The Final Run - in NZ The little Hippie Camper has gone home and so have we - more or less and for a while. When we handed the camper back to the Apollo people we found out why we have seen so few other similar vehicles on the road around the country. There are just 5 in the entire Apollo fleet in NZ. The Hippie is their eco-friendly camper, Apollo’s contribution to Global Warming you might say. So, even without knowing it we have been being planet friendly for the last 31 days. Just imagine what we might have done if we had known? Perhaps we would have driven it a little less? We have done a little over 5,500 km, hit most of the key tourist icons for NZ, circumnavigated the South Island and ... read more

Sitting here in the late afternoon sun at Picton (more lack of imagination from the early NZ white settlers, just as in Australia) it is hard to believe that we haven’t talked about some of the things we have seen and done during the last week. I will run through some of this in a moment. First, though, in the interest of fair dealing, we really should lay out some of those minor things that sometimes frustrate or that are a bit strange for us. Let us start with rest/picnic areas. Most possibly wouldn’t see this as an issue but we are used to travelling long distances and we don’t normally eat ‘road’ tucker. We take our food with us and we make our lunch along the way, consuming it in picnic areas or road side ... read more

We decided on New Zealand for a short-ish visit because we thought that it might be polite to check out the neighbours before we started our travels around the rest of the world in earnest. In our, or perhaps just my, mind New Zealand has always seemed to be pretty much like Australia except that they worship the All Blacks and can be laughed at for saying ‘fush and chups’. I find that I was pretty right but not really complete. We flew into Christchurch from Brisbane last Tuesday, Melbourne Cup Day. Weather fine, sun shining, gentle wind blowing. And that was that. The sun then disappeared until a brief appearance on Friday being replaced by howling winds, rain, sleet and snow flurries. I kid you not - snow! We have been congratulating ourselves on hiring ... read more

There was never really much doubt about the ute getting to Brisbane. There was just a smidgin about whether the canopy would remain fixed to it and whether it would successfully keep the rain away from the gear that needed to be transported. New canopies priced at a little over $3,000 so the one propped against a neighbour's mango tree that fitted, sort of, looked like a good bet. Turned out that it did the job. From Charters Towers we headed to the coast and worked our way down. Camped at Lake Paluma north west of Townsville for a few days. A nice spot, although a trifle damp at times. It is a reservoir for North Queensland Water that send water down to Crystal Creek and then on to the Townsville water supply. 25 or so ... read more

Leaving home was difficult. Doubly difficult because we are not actually moving to any particular place. All of our gear had to go somewhere and most of it was somewhere that we are not going to have access to for some considerable time. Over the last few weeks the bulk of the gear was moved into 2 shipping containers on the block next door. Some was identified for movement in the ute to Brisbane and some, very little, is to go with us on our travels. Unfortunately, our gear bred over the last few weeks and when we came to the last couple of days there seemed to be more and more to be loaded, stored or dumped. We were due to be out of the house by 11.00am on 17 October.We decided, more or less, ... read more

This is the first of our entries on this site. We decided to set up a travel blog to talk about what we are doing, where we are, what we have seen, experienced and who we have met. But first, just a little bit of context. This journey has been a long time in the beginning. Pat has been keen to backpack around the world for the last 40 years. She has had the chance but she has also has had a husband for most of that time. There has always been something in the way. Jobs, campaigns, kids, careers, houses etc. We always said we would do it one day but have never had the time. Made it to our mid - or perhaps late - 50s, and we need to get mobile before things ... read more