Before we begin to tell you about our first impressions of New Zealand, let me tell you a few funny anicdotes about our flight from Cairns to New Zealand. As it was a near to "chrissie" flight, we were accompanied by many Kiwi's returning home to spend their time with nearest and dearest, as well as a few more people heading off on their holidays to get away from their nearest and clearly not so dearest. One family clearly took the biscuit in my estimations for the "writing home about award" and that was a large kiwi family with about 4 young children, the youngest of which was either holding up the queue to the toilet by climbing and getting stuck in the sink or being hoyed (and I mean literally hoyed) up and down the ... read more

We hit the outskirts of the Outback with a very rainy bump. As you can see from our first pictures we were hit with a heavy rain storm as we crossed back over into more populated lands. Unfortunatley this coincided with our running on petrol fumes so we had to stop at our last yocal petrol station to fill er up. Thom was the perfect gentleman of course and got out to actually do the filling up and he was soaked after being out there for about all of 3 seconds. I'd previously heard 2 farmer/cowboy types saying goodbye to each other at a different petrol station the day before by simply exclaiming "Hope you get wet mate!" - I thought it was just another ironic dessert/Aussie saying or something, but it obviously related to how ... read more

Here is a belated South Australia entry. We didn't realize how many pictures we'd taken here, so hopefully they will add to the rather meager text I am typing in. So - we crossed the border after completing The Great Ocean Road and stayed over at the very beautiful but not so peaceful Mount Gambier. We then trucked on up towards Adelaide City and after staying on a beach and mooching about town one day we stumbled across the very colourful and energetic Rock & Roll festival (again - detailed in the pictures). Met up with my adventuring Mammy for a light lunch and a few drinks and then decided it was far too hot to be exploring cities so we'd just loafe on all the beaches to the south of Adelaide instead. We did that ... read more

We didn't have that much time in Melbourne, Thom had already stayed there for ages & our schedule was really tight - so we made a quick visit to have some fun on Melbourne Cup Day & catch up with my old pal Angie (from when I lived in Sydney). We think the pictures speak for themselves here so enjoy!... read more

After a quick couple of days in Melbourne, our trip got officially off to a flyer in Sydney. We touched down on 23rd and were greeted by insane humidity and a billion flies, after a shady airport transfer we stayed in a really rank hostel/"Hotel" in the Cross (Kings Cross) then moved to the very plush Sydney Harbour View Room in O'Malleys. Did the usual city viewing touristy stuff like the Harbour, Opera House, Botanical Gardens. Weather was starting to get worse and much stormier in the lead up to my surprise dinner out for Thom in Sydney Sky Tower. On the morning of this long anticipated night out Thom's first words that morning were pretty choice, but with good reason. Our panoramic Harbour View had been replaced by a whopping grey cloud and the sky ... read more