Hey from Byron Bay! I’m here 2 days after my awesome road trip from Sydney to Brisbane. Julie and I rented a camper van from Wicked (the cheapest of all the camper van rental companies) for 5 days. We started out in the afternoon on a rainy Monday and fought our way through the huge crowd al trying to get their reserved campers on the road. The staff member serving us was a French guy who looked as if it wasn’t possible for him to be less enthusiastic about his job, but after about an hour’s worth of waiting, paperwork, and more waiting, we got our ride and got out of the depot and onto the road! I’ve only driven through Sydney once in my life and I intend to leave it at that, it’s like ... read more

Hello everyone! I’ve been in Sydney for the last few weeks, but now I’m on my way to Brisbane. The past couple of weeks have not been too eventful unless you count the earthquake in Christchurch, but that happened 5 days after I left. I was worried for a bit about some of my friends in New Zealand, but I eventually heard back from them all. I did have a job cleaning the hostel here for accommodation for a little while before I started working at a guys place renovating his kitchen with a couple other people from the hostel. I was unfortunately only able to work for 2 days as I sprained my wrist on the second day playing soccer (I was in goal and deflected a ball with my hand). I haven’t worked since ... read more

Hello again everyone! This will by my last journal update from New Zealand! Since I last updated I went from Te Anau to Wanaka via Queenstown. I wish I had slated a little more time to explore the hiking tracks around Wanaka, but I arrived around 5 PM and had to leave early the next morning. The hostel I stayed at wasn’t very exciting, but there was a peculiar thing about it, it had a dishwasher! I had my dinner, ate, and then started doing the dishes in the sink as I have done almost every night for the past 10 months, but someone told me just to put it in the dishwasher. I had naturally assumed that if it had a door with a hinge on the bottom and was in the kitchen, than it ... read more

Hello from Queenstown! After I left Christchurch I went to Dunedin (pronounced Dun-ee-din) by way of a 5 hour bus ride. The bus depot was in the middle of town which was only 2.5km from the hostel I was staying at (Elm Lodge, which was situated on Elm Row, which contrary to popular belief does not have a single elm growing on it) but the relative elevation of the two was something like half the elevation of the Himalayas, and I bet you can guess which one was higher. Despite my rather viscous purge of detritus I had acquired while I was the proud owner of Helga, I still had way too much stuff. Two English girls on the bus were also going to the hostel and despite our best hopes, the hostel management would not ... read more

Hello from Christchurch! The city was hit by a 7.2 earthquake in September and is therefore often referred to as the “City that Rocks!” There are still quite a few damaged buildings in the city and many fenced off areas that can make traveling through down town a bit of a pain. Every day since the big quake there have been hundreds of micro quakes, some even strong enough to feel (I’ve been here for a week and a half and I’ve felt 2) though nothing dangerous. My plan was to drive down here directly from Blenheim, but the 300km journey proved to be too great for Helga to manage. Because the transmission will not go into top gear, the water temperature sometimes gets a little hot, especially when there is no opportunity to stop and ... read more

Hello everyone! Work continued in the vineyards, though last week we had a little bit of a change where we were working on our boss’s brother’s farm because we had to wait for the plants to grow a bit more for the third wire lift. We went to his farm in Seddon and started off weeding wild oats from a wheat field, barley field and oats. They’re usually taller than the other crops so it’s not that hard to single them out, but it can be difficult to see them from a distance, especially in the oats. The reason we had to remove all the wild oats is because once the seeds get into the soil, they can remain there for years before growing again and they’re even bad for stock feed. I was given a ... read more

Hello everyone and sorry I have been so remiss in updating but until now the internet was hard to come by here. I got the job at Talley’s worked for 3 and a half weeks before spinach ran out and got another job! I worked on the afternoon shift from 4PM to midnight and couple times a few hours later. Talley’s processes a lot of different kinds of food, our factory specifically does spinach. It comes in on dump trucks at about 5 tonnes at a time and is then dumped into a large hopper on hydraulic masts. The hopper is lifted up to the conveyor belt that leads into the factory where workers pick through the spinach coming in and remove all the bad leaves and weeds, it then travels through several water sprayers where ... read more

Hello everyone, I’ve made it from Lake Taupo to Plamerston North, then to Wellington and on to Blenheim (pronounced Blen-um). The drive down to Palmerston North was interesting, a little bit of plastic around the glass of the windshield came loose in the heavy winds and almost came off! I popped it all back into place and continued on until it happened again. With another hour to drive at least in weather that was at best just below gale force winds and a piece of plastic chrome that won’t hand on that long I had to come up with a solution. Most of you probably think I just duct taped the thing on like an amateur (I wish, but I didn’t have any duct tape) but I’m a professional, I rummaged through my pack for something ... read more