Time for the more intellectual one to take-over. After a quick browse around Airlie beach (taking us 15 minutes) we booked our diving course, we managed to get a really good deal which included our four open water dives, the boat trip, breakfast, BBQ buffet lunch, and afternoon tea - very good. Our days began bright and early at 7.30am as the boat took three hours to get to the reef. Once we had geared up, we took our first dive, unfortunately the visibility was...

It's been too long folks. Now, where did I leave you? Oh yeah, Brisbane. As intended, we visited the late Mr Irwin's Australian Zoo. The zoo is about 50 or so kilometres from Brisbane and Ian kindly suggested we use his car for the journey. The zoo itself was initially a reptile park before its development meaning the vast majority of creatures were of the slippery, scaly variety. As you can imagine, the place was filled with 'gators, crocs, snakes (... ruddy gr...

After staying in the remote Village of Arthur's Pass, not only did we see very few people, we happened to bump into someone From Harwich... what are the bloody chances! Gav came running back from the cafe looking like he'd pooed his pants and declared he had recognised a guy from Harwich. I told him to stop being ridiculous, but unfortunately he was right. It turns out Harwichites do leave the shire every now and then. :-) Once we parted with our stylish Nissan ...

Milford Sound would have quite easily caused our mouths to gape open if they hadn't been for the last hour of the journey. A lot of the scenery from the road conjured visions of a T-Rex or King Kong crashing through the tree line or jumping from one of the endless tree covered mountains. Apparently, parts of Jurassic Park were actually filmed here. We took a cruise along the fjord when we finally got there and again, the views were unrivalled: waterfalls, tree av...

Aha! Another blog I hear you cry (... real tears an' all!) New Zealand. The poor brother to Australia - well, not really! Some people have told us it's a lot colder in New Zealand - much like the weather in England. This week has been evidence to the contrary. Christchurch was lovely and warm the two days we were there and Queenstown was 30 degrees today. There was a bit of rain on Friday - I had to explain to the locals what it was - but it looks like it's goin...