Blogs from Oceania - page 7092

I'm on the bus with another 20 or so people, listening to Greg, our tour guide / driver talk about the fantastic landscapes we're zooming through. Kangaroos, Wallabies, Wallaroos, they're all here in the middle of nowhere. We've passed by ancient volcanoes, through dried up seas, across the Atherton Table Lands, where the landscape has almost instantly changed from lush green to cyclone-damaged tropical rainforest (that will take 10-50 years to grow back), to black basalt rocks and ferrous-red desert dust. We've passed through Mount Surprise - so named after the British explorers were surprised to find Aboriginies here....genious - and will stop tonight in the little town of Croyden. Greg really knew his stuff and explained the basics of the Aboriginal 'skin' system, which is basically just a class system, probably similar to the setup ... read more

Went on a 3-day tour to the north of the North Island - hit 90 mile beach (which is actually only about 65 miles long) and dominated at Sand Surfing. Cape Reinga is the most northerly point of NZ and is where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific. Very picturesque and gave us a few days away when we didn't get battered every night.... read more

Are things as bad as my last rant?? ....I'm glad to say that things have been looking up recently and I have been doing bits of work here and there, so all ain't that bad. Chris has been back with us for the last 3 weeks and his parents came over to Melbourne for a couple of days and took us all out to a nice St. Kilda restaurant called Monroes. It was such a wonderful thing to be able to eat proper restaurant food, rather than the sausage pasta or 2 minute noodles I normally survive on! The food was awesome and the beer was good too as we hadn't drank for a while. We all had a great night and really appreciate the generosity of Mama and Pappa Golden paying for everything and having ... read more

Sooo I might be a little sick today.....my throat hurts and I think it might be from walking around in shorts in freeeeezing cold winter windy New Zealand weather (apparently I'm seasonally challenged when it comes to packing). But it's all good because I'm still having a blast, just now I've thrown a few hundred throat lozenges and glasses of orange juice into my daily routine. Half of the people in my group are sick though so I think it was sort of inevitable.... On the up side, I'm getting better at pool. I've been playing with people that really know what they're doing and its forced me to step it up a notch. Molly and I are hooked. We are going have to go to skeezy bars around Carrollton just to find pool tables ... read more

What a bit of luck, it was never the intention to head north of Auckland, yet here I am nearly a week in NZ and I've not been south of Auckland. I got a free 3 day trip to Northland before venturing south so been having a whale, or should that be a dolphin of time, anyway this is what I've done. Wednesday 31st - up and outside hostel at 7am, in my new 'billabong' shorts and sandals, bad idea, it's ffffricking fffffreeezing. still get on the bus and head over the harbour bridge to the northern tip of New Zealand, very pleasant green countryside, lots of inlets etc, get to Paihiri (prob spelt wrong) and decide to get one of my 'things to do before I die' out the way, so get on a boat ... read more