Well here we are in Tasmania, and I have finally sat down to update our travelblog! After our first stay in Melbourne, we headed down to Gippsland for 9 days, then returned to meet Alister on March 9th. He came over for the Grand Prix car racing, more on this later! Anyway, Gippsland is really south east Victoria, and probably best known is Lakes Entrance, but there’s lots more! First stop was Philip Island, well known for its famous fairy penguin parade, which we skipped, but we did see penguins nesting at The Nobbies, a wild coastal headland with lots of sea birds and a very good interpretive centre, plus a bitterly cold southerly wind!. We stayed at a quiet backwater coastal village called Rhyll, unfortunately the caravan park there closed the day after we left ... read more

Well it has warmed up a bit since our last blog, in fact I think it hit 40 degrees yesterday - a bit too hot for us Wellingtonians! We enjoyed our last port of call, Streaky Bay, very much - had 5 days there - until the wind drove us onwards! And they say Wellington is windy…. Streaky Bay was named by the explorer Matthew Flinders because of the colours of the water. We spend some time trying to catch crabs off the jetty with no success, but we went out to gather razor fish a couple of times, these are shellfish you pull from the water at low tide, and taste a bit like a scallop or calamari - rather nice in egg and breadcrumbs. The shells are very sharp so you need to wear ... read more

We are on the road at last! Said our farewells to Perth, after celebrating Australia Day with the family down at the Riverside at Skyworks fireworks and air show - amazing to see how much Australians celebrate their national day!!Everyone wears the flag, drapes it on their car or waves it from everywhere they can!! On Friday 1st Feb, we headed off from Perth, after spending a week at the caravan park around the road from Geoff and Carole's home in Forrestfield ( alovely camp by the way). We were pleased we did a trial run before heading off, as we had a few problems with the caravan (short in the wiring for the water pump and heater, annexe poles too long...) and were able to get the caravan dealer to sort these out, get the ... read more

Well here we are in Perth again and today we got ourselves set up with wireless internet, so we are finally able to communicate at our leisure! So here's some edited highlights from our trip so far. We can't believe that 2 weeks ago we were in the midst of cleaning and preparing our house for letting, and our last minute goodbyes to friends and family! We had a good trip over on Air NZ on the 10th, meeting up with Alister in Auckland, and arrived to about 34 degrees early evening. Our highlights pre Singapore were spending some time with Blu's brother Ross and his wife Laurin, and watching NZ get hammered by Australia at the 20/20 cricket game at the WACA - well it started off well but quickly became embarassing, especially when the ... read more