Blogs from Victoria, Australia, Oceania - page 568

Sorry its taken so long to get these photos up. We have been having a lovely time here in Roturua, NZ, but more on that on a separate entry. First must tell you more about Melbourne. As our previous entries said its was wet (one picture proves it!), windy and at times sunny and quite warm. The city is a mixture of lots of new high rise buildings and in between some of these you find some very beautiful old ones. On our last day we decided to walk the golden mile (which in reality was 3 miles!!!) This walk took us through most of the city and pointed out building and areas of interest. It was a great way to see the city and learn a bit more about it. Lots of places are named ... read more

So, now I'm off on another voyage in three weeks and a day - off to the absolute freezing bloody cold of Canada (like the blog title didn't give it away). The visa is sorted, I bought the plane ticket yesterday, and now it's just down to the minutiae of planning... do I take the tent and camping gear? do I buy work clothes her or there? Do they have Tim Tams in Canada? This time I get a stopover on Tai Pei, making the unfortunate timing of landing in Vancouver at 9am on the third of October. I really wanted to get there at night, and hopefully see the northern lights as I come in to land, but c'est la vie ( I must practice my French before I get to the east coast). Hello ... read more

Melbourne June 21-27, 2006 Melbourne (or Melburn as the locals call it) is a city you don’t hear a lot about in America. Sydney is the city that gets all of the attention but Melbourne is the city that we loved. If it wasn’t so far away from our friends and family, we’d be packing our bags and settling down here. It is a city with an international flair that has a lot of things to do and interesting neighborhoods to explore but that is also very friendly, laid back and accessible. As great as we thought it was, it was probably even ten times better because it was the first large western city we had enjoyed since leaving the United States -- we were sick in Singapore and Darwin and Alice Springs were more like ... read more

G'day everyone, Its been two months since my last blog and i have done loads since then so heres how it went: After the world cup, instead of just sitting round and mourning the loss of that fine trophy, i picked myself up and got a job labouring for a builder who was renovating a pub in Richmond (a suburb of Melbourne), although it may well have been Vietnam for all i knew as all the signs were written in squiggly writing! The job mainly just included dismantling stuff, which is always fun, lugging bricks about and cleaning up the mess left by the other builders and slinging it into skips. I was pretty lucky as i was just sitting in the hostel at the right time when a builder phoned looking for someone to work, ... read more

Ohayou What a fantastic trip! Preparing for this trip has been an adventure in itself, not the least of which involved me getting over the fact that I had been invited! I felt like the gawky kid in Grade 6 that had been invited to play with the Year 12 students - a big deal for me! Not only did I get to stretch my drumming wings, but I also managed to learn about 3 new Japanese words - a bit pathetic on my behalf considering I spent 5 days with predominately Japanese speaking people. We departed Melbourne on a lovely crisp sunny day - everyone excited about our adventure into warmer climes. We were a bit of a novelty at the airport check-in with trolleys full of big drums & stands and just a small ... read more