Blogs from Oceania - page 6511

Caught the 9:35 greyhound bus from Noosa to Hervey Bay arrived at 2:25 then rang the hostel for a courtesy pick up this done arrived at the hostel and was shown to the dorm which is more of a self contained flat with four people in the dorm. As I had planned to stop here 2 nights I extended to 3 nights. I booked a day trip to Fraser Island for Sat 20th Jan. This afternoon I went down to the esplanade and got my bearings then went to the Irish bar for food as I am sick of getting chips with everything, they seem to be the only place that offers a different type of potato’s ie mashed. ... read more

One of the cool things about New Zealand's South Island is the abundance of unusual wildlife that is available to anyone to go and see. Our campsite for the night was not far from a place called Shag Point which we drove to first thing to have a spot of breafast before wandering over to the cliffs and finding a handful of seals basking on the rocks below. A few minutes' drive away was a viewing area for yellow eyed penguins but we were there way too early and the penguins had all gone swimming for the day (well, the weather was nice so who can blame them?). The penguins don't come ashore again until early evening, so we cursed our rotten luck to have come at the wrong time of day. Rather than wait around ... read more

A Maori legend has it that long ago a god-like being, Tu-te-raki-whanoa, wielded his axe to carve out the landscape of South Island. If you look at a map of the southern end of South Island, you might well believe it. Indeed, the island's southwestern coast, facing Australia and the Tasman Sea, does look like it has had an axe taken to it - convoluted and narrow inlets seemingly hewn out of the spine of the Alps. Southland's dozens of fjords are in fact the result not of a cosmic axe but of millions of years of erosion by immense rivers of ice - glaciers. Now retreated, the glaciers dug deep V-shaped valleys into the mountain rock. Fiordland (with an i...) is the result. Our gateway to Fiordland is Manapouri, a small settlement that has played ... read more

Sunnuntaina piti lähteä matkaan heti aamusta, sillä hostellista oli kirjauduttava ulos jo aamukymmeneltä. Onneksi ei ollut paha krapula! Bussi maaseudulle, tarkemmin sanottuna Kyabramiin, lähtee vasta 18.30. Laura päätti lopulta iltabussilla takaisin Sydneyyn töitä etsimään. Veimme matkatavarat aseman säilytyslokeroon odottamaan ja lähdimme kaupungille aikaa tappamaan. Nopeasti se aika kuluikin, lähinnä kauppoja kierrellessä ja australialaisesta ruosta nauttiessa. Bussimatka maaseudulle meni yhdessä hujauksessa, vaikka köröttely bussilla veikin kaksi ja puoli tuntia. Samassa bussissa oli muitakin farmille matkaajia, neljä ranskalaista ja yksi japanilainen. Tilan omistaja tuli hakemaan asemalta sovittuun aikaan, joten lopullinen siirtyminen Australian reisun ensimmäiseen työpaikkaan alkoi. Majoitustilat ovat farmilla, joten kuljetuksesta töihin ei tarvitse huolehtia. Neljän hengen huon... read more

I'm sure most of you have heard of the Great Barrier Reef at some point or another. However I wasn't aware that it was one of the Seven Wonders of the World until we had arrived in Port Douglas and started making plans to go out and see it. Then, I started wondering what the other wonders where, and that is when I found out that there aren’t just Seven Wonders of the World, but like Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Seven Wonders of the Modern World, Seven Wonders of the Natural World, and the list goes on. Anyway, the GBR is one of the Natural World Wonders because it is the only living thing that can be seen from space, or something like that! Back to our day there: we left the marina on ... read more