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 Home | Tue 12th Feb '08 - Day 355 | Brrrrrrr! We left KL in luxurious style in a sleeper carraige on the train to Singapore, where we had our own beds and everything...a few steps up from smelly, crazy, third class in Thailand! We chugged into Singapore on a bright and sunny morning and decided to head to the zoo for a gander (they didn't sell ganders in the zoo but we had a look anyway). After getting off at the nearest MRT (think DART), we realised that the 1 cm on our map represented a 6 km walk in 35 degree heat. Yay. The zoo was well worth it though, especially the white Siberian tigers, the baboons, getting up close and personal with flying foxes and lemurs, and seeing the biggest snake known to humanity...well, known to us! It was humungous, a 6 m python who would wear the same size trouser as we do (if snakes wore trouser). Over the next two days we thoroughly explored Singapore and walked millions of kms taking photos. The city is an even cleaner, more modern city than KL and we got to explore it properly this time around as we are used to the heat and humidity (want to be at this stage!). However, the price does jump. It's not as cheap as the rest of Asia, but in fairness, it's about half-price compared to home. Speaking of home, we lived the last two days in Singapore in a state of perpetual excitement, and sleep was not an option for either of us. Running around in a buzzy state of near-dementia and sqeaking 'Eeep' at each other every now and then was about all we were good for! This only got worse on the flight home, however the 6.30 am chilly morning rain in Heathrow brought us back to reality...for a while! That was nothing compared to getting off the plane on the runway in Dublin (after a piddly little 1 hour flight - we were just getting comfy!). Holy guacamole, it was bleedin' freezin'. It was so cold that Adrian's beard started to freeze and Karen got icicles in her hair. It didn't help matters that we were both dressed in shorts and flip-flops! That didn't matter though. We were home. So, 'How does it feel to be home?' we hear you ask. It feels great. We are very happy. We thoroughly enjoyed our trip and we thoroughly enjoyed coming home too. Seeing our families again was fantastic. Scabbing pints off friends was good too, as was bringing Finn for a walk and being scowled at by Manny. One month on and it still feels great to be home. In the first week, we saw most of the country as we visited family in the four corners of the land (a pox on Bus Éireann!). In doing so, we realised how beautiful this country is, especially when you look at it from the outside. Everything is fresh and green and there is hardly a speck of rubbish to be seen, even in the cities. The towns and cities are full of funky, modern developments alongside picturesque 1000 year old castles and walls. It's also good being able to speak at a normal pace again! Another class thing about being home is sausages...and roast dinners...and real teabags...and tayto...the list goes on! We both came home to new additions to the families so, Fáilte to Bonnie Corcoran and Michael Luke Farrell! Well, it's time to sign off. Feel free to send us an email telling us how wonderful we are and detailing how much you want to donate to AK-OzBlog 2 - 'Revenge of the Roos'. We hope you've enjoyed the journey with us and join us next time for more amazing adventures on AK-Ozblog. Til then, G'Day Mates! | Yes |
Kuala Lumpur | Fri 11th Jan '08 - Day 323 | Extra Photos More photos of KL | Yes |
Kuala Lumpur | Fri 11th Jan '08 - Day 323 | Kuala Oompa Loompa After an unorthodox Christmas Day, where turkey and ham were substituted with triple-chocolate-chunky-fudgy ice-cream, with hot fudge, cream and a cherry on top, we headed south through Thailand. We were looking for a beach and the usual tourist spots and islands were all booked out. We refuelled and had a break from the worst train journey in the world in a place called Chumphon, on the east coast. Alas, no beach, so we continued south and found one in a little place called Songkhla. It was nice, great weather and had the warmest water we've ever been in. We've had baths where the water wasn't as warm as this sea was! Strange thing about the beach though, no one was showing any skin, let alone wearing a bikini. Everyone was fully-clothed, even when getting into the sea! Undeterred, we stripped off and soaked up the sun, attracting more than a few stares. We spent New Years in Songkhla and rang in 2008 with Tom & Jerry and a huge pile of numblies! A few days later, it was back on the train again, heading towards Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur (or KL as those of us 'in-the-know' call it!). KL is a cool city, the most Westernized of all the cities we've been in since Sydney, and there is English spoken everywhere. This makes it a lot easier than in Thailand where they don't always have street names written in English, plus, the Thai language is written in it's own script - no 'normal' letters, so you can't even try to sound out words. The Malay language uses the same alphabet as we do, so you can at least have a go at pronouncing things, like food names on a menu...usually with hilarious results! English is one of the official languages of Malaysia, and some Malaysians actually speak it to each other. There is a great mix of people here with Malays, Chinese and Indian people making up most of the population. This makes for some great eating. You can walk down one road in KL and get authentic Indian Tandoori and Roti bread from one stall, Malaysian Satay and Laksa from the next, Chinese Won Ton Soup from another and wash it all down with coffee from StarBucks! It's cool, and we've tried all kinds of mad food including the strangest fruit in the world. It's called a durian and they love it here. The locals say 'It smells like hell, but tastes like heaven', we were warned that you either love it or hate it, and that most Westerners hate it. Sounds like a challenge! It's around the size of a pineapple but it's covered in spikes. Inside is something that resembles a little beige liver in appearence and slimy, sticky, soft snot in texture. It tastes sort of like mushy onions...doesn't sound too appetising does it? But it's a strangely enjoyable experience. The city itself is a very modern, clean and good-looking city. It's really easy to get around as it has a train, monorail, two LRTs (DARTs) and more buses than you shake an M-meat stick at! It has lots of green areas, gardens and skyscrapers, including the Petronas Twin Towers. These are two 88-story buildings, linked by a 'sky-bridge' on the 41st floor. They are very impressive and tower way over the rest of the city. At night they are lit up so brightly that they seem to have a halo around them, and they send a load of light up into the sky. The other towers and skyscrapers pale in comparison to them - we reckon that's because the Twin Towers drain the city electricity grid so that they stand out! We went up onto the sky-bridge (of course!) and the view of the city was amazing (bleedin' good thing too cos we had to queue for 2 hours at 7 in the morning to get a limited daily ticket!). You could see the whole city and the hills that surround it. KL is in a bowl in the middle of a rainforest...which explains the weather. It rains here....a lot! Every afternoon that we've been here, there has been a torrential rain storm accompanied by thunder and lightning...very cool and 'oooh' if you're inside looking out at it, but loses its charm and 'oooh' factor when you're caught out in it! All in all, KL gets the AK Seal-of-Approval®. It's got great food, friendly people, great shopping, nice parks, a monorail, lots of markets and a hotel with a 5 story IMAX screen (saw AvP2 on it - sweet) and a rollercoaster complete with loop the loop in one of the foyers! Worth coming to see and an easy-peasy introduction to Asia, however we would recommend getting a golf umbrella surgically attached to your head before leaving home! | Yes |
Bangkok | Mon 24th Dec '07 - Day 304 | Extra Photos Here's some more photos of Bangkok for your viewing pleasure! | Yes |
Bangkok | Mon 24th Dec '07 - Day 304 | The King and Us Well, we are here. Bangkok. Where East meets West and they have a reeaally good time. It combines the best bits of modern Western cities with the best crazy bits of the Asian cities we've been to. It's exciting, it's loud, it's clean, it's brash, it's smelly (good and bad), it's cheap. You can buy anything and eat anything, anytime you want. And they have a king! They love this guy. We went to the cinema last night and before the film came on you had to stand up and pay respects to him for a minute! Imagine doing that for Bertie! There are pictures and shrines to him everywhere and signs that say 'Long Live the King' strewn throughout the city. Yesterday morning we went to Chatuchak market, which has 15,000 stalls! You can buy EVERYTHING here, from silk to spices, icepops to ivory, pet puppies to puppies on a stick...only messing, we're not in Vietnam anymore! Speaking of dogs, there are loads more here than in Vietnam. We reckon they are refugees from Vietnam, escaping the dog-meat restaurants that they have over there. We were told in Vietnam that if you have a pet dog you have to watch it carefully, because poor people will steal it and sell it to these restaurants! Back in the market, we did try some M-meat-on-a-stick (M stands for miscellaneous, we reckon it was pork) and it was yummy. Siam square is the main shopping area and central location in the city. It's full of modern air-con malls and boutiques, where you can buy a Mazeratti (sports car if you're not into your cars) as well as Versache chopsticks, after enjoying your iced-frappa-mappa-chino with brunch. We had to go through an x-ray security machine just to get into the place...weird! They didn't like when we tried to take photos either, although we covertly took one before SWAT was called in! Today we took a wander around the west-si-ide of the city and are currently playing backpacker and writing this in a bar on Khao San street (central backpackerland, Leo di Caprio was on this sleazy street at the start of 'The Beach'). We're gonna head now and have a triple-M (M-meat-meal) experience for dinner. Not exactly turkey and ham but it's been a memorable, if crazy, Christmas Eve! Happy Christmas everyone! | Yes |
Hanoi | Sat 22nd Dec '07 - Day 302 | In Commie Country We stopped for a quick 2-day mini-break in Hué, which is half-way up the coast. It was the site of a major siege and battle during the war and therefore one of the places we wanted to see while we were here. There is a huge fortified citadel in the centre of the city which is very imposing and is surrounded by a moat and city wall. On the way there we passed guys selling all kinds of war memorabilia on the street, which included old hand grenades (eeep!), bullet casings, dog-tags and helmets, some with bullet-holes in them. Little bit morbid for us but the American tourists seemed very interested in them. The food in Hué was exceptionally good and we tried out as many cafés and restaurants as we could in the short time that we were there. Good thing too, because we needed all of our strength for the gruelling 12-hour (yes, you read that right!) overnight bus journey to Hanoi. Our bus driver had a serious aversion to driving on his own side of the road and he seemed to need to check that the horn was working every 2 minutes. Hence, we didn't get much sleep and were exhausted when we arrived in Hanoi early the next morning. However, after a few hours kip and a de-bussing power shower, we were ready to go again. Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam and quite far north, making it the coolest place we have visited here. We were still in shorts and t-shirts though while the crazy Hanoi-ans were wearing jackets and jeans! The touristy part of Hanoi is called 'The Old Quarter' and is full of stalls, cyclos, motorbikes, bars and restaurants. You'd know it was the touristy part because the prices doubled compared to everywhere else we've been. The non-touristy part of Hanoi is called Hanoi! It's full of cars, motorbikes, cyclos, parks, trees and government buildings. It has a slight European feel, thanks to the wide streets, trees and cafés which are widespread here. It's also obvious that the North won the war as money is being poured into Hanoi while Saigon is being left waaaay behind. They even have bins in Hanoi (!) and it's therefore much cleaner than Saigon. All in all, it's a nice city and somewhere we will come back to again, although we will be getting our eardrums insured and our lungs coated in smog-resistant titanium before then! | Yes |
Nha Trang | Mon 17th Dec '07 - Day 298 | Chillin in Nha Trang With Saigon behind us, we found ourselves on an 8-hour train journey north to Nha Trang. The train's go quite slowly over here as there's only 1 main line, so there's a lot of waiting for other trains to go past. There's lots of twists and turns on the way as well, so it has to slow right down for them, otherwise we'd be sleepin' with the fishes! One annoying thing is that the telly on the train is blaring constantly. Given that at one stage they had a Japanese film, dubbed badly into Vietnamese (with the Japanese still audible) up at the top volume, it was quite painful at times! Nha Trang is a lovely place. Much cleaner and quieter than Saigon, although the same road rules (yeah right!) still apply. When we got to our hotel, we thought we'd been given the wrong room because it was so nice (definitely been in the bush too long!). The town (only 300,000 people - a village really!) is beside a 6 km stretch of beach which we made good use of while there. The South China Sea is nice and warm, though not as clear as in Oz. Our hotel is in the touristy end of town, which is full of restaurants and bars, and is where most of the tourists spend all their time. It's kind of like a resort in the Canaries in that way. In an effort to escape said tourists, we wandered to the other end of town which is where all the Vietnamese locals hang out. On Thursday (Adrian's birthday - we'll pick up presents when we get home), we were going to go for dinner in a German restaurant. However, when we got there, there was a huge hole in the ground where it used to be! Undeterred, we strolled into a really local Vietnamese eatery. We could very well have been the only two Westerners to have ever gone in there because when we walked in the door, the guys running the place nearly had a heart attack. There was no English on the menus and it really was a case of "Quick! Get Nguyen! He speaks English!". We basically pointed randomly to a couple of things on the menu, there was a lot of mooing (for beef) and arm flapping (for chicken), some appalling Vietnamese from us and somo pidgin English from Nguyen, but it was all good fun and we had a great meal in the end. Good job we can use chopsticks though as there was nary a fork to be seen! The next day we went on a day tour around 4 of the islands in the bay and got to go swimming and snorkelling around some coral reef, as well as chilling on an island and drinking at a floating bar. Ah, the floating bar! This consisted of a floating ring tethered to the boat with one of the crew (barman) sitting in the middle. We put on lifebelts, jumped in and clung onto the ring while drinking shots of pineapple stuff. Health and safety?...not over here! They're all mad! One of the weird things we're seeing here is the Christmas decorations, trees and music on the streets. It's very strange, poor 'oul Santy has his big fur coat and hat on and it's about 30 degrees! At the moment, it's about 8 am and we are finishing up a gruelling 12-hour train journey from Nha Trang to Hue. We haven't slept much, but we did get to see the sun rise over the South China Sea and the mountains off the coast of Vietnam, so that's made up for it. Now for some Pho Bo! | Yes |
Saigon | Wed 12th Dec '07 - Day 293 | Good Morning Vietnam! It's hot! It's damn hot! And humid. There is noise and people everywhere, smells the like of which we've never smelt before, unidentifiable food and the world's largest collection of motorbikes. Welcome to South East Asia! We're better able to deal with the heat and humidity this time round but it still tires you out. We arrived in Saigon (also called Ho Chi Minh City) late in the evening after an 8-hour flight. After negotiating our taxi fare to the city (he wanted $15, we got it for $6) we had one of the craziest drives of our lives. 8 million people live in Saigon and there are 6 million mopeds and small motorbikes in the city. The streets are full of them (see pics) and nobody pays any attention to road rules. We're not even sure there are road rules! Everyone just cuts in and out, turns where they need to and drives up the wrong side of the road and on the footpaths if it suits them. And everyone beeps at each other to let others know where they are. Therefore there's constant beeping! It's crazy. After getting sorted in the hotel and having some much-needed showers, we headed for the bar across the road, chilled with a few cold beers (€1 each - sweet!) and watched the street. This is how we learned how to cross the road. Basically, you walk very slowly across and do not stop or run. This allows the bikes to see you in plenty of time and avoid you. Takes nerves of steel but you get the hang of it (the first few times you basically walk screaming into the oncoming traffic, waving your arms and hoping no one hits you!). You would need pages to describe everything we saw on the street that first evening: the mopeds driving willy-nilly through the intersection, with old people and kids thrown in for good measure; people on small motorbikes caryying all sorts of stuff, sacks of rice, door-frames, couches, whatever; whole families on mopeds, 2 adults, 2 kids and Granny on the back!; and people walking around selling everything you can imagine, souveneirs, cigarettes, postcards, books, cuttlefish, one woman was wheeling around a huge height and weight machine! It's way better than telly! The next day was our first morning in Vietnam (think Robin Williams) and we got our first taste of Pho Bo (pronounced faw-baw). It's beef noodle soup, it's very numbly and has become a favourite dish of ours. We also love one of the legacies from the French (after they got fed up trying to hold onto their colony here)....fantastic coffee! We did a lot of walking around on the first day and saw a huge area of the city. It is packed full of people, there is a lot of poverty with people living in some really horrible conditions and there is a lot of rubbish and crap in some of the streets. The people are very friendly though and the kids love practicing their English on you, shouting "Hello" at the top of their voices as they zoom past, helmetless, on Mum's moped! You haggle for anything that doesn't already have a price tag. For us, that can be hard sometimes because it's so cheap anyway, and we feel stingy arguing over 20 cent. However, you are expected to haggle to keep prices down. Plus, because you're a foreigner, the prices get hiked up and people constantly try to sell you stuff. We learned how to say "No, thank you" in Vietnamese very quickly! All the food and drink is fantastic and very cheap. There's actually too much to describe, and even then, we reckon you could never describe Saigon properly to someone. It's somewhere you have to experience yourself. We went on a day trip to the Mekong River Delta yesterday and had a great time. We went on three different boats, which got progressively smaller and smaller until eventually it was just us and two Ozzies (complete with traditional conical hats) being paddled around by 2 Vietnamese in a tiny canoe on the muddy brown river, with the jungle on each side of us. We got to see some locals making coconut candy and we got to hold a 9 ft python! Today we visited the War Remnants Museum. It was full of machinery and weapons left over from the Anti-American War. It also had a lot of photos taken by both sides and plenty of pretty horrific information and images. Not everyone's cup of tea, but it was definitely worth going to see and interesting to hear about it from the Vietnamese point of view. These last few days in Saigon have been a hell of an introduction to Vietnam! | Yes |
Sydney | Fri 07th Dec '07 - Day 288 | A Tale of Two Cities The day finally came when we had to leave Rainbow Beach (Awwww, boo). We said our goodbyes, offloaded most of our camping stuff to the guy next door and powered up the hippy van for one final road-trip, to Brisbane. Although we'd been here before it didn't get the full OzBlog treatment, so we set about exploring it properly. Brisbane is known as the River city, as it sits on the (rather cleverly named) Brisbane River, complete with an Eastender's S-bend, making for lovely walks along the banks. It's also easy to get in and out of, due to the expressway they built...on stilts in the river! Bris-vegas, as they call it (it has a casino), is smaller than Melbourne and is the most northerly major city, with a tropical climate. The Southbank area of the city is gorgeous. Its an arty recreation area with playgrounds, gardens, museums, swimming pools and cliffs; which people feel the need to throw themselves off of for fun (they call it abseiling). The city center is impressive, with lots of big skyscrapers, lots of bustling shopping malls and lots of introspective goths and punks. On the last day we bid a fond farewell to our rusty, trusty hippy van (if you feel teary thats ok!) and made our way to Sydney (luckily no-one tried to hi-jack the plane by clipping the pilots nails or by filing through the cabin door). Two minutes after landing in Sydney all runway activities were suspended due to an electrical storm. We just made it! The hostel we're staying in is very nice, we got a room upgrade when we arrived, it has free internet and more importantly showers and real beds. Sweet! 3rd real bed in 10 months! Sydney rocks! We have spent the last few days walking many, many kilometers, exploring it on foot. We got photos of all the usual sight-seeing stuff, just to prove that we are actually here. The Opera House is all it's cracked up to be. The first time we saw it we looked at each other and made the Opera House noise from Finding Nemo (Awwwwwwh!). There was some bridge in the photo we took as well, spanning Sydney Harbour...but we didn't find out what that was called. The city itself is class, and massive. It reminds us of Dublin on a bigger scale, beacuse there are some actual old buildings, it doesnt have a perfect grid (probably coz we built it!) and there are Irish everywhere! Today we went swimming at County Bondi, which lived up to its name. There are few Aussies to be seen in the city centre, it's all Asians and Europeans, making for some great food! The city is really busy, it doesn't stop at night-time and it has all of the public transports! Buses, trains, trams, ferry, undergrounds and....a Monorail! (think Simpsons). There are still traffic jams. We met up with Mark and Gaz, two mates (see, we've been Ozzi-ified!) from Tramore for the obligatory "One Quiet Pint" (Ha! Those one pint hangovers are a killer!). We have now had a pint in all the major cities in Oz. Your applause is appreciated. Tomorrow we leave Australia, so this will be the last Ozzie OzBlog, but fear not dear reader, coz we'll keep you updated and amused from South East Asia...eep! | Yes |
Rainbow Beach | Wed 28th Nov '07 - Day 279 | At the end of the Rainbow! Deciding that we were about due for another two-week holiday in the sun (try not to hate us too much!), we continued north along the Sunshine Coast into the familiar territory around Brisbane. Incidently, we arrived in Brisbane and completed our Circle Of Oz on 17th Nov, 238 days (roughly 8 months) and 34,000 km after we'd started. Phew! We felt very proud of ourselves and celebrated the circumnavigation of our first continent with pizza and wine on Rainbow Beach. Seeing as how we've been here for the last two weeks relaxing and chilling, we haven't much to report, except that it's nice being here relaxing and chilling. We also managed to get the same campsite as last time, thereby satisfying Adrian's need for complete symmetry. The access track to the campsite has gotten a bit more sandy since the last time though, so we mentally will the van through it and heave a sigh of relief everytime we make it through without getting stuck. Oh, and it actually rained the other night, which is when we discovered a small leak in the roof of the tent (always the best time to find a leak!). The next morning we attacked the problem with gusto (and sellotape) and it seems to be fixed. Mind you, it hasn't rained again since so.... Speaking of tents, we met two hitchhikers who came to Inskip to camp, but didn't bring a tent! They had spent their first night here in the open, in a sleeping bag, providing a buffet for local mozzies and sandflies, and a target for local raindrops - muppets! Feeling sorry for them, we gave them one of our tents. We thought it only fair as we have two, and a van! Rainbow Beach itself is busier than the last time we were here, although the water is still gorgeous, the sun is still hot and the sandflies don't bite as much this time around. We are relaxing as much as possible before more hectic adventures in Sydney and Asia. The last ten days have consisted of a lot of lying around, swimming, taking long walks and sunning ourselves, with the odd excitement of digging some eejit out of the sand...how bad?! | Yes |
Byron Bay | Fri 16th Nov '07 - Day 267 | Byron get ron free! Didn't make it to space. Made it to Byron Bay though. After Parkes we took a wet and windy drive through the Blue Mountains. We had planned on staying here for a few days and exploring, but it was lashing and the weather was completely miserable (if you're wondering why we left and think we wussed out, take a look at the photo!). Right, we said, enough of this rain pish, we can get that at home, we'll drive north to the sun (That's one of the great things about Oz, you can drive to a different climate!). On the way, we took a quick detour to drive through Sydney in the Friday evening rush-hour traffic. 4 million Ozzies trying to get home, and the two of us in the flowery hippie-van holding them all up by gawking around at everything! While stopped at traffic lights in the city centre, we had a quick chat out the window with 2 guys who recognized the van from when we were in Perth! The traffic behind us wasn't as enthused about it as we were, however!. Sydney is huge and pretty spectacular. We were driving into it for 40 km! We got our first glimpse of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, and took a few photos before speeding off into the night, like a lame snail. We're looking forward to exploring the city when we get back to it in a few weeks. Around 300 km north of Sydney, we finally found the sun at a place called Forster. We lay on the beach and chilled for a few days, enjoying the unfamiliar caress of the sun on our skin! Our next adventure took us inland and around the "Waterfall Way" which, you've guessed it, has loads of waterfalls. They were cool. This part of the country is called New England, and looking out the window you can see why. It's very, very green (water shortage my ass!) with lots of rolling hills, gorgeous farmland and poplar-lined avenues. Very pretty. Back on the Pacific highway, we made for Byron Bay via Lismore and Ballina (pronounced Bal-eee-na over here). We're definitely not in the outback anymore. Nary a fly to be seen (thank God!), more backpackers than you can shake a stick at (oh God!) and there are at least 4 other Wicked vans here in the caravan park. That's more than we've seen in total since leaving Perth! Bloody tourists. | Yes |
Orange | Fri 09th Nov '07 - Day 259 | Star-Trekkin' Being the total nerds that we are, we couldn't resist the draw of the Deep Space Communications Complex just outside Canberra. They have 4 active tracking and communication dishes, one of which is the largest in the southern hemisphere, with a diameter of 70 m. These guys are used to track and communicate with deep space spacecraft such as Voyager 1 and 2, which (we have just learned) are way outside our solar system at about 15 billion kms from earth. Far out! While we were there, they were actually tracking and receiving data from Voyager 2! They are also playing a big role in the current Saturn, Jupiter and Mars missions. At the complex's museum, there is loads of historic space stuff from the Apollo missions, including a real-life Moon rock from the actual moon (looks like a firelighter) and parts of the lunar module from Apollo 11 (looks like parts of a lunar module). We also learned how astronauts go to the toilet in space, and are now trying to unlearn it! Continuing the space theme, we realised one of our simple, humble goals in life, to visit Parkes and its 'beautiful' radio telescope. This telescope was made famous by the film "The Dish" - if you haven't seen it, get it, it's class. It was the dish that transmitted the TV pictures of the moon landing, and they don't let you forget it. We had great fun at The Dish. In the courtyard, they had set up 2 small parabolas (dishes) about 50 m apart exactly facing each other. When you faced into one and whispered, the person in the other parabola could hear you perfectly, because the shape of the dish focussed the sound waves. It was mad. Physics is cool! Inspired by all that we have seen over the last two days, we are currently busy fitting the hippy van with booster rockets, and are almost certain that we will be in space by this time next week. | Yes |
Canberra | Wed 07th Nov '07 - Day 257 | Triple-skinny-mocha-choco-chino Country Guess what people from Canberra are called...and it's not cranberries. Most federal government departments and agencies, as well as all the embassies are based here, and so the city is full of Pubes...short for public servants! That's as funny as jokes get in Canberra. And its true, the city is like a big version of the IFSC in Dublin. Apart from morning, lunch and evening rush hours, the streets are basically empty. It's freaky. The whole city was designed and planned early in the 20th century, but only built in the 50's and 60's, hence it's only about 40 years old! Do you know when you see a computer model of a new shopping complex or neighbourhood, that hasn't been built yet? Well that's what Canberra is like. There are loads of fine buildings on manicured grounds just scattered about like hotels on a monopoly board (scattered in a designed planned way though, like immaculately styled 'bed-head' hair). One of the most impressive buildings is the new Parliament Building which, like the hobbit-holes in Lord of the Rings, is dug into a hill...we saw them mowing the roof! All the most important buildings are in a straight line, with Mt. Ainslie (an 800 m hill, north-east of the city) at one end and the new Parliament Building at the other. We toured the sights, and visited the National War Memorial and National Dinosaur Museum, which were cool. The city is definitely the strangest we've come across so far...for e.g. the city centre is basically a huge indoor shopping mall and everyone does everything at the same time of day. It's the ultimate rat-race! It actually feels like only one portion of a city - the officey bit - without everything else that you normally get. Funny story...on our first day driving around the city, we pulled in and stopped to check the map. Within 30 SECONDS, a 'Protective Service' jeep pulled up behind us, complete with sun-glass-wearing, handgun-toting GI Bruce, who politely asked us to remove our vehicle from the area. We looked up in surprise at him and then realised that we'd stopped our old, noisy, dodgy-looking hippy van right outside the Parliament Building of the Federal Government of Australia! We were literally 30 m from the main entrance! We removed our vehicle from the area. | Yes |
Canberra | Sun 04th Nov '07 - Day 254 | Rainy Mountain We left Wombat Forest and came back to Melbourne, decided we'd been away from the beach for too long and so made a plan to remedy this. Inspired by the name, we struck east for Paradise Beach in Gippsland (incidently Gippsland is home to giant, 1-3 m long earthworms! Apparently you can hear them moving through their water-filled, underground tunnels. We kept an ear out but alas, didn't hear any). Paradise Beach was lovely and we got a good 3 hours sunbathing in, before clouds wrecked our fun. It turned chilly so we went for a walk down 90-mile beach (no, not the whole 90 miles). Along the way, we saw a shape on the sand and went in for closer inspection. It looked like a dead baby seal; we were leaning over it and halfway through saying "Eh, it doesn't look that dead", when suddenly it rose up off the sand, bared its (big, sharp, pointy) teeth, roared and lunged for us! We leapt back out of the way but it kept going, driven on by bloodlust, for Karen's legs! Cute? We think not. It then ran (as well as a seal can) back to the sea and plunged into the waves. We burst out laughing at ourselves and continued our walk down the beach, this time however we steered clear of anything that looked like a dead baby seal. Unfortunately, the following day dawned (well, dawned is the wrong word, 'sloshed in' is more like it) cloudy and wet, so we left the beach and drove east, then north to reach New South Wales and the Snowy Mountains. Our mission in the Snowy Mountains was to climb Mt Kosciuszko, the highest mountain in Oz. Full of beans and woth clear skies, we called into the Information Centre in Jindabyne for a map, but found out that conditions on the mountain were not conducive to us climbing it (i.e. it was 0.6 degrees, snowing, wet and windy, a bit harsh for our mountain gear...shorts and sandals!). Cursing the weather once again, we left Jindabyne, reasoning that an extra day in the sun on the beach was preferable to a day freezing on a mountain...only mad people do that sort of thing! | Yes |
Wombat Forest | Wed 31st Oct '07 - Day 250 | When in Melbourne... The day or two on the beach in Warnambool lasted only a day as the weather took a turn for the worse. As we're not major fans of lying semi-naked in the rain, we pushed on east to the Great Ocean Road. Alas, the weather didn't improve, and the typically photogenic, big blue Ozzie sky was replaced by (increasingly familiar) steely grey clouds. Nearly brought a tear to the eye, reminding us of home...nearly. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the drive (especially the wiggly, bendy bits at the cliff edges - great fun) and took some nice photos of this beautiful coast. We stopped at all the usual suspects that this drive is famous for, The 12 Apostles, London Bridge, The Grotto among others (all rock formations by the way). The most bizarre thing we saw was the crowds of about 500 people snapping the same picture of The 12 Apostles (of which there are only 6!). Not wanting to be left out, we dutifully took the photo (seriously, there was easily $100 billion worth of camera equipment at this one lookout!). We also saw our first wild koalas at one of the campsites! At the end of the Great Ocean Road, we found ourselves in Torquay (insert Basil Fawtly quote here), the surfing capital of Australia. We watched some surfers at the famous Bell's Beach just nearby and found a huge shopping complex devoted entirely to surfing, where we paid homage at the temple of Quiksilver (over-priced, fancy, surfing label for any non-hip-cool-and-down-with-it people out there). With Melbourne so close by, our city senses were tingling, so we jumped on the West Gate freeway and drove to one of the most exciting cities we've ever been in. It started off great; as you enter the city on the freeway, you're suddenly whisked up onto the West Gate Bridge (a spectacular feat of engineering, must be at least 100 metres high and 8 lanes of traffic wide!) and suddenly the city skyscrapers appear on your left. However, things rapidly went downhill (no pun intended). Some of the roads on our map didn't match the roads in reality, and anytime we tried to turn right, it wasn't permitted. Plus it was raining. And then we found out about hook turns...to keep the centre of an intersection free for (insane) trams, cars that want to turn right go into the left lane, drive out in front of traffic waiting to go across from the left and wait for their light to go green before making the turn! Confused yet? We were, and therefore decided to avoid right turns at all cost. After cursing our way around the city for half an hour (in our conspicuous, brightly-coloured, hippy van) we finally found a car park that didn't cost $13 an hour and that you didn't have to turn right to get into! Things calmed down after that. We got the hang of the streets (edited our streetmap with big X's over non-existent streets) and got a feel for the city very quickly. And what a city! Its skyscrapers are taller than a tall basketball player, on stilts, wearing Spice Girl runners. Its drivers are more impatient than someone who needs to pee, standing in line for a toilet beside a tinkling waterfall. And its indulgence puts the Romans to shame! Everything here is based around pleasure, art or just because they can. The city is brimming with all kinds of fancy-pants restaurants, shops, cafes, theatres...you know...the stuff cities are made of (great museum by the way, lots of cool stuff). You can judge yourselves from the photos but suffice to say, we've had a great (and exhausting!) time exploring this beautiful city. It's very easy to see why people come here and don't leave. They also have The Victoria Market, 7 hectares of stalls selling food, clothes and everything in between. They even sell live chickens! Food markets rule way better than smelly chain supermarkets. We should have more at home we reckon. After a late-night photography extravaganza, we slept in this morning and missed our window to get reasonably-priced city parking. So we came up north to Hanging Rock, where four schoolgirls mysteriously disappeared in the 60's while on a school picnic (there was an ozzie film about it...they called it "Picnic at Hanging Rock"). There's some spectacular scenery and now we're camped in the middle of a cool forest, with full tummies ala Adrian and a lovely campfire ala Karen. The stars are out and it's very peaceful apart from Muffy's incessant, drunken rantling... | Yes |
Warnambool | Sun 21st Oct '07 - Day 241 | Extra photos for the previous article Just thought we'd split up the photos for the article so they wouldn't take as long to download. Enjoy! | Yes |
Warnambool | Sun 21st Oct '07 - Day 241 | Bratwurst, Bones and Bluffs With Hahndorf and bratwurst as our destination, we left Adelaide and travelled south through the Barossa Valley. This area is one of the most famous wine-producing regions in Oz. The whole valley is completely covered in vineyards, some of which are absolutely ginormous (we drove past one vineyard at 80 km/h for 10 minutes...you do the maths!). We cast a practiced eye over them, commenting on the quality of the wrapping and pruning and decided that not all of them were up to our exacting standards...of course! We drove over the actual Jacob's Creek itself as well. Hahndorf proved as wunderbar as we had hoped. We ate a good ole German bratwurst accompanied by real beer (strong and German as opposed to weak and Aussie!) There was also a German festival on the day we were there, complete with guys in lederhosen and brass band music, very weird in the middle of South Australia. That night we chilled in a beautiful rest stop in a forest glade surrounded by vineyards, before heading to Naracoorte caves to see some (more!) fossils. The caves were only discovered in the '70s (luckily one of the cavers who discovered them was a paleontologist!). We spent a great day there, during which we got really close to a wild roo - complete with joey in pouch. Bonza! We also got to explore one of the caves where they had found fossils. We were the only ones down there at the time and it was pretty spooky (Karen, of course, wanted to explore the unlit, off-limits section but Adrian wouldn't let her...wuss!). After Naracoorte, we bid farewell to SA and journeyed into Victoria, "The place to be" according to the car license plates anyway. Our first mission in Victoria was to explore the Grampians Range National Park and climb lots of high mountains. This we accomplished! Over the four days, we climbed three mountains, interspresed with assorted other hills and walks. A huge portion of the forest in the Grampians was destroyed in a massive bushfire in Jan '06, so in the photos you can see burnt trees, but also new growth and life as well. Because of this, campfires are a serious no-no in the park still. Fair nuff we say! The Grampians were class. When we got to the top of 'The Pinnacle', the view of the whole valley was astounding (Adrian, of course, wanted to go out to the edge of a particularly sheer and windy-looking bluff but Karen wouldn't let him...wuss!). We saw loads of different types of wild roos and wallabies, and a few echidnas which were very cute. When we were taking photos of the echidnas and they heard the click of the camera, they'd get spooked and stick their heads in the sand to hide...aww! At the moment we're on a beach in Warnambool relaxing for a day or two before we head onto the Great Ocean Road, which is supposed to be just delightful and is billed a a photographer's paradise. Happy days! | Yes |
Adelaide | Sat 13th Oct '07 - Day 233 | And the prize for the most planned city in the galaxy goes to... Heading towards Adelaide we decided to detour and explore the Yorke Peninsula (little sticky-out bit west of Adelaide, shaped a little bit like Italy) to watch a surfing competition. On the road to the comp, we noticed a lot of cars with surf boards attached heading the opposite direction to us. Turns out we missed the surf comp by a day. Doh!! Unperturbed, we spent the night in Port Vincent at a lovely caravan park, and were real tourists for the evening. It reminded Adrian of holidays in Tramore when he was a wee (well...younger!) lad. The following day, after spending an hour trying to figure out which day it was (very easy to lose track of days when you're not working), we went to the southern tip of the peninsula to Innes National Park. This park started as a town in the 1920's where they mined gypsum. However, after the depression people needed food, not gypsum, so the town was abandoned. It was then sold (how do you buy a town?!) to the government, who have been on a quest ever since to make it look like the town never existed - replanting native flora, removing roads and exterminating (Arnie accent!) imported English garden plants etc. The views around the cliffs were class. We took many a pretty picture. On the way in, a wise old woman (information centre attendent) warned us about snakes being more active and "a bit hungry" at this time of year! We stuck rigidly to the walking trail. After Innes NP, it was time to hit Adelaide with some Irish Flower Power! We trundled merrily into the city centre at lunchtime on a hot, sunny day...in the school holidays! It was jammers, with new, shiny cars and jeeps turning their noses up at our crusty hippy van. We parked at Glenelg, a really, really, posh, upmarket seaside resort just west of the city centre (think Galway to Salthill distance). The beach was lovely, and was obviously the place where all the beautiful people hang out. Big sunglasses (girls) and big, floppy hair (boys) were standard issue. Most of the shops weren't shops, they were "boutiques", with peoples names instead of shop names - think we've been out in the outback too long!! Adelaide city itself is great. The city centre is completely surrounded by parkland with all the car lots, malls, fast-food places etc. way outside the city parks. It is the most planned city ever with everything being symmetrical or at right angles! There are statues, monuments, squares, memorials and parks everywhere. It's very cosmopolitan, with loads of shopping, cafes, theatres etc. - even more so than Perth. It's really nice having so many green areas in the city centre. The public transport system however, is seriously complicated. It would be easier to grasp advanced quantum physics taught in Chinese, while doing a rubix cube, blindfolded, with one hand, than catch the right bus! Over the last few days we've had a great look around, strolled through the botanic gardens, mingled with shoppers on Rundle Mall, bought lots of numbelies at the Central Market (Oh...my...GOD!...so many nice things!) and we also took the odd photo. We wandered around the SA Art Gallery, learning about SA's art history (100 years!). We then wandered around the SA museum learning about SA's ancient history (3.5 billion years!). We saw cool dinosaur fossils and fossils from the nearby Flinder's Ranges, which were recently determined as the oldest examples of fossilised animals in the world (Ediacaran Fauna for any interested parties!). We know, we're nerds! We've enjoyed Adelaide and tomorrow we'll head southwest towards Hahndorf (three little pigs from Shrek accent!) for some schnitzel und bier. We think they might have an Oktoberfest at the moment...don't worry if you don't hear from us for a while! | Yes |
Whyalla | Sat 06th Oct '07 - Day 226 | We're on the road to nowhere Leaving Albany in our wake, we continued east to Esperence and one of the most beautiful coastlines we've ever seen. The water was every shade of greeny-blue you can imagine, with really white sandy beaches. We couldn't resist the draw of the beach and Adrian whipped off the tweeds for his first swim in the Southern Ocean...quite cold but crystal clear is his verdict. After a covert supply run (no mean feat in a 10 ft van covered in flowers) we left Esperence to the rich & famous and headed inland towards Norseman and gold country. This is where the One Road To Rule Them All begins, the Eyre Highway, which crosses...(drumroll please) The Nullarbor. From Norseman it is 1200 km to Ceduna, the next town (town, as in more than a fuel stop and motel!). Ten minutes into the journey we came to some roadworks...40 km later (!) we left the roadworks behind and really got going. The scenery, as expected, was spectacularly desolate and barren. Scrubby bushes, small trees, endless horizons and lots of two-dimensional kangaroos were the only things to be seen. On the first day, we drove 146.6 km across the longest straight stretch of road in Australia (also known as '90-mile straight') without turning the wheel! On the second day we took refuge on the side of the road as the biggest road-train in the known universe went past. That evening we stopped at an old telegraph station which is slowly being reclaimed by the sand (luckily nobody lives there anymore, they realized what was happening and left), and then crossed into South Australia. On the third day we arrived in Ceduna, operation 'Drive-The-Van-Across-The-Nullarbor-To-South-Australia' accomplished. We continued south along the Eyre Peninsula exploring the scenic route to Adelaide. Our first impression of SA is...'Yellow'. It's very yellow here and the horizon is mystifyingly fuzzy. Weird. Just to be different here, they put the road signs on the opposite side of the road to every other state; and there's no people. It's like they were all abducted by rock'n'roll lovin' aliens and left their towns empty! (if you look at the numbers, 1.5 million people live in SA and all but 40,000 of them live in Adelaide!) We visited a few of the towns along the peninsula and went swimming at Elliston, Karen's first time in the Southern Ocean...bleedin' freezin' is her verdict! We also went for a cool walk along a headland at a place called Venus Bay and saw wild dolphins playing and frolicking about 20 ft from where we were standing! We could hear them making their cool clicky and squeaky noises as well...just like the dolphins on telly! After rounding the tip of the peninsula we headed north-east along the other side. This side is much more cultivated then the west side, and is filled mostly with wheat fields. We pushed on, as wheatfields aren't great for exploring, except if you're Adrian and you innocently go to take a pretty photo and nearly step on a big, fat, scaly lizard! (fire-breathing of course). We're now camped at a place by the sea just outside Whyalla, the second largest town in SA. Seeing as how our tans were washed off by the incessant rain in Manji, we might stay here for a day or two to crisp up. God bless CFC's! P.S. We were walking on the beach yesterday and spotted a mother and baby dolphin just offshore. Adrian hopped in for a swim with them before they moved away. Check out the cool last photo! | Yes |
Near Ravensthorpe | Sun 30th Sep '07 - Day 220 | Goodbye, hello and off we go! We've finished working, yayaaay! As a celebration, Adrian shaved his work beard, which had kept him warm through those long cold days in Manji, with hilarious consequences! That's the good news. However, dear readers, you'll be saddened and will maybe even shed a tear at the demise of the dear old Frisky Falcon. Coming into Manji 10 weeks ago, we knew it was on its last wheels and would have to be replaced. We reckon it had a crack the size of the Grand Canyon in its head gasket (and we know about head gaskets!). Why car-makers insist on splitting a perfectly good, metal engine block in two, and inserting a small, thin, flimsy piece of plastic between them is beyond us. And don't even get us started on Welsh Plugs! We, very gingerly (like a 3-legged, lame horse with blisters) limped the last 100 km to a scrapyard in Bunbury where we were pleasantly surprised and slightly bemused to get $100 for the car (which we used to treat ourselves to a swanky meal in Perth...thanks Falcon!). We bid it a tearful farewell (you get pretty attached after 24,000 km...a moments silence please) and collected our new, hired Wicked van (Mitsubishi, manual, 2.5L, white and flowery) in Perth. It's so cool. It's a real-live hippy van with flowers and everything. Yay! It has a little kitchenette and a table inside which can be converted to a very comfy bed. We're loving it so far and our fellow motorists are always smiling with (or at!) us. So we're on the road again...yippee! Our first stop was Stirling Range national park where, just for the laugh, we climbed a 1076 m bluff (mountainy, cliff thing). The views from the top were spectacular and worth the climb. The ever-present lizards (of the foot long variety) kept us company on the way up, and...there was no rain!! The night before last we had a quick stop in Albany, the first and oldest settlement in WA. Nice place, kinda like an English seaside town, and we are now on the road east towards South Australia. The flies are back, but so is the sun. We took off our jumpers. | Yes |
Cape Leeuwin | Sat 15th Sep '07 - Day 205 | West Coast Cooler Seeing as how our attempts to see the rest of the southwest were washed away earlier in the week, we waited for a wetter, windier, even colder day to go see it! Our logic was that you can't judge the weather in the wider area by what it's like in Manjimup...coz its ALWAYS rainy here. Plus, the weather here can change very quickly (see photos). That's our excuse anyway and we're sticking to it! When we got to the most southwesterly point in Australia it was cold, miserable and stormy. Bad for comfort but good for photos. Further north at Redgate Beach, we got some spectacular photos of crashing waves breaking on rocks and saw a funny sign. The weather actually cleared up and it got quite nice, so we took a drive through vineyard country and went tasting wine. Of course the winemaker was French. He was the Frenchest Frenchman we've ever met. He was like a caricature, or a racial stereotype. If you looked up "Frenchman" in the dictionary there would be a picture of this guy, eating a baguette, under the Eifel Tower, wearing a beret. Made good wine though. Of all the people to test (Karen was driving and so didn't taste as much), he gave Adrian a glass of unknown wine, to test his appreciation skills. Turns out it was from a $68 bottle of 6 year old Cabernet Sauvignon. At least Adrian had mentioned the dryness in the minty bouquet when quizzed and had liked it and not just said "Mmm, red"! | Yes |
Nannup | Thu 13th Sep '07 - Day 203 | Justin Timberline A drier day dawned and we skipped over to Nannup to walk The Old Timberline Trail. This 17km forest walk follows the old logging railway line which was used to transport timber from the area in the good ole days. None of your conservation stuff back then, if it grew they chopped it down! We passed "Potato Swamp", a real live swamp complete with croaking frogs and everything. The poor settlers used to live here and grow potatoes...personally we think it would have sucked as the place would have been rife with mozzies in the summer and miserable and wet in the winter. After the long tiring walk, in which we negotiated risky river crossings (see photo), we arrived back at the car. Although a nice sit down was in order, Adrian went to get one last photo and unknowingly crouched over an ant nest (not a hill by the way, I'm not blind! - Adrian) full of big angry ants. 10 seconds later, he ripped off his jeans and socks when he realized he was being bitten on the legs by the little knackers (quite sore). So he actually did have ants in his pants! It was funny...looking back on it. | Yes |
Bussellton | Wed 12th Sep '07 - Day 202 | I see the sea! Yes, we know it's been three weeks since our last update. Bold us. However, not a whole lot has happened apart from work. And, as glamorous as it sounds, working on a vineyard is actually quite routine. As most of the pruning is now done, everyone apart from us and another guy have been let go (we're just fantastic!) and we have new, exciting tasks to do, such as "vine support management" (post repairs) and "irrigation network control" (water pipe flushing). Cool eh? So although it's been slim pickings on the blog lately, we took some photos of Manji, and thanks to sudden time off from work we've just had a week with enough adventures to fill three articles! Rather than sit in the caravan and scratch ourselves for the week, we took a mini-break on the south-west peninsula. First stop was Bussellton, a lovely little town by the sea famous for its 2 km long jetty. This is the longest wooden jetty in the southern hemisphere and has an underwater observatory at the end which was unfortunately closed for repairs. This whole area has coral reef just off the coast and the water is just beautiful, all greeny-blue and stuff. Further south along the coast we visited Cape Naturaliste, which despite the name isn't full of nudie people. This coast is famed for its whale watching at this time of year, when they're migrating between Antarctica and warmer waters. We kept an eye out for them but neither of us had our glasses on so a pod of humpback whales could have been waving at us and we wouldn't have seen them. We also reckon they're shy and the sea is pretty big, so we weren't too distraught at not seeing them. We did see some lazy-ass seals relaxing close to the shore though. It ws great to be back on the beach again and we celebrated by climbing a huge sand dune at Indijup Pt., a few kms further south. Back on the beach, Karen was happily paddling for ages, but within 10 seconds of Adrian joining in, a freak wave came crashing up and soaked the two of us. Not to worry, it was sunny. After that it was back to Bussellton for some sunset photos and fish 'n' chips (sweet...) and we spent the night in a Karri forest, which was dark and spooky. Bummer for us, dawn didn't break the next day, it swam! The heavens opened and it was les miserables. To cheer ourselves up we made haste for a chocolate factory (oh yes...you read it right!), called the Candy Cow. These guys are famous for making honeycrunch (think the inside of a crunchie only nicer), fudge, nougat and loads of types of chocolate (including chilli chocolate - confusing taste). You can watch them making it and have free tastings as well! Mmmm...a great way to spend a rainy Wednesday morning. After that one, we visited The Margaret River Chocolate Factory...and it sucked! Basically, it was a fancy-pants, snobby version of the Candy Cow. Only chocolate buttons to taste, overpriced bars and hardly any chocolate. They mostly sell chocolate flavoured stuff (hand creme and sauce etc.) and preserves and jams. They rely on their brand name, and the chocolate wasn't anything special. We snubbed the snobs, and left. It was still lashing rain so we headed back to Manji to await a drier day. | Yes |
Manjimup | Mon 27th Aug '07 - Day 186 | Ye Olde Wallaby This weekend we drove to a town called Ballingup just up the highway about 40 km or so. The reason being, there was a Medieval festival on and we'd been told so much about it in work that we had to go for a look. From what we'd heard, people dressed up for it so naturally we assumed thre'd be one or two nutcases walking around with, like, an animal skin on or something. Turns out, they take the 'oul dressing up in Medieval garb very seriously indeed and there were loads of people dressed up in outfits which had obviously taken a lot of time and effort to put together. In fact, we were among the only ones dressed for the 21st century. And the costumes were class (so many cool dresses! - Karen). There was lots of Medieval music and singing, wine tasting, jugglers, crafts, a blacksmith and more food stalls than you could shake a stick at. Plus the historically accurate ye olde cappuchino van! There was also a big arena hidden out the back where big men with big swords hit each other. We held one of the swords and they're bloody heavy. These guys all wore protective armour and stuff but they looked so comfortable and serious in their roles and outfits that we reckon they'd be wearing them even if the festival wasn't on! In fact, by the level of craftsmanship in the swords, armour, shields and daggers that were on display, it was clear that this was a livelihood for some of the people there. Mad or wha'! Enough rain fell that the organisers started calling it a Mudieval Festival and you could almost believe you were in olde England, except every now and then you heard 'G'day me Lord Gallaghan' and 'Kill im Bruce'. | Yes |
Manjimup | Mon 13th Aug '07 - Day 172 | You can't see the wood for the trees Since our last article we've found some trees. Lots and lots of very big trees. Some of them live in a place called Valley of the Giants, which we visited with a mate (Ozzies have mates not friends) last weekend. One of the really cool things about this place is the treetop walk...which is a walk among the treetops (gotta love the informative nature of Ozzie names!). They spent about $2 million constructing a platform walk which brings you from the forest floor all the way to the top of the canopy 40m up! It's class, the birds are flying through the trees...below you! On the way home, we climbed the biggest tree in the universe. It's called the Gloucester tree and is 61m high. In typical Ozzie fashion, they drilled spikes into the side of the tree so you can climb it, and put in some wire as a cursory attempt at health and safety. Their attitude is, if you fall it's your own fault. Proper order in our opinion. Better than suing the council every time you stub your toe on a loose pebble! Thankfully we didn't fall, and the view from the top was fantastic. We were very proud of ourselves getting to the top (61m by the way...did we mention that?) but the hard part was still to come...gettin' down da bleedin' ting! Scary! More wrapping and pruning ensued on the vineyard during the week and we got a couple of photos one morning. More will definitely follow when the rain gives us a chance. This weekend we went for a 10 km (no bother to us seasoned walkers at this stage!) walk in Gloucester National Park. There were lots more trees. They were pretty. The main type of tree in this area is the Karri tree. It's really tall and straight with different coloured bark from tree to tree (black, white, brown and orange) which makes for interesting and beautiful forest photos. On the way back we had a gander at the Cascades water rapids before arriving home for a well-deserved, hearty stew...mmmm! After all the work during the week and our weekend exertions, a well-earned lie-in was called for on Sunday morning. Alas! It was not to be. Ring ring ring goes the phone at 6am! (Not naming names here - Karen's family!). Remember people, 7 hours ahead...7 hours ahead! | Yes |
Manjimup | Wed 01st Aug '07 - Day 160 | Hardworking Irish couple beat kangaroo at chess We-ll. Happy August and day 160! We haven't a whole lot of news to report as we have been working very hard for the last two and a half weeks in the vineyard. We are wrapping the vines at the moment, training them to grow along wires for next year. Its nice and relaxing work in the beautiful countryside listening to the birds, cows and sheep in the fields around us. Sounds like home, until an Emu or Roo legs it across the field too! Unfortunately the weather is even more changeable than at home, with near constant rain or drizzle. This means we can't have the camera out when we're working, hence the lack of work-realted photos. But fear not dear reader, for we shall obtain photographic evidence for you that we are in fact working and not just lying around getting drunk in a vineyard! We journeyed up to Perth at the weekend to have a look around and do some sightseeing. It is a class city and we had a great time wandering around looking at things. The skyscrapers are especially cool and we hope to make it up to the top of one of them soon and get some shots of the city from up high. As well as being lots of fun, the freeways make it very easy to get around the city. Basically they're elevated motorways that go through the city and have exits to all the major streets. Means getting into and out of the city centre is possible in about ten minutes with no traffic jams!...National Road Authority take note! (By the way, the Kangaroo was the the reigning Australian chess champion and now claims that she was not 100% focused on the game due to headbutting a road-train earlier in the day...) | Yes |
Manjimup | Mon 23rd Jul '07 - Day 151 | Heard it through the Grapevine... After careful negotiation of the freeways around Perth, we made it into the city centre for a quick looksie. The city is cool and actually reminds us of Dublin...that could be because it's the first proper city we've been in in 20,000 kms! It seems to be very relaxed and we felt really at ease just walking around, unlike Brisbane where everything was very rushed and hot and stuff. It also seems to have loads of green areas as well. We'll get back to it over the next few weeks for some more photos. We didnt get to stay long as there were jobs waiting for us in Manjimup, a town around 300km south of Perth. As we arrived it was lashing rain and suddenly the 'oul tent didn't look like much fun. Luckily, when we checked out one of the caravan parks, we were offered an onsite caravan for a good price. How bad! We started working in the vineyard the following morning with a mostly Ozzie team. The first day we were pruning using gas-powered shears and during the week they had us doing all kinds of weird and wonderful things with vines like "wrapping", "pulling out" etc. We have all the vineyard lingo now! The work is good, not as physically demanding as Childers was, and the people are very friendly. The town itself is a small country town but much bigger than Childers (there's two video shops - sorted). For the size of it though, it still has only two pubs where we would have at least ten! We'll be staying here for a while to top up the funds and we'll keep you up to date on vine-related issues. | Yes |
Perth | Sun 15th Jul '07 - Day 143 | Shark Bay Our next stop was Denham at Shark Bay. We were there to see stromatolite living fossils. These things are rock formations formed from chemical secretions of the bacteria living inside (Adrian - yeah bacteria!). The important point is that these stromatolites and the bacteria have not changed in 3.5 billion years! Because they produce oxygen, they are the main reason we have an oxygen atmosphere. Both of us had read about these at home and were eager to see them (yes...we are nerds at heart). So, they were cool and the town of Denham was lovely, like an Ozzie Tramore. Shell beach was also lovely, as you can guess it's a beach made entirely of little shells. Does exactly what it says on the tin! We camped in the area for two nights and had a nice relaxing time even though it was bleedin' freezin and we had to put on jeans. Ah but you'd miss the cold sometimes! From there we came south and saw the pinnacles (desert sandstone rock formations which look like termite mounds), and at the moment Karen is negotiating the traffic on the outskirts of Perth so we can get to an internet cafe to upload this for you guys. So you'd better enjoy it right! | Yes |
Exmouth Peninsula | Tue 10th Jul '07 - Day 138 | Cape Range Well we've left Broome and have been on the road for three days. The first two days we didn't do a whole lot except drive as there was nothing to stop at. Australia is mad for that....just miles and miles of unchanging bushland. The first night we stayed at a pretty cool rest stop by the Yule river. However most of the river wasn't there as it doesn't rain but the riverbed looked nice enough. We decided to take a break from driving on the Exmouth peninsula which is famed for its beaches and for Cape Range National Park. We took a walk through a gorge (gorge-ous [Adrian]) which had a spectacular view of the coast when we got to the top (also startled a little snake while climbing which slithered away!). We didn't camp at the Park as they were charging $26 for a tiny patch of dirt (literally!). So we hit the road south again after stopping for a ton of chips in Exmouth (you start off at $3 and get your chips by the dollar not the bag - we asked for $5 and Karen needed both arms to carry it!). | Yes |
Broome | Fri 06th Jul '07 - Day 134 | Broom Broome We have succeeded in doing absolutely nothing for the last two weeks and so reckon we should probably do something now. Hence, we're getting ready to leave Broome (sniff) tomorrow or the next day...or whenever. Our two week sun holiday was great fun. Sunbathing, swimming, walking and reading were the most strenuous things we did (went through 10 books between us!). Consequently, we haven't too much to write about. Broome is definitely a place we'd recommend for a sun holiday if you fancy going further (really further!) abroad than Europe. We were here for the full moon and saw the Staircase to the Moon, where the moonlight of the full moon reflects off the mud flats at low tide and it looks like...well you probably guessed it...a staircase going up to the moon. We also saw the Aussie's best attempt at driving a small car, a VW Polo...albeit a 1.9 L Turbo Diesel charged Polo! So we're gonna hit the road again in the general direction of Perth (south). We'll probably be working again soon and as we're heading into wine country, that could be great fun. Wonder how much wine-tasters in vineyards are paid... | Yes |
Broome | Wed 27th Jun '07 - Day 125 | What's the fastest town in Australia? After a daring escape from NT, we crossed the border (dodgy Nordy accent) at Newry. We went through our first quarantine check and were interrogated as to our fruit and veg cargo. They were particularly interested in bananas for some reason. Fortunately we knew this was coming up and so spent the previous few days eating a bag of onions and a few 'oul spuds, that we came across in the boot, to prevent their seizure. As you can imagine, the first supermarket on each side of the border is made of solid gold! We replenished the larder (plastic box) in a place called Kununurra and already noticed a livelier buzz about the place than was present in NT. We continued west over the next two days, past a place called Derby and realised we liked WA already. The huge sky is spectacularly blue (bluer than the skin of an albino Scot in the North Sea...in December). The dirt is stupendously red (redder than the same Scot after two weeks in Ibiza in June...with no sun cream). And the flies are miraculously absent. And then we arrived in Broome! What a beach! This place has won Australian awards for beaches and is advertised as the most beautiful beach in the world (when we've tested all the rest of them we'll let you know!). It's about 80 km of pure white sand, aforementioned blue sky, azure sea and of course, palm trees...well it is paradise! We might stay here for a while and change colour and let the 7000 km since Cairns (last time we were in the sea) fall away. Funny story...the beach was closed for swimming this morning due to the presence of a saltwater crocodile (called a saltie...Australians have cute names for the weirdest things!) in the area. But it's safe now and the beach is open and the bad crocodile has gone away. Only thing is, there's a floating log with eyes that keeps following us... | Yes |
Litchfield NP | Sun 17th Jun '07 - Day 114 | 1 Rock, 1 Canyon, 1 Waterfall and 10 Squillion Bazillion Flies Well we found the rock. As we neared it we came to a Checkpoint Charlie and they tried to take all our money so we could see the rock up close and personal. However, since we could already see the rock perfectly well from where we were, and had been able to for several miles, we politely declined; executed a perfect 180 turn and powered back up the one-way road we had been sneakily funnelled down! Despite this, over the next day or so we took photos of Ayers Rock, sometimes risking our lives and our freedom by trespassing over sacred Aborigine land without a permit (which also costs dollars). We're so bold! All in a days work for two super-duper budget photgraphers! This little adventure at Ayers Rock set the scene for the rest of our time in the Northern Territory. Compared to Queensland, the National Parks here often charge an entry fee in addition to higher campsite fees. Plus, if there's an Aborignal interest in the park / tourist attraction the price sky-rockets. Saying that, the desert landscape is unique and beautiful and we've never seen anything like it before. Its not like the Sahara or a desert on the telly with nothing but sand everywhere. There are plants, scrub, bushes and wildlife, including the enormous Wedge-Tailed Eagle (v. cool), dingoes and the by now routine kangaroos (99% of which are "sleeping" beside the road!). One good thing about the desert is that it's nice and cool after the tropics. Also not what we expected from the desert. It gets down to -1 or -2 degrees at night, and one morning when we woke up there was frost inside the car on the windscreen! On the other hand, during the day the hoardes of flies released by Satan from Hell abound and can be a tad irritating (...under-statement of the millenium!). There's an insect shift-change after dark, with the flies signing off and the mozzies taking over...yippee. Heading north from Alice Springs, a tourist town with a self-confessed alcohol problem, we began the 1500km journey to Darwin. On the way we passed through the most depressing town in the world, also known as Tennants Creek. Even the Lonely Planet describes this place as having an "air of despair clouding it"..inspiring! After driving past a big bushfire that came right down to the road, we came to Darwin. A welcome change. The city had a buzzing, lively atmosphere with lots of shops, restaurants and nightlife. We treated ourselves to an exquisite Thai meal, sitting on cushions on the floor instead of chairs at a low table. It was cool. The city itself looks nice and seems to be growing rapidly, with buildings going up in the center of town (they're actually creating a purpose-built Chinatown!), a new port and new roads. This could be due to the modernization of the train-line between Darwin and Adelaide, which links the lonely Top-End city with the rest of the country. Now it can be used as Australia's main trade-link with Asia. We'd heard great things about Litchfield National Park, south of Darwin and so fired up the Frisky Falcon and once more set up camp in the wilderness. This has meant a nice rest here after our epic 4500km 9-day journey from Cairns. We've camped beside Florence Falls, which has a lovely deep rockpool where we go swimming. The sunsets are fantastic and there's lots of cool wildlife around, including Short-eared Rock Wallabies which are very cute and let us get quite close to them. At night they investigate our campsite, regularly coming right up to the tent. Tomorrow we head west towards cooler climes in Broome (its around 27 degrees here at night) into the great expanse of Western Australia. Its been a quick tour of NT, but we've seen most of what you can see without a 4x4. It looks like we're not cut out to be Top-Enders...the flies, heat and humidity take their toll after a while and this is the Dry "comfortable" season! Oh, btw, you wouldnt believe it but when we cross the WA / NT border we'll be going through a town called Newry..mad! | Yes |
Alice Springs | Fri 08th Jun '07 - Day 106 | The Long and Not So Winding Road Well we've arrived in Alice Springs...after one hell of a road trip! After four days and 2500 km (1600 miles) we're finally here. The journey was great craic. We drove about 600 km a day through tiny little towns and along long straight roads (one stretch didn't have a bend for 120 km!). We had to content with kamikaze kangaroos which jump out at you when they see the headlights. Explains why so many of them are splattered on the roadside! After that first evening we understood why people over here don't drive at night...and so we followed suit. Suicidal boucing things are one thing you don't have to watch out for on the N6! You also have to watch out for the huge road trains which thunder around the roads, and in fairness do actually own them. Think articulated truck with up to 4 trailers and you're getting close. During the trip we drove through the real outback, from dusty red roads to plains of scrub and grass stretching away as far as you can see. On the way, we stopped at the Devil's Marbles which is a group of great, big, red boulders in the middle of nowhere. Lots of the huge rocks are balanced very precariously on each other and they make for great photos! Now, where's that rock everyone talks about? | Yes |
Cairns | Sun 3rd Jun '07 - Day 100 | The Barrier Reef is indeed Great! After an uneventful drive from Townsville, we arrived in the city of Cairns. Man was it hot..and humid! The city is really cool, vibrant and alive with people...unlike some places we've come through. It's a travellers town, with loads of cafes, bars, bookshops etc. however because of this, it's quite expensive. We had a good look around and managed to find a decent Reef day tour that included an introductory scuba-dive, snorkelling, buffet lunch and sparkling wine. So that was nice. The scuba-diving was something else. We were down about ten metres for about fifteen minutes and saw coral, fish and giant clams. We went snorkelling at a tiny cay (basiccally a coral sandbar in the ocean) and saw loads more stuff...shoals of colourful fish, purple starfish, a moray eel and a huge octopus! The reef actually does look like the pictures...and it's amazing. Tomorrow we'll leave Cairns and head west into the outback towards Alice Springs. Someone told us there's a nice rock to look at there... | Yes |
Townsville | Thu 31st May '07 - Day 97 | Finding Nemo We are preparing to leave Townsville. We've ended up staying a bit longer than we'd planned but we've had fun. Went to the Reef HQ aquarium (which was guarded by a massive spider, see pic!) and it was amazing. They have a coral reef display where they have re-created part of the coral reef, complete with the cast from Finding Nemo! Its very cool. We cant wait to go diving at the real thing now! We also went to a car show where we observed a strange local custom. Burn-out competitions. Basically you lock the front wheels of your car, spin the back ones and try and make the back tyres burst. This is accompanied by plumes of noxious, presumably toxic, smoke. When the tyres burst everybody cheers. Wierd. We cheered along with them..its only polite. We've spent several days chilling out at the freshwater rockpool at our campsite too. Apart from the usual assortment of wildlife we've become used to (5 ft goannas, roo's, 2cm long ants, brush turkeys and humungous spiders) there is a family of turtles and a load of fish living in the rockpool. The turtles scuttle away when you get too close but they are very cute. The plan now is to head to north to Cairns, which is a paltry 300km away. On the road again... | Yes |
Townsville | Tue 22nd May '07 - Day 89 | Back down in the valley-o We bid farewell to our campsite in Eungella National Park and descended once again into the heat and humidity of the valley. Our destination was Airlie Beach. On the way we stopped at Finch Hatton Gorge, which is a series of waterfalls and rockpools in a..well..gorge! We swam in crystal clear pools under waterfalls, which was funny coz the water tastes like drinking water, not salt or chlorine, and you sink! After a hearty meal (beans on toast!) we continued on our way to Airle Beach. Airlie Beach, the name is uninstructive as it is not so much a beach as a shopping, drinking and eating strip. There is a beach but you cant swim at it due to stingers in the water. To get over this problem (of bathers and swimmers dying from jellyfish stings!) they have ingeniously built a huge lagoon that is stinger free and it's where the beautiful people hang out. Needless to say we fit right in! Although a nice place, Airlie wasn't really for us (you'd need around $3million to enjoy yourself for a week!!) and so struck north for Townsville. Sunset from the top of Castle Hill in Townsville was spectacular. Castle Hill is a big rock in the city center that crazy Aussies run up of a Sunday evening. We drove. Then we pretended to be tired at the top. They didn't approve! The view from the top is fantastic.The whole area is spread out all around. Townsville is situated in a vast plain bordered by the sea on one side and the Harvey Range mountains on the other. You really get a feel for the size of the country from up here. The land just stretched on and on and on. We set up camp in a national park just outside the city called Big Crystal Creek and spent yesterday exploring the city center. Flinders St Mall is the mail shopping street and the prom and Strand are really nice. Townsville is cool. | Yes |
Eungella National Park | Thu 17th May '07 - Day 84 | On the road again What a class week! Being on the road rules! We stayed in Rockhampton last Saturday night and in the morning headed for Mt Morgan, an old gold-mining town, to see some dinosaur footprints. However you had to pay to go on a long stupid tour of the whole town to see them. Pants to that! We instead headed north to Mackay (pronounced Mack-eye for some reason) by an indirect inland route, the Fitzroy Developmental Road. This road was class with flat country stretching to the horizons on either side. After a little town called Dingo, you had 128 km (think Galway to Enfield distance) of empty, totally empty road to the next petrol station. No houses shops or anything (so don't run out of petrol!). After the lone petrol station, there was another 120 km to the next town. Madness! This one 'small' road is longer than Ireland is wide. We spent the night at a beach in Mackay and took the new camp toaster for a test run in the morning. Mmmm..toast! We heard about a National Park not far from Mackay called Eungella (pronounced Young-gulla) and drove there on Monday. It's a gorgeous place in the mountains and we set up camp right beside the rainforest. The birdsong and miscellaneous forest noises at dawn and dusk are brilliant and can be deafening. On Tuesday we went for a 20 km (that's right, twenty) hike through rainforest which was amazing. Huge, tall palms, ferns and cedars tower overhead. There's green light everywhere and our track followed a muddy brown river, which, unlike the Corrib in Galway, may contain crocs! Interesting. Needless to say we were knackered when we got back to camp and so spent yesterday relaxing. Today we went on a hike of a paltry 4 km in another part of the rainforest. It was misty and raining, although the thick canopy overhead kept us dry. The rainforest is so cool. Now, we're chillin' in front of our super-duper campfire and listening to the night-time forest music. | Yes |
Rockhampton | Sat 12th May '07 - Day 79 | Last days in Childers We spent our last week of work staying with Jim & Lois on the farm. They very kindly invited us to stay for the week and we kicked it off with Sinco de Maio celebrations (Mexican dinner party commenmorating the Mexican Revolution). It was class (slept in a real bed for the week...spoiled rotten!). They opened up their home to us and it's the first time we've been in a house since Wellington...about 10 weeks ago! We got on like a house on fire and shared many a tall tale over dinners. During the week we finished the pruning of about 6000 trees. Our last job on the farm was weeding...but no ordinary weeding! They gave us a flamethrower with a mission to exterminate Bindi Weed...great craic. This morning they brought us on a guided tour of the bush on their property, which was cool. We didn't see any roos but they showed us 'strangler figs', which grow around a tree and choke it. We also saw termite nests in trees, which masquerade as koalas for the short-sighted among us (i.e. Karen). After packing up our house, we said our goodbyes, hit the road and headed north for Rockhampton. | Yes |
Childers | Fri 11th May '07 - Day 78 | A Day in The Life We took some photos of ourselves doing our normal daily work stuff one day and thought we'd give you a look at a typical day in Childers. We start by getting up at 5.30am and having a nutritious cornflakes brekkie washed down with a strong mug of coffee. This is by far the most important part of the day as without the coffee none of the rest of the stuff would occur! We drive to work at 6.15am and meet Jim and Lois before 6.30. They tell us what the story is for the day and we head off to the relevant section of the farm on the quad bike and do whatever our task for the day is..could be picking, pruning, de-bagging, staking..whatever! 9am is little break for half an hour and then back to work for another 2 and a half hour stint. It's getting pretty warm by this time and all the creepy-crawlies and insects are waking up. Lunch is at noon for another 30 minutes and then onto the last 2 and a half hour stint of the day. Its hot in the afternoon and this is the hardest part of the day, but then 3pm comes and we're finished! We are normally pretty tired (understatement of the year!) by the end of the working day, and always dirty! We're free then till darkness falls..(around 5.30pm!) and we go into Childers for internet, shopping, a pot of beer (think a third of a pint) or whatever. Then back to camp for showers, evening wear (long clothes for their insect-proof qualities) and a gourmet meal cooked on the wee gas burner. It is important to avoid being outside at dusk at all costs..otherwise you are eaten alive by mozzies and sandflies. Dinner (which always tastes better outside!) and the essential cup of tea is followed by a bit of a sit, reading, website stuff or whatever and then bed..around 7pm!! Just a typical day on the farm! | Yes |
Childers | Mon 30th Apr '07 - Day 67 | Rodeo videos Oops, we forgot to stick these onto the last article. Enjoy! Click for Bronco Riding Video and Bull Riding Video. | No |
Childers | Sun 29th Apr '07 - Day 66 | Rhinestone Cowboys This week the picking wound down on the farm until just the two of us were left. We were set the exciting task of removing the planting bags from the baby trees (1500 of the bleedin' things!), and no sarcasm is intended as the dark and hot black plastic bags are ideal homes for the infamous redback spider! However, we had SPIDER-PROOF GLOVES! OOoooo! At least we hoped they were cos we found 7 during one afternoon (usually there's about 1 per orchard...yeah right!). We also spent a day spraying weeds (Karen drove the tractor) and Adrian only killed a few of the bosses prize-winning vegetables. Ooops. We were then asked to prune the baby trees (as far as we can gather this means chopping random branches off the trees). Apparently we did a fantastic job and were kept on for this week as well...although we've been moved away from the baby trees. We were knackered yet again at the end of the week but headed off to Agnes Waters yesterday to see our first rodeo. It was so cool. There was steer roping and wrestling, barrel races, bucking broncos and mad bullriding! The two of us were lost in a sea of checked shirts and cowboy hats and deafened by country music. We left wanting to become cowboys. At least Karen did! Oh, it rained today!! And the temperature plummetted to a paltry 18 degrees. We put on jumpers. | Yes |
Childers | Sun 22nd Apr '07 - Day 59 | Avos and Animals After a long hard week picking avocados in the searing heat (about 29 degrees), we rewarded ourselves on Saturday by driving 200 km to the famous Australia Zoo. It was worth it though as you can see from the photos. You can pet kangaroos and koalas and feed elephants and see the animals up really close. Steve Irwin is a God in this place and there's pictures and shrines to him everywhere. In fairness though, the guy was everywhere in the world and did a helluva lot of good work. We had a lovely day at the zoo and then relaxed today in Bargarra (after a BBQ breakfast of sausages) on our beach. Work is going well. Not much to report except we saw an iguana during the week in one of the trees, the ants grow to ridiculous proportions (and bite you!) and we are no longer suprised by humungous spiders and other creepy crawlies. Adrian's even getting over his fear of spider-babies! | Yes |
Childers | Sun 15th Apr '07 - Day 52 | Who knew avocados could get sunburnt? After leaving Rainbow beach we struck north for Hervey Bay. Although quite nice, Hervey Bay was seriously lacking in the available work department so we left and arrived in Childers. We had planned on coming here anyway as it's known as a fruit picking area and lots of backpackers (although we had a discussion and decided we're actually bootpackers!) find work here. Unfortunately, being the day before Easter when everything shuts down here, there was no work to be had, although we were told to ring a "guy" on the Sunday evening. Undeterred we explored the whole area over the weekend and found some lovely beaches, notably Agnes Waters and Bargarra, where we got in some much-needed sunbathing and swimming. The water was gorgeous over the weekend, about 21 degrees, which attracted lots of swimmers, including a lovely foot and a half long, red and white sea snake which swam past Adrian (who nearly had heart failure) and put an end to his swimming for the day! We also found a town called Town of 1770, which wins the prize for most bizarre name so far, but not for anything else. There was also some seriously good windsurfing being done on Elliott Heads with guys flying all over the gaff and jumping waves and stuff. Very impressive. Anyway, we were just about to start cooking a curry on Sunday evening when we rang "The Guy" and he told us we had an hour to get back to Childers to meet him that evening and start work the next morning....at 7AM!!! This time Karen nearly had heart failure. We made it to the bus the next morning (Monday 9th) and started work on Jim's Avocado farm, which brings us neatly onto the title of this article...Yes, avocados can get sunburnt, just one of the million amazing things we've learned about avocado farming over the last week. In answer to your next question, they grow on trees and they're used mainly for making guacamole. The work is hard and goes from 7am 'til half 3 with two half hour breaks, but the money is good. Plus, we get to see all sorts of "interesting things" (Adrian would substitute horrifying for interesting) including cane toads, brightly striped spiders, spider babies in nursery webs (Adrian put his arm through one and they crawled all over it), bigass crickets and a huntsman spider. This kind of spider was very "interesting", about the size of your palm but Cody (Aussie workmate) said "its ok, they'll bite you but they're not that poisonous"....!!hello? So, it's all good in the hood, we have weekends off and we're gonna hang around here for a bit and save some money. Our tent is comfy, our bosses are nice and our rent is low. Also, Childers is a really nice little town and everyone knows each other. By the time we leave, we may be classed as locals, we're already covered in red dust so that's a good start! Karen said "mate" by accident yesterday in a shop so the process has already begun! G'day. | Yes |
Rainbow Beach | Tue 03rd Apr '07 - Day 40 | Itchy Feet Well the last few days have been lovely but its nearly time to head. We've decided to head north and see what lies ahead. Plus, the bleedin' insects are driving us mad! We've explored all over this area and made our first foray into the bush last week! It was cool. We reclimbed the Carlo Sand Blow ( a big sand dune for those who don't know) and actually had battery on the camera this time round! We walked various trails and down the beach to the colourful cliffs, found the best cappuchino in Rainbow Beach (a town of 4 cafes) and enjoyed beach beers with a side order of sunset. Apart from all that, we survived a devastating tsunami (alert) for the Australian east coast yesterday morning at half nine, which turned out only to be 4 or 5 waves about 2 ft high! Still, how many tsunami alerts do you get in Galway with your cornflakes!? | Yes |
Rainbow Beach | Fri 30th Mar '07 - Day 36 | Rainbow Beach is still beautiful Compared to last week, this week is heaven. The last few days have been spent camping on Inskip Pt., a nature reserve at Rainbow Beach. We're literally in Da Bush! The tent is about 30 ft from the sea, which is only gorgeous. Really warm and really blue-green. There's wildlife all over the place, bush turkies, birds, insects (unfortunately), goanna's (see pic) and even....snakes! Ooooohh. A brown one over a metre long crossed our path yesterday on the way back from the beach! Its real living outside Robinson Crusoe stuff, cooking on a campfire, getting water, washing in the sea, testing the hammock...and we're lovin' it! It's very relaxing. The tans are coming along nicely and the furthest we've been this week is the shop. Might stay here for a while... Also, a big Happy Birthday to Elaine. Our phone doesn't get coverage here so we can't text at the moment. | Yes |
Brisbane | Mon 26th Mar '07 - Day 32 | Getting Sorted in Brisbane How the hell does anybody work in this heat? It's unreal in the city and we're in shorts! Most other people are in office clothes! The last week wasn't the greatest in the whole world. We trucked our bags out to a campsite a couple of kms north of the city for the week. It was hot there as well...especially at night time in the little tent. So we decided a bigger tent was required (5 man, can stand up in it, 40 euro!). Although we visited Surfer's Paradise, Moreton Bay and Byron Bay, we spent most of the week getting a car and camping equipment sorted out. Our original plan to buy a car from a place specializing in backpackers cars didn't work out as a lot of stuff they advertised was lies and their cars were crap...and expensive. On the Friday we found a cool station wagon (Ford Falcon, auto, 4L, white) in a used car lot which was perfect. It's bleedin' massive but can hold all our stuff and us! After finally getting through all the paperwork (unreal over here, need loads of forms and stuff) and collecting the car on the Monday, we were on our way to Rainbow beach! | Yes |
Brisbane | Tue 20th Mar '07 - Day 26 | Goodbye New Zealand In typical Karen and Adrian fashion we had to drop the rental car back and get to the airport in Rush Hour traffic. The first thing we did was get on the wrong motorway, when we found the right motorway it was jammed with cars. We made it there eventually and then realised we were way to early as we had not put the hour back at the weekend. We had been wondering why it was so quiet in the mornings for the last few days. We therefore spent ages in the airport. Finally it was time for our flight, which then ended up being delayed for about 45 mins while they checked the engines for something...inspires confidence in the plane! NZ obviously didn't want us to go! On arrival in Brisbane it was hot..damn hot (over 30 degrees in the city) and the only thing we could bring ourselves to do was find a hostel and lie down for a few hours! Incidentally, the hostel was shit. And they call Burger King Hungry Jack's over here...crazy Aussies! | No |
Aukland | Mon 19th Mar '07 - Day 25 | To Aukland Today we said goodbye to Waihi and hit the road again for the final part of our NZ tour. We got some cool pictures of the Aukland skyline and the Skytower. We also had fun playing on the intersection of 4 motorways in the middle of the city...Catherine you would have hated it! Lanes everywhere. We had a bed again tonight in a nice hostel in the centre of town and had some lovely Japanese food for dinner. Aukland seems to be the most city-like of NZ's cities, it feels bigger than Wellington but we didn't get to see that much of it because of time constraints. | Yes |
Waihi | Sun 18th Mar '07 - Day 24 | Recharging the Batteries! Today we took it very easy and had a lie-in (til 10 am...wow). Had brekkie and walked along the beach for a while, finding the perfect spot to get in some sunbathing and swimming. Later we came back to the campsite and chilled for the evening with a pizza and some beers. By the way, we just saw the big floods in NZ on the news. It hasn't affected us but we must have done something cos we were in those places during the week. The destruction is following in our wake. Also we just saw that we lost the rugby to France...again. To be politically correct...Poo! Going to Aukland tomorrow to (finally) go to Oz on Tuesday. Talk to y'all soon. | No |
Waihi | Sat 17th Mar '07 - Day 23 | R'n'R at the beach To celebrate our epic travelling effort we decided to head to the beach for a relaxing couple of days. On the way we visited Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland to have a look round. We saw some more cool mud pools and thermal stuff such as craters, sulphur deposits and colourful lakes. On the way to the beach we drove through the place where they filmed "Hobbiton" in Lord of the Rings although we couldn't get a tour because they were closed on Saturdays! Undeterred, we continued to the beach, had mexican food and watched the sunset with a beer on the beach. | Yes |
Rotorua | Fri 16th Mar '07 - Day 22 | On the road again We said goodbye to Lisa and headed north along the Pacific Coast Highway to Whakatane where Karen finally had her steak! In fairness we were driving for most of the day today so not a lot happened. We stayed in Rotorua, which, due to being planted right in the middle of the most active thermal region in NZ, smells like sulphur (farts)! | Yes |
Napier | Thu 15th Mar '07 - Day 21 | On to wine country We left Taupo and drove to Napier in the east. On the way we saw the Huka Falls and Craters of the Moon, a geothermal park. There we saw mudpools, craters and steam vents. On arrival in Napier, we headed to the Mission vineyard to sample the local wares. Adrian could actually taste the difference between wines! Napier is a gorgeous city, full of art and sculptures and scrumptious cafes. We stayed in a gorgeous hostel containing an unfriendly, grumpy cat who was the image of Manny and was called Manary!! Stuffed ourselves at a chinese buffet and washed it down with a few quiet pints. A great night was had by all! | Yes |
Taupo | Wed 14th Mar '07 - Day 20 | Middle-Earth! There was a storm last night but our trusty tent weathered it well. We left Waitomo and headed towrds Taupo via Mordor! Saw some of the locations where some Lord of the Rings scenes were shot (see pics). The weather was quite bad and visibility was low so we couldn't see as much as we would have liked. We met Lisa in Taupo and went for a pint in Mulligans Irish Bar before heading back to our hostel for the night. Ahhhh...beds! | Yes |
Waitomo | Tue 13th Mar '07 - Day 19 | To the North! Well it was lashing rain when we left Christchurch this morning but we flew to sunny Aukland. We picked up our new car (white, Nissan Sunny, auto) and headed south to Waitomo and its cool caves. We went on a tour of the caves and saw cool glow-worms. To get out of the caves we took a boat ride in the dark with only the worms for illumination. It was so class although we weren't allowed to take photos! | Yes |
Christchurch | Mon 12th Mar '07 - Day 18 | A day in the garden Today we left Akaroa and returned to Christchurch to have an ole wander. The city is lovely. We spent the afternoon in the Botanic gardens, in Hagley Park in the city centre. It was all good, the rose garden was especially pretty. Adrian was actually able to smell the roses! However, the park was filled with crazy get-fit people, running all over the place. Madness! We are now heading off to get some din-dins and we will be getting our flight to Aukland in the morning, after bidding farewell to our trusty Scarlet Starlet. | Yes |
Akaroa | Sun 11th Mar '07 - Day 17 | Le Mini Golf This morning we arrived in Christchurch, which is a beautiful city, Europeany in the centre with an Americany outer shell. Hung around for a bit in Cathedral Square, soaking up the atmosphere and drinking cappuchinos (very suave and swanky of us!). When we felt all cultured out, we drove to a gorgeous seaside town called Akaroa, which was founded by the French and has a real French vibe thing going on. Their streets have French names and they even have Le Mini Golf! Got in sunbathing, swimming and Fish 'n' Chips before coming back to our campsite (up another big feckin' hill!) to write this article with a bottle of wine watching the sun set and the stars come out...awwww! | Yes |
Timaru | Sat 10th Mar '07 - Day 16 | Karen and Adrian go to the Beach Today we drove from Pukerau, where we stayed last night, up the coast to Dunedin. Dunedin has a reputation as a drinking city with lots of students, however we found it rather pleasant, darling. After local enquiries, we found a beautiful beach where we spent the day. During the afternoon, we met some engaging penguins and seals. Class! Unfortunately, this lovely beach with its charming wildlife required us to climb the biggest sand dune in the universe to get back to the car. Oh yes it was great 'oul craic going down the humungous sand dune, but by the time we got back to our trusty scarlet starlet, we were mere husks of our former selves. After rehydration, it was back to Highway 1 towards Christchurch. | Yes |
Pukerau | Fri 9th Mar '07 - Day 15 | Milford Sound is Sound Today we headed to Milford Sound, one of the biggest tourist attractions in NZ, and rightly so. The scenery, as usual, was phenomenal. Towering mountains made you feel very, very small indeed. The sound (a posh word for fjord as far as we can see!) itself wasn't as mirror-like as usual, but nonetheless we got excellent photos!! (hee hee). Then it was back on the road again, with a quick pitstop in Te Anau for chinese numnums. | Yes |
Te Anau | Thu 8th Mar '07 - Day 14 | On Top of the World Woke up this morning and had showers. Oh yeah! Clean bods! However, we then foolishly climbed up the nearest mountain (which just happened to be 1 km upwards and at least an 8 mile round trip) in the sweltering heat of the day. Go team! After getting back down said mountain, Adrian super-foolishly (in Karen's opinion) launched himself into the clearest, coldest mountain lake in NZ. Karen merely paddled and lost all feeling in her lower body! Kebabs were needed to unfreeze our blood before we drove to Te Anau for the night. We love Queenstown! | Yes |
Frankton | Wed 7th Mar '07 - Day 13 | Karen and Adrian in the Mist Although we were in Franz-Josef, glacier country, with some of the most unique and amazing scenery in NZ, it was pissing rain and we couldn't see more than 50 ft in front of us...also according to a local sage (waitress), it was down for the day. Hence, we abandoned Franz-Josef and headed south to sunny Queenstown. The weather cleared the further south we got so we saw more fantastic scenery and passed by the Misty Mountains and Mordor (from Lord of the Rings). Great stuff. Found a campsite by a lake in Frankton (just outside Queenstown) where we rested our weary heads for the night. | Yes |
Franz-Josef | Tue 6th Mar '07 - Day 12 | The South Island Awoke somewhat shaken to the loudest, longest and most horrifying goods trains in the universe thundering overhead in the dead of night. We thought the world was ending. Turned out the campsite is under a railway bridge! To make matters worse, Adrian was harrassed by a sniggering monster during the night...which transformed itself into a duck come daylight. After a night like that, we hiked (rucksacks and all, early morning, Karen pre-coffee) 2 miles in 25 degree heat to get our car (1L, Starlet, automatic, fire engine red) and got the hell outta Picton! 10 minutes later we were lost, but found SubWay and the main road an hour later. We drove from Picton to Franz-Josef, through amazing mountains, plains and valleys and accross the dodgiest bridge in the world...it was a dark and stormy night and the road across the bridge was shared with a train track...seriously! | Yes |
Picton | Mon 5th Mar '07 - Day 11 | Leaving Wellie Today we packed up and left Lisa's to get the Interislander ferry to the south island, to the buzzing metropolis that is Picton. The ferry was big and fun and we got great views of the north and south island coasts. The south island kinda looked like Jurassic Park from the ferry, all forest-clad mountains and mist and whatnot. We made it to our campsite (eventually!) and had pies...mmmm | Yes |
Welington | Sun 04th Mar '07 - Day 10 | A sunny day Headed to the beach today and had our first Pacific swim. The water was only gorgeous boy'. Adrian got to drive the Celica on the Motorway...a lifelong (well 2 yrs) ambition has been fulfilled. Went for Italian food with Lisa's gang and then headed up Mt. Victoria for some night photos of the city. | Yes |
Wellington | Sat 03rd Mar '07 - Day 9 | A soft day Somehow, we ended up being recruited onto Lisa's all-girl softball team today. Their opponents didn't show up so we had a game ourselves and as you can see, the rules are very relaxed (drinking beer on pitch allowed)! Karen got to drive Lisa's Celica and there was a BBQ in Lisa's house. Grand food, James (flatmate) is the BBQ King. A good time was had by all! | Yes |
Wellington | Fri 02nd Mar '07 - Day 8 | A day out in town Today we headed into town to the National Museum where we learned all about New Zealands history and stuff. We also saw some cool skateboarders and most impotantly, Karen bought a pair of sandals...which enabled her to walk like a normal-looking person. We went down the waterfront which was lovely and paddled in the sea (Elaine, you can get sick here if you want). We then went to a lovely Japanese/Malaysian restaurant and had numblies and Jasmine tea, which even Adrian liked! | Yes |
Wellington | Thu 01st Mar '07 - Day 7 | Viva New Zealand Hi all, New Zealand is class. Our friend Lisa collected us at the airport and we're staying with her in Wellington for about a week before heading off to explore the rest of the country. The weather here is great. It's nice and hot but has a breeze and thankfully very low humidity. Much easier to deal with than Singapore!. Had a relaxing few pints on the first night...Lisa has been showing us round the city and introducing us to her friends. She's basically a great host/tour guide!. There are some fantastic views of Wellington from where we're staying and we'll be taking some photos today with our brand spanky new camera so you can see them. Adrian has gone native with flip flops and shorts already. Went to the cinema last night in my bare feet! (Which is ok here by the way.). Karen is finally getting over jet lag and has only taken 5 days to adapt to local conditions! Talk soon homies | Yes |
Sydney | Tue 27th Feb '07 - Day 5 | Down Ozzie Way Well, we made it through Singapore and managed to pick up a beautiful digital camera on the way, complete with snazzy lenses etc. We have just finished another long haul flight (7 hrs) to Sydney and we're now waiting for our next three hour flight to New Zealand, the last flight for three weeks thank god! By the way, if you're goin to fly anywhere, go with Quantas...they're class. We've completely lost track of what time we're supposed to be at so we're basically in the most important time zone of all, food time. In food time, when we're hungry its time to eat. Very simple! G'day, A and K | Yes |
Singapore | Mon 26th Feb '07 - Day 4 | Nightime in Singapore Hello Everyone. The site is up and running and we are just finishing our second night in Singapore. We made it here yesterday after an exhausting 24 hour flight from Heathrow and the heat and humidity here are unreal. The city is beautiful and I got some cool photos this evening (on the right). We are heading to the shops tomorrow and flying out tomorrow evening for Sydney and then to New Zealand. Talk to you then. Adrian. | Yes |