DK DownUnder08

Hello everyone! Welcome to our final blog, and we have a lot to catch up on. Well, we had another couple days in Mooloolaba, we met the girls on Thursday morning and enjoyed another round of surfing with them, then on Friday we had our opening mass with the church and hung out with lots of the Canadians there, including Archbishop Smith. This was also the day we went to the Australia Zoo! We all got free face painting! And we enjoyed the Crocosseum show where we also saw Terri Irwin (Steve Irwin's wife) and enjoyed the many animals there. We got to pet a koala, feed an elephant, and also feed and pet kangaroos! One of our host families held a barbeque for us that night so we spent the night singing, eating kangaroo (SOOOO ... read more

Hey everyone!!!!!!! How was everyone's Canada Day? I hope it went swimmingly. Thanks for all the birthday wishes, emails, and facebook messages, and also a big happy birthday (belated) to Marilyne! Well we are now in Hervey Bay, Queensland, after our LAST long bus ride!!!!!! 13 hours and overnight. YUCK. But we are here, and its wonderful and warm! We last left you in Airlie Beach, which we thoroughly enjoyed. We spent that day relaxing by the lagoon, sunning, swimming, and shopping. We both picked up some surf shorts for our surfing adventures coming up. Then we hopped on our bus after listening to some amateur live music which was quite excellent in fact, he did a lot of covers. I promptly knocked myself out with gravol and Dennis needed no help at all! We woke ... read more

Hey guys! We made it to OZ!!!!!!!! It is a GREAT feeling to walk outside and not realize it because the temperature outside is as nice or nicer than the controlled inside. We got here late last night after a bumpy landing! We last left you on our first full day in Christchurch. Well, the next day we took a bus to Akaroa for our harbor cruise to see some pretty sites. AND LET ME TELL YOU they were pretty! Akaroa is a town with a giant harbor, in fact Akaroa means "long water" in Maori. We stopped at a beach which had no swimming allowed because the waves were so crazy! And the sand was actually huge rocks. We stopped at a lovely hilltop cafe on top of the volcano (now extinct) that created the ... read more

Hello everyone! Currently we are in Mount Cook National Park. The town of Mount Cook is about 150 people at best. And.. one restaurant. And..... its chilly! Yesterday we went to Milford Sound on a day trip. It was sooo amazing both on the drive there and back and the amazing cruise we took. We left at 7 in the morning and the drive there took 5 and a half hours with several stops along the way for photos. THe veiws were absolutely incredible. Words cannot describe the beauty so we will just attach photos. We seen a Kea bird on one of our stops as it landed right on our bus. A kea is an alpine parrot, green with orange underwings. They were labelled as sheep killers back in the early 1900's so people were ... read more

Hey everyone! Well, here we are in Nelson, although we leave for Franz Josef early tomorrow morning. We had a great two days here. After arriving on the ferry from Wellington which was a very cool ride, we took a bus from Picton to Nelson and arrived around 3. We got into our hostel and I was just settling down to call Dads for Father's day when in walked Lisa and Ashley! It was great to see some familiar faces and we exchanged stories as we walked around the town and shopped a bit. We also decided to book a tour for the next day together to Abel Tasman National Park, the smallest and busiest national park here in New Zealand. We ate a fantastic dinner together (roasted lamb), played some cards, and had free pudding ... read more