We arrived in Cape Town late at night so stayed in the airport hotel for our first night. The airport is quite chaotic as they are currently refurbishing it hopefully in time for the 2010 World Cup. Arriving in the city centre shows why a lot of people regard Cape Town as the world's best setting for a city. Table Mountain dominates the skyline, but there are other peaks such as Lion's Head and Signal Hill. Table Mountain is often shrouded in cloud (known locally as the "tablecloth") so we had to time our trip when taking the cable car up [View Full Entry]

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The state of Western Australia is about the same size as India, but only has 2 million people compared to over a billion in India. 85% of the population live in or close to Perth and 99% of the population live on the coast. There's an awful lot of nothing in Western Australia. Perth itself is a nice enough city, but lacks character - even by Australian standards. This is partly because the original towns of the colony were to the north and the south of Perth itself. The town to the south is Freemantle. This is a really nice town [View Full Entry]

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Alice Springs is pretty much in the centre of Australia. It has a population of around 30,000 people, but it doesn't look that big. When out train pulled into the town it seemed that the train was longer than the town. Whilst we were here the temperature got up to 42 degrees and often didn't go below 30 degrees at night. The Desert around Alice springs is about the same size as Europe and is normally just bare red soil. However, in November they had their heaviest rains on record. This means that the land actually looks quite green at the [View Full Entry]

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When we boarded our flight to Adelaide in Melbourne, the check-in lady asked where we were going. When we mentioned Adelaide her response was "Oh, it's a very quiet place". That's the most positive comment she could come up with. It turns out that she's right. Adelaide is actually quite a nice little city. The whole city was planned from the outset. It follows a grid system which is bisected by a river and the entire city is surrounded by a greenbelt of parkland. It has a beautiful state library and a really interesting immigration museum. It's main industries, though, appear [View Full Entry]

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Melbourne is known as having one of the highest quality of life scores of anywhere in the world. It didn't look like that on the way in from the airport, though. There's lots of building works and lots of industry. When we got to the bus station, there also seemed to be a very large number of crazy people - even more than London. The next morning, though, everything seemed a lot nicer. The city is on a grid system and is walkable. Their public transport is also amazing. They have hundreds of tram routes and their suburban train lines are [View Full Entry]

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We flew into Sydney in the evening so by the time we arrived in the centre of town it was dark. We had chosen not to stay in the centre of Sydney, but in a suburb called Manly which is about 17km from the centre of Sydney on the north shore. The main way to reach Manly is by the famous Manly ferry which passes the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. Our first trip on the ferry was at night so we got to see the city all lit up. Sydney also has quite an impressive set of [View Full Entry]

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From Airlie Beach we took a two hour flight down to Brisbane. We hadn't planned to come to Brisbane originally, but our friends Karen and Dave (who we met in Australia and who subsequently lived in London) were planning to be on Moreton Island at this time, which is just off the coast of Brisbane. Moreton Island is similar to the more famous (and touristy) Fraser Island. The main difference is that Moreton is quite a bit smaller being 38km from north to south. Due to it's less touristy nature, it's a favourite holiday retreat for Australians. There are no paved [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Airlie Beach from Auckland via Brisbane. Proserpine airport is a tiny place, with just a couple of flights a day. The baggage just gets carted out into the car park and a huge bunfight ensues as everyone tries to find their luggage. From the airport shuttle bus we managed to see kangaroos (turns out it's quite easy to see kangaroos in Australia). During our first wander into the small town of Airlie Beach, we could have been foregiven for thinking that we were back in the UK. Most people were English and Irish with a few Europeans. The [View Full Entry]

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From Rotorua we headed north-east to Mount Maunganui. We hadn't really planned to come here, but our friend Nicky's parents (John and Sue) live here and as it's only an hour from Rotorua we thought we'd pop in and say hello. It was quite late by the time we arrived so we found a great campsite by the beach and then drove around to the address given to us by Nicky. There was nobody in so we left a note that said we'd be back around in the morning. The next morning as we were sitting by the beach eating our [View Full Entry]

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Wellington was a lot busier that anywhere we'd been to on the South Island. They had motorways with flyovers and slip roads. Before now we had hardly driven on any dual carriageways let alone a motorway. Even for a busy city, though, nobody seemed hurried. Everyone seemed to be sitting in the cafes rather than troubling themselves with going to work. We visited the Te Papa museum which explains a lot of the history between the colonial powers and the Maori people. The Waitangi treaty was signed by the British and many of the Maori tribes, giving Britain sovereign rule. The [View Full Entry]

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