more than the north. We stayed at Nelson the first night, and had a fantastic seafood meal over-looking the bay whilst drinking the local wine. We stayed the night at a local holiday park in a basic cabin, as it was just as cheap as camping and slightly more comfortable. We then moved on to the Nelson Lakes the next morning, which were stunning. One of the largest lakes had also flooded its camp-site, which made us feel less cursed! As the rain started we drove for a couple of hours to Westport on the west coast, stopping to walk over NZ’s longest swing-bridge over the Buller Gorge. To look down at the gushing river below whilst halfway across certainly made your stomach turn!
Westport is a large coal town which is also home to a seal colony. The seals were enjoying themselves sun-baking and fighting - it is mating season. When returning to our car, we saw a Weka which is often mistaken for a Kiwi, eating the remains of roadkill from the parked cars. Charming! We decided to drive down the coast (spectacular coastal views) to Hokitika and spend the night camping in a small, fantastic 4* camp-site next to the roaring sea. (The camp-site also had new log cabins for the richer traveller.) We sat on a rock groyne watching the sun set, whilst laughing hysterically…..the tide was coming in and we were getting wet/stranded! In the morning we visited the town and saw the elusive (and nocturnal) Kiwi. They are much bigger than we had imagined and very quick.
Our next trek was to the Franz Joseph glacier. On the way we kept ourselves amused by reading out the funnier creek names, for example; ‘Big Deep Creek’, ‘Roaring Swine Creek’, ‘Gout Creek” and ‘Nuggety Creek’. You can see that the journey was fairly tedious, although very picturesque. When we arrived we went and booked ourselves onto a next full day trip up the glacier and into a hostel for two nights in anticipation of aches. We were right to do so!
The glacier was brilliant! We were extremely lucky that we had had so much rain as it had made the ice more blue in colour, and even more so that it wasn’t raining the day we went up, which apparently is unusual. We walked six hours through ice caves and down into crevasses. The whole experience was utterly amazing and very tiring. Our guide gave us a fright though, by falling into (fortunately) a small crevasse whilst cutting a path for us in the ice. Things could have been very different.
We went to Lake Matheson the next day (for a walk-ouch!), where if it is not raining you get a very good view of Mount Cook - it was raining, but the lake was glorious.
We are now in Wanaka, a typical alpine ski resort surrounded by beautiful snow-capped mountains and over-looking Lake Wanaka. Obviously as it is the summer months people are here to walk and sail. We camped last night in the Youth Hostels’ garden, as it has been nothing but glorious sunshine since we arrived! Long may it continue.
Hope everyone is well and is beginning to wind down ready for the Christmas break. We wish you all a very happy Christmas and shall be thinking of you enjoying your feasts with your loved ones. We shall probably be having a drink on the beach!

Kia Ora (Hi in Maori, not an advertisement for a squash!)

Rain. Green. (SWISH). Rain. Green. (SWISH). Rain. Green. (SWISH). Rain. Green. (SWISH). Rain. Green. (SWISH). Rain. Green. (SWISH). Rain. Green. (SWISH). This has been the view from our car windscreen for the past seven days! Home from home as they say.
We arrived last Wednesday and stayed three nights in Auckland, which was like any other large city, so we used the time to sort out a car (Toyota Corolla) for the rest of our stay. It was amazingly only 12 pounds per day. (The petrol is about a third of the price in the UK, so travelling around in a car is a reasonably cheap and flexible way to travel).
After we left Auckland we visited the beach where “The Piano” (and Zena: The Warrior Princess?!) were filmed, called Karekare. The beach was pretty much deserted except for the surfers, probably due to the large storm clouds looming.
We then headed up to the Bay of Islands, north of Auckland, where the rain really kicked in. The journey up there seemed to be by way of a roller-coaster, going up and down coastal roads. The mountains, which are many, all had a rain cloud sitting on the top. We managed to pitch our newly-bought 2-man tent (a summer one that came with a warning ‘not to trust the waterproofness in heavy rain’), in a lovely camping ground, between the rain torrents. We were fortunate to have had a tent, as every hostel in the area had been booked out for the night. That night it poured down. The rivers rose two metres in one hour, and two/three of the only roads up to this region were flooded. We didn’t know this last piece of vital information, when we left in the morning, and spent four hours trying to pass down these two roads - to no avail! We did, however, enjoy wading in the road-pool, although the water was freezing.
We also visited a glow-worm cave in the area, which was pretty amazing. There were hundreds of them all on the limestone ceilings and when the lanterns were dimmed the ceilings would light up with their glowing bottoms! Quite unusual.
We then drove 5 hours south past Auckland to the Coromandel Peninsula where the rain abated temporarily. This is a stunning area. We also had a lovely hostel to dry our damp things in. We had our first New Zealand meals of oysters and rack of lamb……for only ten pounds each!!
The next day we drove on to Tauranga, by way of a waterworks park. This is where you see amusing things powered by water. It was great fun. Tauranga was a nice town (possibly enhanced by the fact it wasn’t raining!)with a very friendly hostel owner. We decided that we should follow the crowds and go and see ‘Harry Potter’ at the cinema, which we both really enjoyed.
Today we have had an easy day, as we only had to drive 1hr30 to get to Rotorua, which is where we are typing from now. This town is famous for its thermal activity! So tonight we are camping, hopefully without the rain, and tomorrow we are off to see the geysers, etc.

It has been a very busy time for us over the last two and a half weeks and a time of great experiences. Having discovered upon arrival at Brisbane that we in fact only had 17 days in which to get up to Cairns, we spent two hours with a travel agent booking the rest of our journey. We were disappointed to realise that 17 days just wouldn’t be enough to do this section of Oz justice and that we would have to leave out Great Keppel Island and Magnetic Island amongst others. A tight squeeze to say the least!
We made our first stop Noosa Junction after Brisbane, which we been told was beautiful. Upon arrival though, it appeared that we had entered a tourist spot, particularly one road called ‘Hastings Street’ which was back-to-back Australiana nik-naks. We decided to try the other side of the town and discovered a much quieter area, unfortunately the heavens decided to open on us (literally!) so we went to the cinema for refuge…..”The Others”- a v. good film! We were quite pleased that we were going the next day as we would have been struggling to avoid the other tourists if we had stayed much longer.
The next stop was Hervey Bay, a route to Fraser Island, where the Youth Hostel was brilliant (and air-conditioned!). We left our big rucksacks there (only taking the bare essentials) and made our way to the boat that would take us to Fraser Island. Fraser Island is the biggest sand (only) island in the world, with the purest strain of dingoes living there and a World Hertitage site. We spent two nights there and had a fantastic time, especially so as we were sharing a room, in the middle of the rainforest, with Colin and Kelly a Canadian couple (originally) from Vancouver.
The island had many spectacular areas including; a 75 mile beach, numerous sand dunes running into fresh water pools/lakes and sub-tropical rainforest. Our guide did some taste tests and showed us lots of wildlife, etc. We went for an 18 minute flight in a Cessna over the east coast of the island and saw a mother Humpback and her calf, a sting ray and a turtle. We went for a swim in Lake Wabby, which is a pool that has been left as the dunes have moved in around it, and were sucked on by Jungle Perch! We enjoyed a few glasses of wine whilst watching the sunset, which was lovely.
The only problem with the island was that there were loads of Marsh Flies, which are just like Horse Flies, and swarm around colours in the darker end of the spectrum, i.e. purple t-shirts!!
From there we took another overnight bus to Airlie Beach (13 hours) where we

checked into our new accommodation for the next three nights…..a tallship called “Solway Lass”. It is a one hundred year old tallship which sails around the Whitsundays, stopping at isolated beaches and fantastic snorkelling areas. We had a good time on board, particularly as we had a brilliant viewing platform for the ‘Meteor Storm’ on the 19th November. It was awesome!! The star gazing oppportunities were endless. We also tried our hands at Scuba diving again, which was excellent. The coral reefs around the Whitsundays were relatively untouched and were so diverse.
After getting back on dry land we made our way up to Mission Beach (famous for its Cassowaries - we didn’t see any!), where there was a youth hostel in the middle of the rainforest miles away from anywhere. It was a little bit like a hippy-commune and very laid back. We used it as a base to relax and to hone our backgammon skills - there was no internet or T.V.
We then made it to Cairns where it has been non-stop adventure! The first day we had amazing fun doing white-water rafting (see enclosed attachment…we are the two in the back!) although both of us managed to rip our toenails! The next day we went on a large speedboat out to the Great Barrier Reef where we snorkelled our hearts out watching all the gorgeous coloured fish and contented turtles. No sharks unfortunately!! Today, we went hot-air ballooning over the Atherton Tablelands, which was a good experience, but we definitely preferred ballooning in the U.K. as there is more to see!
As you can see it has been an exhausting 17 days, but what a memorable time! It is nearly time for us to leave this amazing land and we shall be very sad to leave it, however, we have missed so much out that we will definitely have to come back. We highly recommend a visit, if you have not been already. It is a country that has everything.
Off to New Zealand on Wednesday, so we will be in touch from there!

Hope all is well at home and that you’re enjoying preparing for Christmas (!). It seems a little strange to see Christmas trees, Santa’s and fake snow in the shop windows, that are also glaring with the sun.
The night session in the Sydney Observatory was a little disappointing as there was a large group and not a great deal of time for us all to look through the telescopes. We did see Mars and then a really clear image of the Moon, which was fairly impressive. Unfortunately, the Southern Cross is very low to the horizon at the moment, so we will have to wait a while to see that.
We have been working our way up the coast between Sydney and Brisbane, stopping at Shoal Bay, Forster, Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour and Murwillumbah. The towns have all had gorgeous stretches of beaches and active marinas. We have been on a couple of boat trips (usually with small numbers of people on board, because it is not peak season yet) and have been extremely lucky to have seen both bottle-nosed dolphins and hump-backed whales. Truly a one-off experience.
In Murwillumbah, we were very energetic and climbed Mt. Warning at 3 a.m. so that we would be at the summit for sunrise - it is the first place in Australia to catch the sun. Mt. Warning (called this by Cook as a marker for ships, as he ran aground on the reef nearby) is the old central vent of the largest volcano in the southern hempisphere. The walk was classed as strenuous, which, fortunately, we didn’t know until we reached the bottom! It certainly was a v. difficult climb of 8.8 km’s (return), especially by torch-light. The last 200m was basically a sheer rock face which was incredibly tough going. The view from the top was very rewarding, as you could see the whole outer rim of the crater. We were very pleased to have conquered such a hard climb, although the rest of the day was a wipe-out!! The Youth Hostel in Murwillumbah was really quaint, lying alongside the Tweed River. The Manager gives out free ice-cream to its residents at 9 each evening, which we all enjoyed! We met another couple there, who joined us on the climb, and we spent two v. funny evenings playing Monopoly - the only complete game supplied!
The journey to Brissy was non-eventful, although it had started to rain. It is still raining now. The rain here is fairly powerful and particularly sudden. But at least it’s still warm enough for T-shirts and shorts….;-)!
You may not hear from us for a while as it is non-stop for the next couple of weeks, cramming in as much as we can before taking-off for Auckland on the 28th November, from Cairns.

It seems a long time ago since we left Melbourne, so I shall briefly run through our adventures since we last wrote.
We made it to the Sanctuary and saw loads of native wildlife, including the Platypus! There were few people there so we had a lovely day walking around wildlife spotting.
The next day we were just sunbathing/snoozing in a park, when we noticed we were next to Melbourne’s theatre where “Mamma Mia” was playing and people were waiting to be seated for the matinee performance. We thought that we might cheekily enquire if there were any spare seats….yes, we got in, and yes, it was one of the best musicals we have ever seen. We highly recommend it!
(I’m sure all of you will be interested to know, the new room was much nicer. No mushrooms!)
We then had a grotty all-night express bus journey to Sydney. We didn’t sleep much, but it saved one night’s accommodation.
We had a couple of hours kip at the Y.H. ( v. nice in a lovely leafy suburb of Sydney) when we finally arrived 11 hours later and then decided to explore. We ended up at the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. What an amazing sight! It was really warm and they both looked v. impressive.
The next day we decided to make use of the weather and to try out Manly Beach, north of Sydney and accessible by ferry. It is a huge expanse of yellow sand and huge waves. It was very windy, we attempted sunbathing, but it only lasted for 15 minutes as we were quickly becoming a sand dune, so we gave up and decided a trip to the local shark aquarium would be nice. That was an experience.
It is Good Food Month in Sydney, so every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in October there is a collection of stalls selling cheap dishes from local restaurants on a hill over-looking the Opera House. We went there for some great thai food, with a few glasses of different wine. As we were by the Opera House, we went to have a look round and ended up buying 2 cheap seats to watch our first opera of Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’. It was fantastic! We were both v. surprised how much we enjoyed going to see an opera. Do you think the location helped??!
We have pottered about the city and the suburbs, meeting up with a few of our friends from uni/school (some whom we haven’t seen for a number of years). It has been lovely to see faces that we recognise and to have a proper chat (Annelise from Bruton, Warwick from Queen’s and Mark from Loughborough).
We are off to Sydney’s Observatory tonight to do a spot of star gazing, which should be good. Tomorrow we make our way to Shoal Bay, near Newcastle, where we may be lucky and see dolphins. Now that would be an experience!
From now on we will probably be spending a short amount of time visiting lots of towns/attractions going up the east coast, as we have quite a large distance to cover and are rapidly running out of time.

It’s been a v. hectic time over the last few days, as we have been travelling between Adelaide and Melbourne (11 hours between by Express coach). We decided to do the local tour called ‘The Great Ocean Road Tour’ which takes you down the South Australian coastline between the two cities, with a one night stop-over to break up the journey.
It was a really beautiful road (the original road was dug by the returning servicemen after WWI, to give them work) following the sheer rocks and passing through limestone cliffs. Many of these limestone cliffs have eroded to leave stacks sitting out in the ocean, and we viewed all the important/famous stacks such as ; The 12 Apostles, London Bridge and the Arch. All pretty much self-explanatory as to what they looked like! They were all v. spectacular, particularly the 12 Apostles.
We also went into an extinct volcano which has now been left as a nature reserve, and we saw a v. tired koala sitting in the fork of a eucalyptus tree (apparently they sleep for 19 hours a day….what a fantastic creature!). We also saw quite a few red Kangaroo’s jumping away from us and wild emu’s grazing all around. It was truly amazing.
We saw miles of beaches: all unspoilt and sandy. The views were incredible. We travelled through Torquay, a famous surf town…..sound familiar??! It is home to the big surf named brands such as; Rip Curl and QuikSilver.
A down-note though….our hotel (which we had to book due to school holiday “urban camps” in Melbourne taking all the Y.H. places……darn kids!!) is disgusting. There is a collection of mushrooms growing happily out of the wall in the Men’s Bathroom, about the size of my hand. Now usually we would be resourceful and cook up a risotto or something, however the thought of it being in the bathroom is rather off-putting!!! To say that this “hotel” is not clean is an understatement. However, we shall persist for another night, and then we shall have alternative accommodation for tomorrow. (Apparently, through the backpackers grapevine, a chap found a baby bat and bed lice in one hostel, so really we should count ourselves lucky).
Melbourne seems nice. We shall be hoping to go to a wildlife sanctuary and also watch the Fairy Penguins on the coast at Phillip Island. The city is famous for having four seasons in one day, and so far we have been pulling our jumpers on and off. Victoria (the state) is the same size as Britain, so it is v. unlikely that we shall be exploring much more than Melbourne itself.
On a serious note, we have been following the news and it seems that Australia has been prey to lots of hoaxers concerning sending white powder through the post. Melbourne has evacuated two buildings with scares, fortunately the day before we arrived. Sydney has also been experiencing the same problems. Though we don’t seem to get a lot of news about the U.K. over here.

Still having an amazing time out here, with lots to do and lots to experience.
After another 6 hour bus ride from Alice to Uluru (Ayers Rock) we were pretty fed up with sitting on buses! We went straight to the famous rock itself and were told all the history behind the Aborgininal stories of the Rainbow Serpent and it’s creation. We then went to see some more rock art and the billabongs created from the excess water coming from the top of the rock. It is a really impressive size 340 km above ground level and very red due to the iron oxide in the soil. We watched the sunset on the rock (with many others!) and hopefully we will have some great pictures. We then had a cook your own BBQ back at the hostel and crashed into bed as it had been a v. long day! (I have to say that I was v. wary of all the fauna in the area…apparently 4 of the 9 most venomous snakes were found around there…!!)
The next morning (early) we went to see the Olgas, another famous set of domed-shaped mountains nearby and then on to the rock again. Unfortunately it was tipping it down and the climb was cancelled - this made life easier for us as we were still undecided as to whether we were going to climb up due to the wishes of the Aboriginal people, a moral dilemma. Instead we decided to walk (9.4 km) around the base which took 1.5 hours and we got completely soaked. It was well worth it though. I do hope our photos come out.
We then returned to Alice Springs - in the rain - and slept for ages! Alice is quite nice considering that it is a pass-through for thousands of tourists everyday headed for Ayers Rock. The hostel was much nicer than Darwin and certainly more friendly.
we then had to catch a plane to Adelaide. We arrived in the rain!!! I’m sure that Oz is supposed to be warmer and drier than the UK?!! The hostel is so nice, it is just like a hotel and actually thinking about some of the dives we have stayed in, probably much nicer. It is clean and loaded with facilities (even a cinema screen!). The city of Adelaide is lovely with lots to do. Today we went to The Centre Of Wine Tasting, which has been opened 7 days. What luck! We tried rather a lot of wines and have been smiling and giggly all day! Great wine!

Just got back from Kakadu National Park (300km’s from Darwin) having had a fantastic experience. The park was much hotter and in the middle of Aboriginal Land, so there was plenty of culture to absorb which was fascinating.
We went on a boat cruise and saw plenty of crocs and loads of wildlife, which was quite thrilling. Best of all, we spent 7 hours with just us two, two rangers and an Aboriginal lady called Patsy - can’t stop associating that name with Ab Fab! - going round the Bush where most tourists don’t go. We got really close to Water Buffalos, Dingoes, Frilly-Necked Lizards and Wallabies. We were allowed to hold a File snake (lives in the rivers) that some Aboriginals had caught for their tea. We then ate from a fire, Magpie Goose, that Patsy had caught that morning and then cooked traditionally on the coals of the fire, and Johnny bread (damper)whilst drinking tea made in a billy-can watching the sunset. What a brilliant experience! Words fail to capture how amazing this was. We were so lucky to have got that trip, as it was through the bus driver who seemed to have had quite a laugh with us. Wow!
We also visited loads of Aboriginal rock art sites, which were ace, especially when you see the grindstones that they would have used over 20 000 years ago, just sitting there in front of you.
The only down-note: the mozzies love me!
The accommodation in Kakadu was v. good but Darwin hasn’t been too impressive, but then that goes for most of Darwin. It is a bit of a dive just catering for smelly backpackers like us! Never mind, it has all been worthwhile so far by meeting Patsy.
Off tomorrow to Alice Springs, where the humidity will hopefully decrease and unfortunately the tourists will increase. I have discovered that I really dislike other backpackers….they just want a swimming pool and set tours! How boring!
Anyway hope the sight of all the Christmas stuff in the shops is cheering you all!! I’m back off for a stubbie.