TravelStream™ news feed for member ouradventures08 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/ouradventures08 en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:07:32 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1216177260/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1216177260/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1216177260/tpod.html Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:07:32 -0400 Round the World in 5 Months

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Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand

We arrived in New Zealand quite late at night and were anticipating a really cold evening as people we had spoken to had told us it would be freezing....we were pleasantly suprised it wasnt as cold as places we had been previously...

We collected plenty of infor from the airport about touring and things to do .....there are so many things to do and beautiful places to go here you are really spoilt for choice. We have just booked our new camper van for our trip and cant wait to pick it up to get started. I dont think we will have enough time or money here to do the variety of things on offer ( which is a shame) but we will see what we can squeeze out of our budget!!

We are staying in a hostel called the Jailhouse...which was an old prison and is still set up in cells etc ( although they are more comfy than the orginal cell they have left for people to look at). We had some silly pictures taken here and made our way up to our cell which is quite small but really nicely done out. They even have a gym, cinema, tv room and kitchen which is pretty cool. Unfortunately two groups of school kids have just checked in and are quite annoying so thats the not so great part...

Anyway we best get planning what we want to do...speak to you soon!!
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Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Arriving in Melbourne was such a relief, it is no where near as cold as Canberra so we are happy. We also disposed of our fruit and veg at the side of the road which was very bizzare...no fruit flys are allowed to get into Victoria from other states....

Melbourne is a really nice city...somewhere thats really liveable, we drove into the city the first night and had a look around the amazing federation square and i had my picture taken with both the old Super Mario and the new super mario ( part of a gaming exhibition that was on)

First thing was first we booked our neighbours tour... i dont think Craig was as excited about seeing the real life Ramsey street but nevermind. We drove to Erinsbourgh high ( which didnt look anything like it does on telly), had some pictures taken, then we headed to the street which is really tiny but just as lovely. We had photos taken here and spied on the security guard that is always outside these houses ( as real people live here all the time)...from here we headed past the studios ( but there wasnt anyone there so we couldnt take a chance a blagging our way in to see the sets) and down to St Kilda ( which is a really really ncie area of Melbourne) to meet our star. I had hoped that we would get to see an old school character like Dr Karl, Susan or Toadie...but no we got Janelle Timmons ( who isnt even in it anymore) anyway we had our photos taken and i got her to sign my postcard for my birthday ha ha and then that was it!!! All this and we got to watch old episodes of nieghbours on the bus and find out future plot lines!!

After that we spent the day on the train exploring the city, the train station is really nice and quite old fashioned which is bizarre as alot of buildings are quite modern. We got our belongings stuck in in the library lockers and had to persuade the locker attendant to check our camera as ID that the stuff was ours ( or we couldnt get it back) and we discussed new zealand with some campers in our campsites camp kitchen. The campsite we stayed at was cool and you got your own personal toilet and shower cubicle all in one which was such a good idea and Craig spent most of his time chasing and trying to catch rabbits!!

Well thats our Australia adventure over with, we fly to New Zealand now and are really looking forward to renting a better camper ........
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1215424260/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1215424260/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1215424260/tpod.html Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:18:08 -0400 Round the World in 5 Months

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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Sydney is really nice, the opera house is amazing from afar, although is not as big as i thought it woulds be ...same goes for the harbour bridge. We have driven, been driven and walked across the harbour bridge and the view across to the opera house is really cool. Luckily we had some nice weather while we were staying here. We stopped in a eco park not far from the town where we spied on possums outside our van all night.

Sydney has a lot to offer but i think we both still preferred Brisbane as a place to go. "The rocks" area in Sydney is really nice, quiet old fashioned and full of quaint shops selling specialty tea or chocolate. The Queen Victoria building is lovely and has carpeted floors around the shops and here we stopped for high tea with a huge slice of cake and coffee that we both felt sick afterwards. There are some amazing clocks in this building and the outside is just as nice as the inside.

We walked around the botanical gardens and hyde park, as well as darling harbour and chinatown. All areas of sydney are nice but there was just something that wasnt as amazing as i anticipated. The walk around town took all day really as we spent most of our time looking at random buildings and took lots of photos ( i think craig has got an obbession with the shutter noise as he takes lots and lots).

Darling harbour is a cool area with nice bars and its also the location of the wildlife walk and the aquarium, and lots of boats...some old fashioned and some new....we popped into chinatowns makets for some spring rolls and onion bhajis ( our second treat for the days we were there). We visited the chinese gardens which did feel like we were in Beijing for a second ( minus the spitting) and found a bird with stuck on green wings ( poor thing)...some people are cruel.

On our way to Sydney we visited the Koala Hospital, a place where injured Koalas of bush fires or road accidents are taken in, looked after and hopefully released into the wild. This was a sad place especially when you see the pictures of the koalas in the bush firs, they are sooo burnt and its just horrible. The ladies that look after them are all volunteers ( as is the whole project) and they rely on donations. The lady showing us around at feeding time said that alot of the koalas having to be put down as they are too ill to carry on which was so sad, the ones that were there getting better though seemed to be care for so much and you could see how much the ladies cared for them....it was nice that they were being cared for after such horrifc accidents etc....

A bad point about sydney is the toll roads in and out of the city, they can be a pain to avoid especially in our van when we go round corners all our stuff falls about....right we are off to treat ourselves to a chicken ( that should last about 4 days) speak to you all soon....
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1215683700/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1215683700/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1215683700/tpod.html Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:14:21 -0400 Round the World in 5 Months

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Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

After a fairly short drive to Canberra and the sight of lots of rainbow, we have certainly noticed a differenc in the weather. It os now around 0 degrees, 5 being the highest so it is absolutely freezing.....and sleeping in out tin can is really not the best idea we have had now...

Canberra doesnt feel like a capital city at all, there doesnt seem to be much to the city at all and im not particulary keen on it really. (Maybe its just the cold getting to me) We spent our first day splashing out on some warmer clothes...we didnt think strapless tops, vests and shorts were a great idea, so now we have a couple of jumpers, bed hats, gloves, coats and scarfs...along with a luxury heater for our van. The shopping in canberra is pretty good although again not what you'd expect from the capital.

We are staying at an exhibition park where they train dogs for shows and horses by chariot racing them which is a tad weird. As you can tell we have been making use of the free internet at the library ( now ive finally gotten round to trying to write what we have been doing for the last month)...at the moment we are researching campervans for new zealand as we think this will be lots more fun than the bus.

So far in canberra we have wandered about as much as we can, but its just too cold, we have seen parliment house and the captain cook memorial water jet. We went to Black Mountain tower to sdee the views but you have to pay to get to the top so we just opted for overlooking the edges. The views of the city are pretty cool though...it looks much better from above

We also went to the National Musuem of Australia today, this was fun as we learnt abit about all of oz, went in the revolving cinema and made our own 3d future buildings and then watched them on a 3d screen with other peoples ( this was lots of fun, especially as they took photos of you first so they could attach them to your building). We felt platypus's fur here which is so soft and the building its self is really cool and wacky....i think craig would have taken more photos had we not been running out of space on our memory cards.

Oh there are also loads of cockatoos here, hundreds, we saw them first in Australia Zoo and now there are lots in the wild. They are always grazing for food and make a right rackett!!!

Anyway i guess we should go and get some tea, we are starting our final journey to Melbourne tommorrow, so only 2 more days of driving ( well half days)...i think we will miss our little cold tin can when we have to leave her...oh and the packing will be extremely hard...how will we get a fan heater through the airport?? any ideas?
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1214469120/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1214469120/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1214469120/tpod.html Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:51:15 -0400 Round the World in 5 Months

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Airlie Beach, Queensland, Australia

After one of the longest drives we will do we arrived late in the night at Airlie Beach. Driving in the dark in Australia is a little scary as there are hardly any lights and huge trucks flying down the roads.

Anyway Airlie beach has alot of backpackers and tourists, mainly as you can get to the Whitsunday islands from here. We think we may have wrecked our suspension too as they have alot of huge speed bumps here. Anyway Airlie beach has a really nice feel, there is a nice walk which we did along the coast and explored the area. We visited the lagoon ( an area where you can swim in a sea salt pool, and lounge on the beach have bbqs etc to avoid the stingers in the sea and as an alternative for those who don't like the sea)

We spent some time at the marina and admiring some of the architecture. The main section of this part was the trip to the Whitsunday islands, we chose a trip that took us to Hook Island, Daydream island and Whitsunday Island. Unfortunately the weather was not very nice for this trip, it was cold, dull and raining. We could imagine how Nice the beaches etc would have been in the sun. First stop was Whitsunday Island and Whitehaven beach. The beach is beautifully white, clean and soft ( and i don't really like Beach's), i saw my first sea plane take off here which wasn't as exciting as i had hoped!!

Then it was back on the catamaran to Hook Island, here we looked in the underwater observatory at the coral reef and the fish, which was really cool and there were some huge fish!! We also went on the Reef explorer, a boat with windows in the bottom to see the reef without having to get wet, this was a good idea but because the weather was dull we didn't see a great deal and as it was the outer reef the coral was not as colouful as you imagine ( sometimes caused by bleaching). We were then allowed to do what we wanted for a little while as some people went snorkeling but it was far too cold for that, so me and Craig headed to do some rock climbing ( well clambering) ....when we returned the beach was dead and there was no one around...we ran to the jetty but there was no boat!!! They had left us on the island!! There is one tiny hostel on the island and when we got there they radioed the boat who said they had the correct number of passengers....someone hadn't updated the list to include the staff returning on the boat from the hostel so they had took our place....luckily the boat returned after about half and hour otherwise we would have been stuck on the island until the next day...it was quite embarrassing.

Final stop was Daydream island which is a whole resort where you can do what you want for a while so we wandered and explored the island.

Oh i also got attacked ( well jumped on by a dog here) so my fear of dogs is even worse now!!! It emerged out of the woods and was awful...so much for our relaxing walk in the national park...altough at the end we found a lovely secluded beach.

Overall the day was good, and the Whitsunday islands are beautiful....there are soo many places we want to return to...
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Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia

Arriving in Byron Bay you can tell that this town is fairly relaxed and chilled out. There seems to be a great deal of people who dont seem to do much all day. The area is really nice, our favourite part of the time we spent here was the walk to Cape Byron ( the lighthouse) ...it went along the coast and the beach where we stood and watched surfers, then walked up a huge hill to the top where we saw loads of whales migrating to the warmer north waters. There were loads, along with these there were loads of dolphins playing in the surf and sea turtles popping their heads up every now and then. This was amazing and Craig went a bit overboard with the photos.

Unfortunately alog the way up i fell sort of and scraped a whole layer of skin off the bottom of my big toe, so there was quite a bit of blood and pain and we had a long walk back to the van with my homemade bandage. The whales and dolphins definately made the walk worth it. The walk back was quite difficult with me limping along behind and trying to get across the soft sand without getting any in the wound, but it was fun and a really nice day out.

From Byron we drove to Coffs Harbour and here we encountered our first downpour of rain. It chucked it down the first night we were here so with my bandaged toe covered in a little plastic bag we struggled to make tea in the lovely camp kitchen. Our van got wquiet wet that night and you can see how much the weather has changed.We are also feeling the cold alot more having come from such hot countries to here, its freezing. Here we walked along the coffs creek walk and along to Muttonbird Island, this was a long walk but was worth it to see the dark sky above the huge waves in the sea.

After Coffs harbour we headed to Port macquarie where there wasnt a great deal to do, but it was just a resting point for us on our way to sydney.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1214903760/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1214903760/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1214903760/tpod.html Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:35:37 -0400 Round the World in 5 Months

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Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Another early start was required for our drive down to Brsibane as we wanted to stop off at the world famous Australia Zoo...Craig was very excited as he loves Steve Irwin, especially when we got to Steve Irwin Way. Here we saw our first Koala and they are as lovely as i imagined. We also saw loads of animals we hadnt seen before like the tasmanian devill, wombats, koalas etc. We storked the Kangaroos in the enclosure and they are soo soft, although i was scared that it would jump up as there was alot of people feeding them around.

We went to the famous crocoseum and saw the crocodile show. This was pretty cool and it was interesting to learn about the crocodiles, altough it would have been better with Stevie there!! We also saw a sea snake actually int he water which was really strange and the largest python in captivity. I tried to get Craig to stroke a snake but he wasnt having any of it!! We wanted to stroke the koalas but as its the school holidays the queues were quiet big so we gave it a miss.

From australia zoo to Brisbane centre. We both really liked Brisbane, Craig liked alot of the modern architecture like the library and i liked the mix of old and new. We did get a bit lost driving around the city which is funny now but wasnt at the time. We have started to feel the cold arriving from here and are not looking forward to it getting much colder. We visited the gallery of modern art which was quite interesting and wandered around the shops and bridges. We also had a really great value decent meal here which filled us up instead of the beans on toast and pasta we have been having.

My favourite part of Brisbane was South Bank, here they had a outdoor pool and beach area, nice walks, parklands,and shops....its a really nice place that we would like to visit again one day!!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1214730000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1214730000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ouradventures08/1/1214730000/tpod.html Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:16:25 -0400 Round the World in 5 Months

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Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia

Hervey bay is a nice little town, a little touristy but with some interesting parts...mainly it was our location from which we set off to Fraser islans.

Fraser island is beautiful and amazing, the whole island is made of sand and yet a whole rainforest and other bushladn grows upon this which is the only place in the world where this happens. We had to get a ferry across and saw a dugong and then we hooped onto the four wheel drive bus ( which was massive) and headed in to the rainforest. Our driver was very informative and told us about how the rainforest came about and how the island is constantly growing with sand being deposited all the time. We took a walk down Wanggoolba creek and saw the freshwater and the amazing strangler trees which grown from the top down suffocating the tree it covers. We also saw the home of a funnel web spider, these are quiet scary as you may die if you get bit by one.

From there we headed across to 75 mile beach, which is huge, it stretches for miles ( as the title states). Along this journey we saw a dingo and loads of whales playing the sea. We visited the interesting and amazing Maheno wreck, a ship that has just rusted there for years and is really fascinating. We also saw the coloured pinnacles which are said to have something like 70 different colours in them ( although craig couldnt see what the fuss was about)

We then headed to Eli creek which is a beautiful freshwater creek with clear water and soft sand. I paddled and waded up and down, unfortunately Craig had his shoes on so didnt want to get his feet wet. Th water was lovely i didnt want to get out, but iw as so hungry. We stopped for dinner and craig and i stuffed ourselves so we wouldnt have to pay for any tea and then we jumped back on the bus for some more off roading to Lake Mackenzie.

The lake is massive and so clear you can walk all the way in and still see your feet, i waded around in this and the sand was soo soft ( apparently extremely good for cleaning jewellery) ...we then headed back to the jetty and on the ferry to hervey bay....I really liked Fraser Island and would love to go back again one day...altough we did see some huge spiders with really creepy legs!! Urgh
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Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia

So from Innisfail we drove several hours to Rockhampton with a stop off in Townsville. We again can't remember what we did in this period as we were looking forward to the Whitsunday islands etc. Rockhampton is a fairly large town/city with lots to do, we spent awhile looking for crocs in the river...but didnt come across any...we are a little dissapointed.

On our trip down we have seen more roadkill than anything...ive never seen so much in my life and the types of things are amazing and awful at the same time. As morbid as it is we have seen deer, kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, snakes and even a sheep dog ( although we had a feeling it was killed by its owner and dumped to look like roadkill). Seeing these animals is awfula s they are soo big and some have there heads missing or mangled up...not very nice!!

We still havent seen a Koala, which i am really looking forward to...anyway as i cant remember what we did here i'll carry on with other parts of the trip....
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Innisfail, Queensland, Australia

So we drove an hour or so down the Bruce highway to Innisfail...a very small town with nothing to do on a sunday night except watch the millions of huge bats emerge at dusk and fly off into the darkness. This was one of the most amazing sights we have seen. Unfortunately on the first night we saw them we didnt have our camera, but the sky was soo much nicer than the pictures we did take ( it was purple and midnight blue) on the day we did take the pictures the sky was orange and not as interesting.

The van is cool and the driving is easy over here...so far its one road, called the Bruce highway, all the way to new south wales. We have seen some amazing views whilst driving her to innisfail including some lovely mountains.

It was here in innisfail that we first heard the scary but funny laugh of the laughing kookaburra that marks its terrority with these laughs. The first night i heard it, it sounded like hyenas or a group of scary crazy people...it has to be heard to be believed!!!
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