Today was a travel day… I think we clocked up about 500kms.! After leaving the campsite we headed out of Melbourne, and South to Phillip Island. A couple of hours later we arrived, had a walk near the track and left to venture along the coast and East.

We found nothing significant on the way so stocked up at an Aldi (!) and resumed our travels eventually ending up at a place called Bairnesdale. I think we are about 250km from Jens relatives so we may even make it there tomorrow where there shall be much rejoicing and drinking (yeah baby!!)

So another day dawns… what will tomorrow hold?…. who knows!

One thing that was odd today, was at Phillip Island…. instead of sparrows resting on telegraph lines, there were rows of parrots!! Weird!

No snakes or spiders or crocs yet…. but here’s hoping eh?!

SD

G’Day cobber… Is that the lingo?

We arrived yesterday, and had a kip at the airport hotel. Woke up early… don’t know why!! We then waited for our taxi which never turned up, and we had to get another cab from outside the airport… Mr Stressy was our driver…! Not a good start to the day. We then picked up our camper and headed into the city of Melbourne to rent some cycles and look around. Unfortunately this did not pan out either… The damm sat nav kept trying to take me up streets with bridges too low to get under… Needless to say 1hr 30mins later there was a barrage of swear words from me aimed at the sat nav kit…

We eventually decided that before I lost my sanity, we would head to a suburb of Melbourne called Footscray. After we parked up at a camp site, we caught a bus into town.

Looking around the city in the small amount of time we did, it seems like every other major city, and I feel like I’m repeating myself… but I am not in that frame of mind at the moment, so it was a tad dissapointing. We did manage to sort out wireless mobile broadband, so you guys might be lucky and get some Skype calls if it all works out good.

After sorting the internet stuff out we wandered into a full blown demonstration, with riot police, helicopter… the lot.. So we dived down a back alley and grabbed some soup from a cafe. Then popping into a pub we supped the local beer (forgotten the name already) and then caught the bus home, whilst avoiding fire engines zooming down the street, and some drunken idiot falling over in front of the bus and almost dying! Popped into the supermarket where a row kicked off between 2 people… Oh the joy of big city life… Catching my drift yet.?

So, tomorrow we plan to head South about 120km to one of the greatest Moto GP tracks in the world. Phillip Island. Sadly the race isn’t here till October… but at least we can say we were there!!

Thats all for now folks.!

SD

Hey guys,

Well, we are waiting at Auckland airport, and have gone through check in.

This time I stayed cool, and pleaded lenience with Qantas due to British Airways completely landing us in the smelly stuff. They were extremely helpful and understanding. They took photocopies of our itinerary, and after a bit of chatting to other people, charged us a paltry $84 which equals about £30…! I must say I was totally stunned seeing as the weight we are over is 85kg… Many thanks to Qantas for this…. now we only have to repeat the process one more time in 6 weeks on our way home.

My final thoughts on New Zealand. Its quiet, beautiful… stunningly so… and few and far between towns where you can do stuff. Great place if you like walking through hills, or checking out scenery. But for me, being the kind of person that I am, I need more stimulus, and I now realise how much I despise big cities, traffic, cars etc.

Being on Koh Tao running full steam doing something every minute of every day, working our butts off studying, diving, assisting, climbing, paintball, motorbiking…was hard but so rewarding, and I think New Zealand has a much slower pace of life than we have been used to these last 4 months. Its hard to adjust.

Anyway, 2850km travelled in New Zealand at a breakneck speed, White Island and the Canyon Swing were major highlights, and we look onwards to further adventures in Australia. Hotel tonight and pick up new camper tomorrow. See you on the next internet connection!!!

SD