the kemps

We left Golden Bay and prepared ourselves for the twisty turny two hour drive to get back on the main drag to Nelson, I am such a rubbish passenger especially on hairpin bends!!!! We stopped off in Nelson for a mooch about, nothing that exciting there really so we moved on to Havelock for lunch, capital of the Green Lipped mussels and boy were they good!!! From here we went for a bit of a drive through Marlborough sound which was beautiful but as time was ticking away we made a dash to Blenheim and then onto the much raved about Marlborough wine region. I know Mum absolutely loved it there so we had very high hopes. We found a sweet campsite (old but sweet) and the guy in the office said rather than pay for ... read more

We were looking to Shantytown to deliver something pretty great to lift our spirits but on closer inspection discovered it was New Zealand’s Black Country Museum so gave it a miss. Morale was pretty low (how sad are we but I so wanted to go to Glastonbury again!) and even the biggest muffin ever couldn’t cheer me up - especially when I bit into it! We saw one of the brown attraction signs saying Pancake Rocks and Blowholes so decided to pull over and have a look. It was brilliant, there was a lovely walk through a fern lined boardwalk and then there were the pancakes rocks which have been formed over millions of years. After this you carried on walking to the blowholes which were amazing. The biggest blowhole, can’t remember the name, kept blowing ... read more

We left very early to start the journey to Milford Sound, unfortunately in the rush, a tragedy occurred, Ted, the turtle that I bought as a replacement for Barclay must have dropped out of the van and his final resting place was Te Anau - bye Ted. Luckily Tel decided to drive and I was very grateful, its basically a twisty turny road round hairpin bends and tunnels through the southern Alps, amazing but also nauseating in a car! We made it just in time to get the afternoon boat and were talked into buying the special winter package of barbeque lunch and a trip to the underwater observatory - why haven we learned!! The lunch was interesting but the boat trip was pretty cool. It was a very misty wet day at Milford sound which ... read more

It’s quite weird sitting typing this as I have got so behind, we are nearly half way through our time in south island, I’m about a month behind with this as we have been moving around so much and it’s too cold to have the window open for the power lead for the computer - what a hard life I hear you say!! Anyway, back to Australia…….. We left Airlie by about 8.30 and after a quick stop at a little town to raid the delicatessen we made our way to the much acclaimed Mission Beach. Loads of people had said how expensive it was so when we turned up and found a cute little village with a wicked campsite right on the beach we were well chuffed. To celebrate we went to the local and ... read more

We left Yeppoon and ended up in Emerald by about 2.30. On the page of the map i was looking at it looked as if we were about a quarter of the way across Australia but when looking at the big map we were only about 10%, Australia really is a massive country! We arrived in Emerald and it was absolutely boiling, instead of over heating in Clyde we decided to try go into Sapphire and RubyVale and try and get me a sapphire nose stud made, We were too lazy to actually fossick for the stones so bought a very cute little sapphire for the bargain price of $14, unfortunately the shop that could set nose studs was shut so it's in the bag ready for a trip to the jewellery quarter on our return! ... read more