TimButDim

Hello all, Just a quick one as the internet here is slow an expensive. We're in Fiji, enjoying the weather (when not completely being boiled alive!), we flew into Nadi and then went to Mana island for 5 nights, Kuata island for 3 nights and now just arrived in Nacula island. We'll be here for 3 days and hope to go to the Blue Lagoon (of the film) and some caves or other, as well as the Long Beach which I'm writing from now as our resort does not have internet. We went reef snorkelling yesterday and saw a load of reef sharks, which was quite exciting! Have fun! Tim... read more

Hello! We're finally at a campsite with a decent (and more importantly FREE) web connection! Hopefully I'll be able to put some pictures on here - although I have said that before... I've just had to check with Sarah what we've been up to - I'd completely forgotten some of the last few days, clearly I've been having too much fun! We went to the Te Papa museum in Wellington and had a great few hours. We could have spent longer in there but we had a massive hunger attack and had to leave an hour before closing time. We did get the best of the natural history (including the only Colossal Squid on show in the world) and Maori history/culture bits though. We also stopped off at the Mac's Brewery Bar for a chance to ... read more

Hi! We've just arrived in Wellington, capital city of New Zealand, and with a massive population of 195,000 we both found ourselves having a cultureshock moment in the local New World supermarket when we had to actually deal with people instead of naff-all choice and massive small town prices! The last few days took us to Nelson (stayed in a hotel room and relaxed), St August and Picton and then here by ferry. Quick one!... read more

Hi! Well, we've been busily ticking off things to do over the last few days. We didn't go to the glow-worm caves but we did go to Milford Sound which was, as pretty much everyoe who's been here before said, amazing! We were lucky enough to not only see the beautiful fiord (not technically a 'sound', something to do with the receeding waters and glaciers) but we saw some Bottlenose Dolphins, New Zealand Fur Seals (not actually that rare but reasonably entertaining nonetheless) and a single Yellow-Eyed Penguin, the first of the season apparetly, which was waiting patiently on its own for the mating season to begin! The next day was a pretty intesive driving day, takig us from Te Anau to Haast. While all of the drive was picturesque the last bit, from Wanaka to ... read more

Helloski! Once again it's been a while since updating (sorry!) but we've been busy busy extreme-sporting bees! From Christchurch we went to Lake Tekapo (giggle) where we saw our first bit of snow in this hemisphere (and year) and went on the snow-tubing, a bit like sledging but just on large rubber inner-tubes. That was good fun - surely after that no-one needs to bother with that skiing rubbish! We then headed to the Mount Cook national park (named after - rather than by - the Oz-discoverer) and stayed a night just outside the village in Glentanner (which seemed to consist solely of a caravan park and a helicopter pad, although there were a fair few sheep and cows about too). We went on a 3 hour walk around the national park the next day, we ... read more

Hello there! We're back in Christchurch to pick up Sarah's mum and one of her sisters who have popped over for a while to join us on our travels. Now we need to sort them out a hire car (no seat belts in the back of ours) and then we're off around the South Island. We went to Akaroa and back after writing the last entry, then we headed down to the Moeraki boulders (a very impressive natural formation of strange boulders 'washed up' on the beach) and the amusingly-named 'Shag Point' where we saw seals lounging around after a busy day of fishing. We're maybe off to Mount Cook today, although no fixed plan has been agreed on yet, and I'll try to keep updating a little more frequently, and even get the oft-promised pictures ... read more

Hi! Well, with less than 6 hours until Enlgand's crunch game against Slovenia we find ourselves in our first new country in a while! New Zealand is really quite nice so far, although we haven't done much as we're acclimatising ourselves to the much MUCH colder weather here. We picked up the Jucy camper yesterday and it's fantastic - we were worried that it wouldn't be very comfortable but we slept in until midday today so it can't be too bad! It even has a DVD player so we sat inside and watched a film last night. To catch you up on our antics over the last few days we went up to Port Douglas and caught up with some Aussie Farmer types who we'd been working with in Melbourne and generally kicked back and relaxed, ... read more

Hi! Another entry so quick? We've got 3 hours free internet at our campsite so I thought I'd take the chance to update you all again! We're in Cairns now after a couple of days of respectable national park visiting! After leaving Townsville we stayed on a small campsite in the Girringun national park with no hot showers or much else - we ended up not only worried about the wildlife (of which there was plenty, including rat kangaroos and cassowaries) but about being in some kind of terrible 'people go camping and don't come back' style horror movie. I was following Sarah down a path with her head torch wobbling from side to side and we both had a 'Blair Witch' moment! From therein I was convinced that was it; we were going to end ... read more

Hello! Well, we're finally enjoying some proper Aussie sun again here in northern Queensland. Townsville, despite soundng like the most unimaginative place ever (I can see the meeting now: "what should we call it?"; "how about 'Town'"; "don't be silly, we need more than that"; "ok, how about 'Towns... ville'?"; "ok, but we'll come back to look at that later and come up with something better") is actually quite nice, although it shares it's love of roundabouts and speed humps with Noosa. Fraser Island 4x4 driving was amazing, we drove along the beach and up the to Lake MacKenzie which was beautiful although surprisingly a little chilly. The beachside camping was great as well, although the dingo fear was definitely worth bearing in mind - you had to go to the (self-dug) toilets in pairs, and ... read more

Hello! Another quick one I'm afraid, just to catch up. From Sydney we drove North up the coast to Newcastle (stayed in a nice campsite in Stockton just across the water), then up to Byron Bay which was a lot of fun (sea kayaking with dolphins - but they didn't turn up - and visiting Nimbin). Then we blitzed through Surfer's Paradise (a big tourist trap), past Brisbane and on to Noosa where we are now. It's gorgeous here now the sun has come up, we went swimming and body boarding on Sunshine Beach and then hiked around Noosa National Park this afternoon. Sarah has been doing well with her new hobby of fishing (caught 3 last night) and is off catching dinner as we speak. We're heading to Fraser Island next (4x4 self-drive tours) and ... read more