There was no need to dream of a white Christmas - Melbourne has just had the coldest Christmas on record. It was 35 degrees when we arrived from Tassie, but by noon on Christmas Day hailstones were pounding the city centre and those with more money than sense at the Barmy Army BBQ near the MCG - our own plans were a little out of sync with the weather too, as we tucked into our prawn and salmon salad. The overseas tour of the OP squad came through with the tickets for Days 2, 3 and 4 of the Test Match [View Full Entry]

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As I'm sure we've said elsewhere on this blog, we had an objective not to repeat visit sights we've seen before. It therefore makes no logical sense therefore to drive from the west coast of Tassie to Wineglass Bay on the east.....except that the 2003 Wineglass experience was a perfect view of some very dense fog! The current pictures demonstrate second time lucky, although a couple of days later bush fires closed a lot of the roads in the vicinity which would have made it very difficult to get there. The drive across the centre made it very difficult to believe [View Full Entry]

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The sun doesn't shine everyday in Tasmania, so we figured it would be a good idea to head straight to Cradle Mountain. At one stage, there wasn't a cloud in the sky so we were fortunate to get the almost perfect photo across Dove Lake towards the mountain. We headed northwest, ironically across the Vale of Belvoir, towards the coast and eventually to Stanley. Rocky Cape National Park was the same scenery as you get on the East Coast at Wineglass Bay with one exception - there is nobody else there. There was some stunning scenery and pure white sand beaches. [View Full Entry]

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We left New Zealand and headed to our new "hostel" in the Melbourne suburb of Black Rock. We'd met Bri in Western Australia in July and gladly accepted an invitation to become dogwalkers for a week as a holiday from hostel life. We didn't actually do a great deal else for a week, except walk Kiah down the same streets where Shane Warne grew up and Merv Hughes still drinks. .....and so to Under Down Under. We abandoned plans of the 2nd Test in Adelaide due to a ticketing difficulty i.e. we didn't have any and bought a cheap flight to [View Full Entry]

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After the commercialism of the Queenstown area, the Goldfields of Central Otago were next on the agenda. The towns were a mix of fine old buildings and deriliction and decay or in the case of Cromwell, underwater due to the dam built at Clyde. We followed the old Central Otago railway line (now a cycle route) and had an overnight in the former provincial capital of Naseby - things have changed somewhat since the good old days of the goldrush in 1863 and the fulltime population now struggles to a 100. The town's motor camp was proof that the spirit of [View Full Entry]

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We acquired another hire car and went hunting mountain scenery and snow. The ski areas around Mount Hutt still have the white stuff in abundance, so it wasn't exactly a difficult task. We headed inland via the Rakaia Gorge towards the much photographed mecca for all Japanese tourists in New Zealand - the Church of the Good Shepherd at Lake Tekapo. In amongst the tour buses of course, the perfect photo remains elusive. Whilst the weather was still on our side, we made a beeline towards Mount Cook - alas as we made our way past Lake Pukaki the clouds came [View Full Entry]

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After an overnight stop at a farmstay hostel - nobody much to talk to except Jim the dog, who in the absence of the owners said it would be OK to let ourselves in - we headed to the Buller River Valley via Murchison towards Westport. Murchison suffered an earthquake in 1929 and clearly not a lot has happened since. Westport used to be a major player in the New Zealand coal industry, but times have moved on and left it somewhere in the 1960's - and very nice it was too, after the traffic chaos of Nelson. The majority of [View Full Entry]

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The ferry across the Cook Strait was a bit lively! As forecast, weather conditions were bad and were described on boarding the ferry as "less than favourable out in the Strait". This translated to an approx 4 metre swell, gale force winds and torrents of rain, with over 50% of the passengers becoming well acquainted with their sick bags - incidentally we were not included in the number! ....and so to Nelson, where things were a little less lively and the sun was shining. The geographical centre of New Zealand is conveniently situated on a hill on the edge of town, [View Full Entry]

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The slogan is actually "Absolutely Positively Wellington" - they just must have forgot to put the windy in there! As anybody who has ever spent anytime here will be able to testify, you can't miss the "wind" in this city. The wind aside, it's a great place. We are having another one of our extended city stays, primarily because there is so much to do and the lion's share of it is free. You get to enter into a debate with people who say that New Zealand is about walking, countryside and scenery, but by not hanging around in the city [View Full Entry]

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Gisborne, first city in the world to see the sun and the chardonnay capital of New Zealand, was best described as an acquired taste. It wiil probably rank in our minds as the Invercargill of this trip - closed on Sundays. Gisborne is also the place where Captain Cook first landed in New Zealand, exactly 237 years to the day before our arrival. The Cook connection obviously created additional interest from our perspective and the foreshore at Kaiti is scattered with various points of interest - lookouts over Poverty Bay towards the first land sighted at Young Nick's Head, monuments to [View Full Entry]

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