Panoramic View: Mt Cook National Park Out On The Road We awoke from our first campervan night nice and early. It was still pretty cold, but thankfully our campervan heater gave us a lot of warmth and Britz provided us with loads of bed sheets. Our van itself is great. Aside from a sticky transmission, it runs like a dream and pretty easy to drive. It's got the right amount of space for us and includes a sink, gas stove, fridge, cupboards, couch and table which also converts to a comfortable bed. Our home for the next 3 weeks! We left [View Full Entry]

---

---

Melbourne to Christchurch Despite the ridiculously early start from Melbourne, neither Gary or myself got much sleep on the flight to New Zealand. I think this was due to the excitement of exploring a new country once again. Australia was great and we managed to see a large proportion of the country, however we were more than eager to get to pastures new. The flight was only 3 hours however with the time difference it was around 2pm when we arrived in Christchurch. The visibility was surprisingly poor during the descent however when we arrived greeted by a snow blizzard it [View Full Entry]

---

---

Panoramic View: Ramsay Street When Not Neighbours Arrival We arrived at dinner time in Melbourne and discovered a lot of trams on the street while our guide drove us to our accommodation. Trams were always a nice surprise but it turns out they cause some problems for cars and make right turns a bit tricky. Still fun to ride though, and that's the important thing. We ended up staying at Base in the suburb of St Kilda just for the sake of ease as others in our group were staying there. After check in, we went to our room to discover [View Full Entry]

---

---

Panoramic View: Rainforest Tree Top Walk More Rainforests & Traveling The Road The final day of our Great Ocean Road tour firstly took us to the Otway Ranges where we had just over an hour to explore the Otway fly tree top walk. The walkway is 600m long and 25m high winding through the cool temperate rainforest. Halfway along the walkway there is a 45 metre high lookout which is accessed via a spiral stairway providing an excellent view of the rainforest. It was fun and even had a dinosaur section shoehorned in. We were also told the story of William [View Full Entry]

---

---

Panoramic View: Bay Of Islands, Great Ocean Road More Climbing & The Great Ocean Road Coast Despite the late night of fun and games, we were all up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6.30am for another action packed day ahead. What better a way to cure a hangover than climb the Pinnacles, well thats what Dave our tour guide assured us. He couldn't have been far from the truth, and to be honest I think he was talking from experience. The climb to the top was around an hour, some of which required some careful planning and precision as I [View Full Entry]

---

---

Panoramic View: Grampians From Atop Mount Hollow Back On The Road With a day break, we were back to our travelling antics and were picked up early by our new driver to take us out of Adelaide. The new driver's name was Dave, and he conclusively proved to be the best guide we were to have in our time in Australia. He really knew his stuff but was also very funny and put some great tunes on to boot. It's a fact that a good guide can make a trip as this was probably the most fun we'd had here. Anne [View Full Entry]

---

---

Aboriginal Caves This was to be our last day on this particular tour, as it was a new one that started after we got to Adelaide. Because of this, we were going to be saying goodbye to all but one of our group as most were making their own way to Melbourne or had different things planned. Leaving Parachilna, it was some more bumpy road time before stopping at Yourambulla Caves near Hawker to look at some Aboriginal paintings. It was only a short hike up to these and it was pretty amazing how well preserved the site was. The paintings [View Full Entry]

---

---

More Bus Time Departing at 6:30am. This was a long lie for us by now though. After leaving Coober Pedy (we really liked the place), we stopped off for sunrise nearby. Sunrises and sunsets are pretty cool to watch, but we were now somewhat jaded with them. They do start to look the same and we now have copious amounts of pictures to prove this. It's still a nice way to spend 5 minutes though, and then we were off again. After re-alighting the bus, it was going to be another long drive before we got to our final resting place [View Full Entry]

---

---

Early To Bed, Early To Rise... 4am could not have come any quicker for me as I was really beginning to feel the cold in my swag, despite being assured that they were warmer than the tents. As soon as the alarm went off, I was out my swag, rolling it up and heading for the bathrooms to get some warmth and changed for the day ahead. As a group we were beginning to get good at packing up and loaded into the bus in time for Sauce's preferred departure. We had around two and half hours drive ahead of us [View Full Entry]

---

---

Panoramic View: Kata Tjuta On The Horizon. We didn't want to get too OTT with Uluru Leaving Alice Springs And then we were off on our next odyssey. It was a 5:05am pick up (ouch!) so it was up in the pitch black. Due the nature of a 16 bed dorm, we hadn't had the best nights sleep, but beggars can't really be choosers as we all know. We met Sauce, our guide for the next 6 days until Adelaide. He was a true Aussie bush-man; thick accent, long hair and beard and an attitude weathered by the outback desert. From [View Full Entry]

---

---