Blogs from Oceania - page 7801

With only having a short time in Austrialia I thought I should cram as much as possible. Organised a trip along the Great Ocean Road and a wildlife trip to see the Phillip Island penguins. The Great Ocean Road trip turned out to be a geographers/geologists/photographers dream. We got to see wild kangaroos that have made their home on a private golf course, as well as a wild Koalas. The main part of the trip was to see the amazing coastal scenery that Victoria is famous for. Victoria as in the state in Austrialia - not me! The following day the trip consisted of visitng a wildlife sanctuary which involved getting up close and personal with orphaned wombats, kangaroos, koalas and not so personal with dingos Phillip Island was the next stop to see tiny timid ... read more

Sunday 8 August 2004 Last week I was in the east of the state. Tonight I'm in Warrnambool which is on the west coast of Victoria. Most of the day was fine but it started to rain this evening, so much that I had to drive to the pub for my meal which was a bit annoying because the establishment was within walking distance. I'm here for a couple of days working in town. I don't know what has come over me. Its as if the end of the financial year and I'm ready to give up photographing children. This job is getting the better of me. I'm visiting the same towns and because I have photographed all the interesting sites on previous occasions I'm now finding these towns boring (except Glenrowan which I hadn't worked ... read more

I spent the last few days in New Zealand in Christchurch staying with my great-auntie Janet - well I think that is her relation to me. Janet has been in N.Z. for forty years, yet she still has a broad Dundee accent while I have been in the country four weeks and have a strange mixture of accents depending on who I am talking to at the time. Janet and her welcoming friends and family are proud Scots and seem to have enjoyed re-telling stories from their past and I have very much enjoyed listening to them. Janet took good care of me, feeding me home-made soup and making sure my electric blanket was turned on. In fact it was just like being at home - which is where I wanted to go when I left ... read more

After deliberation, I decided to go back to the Remarkables for another days' skiing.  I had enjoyed the first day so much and my skiing had come on heaps in a short space of time so I hired all the gear again and headed up the mountain. At the end of my last lesson the instructor said I was about a level 3B so I went along for my morning lesson and stood in the 3B line.  We headed straight up the hill and went for a test-run to make sure all the 3As & Bs had assigned themselves to the correct ability group.  Well I had managed to forget almost everything from the previous days skiing and was tkaing it a little too slowly for the 3B group and I was demoted :( This must ... read more

A more reasonable start this morning a cushie 9.50am pick-up from my hostel by the kayak instructor Wayne. Yes, I am going kayaking again - this is the one place I was determined to have a go at it before I even arrived in N.Z. so despite being on many kayak trips already, I booked a full day trip - surely I should be good at it by now....This is the furthest south I have been on my trip and this was also set to be the coldest trip I had been on to date, so I was pretty pleased that the kayak folk had lovely matching stripey thermal gear to dress up in as well as fleeces, beanies (hats) and spray jackets in a fabulous shade of purple.Back in a tandem kayak - which are ... read more