Chief and Wife

This last week has proved both productive and very tiresome all in one. We spent the majority of it in Mooloolaba on 'The Greatest campsite in Australia' and so that softened the blow somewhat. Much of my time was wasted waiting for a response to my initial job enquiry and nursing my lame wife. Coupled with this I had the disagreeable task of having to deal with the campsite manager idiot. These characters truly are a breed apart. They come in both flavours, men and women but they are essentially the same creature. Usually quite chumpy with glasses, thinning hair and an overwhelming sense of self-importance. Generally we first encounter them being super nice to similarly built Australians and then things change dramatically once I open my mouth. Mental shutters come flying down and I ... read more

As a last gasp before reality hits I was very keen to get to the theme park belt of the Gold Coast hinterland. I suspected that Em wasn't quite as keen as I but gamely she came along without too much resistance. Ever since I made her go on 'Oblivion' at Alton Towers which left her a shaking sobbing wreck, Em has had an aversion to rollercoasters, perhaps understandably. Given the choice of many theme parks we settled on Warner Brothers Movie world. I figured that there would be enough film related guff to keep Em from getting too annoyed at my constant badgering to go on the thrill rides. Upon entering the park my inner child, which isn't always brilliantly hidden, would not be stopped. I insisted on kicking off proceedings on the 'Bat force' ... read more

Here we are in the less than exciting harbour town of Hervey Bay having returned from Fraser Island to find the place in the full throws of Easter madness. It is tradition at Easter for whole communities to descend on such places and erect what can only be described as canvas cities housing many families with seemingly endless supplies of children. The men then sit around drinking weak lager, talking about cars and comparing beer bellies while the women try to outdo each other in the pitch of their screeching. I have decided that the collective noun for middle-aged Aussie women should be a 'Squawk'. Anyway it's always like this and we have to take camping space where we can find it so we're stuck here for a few more days. Then it'll be back to ... read more

Here we are back down under and continuing the adventure in our much loved van Irvine. We really have developed something of an unhealthy attachment to this 23 year old Nissan Urvan ( hence the startlingly imaginative name Irvine! ) but he has served us particularly well over the past 4 years. I have a suspicion that if Em had to choose between me and the van then I might be shown the door. We finally flew back to Oz on the 25th of February through the ever inefficient Heathrow and straight into Sydney after an unscheduled 5 hour holiday in Hong Kong airport. Thankfully we were greeted by fabulous sunshine and the ever beautiful city itself, not to mention the ever beautiful residents. This truly is an uplifting city to visit and sipping coffee in ... read more

Well here's a turn up for the books, we are no longer in South America as the title may have given away. There are a number of reasons for our early departure from this part of the world but by far the dumbest is the simple fact that we failed to cancel an internal flight and the kind people at Lan airways took it upon themselves to cancel all of our onward flights including the incredibly overbooked leg from Santiago to Auckland. Long story short, we would have been stuck in South America for much longer than planned or budgeted for so we bailed. Having seen Macchu Pichu and countless other wonderous things I felt satisfied that we had made a decent fist of our first trip to South America. We couldn't afford the Galapagos and ... read more