The highlight most anticipated by many visitors to New Zealand's South Island is a visit to Fiordland National Park, and for many that means a cruise on Milford Sound. In normal times, this means about a two hour car drive from Te Anau or a longer drive from Manapouri or Queenstown, followed by a relatively short cruise on what is a surprisingly small body of water. However, this was not normal times. Continuing our string of catastrophic near-misses, we arrived in Fiordland just days after an historic flood event devastated the road to Milford, stranding hundreds and requiring several air rescues. Over 39 inches of rain fell within a 60 hour period. https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/hundreds-stranded-flood-hit-fiordland The result of the consequent flooding was that the road into Milford was several damaged in several places. When you drive the road, ... read more

Heading further south on the South Island East Coast, our goal for the day was the Otago Peninsula and the Royal Albatross Center. We had originally planned to also watch the small blue penguins come ashore, but that encounter takes place at sunset and at this latitude at this time of year sunset comes late. We decided instead to head on back to Dunedin and our evening lodging after visiting the Albatross Center. The albatross is famous in legend and literature. We are all familiar with "Water, water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink" from Coleridge, and with the expression "albatross around your neck". Still, this literate familiarity does not prepare you for the majesty of seeing these magnificent birds aloft. The albatross spends most of its life at sea, and albatross pairs (they mate ... read more

After Cairns, it was back to Sydney. The flight from Cairns left us with half a day, so we decided to explore The Rocks. The Rocks is the area of Sydney that was originally inhabited by aboriginals then by convicts, and for many decades it was a favorite haunt of criminals, prostitutes, and sailors. It is named for the sandstone on which the buildings are built. More recently, it has undergone partial gentrification, and has tourist shops and eating places, as well as two pubs that each claim to be the oldest in Sydney. We chose the Lord Nelson for a wee pint, and then for dinner upstairs, which was surprisingly significantly more upscale. The Sydney Observatory is located here, but we did not have time to visit. This area was once being primed to be ... read more

In the environs of Melbourne and Adelaide we visited several wine areas. It is easier to cover them all together even though they were on separate days. Melbourne has the famous Yarra Valley northeast of the city, basically surrounding the area of the Healesville Aniam Sanctuary we visited. However, when we were at the the Sanctuary it was obvious that traffic was heavy and we found out that Elton Jon was giving a concert that night and the next night. Rather than going back up there to try the justifiably famous wines, we elected instead to go to the Mornington Peninsula. Mornington is Sonoma to the Yarra Valley's Napa. Much more laid back and informal, and frankly more fun. Viticulture is intricately related to microenvironment. A little higher tip a slope and the annual rainfall or ... read more

Although Melbourne is a wonderful city, and more European than most places in Australia, we did not actually spend much time there. Following our visit to Healesville, the next day we went to the Mornington Peninsula (more on that later) and the the following day visited the Museum and then flew to Hobart, Tasmania. For some reason, even more than the rest of Australia, Tasmania has always seemed a particularly exotic destination to me. Not sure if it is the prison background, or the sordid aboriginal history, or the Tasmanian devils of cartoons, or perhaps the far southernly location, but Tasmania has always seemed the stuff of dreams. As it turns out, it is indeed that in some ways. With only two days to spend in Tassie, we elected to focus on two things: the beauty ... read more