Cooga

So from Melbourne city I began the train and bus ride over to Kate's halls (for the umteenth time). We met up and made our way to the airport for what was to be our last trip together. At the airport Kate bought a book called One Day which she was glued to all flight. The flight over to perth took about six hours (Australia is a rediculously large country). We made our way to a hostel just north of the city centre called Governer Robinson's. It was a really nice old colonial place in a friendly looking neighbourhood. We walked to town in the evening and I instantly liked the feel of the place, a much more relaxed, friendly place compared to Melbourne. It felt more like the kind of city I would like to ... read more

Alice Springs is a large town in the outback situated in the centre of Australia. It is in the Northern Territory region and owned by native Aboriginal people. Alice Springs has a strange feel to it. The aboriginal people are distinct looking, they have dark skin and ginger hair and enjoy sitting around on the streets, which to be honest, seems to make the white people walking around feel a bit uncomfortable. Their culture is vastly different from the white Australian's, and of course the Aboriginals feel the white man stole and pillaged their land; this all leads to a lot of racial divide. The Australian government gave the land around Alice Springs back to the Aboriginal people in 1985 and now they charge people to drive on certain surrounding areas, notably the route to Ayers ... read more

I leave Christchurch on a flight due for Melbourne via a stopover in Sydney. I land at 6pm and make my way over to see Kate at her university halls. I catch a shuttle bus from the airport to town, followed by a train out to the suburbs and then a bus to the Monash University campus. This takes about 90mins but im so excited about seeing Kate that its worth it. To those of you that don't know, Kate is one of my best friends, we met through the surf club at university in Liverpool and she is currently studying for a semester at university in Melbourne. Kate is currently on a half term break so we meet up to travel Australia together. We catch up in the evening and the next day are due ... read more

So as i was saying when i went skydiving in Fiji i met an englishman called Nick who said that if i wanted to learn to solo jump i had to go to Taupo and do an AFF course with a world renowned guy called Geoff so i booked a bus from Paihia and made my way down. The bus took around 10hrs and i checked into my hostel and had a wander around town. Taupo is in the centre of the North Island and is situated next to the biggest lake in NZ. It has many skydiving centres that all focus on tandem skydives; for some reason it is a massive tourist attraction rather than a sport, which was really annoying at times because tandems got priority for plane spaces. Taupo Tandem Skydiving was at ... read more

I left San Francisco at 3pm thinking my flight was at 18.50 but i got put on the earier 4pm flight to LA then a 3hr connecting flight over to Fiji. I left at 9pm LA time on 20th feb and arrived at 6am on 22nd in Nadi having crossed the international date line. Fiji is one of the closest countries to the date line meaning that it is one of the earliest place of daybreak in the world. This made me think that as I saw the sunrise on Monday i would be one of the first people on the planet to welcome in this new day. Back in England this would not be seen for another 13hrs! I got a shuttle bus to my hotel, which is on the same bay as the airport ... read more