After a train ride through the most desolate parts of this large island-continent, it was good to be back in a large city again. We are both admittedly city dwellers, but certainly don’t mind venturing out into the lesser populated regions. Perth is a city of almost 1.5 million people. If you looked at a map, spotted Perth and looked at its latitude, you would notice it was at about 32 degrees give or take a few degrees and minutes. Then, if you headed west on that same parallel until you hit land again, you would have to go all the way to South Africa across a vast expanse of water, the Indian Ocean. Perth is the only city of any size west of Adelaide, which is over 1650 miles to the east. This is one ... read more

Hello, hello, hello! Great news, we have a new camera and so far we like it a lot. It has a great zoom on it. I’m sure it will take us a little while to get comfortable with it so please bear with us. Sydney is as spectacular as you can see from the photos. It is one of the Great cities of the World!! The Harbour Bridge and the Opera House are outstanding!! What a beautiful city. It is very cosmopolitan and diverse. This city is full of life and crazy drivers on narrow streets. Speaking from experience, it is a monster to drive in this city because of all the one way streets and the buses and trucks that have trouble staying in their small lanes. None the less, we both agree this is ... read more

G’day Mate, here we are in Queensland, which is called the Sunshine State. Does that sound like Florida? There are some sunny similarities. Take a glance at an Australian map. We’re starting the next part of our trip on the northeast coast of Australia… Port Douglas to Hervery Bay. In all honesty, it was good to flee the heat of Alice Springs and head to something more palatable weather-wise. It “only” goes up to about 30 or 31 degrees in Cairns. That’s 86 degrees for you Yankees. Sure it’s humid, but after 106 degree heat, this is almost cozy! So on Australia Day, when most of the country celebrates the national holiday by ingesting alcohol and barbequed meats, we landed in the city of Cairns, pronounced “cans”. Cairns is a backpacker’s and diver’s paradise. It is ... read more

We’re back on the mainland of Australia after having taken a 6 AM flight from Hobart to Melbourne which included getting on the wrong bus and having to run to catch the right one. With all our luggage in tow! It is good to laugh at ourselves. We arranged for a shuttle bus to the airport at 4:45 AM and they said they would pick us up around the corner from our hotel. While we waited there, a shuttle pulled up in front of our hotel. We quickly brought our stuff back down there and loaded it on the bus. After a few moments, the driver looked at our vouchers and told us we were on the wrong bus. We got out and grabbed our luggage, only to see the shuttle we needed pulling up down ... read more

Hello again from the South Island….. We’ve decided that scones are woefully underrated!!! New Zealand offers wonderful scones in most towns. We’ve decided that America needs more scones. It makes us long for our next door neighbor in Tampa-- Mildred always made the best scones!!! We also wanted to mention that it is a different experience being south of the equator. It is quite strange when we drive south and it gets colder—because we are going further away from that invisible meridian called the equator. This makes the north island of this nation the warmer of the two…..very strange for us folks used to living in the northern hemisphere. And yes, the drains circle in the opposite direction south of the equator. This has been repeatedly tested. We are currently at about the 45 parallel, which ... read more