Kat writes: Booked on the early ferry bound for the South Island we are packed up, out of our hostel, in the car, engine on and all ready to get down to the port - there is a slight problem - everybody in the city is trying to get to work, the traffic is slow and I am holding the map! "No worries, I have a short cut!" should not really have been words I should have uttered at that point but you live and learn. After cruising past the ferry terminal (see my map reading is fine) on a one [View Full Entry]

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Scott writes: Landing in NZ after two and half weeks in Fiji was like returning home after holidaying in the Med. It was cold, everyone was extremely pale and official looking and there was a huge Mcdonalds waiting for us on arrival. It was getting late when we arrived in Auckland and after we smuggled more sweets into another country, this time Parcalls Bon-Bons (I dumped the open bag of cheese twists into the amnesty bin, i didn't want to push it), we booked a hostel for the night and made our way into the city. Auckland Auckland is NZ's largest [View Full Entry]

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Kat writes: Walking through the airport the air was filled with the sound of guitars strumming and people singing. Wearing big smiles, loud shirts and colourful flowers. Our Fijian welcome was in full swing. "Bula!" they cried "Where you from?" "England!" we replied. "Ah, the mother country. Welcome home". I knew i was going to like this place! We headed for Nadi the main jumping off point to the islands we wanted to visit and met up with Gemma, a girl we met in Byron Bay, Australia, who also flew in today from New Zealand. After a rather messy night out [View Full Entry]

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Kat writes: Eight to a room After 3 below zero nights in a camp site in Melbourne's suburbs we moved out. The extreme cold and sleeping in two layers of clothes, plus a sleeping bag, duvet, fleece, blanket, woolly hat and gloves, just wasn't working for us. So reluctantly we left the van and moved into a hostel in St Kilda for the first time since Sydney, over 4 months ago now. Back then we had taken double rooms but now came the time to take the plunge and have a shared dorm. Oush! Venturing in to the 8 bed dorm [View Full Entry]

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Scott writes: Come out, come out where ever you are From Kings Canyon we travelled 500km to reach South Australia (our 4th Australian state) and visit Cooper Pedy. Coober Pedy, is a small Opal Mining town of about 4000 people of 45 different nationalities, situated in the middle of the desert. 80% of the folks live under the ground in caves due to the extreme heat (50 degrees and up) in the summer time and the freeze at night! There is even a church and a few shops underground as well. The Aboriginal translation of 'Coober' is white man and 'Pedy' [View Full Entry]

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Scott writes: Uluru, wow, this is not just any rock We'd been told that its possible to climb Uluru and that it's quite strenuous. Nobody had gone into details other than to say, don't get put off half way up and keep going. We really wanted to climb it and as we caught our first glimpse of the rock from about 50 km away we started to get really excited. The rock is massive. Just truly immense and it looks totally smooth until you get very close to it. We drove to where the climb begins and we both thought that [View Full Entry]

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Scott writes: Bloody Hell, we know it has been a while since our last installment but we do have a good reason! We decided to take a proper road trip and drive across the country to Darwin and then down the centre from top to bottom, before heading east, to our final stop in Melbourne. Ok so starting where we left off in Cairns Cairns is a busy little party town which made watching the start of the world cup a blast, particularly as there were lots of different nationalities around which resulted in lots of banter, name calling & hair [View Full Entry]

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In a nut shell Scott writes: I think we have just popped out of a Purple Patch with our travelling as the last couple of weeks moving up the east coast have been so good that we have to pinch ourselves just to make sure we were actually there. In a nut shell we have ragged a 4wd Suzuki Sierra around the largest sand island for three days; went sailing on a picturesque tall ship around the Whitsunday Islands and snorkelled on it’s beautiful fringe coral reefs; completed our four day PADI Open Water Dive Course in a small town called [View Full Entry]

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Kat writes: Well from leaving Byron Bay we made a little inward detour to a crazy little town called Nimbin, made famous by its unrelenting will to make cannabis legal. Again the tie die was ever present and the born again hippies who are still living the dream were in force plus a few normal types thrown in for good measure. There really isn't much to the town. A few shops, an art gallery with a lady poet shouting in a mic about how much she hates men, and a museum of sorts. Well more a grotto to Nimbin really. Seriously [View Full Entry]

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Scott writes: Crikey, living in a van and traveling up the east coast has been absolutely ripper so far. Our very basic of mobile home, now called Chad, is exactly that....basic. We have all the normal rooms that come with a house its just our kitchen, lounge, bedroom, garage and loft are all rolled into one small space. Oh yeah, and we have two bikes that go into the mixer as well now. Go North We decided to travel up the east coast and abandon our original thoughts of going south and then west on the basis that a few locals [View Full Entry]

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