We arrived in Melbourne airport on Monday afternoon, going back three hours from NZ! Andrew was really starting to suffer after our night out last night, which I thought was quite funny! To be fair he only got about 3 hours sleep! We then got a bus from Melbourne to Geelong, where we were met by Irene (my Dad's Cousin). We are staying with Irene and her husband Goff for a few days in Colac and really loving it. It is so nice to stay in a family home, they have s...

Continuing our little road trip we headed into South Australia (briefly!) We had to put our clock back 30 minutes and chuck any fruit and veg, you forget each state is like its own separate country! We stayed the night at Naracoorte, where we got a great big buffet dinner for $8 - bargain! Then in the morning we went to the Naracoorte Caves, which were very interesting, with the fossils of some huge animals that have been extinct from Australia for many years. ...

Our last stop in New Zealand! We cannot believe how quickly the last 6 weeks have flown by, we have loved every minute even the rain! The first thing we had to do here was hand in the camper van which was a very sad moment! It has been our first home together and we were very attached to it! In total over the last few weeks we have driven 6946km all around NZ in that van and listened to 3362 tracks on the ipod shuffle and spent 38 nights on the foam mattresse...

As we approached the Canterbury Plains the weather improved steadily and by the time we reached Christchurch it was a glorious spring day. We managed to sneak into a hostel and have a free shower before picking up our now mended camera from the post office - yes we now have 2 cameras!!! We then drove out onto the Banks Peninsula in search of a little French town called Akaroa - the French colonised here just after the English had claimed sovereignty over the ...

We left Franz Josef and headed north towards Hokitika and the famous old gold mining areas, it was raining yet again. It often rains on the West Coast, close to the sea they have about 5 m of rain annually, but up in the Southern Alps the figure gets as high as 12m!! We got to a soggy Hokitika mid morning and ventured to the i-site to try to find something to do in the rain for a few hours. Hokitika is famous for its Jade (nephrite/greenstone), it was precious t...