One life and One World

Hi all

It's been a fairly calm couple of weeks after leaving Sydney but getting the chance to see a lot of rural Australia, and how things are like over here.

I arranged to meet up with Alan, a friend I met on the Mexican Tour who lives in a small town called Woolgoolga which is located between Sydney and Brisbane.

Managed to meet up and he kindly offered to let me stay as long as I wanted.

I got the chance to drive his 4x4 Jeep for a couple of days as we saw all the sights and met up with a lot of locals which was great for me to meet such nice Australian people - I even had a go in helping to fix a computer or two which was the least I could do.

5 days later I caught an early bus and made my way into Brisbane for a couple of nights stay in the outskirts of the city which although is nice was not as interesting as Sydney.

My next move was a visit to Hervey Bay which is again further north and home to the famous Frazer Island just offshore which is the worlds biggest Sand Island!

A day tour got me a Ferry ride to and from the Island, a tour around in a 4x4 with a guide to some of the main spots on the island (the Maheno shipwreck anyone...) a plane ride over the island to witness the beauty and just how huge it actually is, and many a dip into the natural pools and spa's that are dotted all over the place - Excellent!!!

Now planning my next moves as I write this, off to a town called 1770 tomorrow which is apparently a hidden gem of a village that is rapidly gaining popularity and my not be so hidden for much longer, before moving southwards back to Brisbane with a stop or two along to way.

Hi All

Flew from Christchurch into Melbourne and arrived just before the extremely popular Melbourne Cup Horse Race, the whole city takes the day off and watches the different races throughout the day.

Melbourne was a great city to stay in and get used to the Australian summer, visited several sights in the city and together with others in the hostel visited a couple of local bars in the evenings.

To my next destination and as the long distance between the cities is managed to book myself a cheap flight to Sydney, once here I checked myself into the friendly Blue Parrot hostel located close to the quirky and fun filled district of Kings Cross.

The summer is beginning to kick in and the temperature is already hot and sunny, so far have visited and walked along the huge Sydney Harbour bridge which towers across the skyline, the Famous Opera house which is surprisingly smaller than I thought it would be but still very impressive, the well known and popular Bondi Beach with it's blue sea and white sand and the metropolitan and busy city centre reminds me alot of London.

There are a few more places still to see here so I will be staying here in Sydney for a couple more days before travelling up the east coast to the popular town of Coffs Harbour which is a place built off the back of it's important Banana growing industry and is home to Australia's Big Banana - A Building in the shape of (you guessed it) a Banana!!!.

Unfortunately my time in New Zealand is almost up, and in only a few short hours I will be flying to Melbourne to begin the tour around Australia.

The last few weeks here in the South Island have been mixed with some action packed days and some days spent lazing around, some time has been spent in several cities (Dunedin - World steepest Street, Christchurch - Antarctic Centre), whilst the rest has been in small villages and towns which are dotted around (Queenstown, Lake Tekapo, Kaikoura).

On the last leg of the journey we stopped of in Lake Tekapo which is located next to Mount Cook National Park, managed to see yet more awesome scenery and ventured out on some stunning hikes with other people from the hostel.

Also something that I wanted to checkout was the Space observatories located on top of Mount John which looks over miles and miles of NZ wilderness, due to the weather being so fantastic at the time I signed up for a night of star gazing, and together with several other people managed to look at various planets, stars and other interesting heavenly bodies in space huge distances away, all through powerful telescopes only normally accessible to scientific study - Fascinating!!!

My final stops have been to the popular Fishing village of Kaikoura, and to the largest city on the South Island Christchurch which is supposedly the most European City in New Zealand.

The Magic Bus turned out to be an excellent way of getting around the country, we stopped off in many isolated places to take photo's, lunch in small villages and seaside settings and drinks out in some excellent pubs and bars in New Zealand, I was fortunate to meet lots of people along the way and will stay friends with many of them.

During my time here I was on the lookout for native Kiwi's to find out more about living on this side of the world and cultural differences, luckily I met these great group of people who were touring around their home country, it was interesting to learn about the differences in the way of life here and it was great to swap stories from places closer to home.

My 36 days here has moved by very quickly, I have managed to see all that I wanted and more in between, looking forward to visiting Melbourne and have a few ideas to mix it up and make things as interesting as possible?