Blogs from Oceania - page 7359

After our short break in ”Paradise” we landed in Melbourne, Australia, and were greeted with horrendous queues to get through customs. Two hours and a bit of queue jumping later, we met up with Duncan (June's son) who took us to June’s house in the Dandenong Mountains. The skies were grey as we drove through the suburbs and it felt very much like we'd returned to England. Fortunately it was just a blip and the weather went on to improve immensely. During our time here we spent most evenings sipping a cold beer and talking with June, Chris and Janet (June's daughter.) In between hospital visits our days were filled with walks in the nearby forest listening to the strange noise of the kookaburras and searching in vain for Lyre Birds. One day Melanie and Pud ... read more

42years ago I travelled on the ship Canberra to Melbourne in the state of Victoria. I was unable to stay there at that time due to family commitments. This holiday has been an opportunity to re-visit this lovely place. There are many ways of travelling to Australia, we chose to go direct with no stopovers only changing 'planes at Dubai. This proved to be the best choice for us. We arrived early morning in Melbourne, collected the hire car and set off for Rye, which is on the Mornington Peninsular, about 90km south of Melbourne. The weather was cold, wet and uninviting. The traffic was horrific, not at all what we expected, more like home. We had to pay conjestion charges for using the city-linkand we were very tired. Following an Aussie welcome we set off ... read more

We spent 3 days in the bush near Alice Springs. Our trip took us to Uluru, Kata Tjuta and King's Canyon. We slept in swags (it's like a canvas cocoon) under the stars. Fine if you are not worried about snakes, spiders, dingos and huge centipedes crawling into your sleeping bag!... read more

It was so tough being in Sydney that Orla and I decided we needed a week in Fiji, so we duly flew to Nadi with no plans and no place to stay and hoped that we would have a Pacific adventure. We were not far wrong with all sorts of wrangling and comedy of errors including missing boats, seasickness (not us, thank goodness!), torrential Pacific downpours and being ripped off by (probably) well-meaning, but unclear, travel agents. However, it was all part of enjoying "Fiji time" i.e. being so laid back we were horizontal and you couldn't help but have a great time on these beautiful islands: Treasure Island, Musket Cove on Malololailai, and Sonaisali. We felt almost like the Famous Five given the names but didn't think that George, Anne, Julian, Dick and Timmy the ... read more

Sorry about the delayed message everyone, my internet just was just hooked up today. Well it’s official, I’m at school in Australia. Oh sorry, Uni, they don’t like the word school, it only means elementary school to them, and since I look like I could be in elementary school, it just throws everyone off. So I’m at “Uni”, just arrived today and whoever said Perth was picturesque was a genius. It is so damn beautiful here, it makes the rest of Australia look like the ghetto, no offense to all my friends over on the east coast. Alright so before I go on gushing and make everyone vomit, I’ll just quickly reminisce on the rest of my Sydney experience. So the second day we were in Sydney, Char and I dropped off Becca at the university ... read more