Carrie Bibb and John Whitten

The crossing from the North Island was picturesque, especially the final part through Marlborough Sound (I think ‘sound’ seems to be another word for fjord) to the town of Picton. Here we settled into a lovely hostel - complete with hot tub and complimentary hot chocolate pudding! We pottered around for a couple of days before heading on a very pretty drive west to Golden Bay. On the way we climbed a very steep hill to Rawhiti Cave which had very impressive stalactites…well worth the effort (though I’m not sure Caroline agrees!). We stayed the next couple of nights at The Innlet, a lovely relaxed hostel with a hammock, big trampoline-type net over a stream, and outdoor baths (as well as more conventional indoor ones!). From here we explored Farewell Spit (at the North-Western tip of ... read more

We left Melbourne on the 11th of January; it was expected to reach 43 degrees C so we were quite happy to be on the way out of the country. We spent the whole day at the airport after a lift from our kind housemate who was off to pick up a friend at 9am. We weren’t to fly until much later (after 4pm) but didn’t much fancy dragging our luggage across town and spending what little time we had left in Melbourne in our somewhat warm-non-air-conditioned-house. We arrived in Auckland and picked up our hire car from the airport carpark - much less effort than the plan to buy a car. Then drove into Auckland proper where we spent the next few days. Whilst in Auckland we spent one day on Rangitoto Island - a ... read more

We left the Blue Mountains for a long drive Southwards through some surprisingly green countryside. At Kiama we stopped to see the blow hole - but we caught it on a calm day when it wasn’t doing much blowing, but it was a jolly good hole! We jumped out of the car to grab lunch in the small town of Milton where we were surprised that the weather outside was very hot and windy - it felt like a fan assisted oven! I used this as an excuse to pop into the cooler TAB (betting shops normally attached to pubs) and put some bets on the Melbourne Cup - a huge deal here even worthy of a public holiday in Melbourne! Anyway, we listened to the race on the radio later and it was exciting as ... read more

We checked into our hostel-come-B&B in Brisbane and spent the next couple of days exploring the first proper city of our trip. We enjoyed wandering along the Southbank with its artificial beach and flower covered arches over the path and also took in some culture: museums, galleries, coffees and cakes! On Friday morning it was time to continue our journey, this time heading towards Byron Bay via Lamington National Park (which had come highly recommended by Caroline’s Auntie Janet). The road up into the park was steep and afforded brilliant views down to the coast over Surfers Paradise - a strip of high rise development. Having spent an hour or two walking (and eating homemade pies in a lovely cafe) we plowed on, arriving in Byron Bay just in time to find out that spring weekends ... read more

From Townsville it was a fairly short drive down to Airlie Beach so we arrived with plenty of time to pitch the tent and explore. We chose a central campsite - a strange place which felt like it was a popular site with tourists back in the early seventies but had since been a bit neglected. Airlie itself was a lively strip of cafes and bars mixed in with travel agents and tourist shops and finished off with a large man-made lagoon for visitors to lounge around. We spent some time pottering, lounging and swimming before taking a walk down the high street to get booked onto a tour of the Whitsunday Islands (everyone in Airlie seems to be there to head out to the islands). Leaving it until the last minute to book was a ... read more