Stan and Annie

THE We left Sydney at 6pm on 1st May and flew via Auckland to Rarotonga, capital of the Cook Islands for the penultimate leg of our adventure. We then arrived at 3pm on 1st May...despite completing two flights and a 9 hour stopover at Auckland, we had arrived 3 hours earlier than when we had set off!! We had crosssed the international date line and gone back a day..how crazy is that?! There had been a cock up with the booking when we arrived in Auckland .... we thought we were 'in transit' but it appeared to be two seperate flights instead. So, we had had to briefly enter New Zealand again to collect our luggage and then immediately check in again and go through customs again. This was a real flying visit and the quickest ... read more

We are rapidly approaching the end of our adventure in Australia. We left Perth on 22nd April and headed East to Sydney with Jetstar on an overnight flight. We are staying in Sydney for 8 days and then on 1st May we fly off to The Cook Islands. We loved our 6 weeks in Perth .... seeing family and friends... John and Andrea have been so kind in letting us stay with them and have done an awful lot for us. We owe them a massive BIG 'Thank You'!! Since arriving in Australia one of our priorities apart from embracing the wonderful Auz culture & beach lifestyle has also been to seek work opportunities .... and have a lot of fun on route! Achieving employment in Australia is a difficult process ... complicated by the visa ... read more

Easter weekend marked Trish and the girls' last weekend in Perth and we wanted to do something special. It was glorious weather and so we managed to charter a yacht for a twilight cruise on Easter Monday for all of us. It was a beautiful 4 berth sailing yacht called 'Alphee' and operated out of Hilary's boat yard. Alphee is a 14m yacht - "Fully equiped with all the trimmings, Alphee offers great flexibility to enjoy yourself for an afternoon cruising in the beautiful clear waters of Western Australia"..... http://www.alphee.com.au/ It was a glorious day and very busy due to the bank holiday. We met at Hilary's and boarded the yacht at 2pm - John & Andrea, Tash & David, Trish, Shauna, Kelly and Lauren and Annie and I.... and enough food and drink to sink ... read more

Annie's little sister Trish & her daughters Shauna, Kelly and Lauren all arrived safely on Sat evening 16th March. We obviously all couldn't stay at John & Andrea's so Annie and I had booked into a backpackers hostel in Northbridge in central Perth. We checked in and dumped our bags during the afternoon and found a strange mixture of older travellers like us and partying youngsters. It was mostly full of Irish people, lots of them appeared to be working in local bars and building sites and staying on the cheap at the hostel. They were all friendly though and it had a bar, swimming pool etc. We travelled to the airport to welcome the rest of the famiy but their flight from Dublin had been delayed for a couple of hours at Dubai. Meanwhile John, ... read more

We started out on our mammoth journey on Monday 11th Feb when we picked up our Britz campervan from the depot in Brisbane & we arrived 4 weeks later in Perth on 10th March. The road trip had taken us down the East Coast of Queensland and New South Wales, through Victoria and South Australia and finally across the Nullarbor and into Western Australia. We visited Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Adelaide before we arrived in Perth and numerous smaller towns on route. We travelled a total distance of 6830km's and to help put that into context... London to Moscow is 2500 and London to New York is 5600km's!!! So, it was a bloody long way! The advice given at the start from many locals was, 'fly to Perth' or 'why not put your campervan on the ... read more