Pam and Mike

It’s my turn now to write an entry since Mike says that I have to write the ones about boats. Honestly, I don’t know anything about sailboats. Mike says this one was relatively small, about 40 feet long and had a crew of 3. I had never gone sailing before so here are the things I’ve learned: 1. Do not drink excessively on a sailboat. You and all your mates will be seasick. 2. Sailboats tilt. 3. Getting scratched by coral really stings. We went sailing for 2 nights around the Whitsundays on a sailboat called Prima. There were 11 onboard. We weren’t blessed with the best weather, nor the best snorkeling conditions, but we still had a good time. The people we sailed with were really great and laidback backpackers around the same age. ... read more

It's been a while since we had a chance to post anything up here but we'll try and get caught up in the next day or so. Currently we are in Sydney with only 3 days to go in Australia - 4 weeks since we left NZ - but we'll try our best to make sure we remember everything! We arrived in Brisbane after a 3 hour flight from Auckland and were picked up by Michelle and Chris. We stayed the night with them before heading out to South Golden beach to spend the week with John and Jennifer (good friends of my parents / also my spare parents and Michelle's aunt and uncle). As we were getting ready to leave Brisbane I couldn't find my wallet in the day pack, or anywhere else we ... read more

Right after our last entry we drove from Nelson to Picton to catch the 7pm ferry for the North Island (Wellington). After reaching Picton we were sad that we weren’t going to be staying around the region. We took the scenic route—driving along the northeast end of the south island. The area was full of beautiful inlets and steep, windy narrow roads. For a while it was hard to enjoy the scenery since we were in a rush to make the ferry on time; also, the fuel tank was hovering over empty (especially after accelerating uphill). Thankfully we made it to Picton without running out of gas and made the ferry. If you have been reading our previous blogs… this Bluebird Ferry was not anything like the Spirit of Tasmania. It definitely did not cater for ... read more

Apologies for the lack of update in the last 2 weeks but man have we been moving! We arrived in Christchurch (chch) 2 Saturdays ago at about 11pm and made our way via a shuttle with 9 american law students on exchange to our hostel. On the way the driver made sure to take us past 'the strip' along the river Avon. We found out later that Chch has about 400,000 people, but there had to be 2500 of them lined up to get into the bars (which apparently keep rocking until '7 or 8 in the morning') lining that street! Our law student buddies were very excited by this especially when they found out that they were living about 2 blocks down the road for the next 6 weeks but unfortunately not for us that ... read more

So just back in Melbourne this morning and as promised here's our update for Tasmania. Flew on Sunday with Virgin Blue to Hobart (thanks Murray!). We were flying standby on Murray's staff ticket rate so wern't sure until part way through the day which flight we were going to be on. This resulted in far more time at the Melbourne airport than either of us ever wanted to spend but thankfully there were bookshops and lots of bars etc that we could move between so as to look like wern't living there. Ended up on the 7:45pm flight and arrived in Hobart 9ish. Once we got into Hobart picked up the car and managed to downgrade to a cheaper one which was automatic. Pam can drive!! Also found out that we were going to be in ... read more