Blogs from Oceania - page 6580

Woke up at Bryony's and we headed for Auckland museum. This is a great place to go to early in your holiday as it gives you a good feel for the country and the history. We spent a couple of hours here, looking at Maori artefacts from all different parts of their history and wandering through more modern history with children's toys from last century (we found Star Wars but they seemed to be sadly lacking in the Superman department). The best bit of the museum is about the volcanoes; there was a mock up living room you would sit in where they showed a modern day news reel as if there was a live volcano eruption. You can see through the patio doors of the living room across the Auckland water line and you experience ... read more

Happy New Year !! After New Year Eve comes the New Year. Now New Years Eve was great night - we were back in Horsham with Buffy and Graham, who were entertaining 10 for dinner, and it was a very entertaining dinner. At some stage midnight occurred, and was greeted in the traditional manner (which is running around manically having party popper wars while trying to consume a third of a bottle of Jack Daniels with ice and discussing the merits of home engineered mobile log saws in case you are not aware of local traditions), and the festivities continued for a few more hours. Big thanks to our hosts and all involved !! So bright and early on the 1st of Jan honnors x 3 plus flanagans x 2 head for the Great Ocean Road. ... read more

New Year’s in Queenstown was a lot of fun. We went out around 9:30pm and did a little bar hopping. Then we moved out to the central waterfront park for the fireworks display, which turned out to be eight minutes of fizzle. Back to the Buffalo for pool, music and drinks. It was entertaining to see a group of women aged 50 to 60 that were trying to blend in as they chaperoned their teenage daughters/granddaughters. I called it a night around 3:30am only because I had the big bungy jump that morning. No sense trying to jump with no sleep and drinks on the stomach. I’ve already described my bungy experience in an earlier blog. Let’s just say this jump seemed out of this world. Eight seconds of free fall towards a rocky river valley ... read more

Christmas was the last thing we were expecting - our boreal brains had some difficulty reconciling the month with the weather. But Christmas it was, before we knew it. We were fortunate enough to have been isolated from the consumerist hype that has come to typify Christmas at home: no jingles in shops from September onwards, no television adverts exhorting us to buybuybuy and spendspendspend. Quite a bizarre experience. Beans and weeds don't stop growing for Christmas, even in New Zealand, and work continued as normal until the day before. The day itself was spent in true Kiwi style, namely outdoors and barefoot. By that time four WWOOFers remained at Te Aranga, and with Jim, Julie, Nathaniel, foster son Blair, his wife and two children and neighbours Bernard and Daphne, the thirteen of us (no doubt ... read more

So it has been a good couple of months since you have seen a blog from us. Happy new year to anyone we haven't had contact with. We are in Sydney and have been since we left Fiji. Yes, Australian customs saw it fit to let us through despite looking like Mr and Mrs Swampy and having a good hard look at our deer antler. We spent 3 weeks at big brothers which was very generous of Darren and Natalie. During that time we did a tiny bit of sight seeing and loads of flat hunting and job hunting. Basically, we had decided by then to work in Sydney for 3-6 months and save some money for further travels. Trying to find a place to live proved frustrating. Every room we went to view seemed to ... read more