Good afternoon everyone - the sun is shining here in NZ and we're off to watch England thump the Kiwi's tonight as the Twenty20 cricket bandwagon hits Christchurch. Good times!!

Once again, the few messages we're still getting are very much appreciated. Good to see Mr Philips is still tuning in - the NZ itinerary we worked on is turning out to be a corker!!

Thanks for the City update Nige, Win was right, he is a much better crack than you, at least he sends me text messages!! Right, on we go..... Winston Churchill once said that Golf ruins a goods walk, well Mr Bulldog, although you defeated the Nazi's and in doing so made some rather resounding and memorable speaches, you were wrong with this one. The thing is that the Blue Mountains must have arguably some of the best walks in the world, and someone in a pair of plus fours striding round a big open space with little holes and an even littler ball certainly wouldn't have put the kibosh so catastrophically as the thick fog and rain we came across at the Blue Mountains.

We jumped on the train from Sydney for the two hour journey to the town of Katoomba - the start point for our 'bushwalks' around Australia's best known mountain range. With blue sky's all round, we arrived at around 2pm we checked into our latest hostel which looked like it was something out of the Waltons. The decor was a tongue and groove enthused ensemble boasting a room smaller than my Mum's freezer shed with no tele. But not to worry, we weren't going to spend any time in the room anyway, we'd be too busy tramping round the many Blue Mountain bushwalk routes, [Blue Mountains] named as such due to the blue halo caused by the oil's released from the huge number of Eucalyptus trees. Nice.

So following check-in, time had passed so it was too late to get the walking boots out. Instead we signed up for the local explorer bus that would take us to all the walk start/end points, but instead of alighting we would just have the orientation in readiness for tomorrow. That evening we had one of our first dry nights (no booze) in quite some time so it was a nice dinner at a local eatery followed by retiring to 'the box' for an early night in readiness for the big day tomorrow.

The following day, wee Belle opened the curtains with a resounding "Oh boll**ks!" - the one full day we had scheduled to be in the Blue Mountains where a minimum visibility range of 30 miles was required to appreciate the place, actually turned out to be the foggiest and wettest day of the summer, bloody marvellous! So with Katoomba having nothing much more than what the mountains have to offer, we, along with numerous other tourists, spent the full day trudging around the little town, reading, sleeping and generally displaying faces like slapped ar*es!!

After gambling on good weather, we extended our trip to exciting Katoomba for an extra day. So when Belle ripped open the curtains once again to see brilliant blue sky's there was a certain amount of simultaneous jumping and hugging, the 'box' can't have seen so much excitement since it's last spruce up in 1943.

So off we went generally tramping round some fantastically scenic routes that lead us to numerous lookout points such as Echo Point (to view the 3 Sisters and the Jameson Valley), Honeymoon Lookout and Kiah Lookout. As you can imagine, the camera was getting a good work out, but not as much as yours truly - with Belle, once more annoyingly sporting the odd red cheek, I had, for about the three thousandth time, managed to sport an attractive v-sweat mark on the t-shirt down to my stomach, a blood red baldy head and a penchant for the odd swear word.

All in all we walked for around about 4 hours, and covered (a rather embarrassing sounding) 6 kilometres - but not so considering the gradients we negotiated in our FLIP-FLOPS - Yes, while other walkers wearing their best mountain walking boots commented to us as they passed that they couldn't beleive we were in 'thongs', we reminded ourselves that this was kids play, after all, have you crag rats trekked in Nepal? Nope? Thought not, on yer way!!!

So, tea-time came and it was time to catch our train back to Sydney satisfied that we'd seen some amazing scenery and had worked off a little Christmas prosperity to boot. So Winston, as you're looking down on us, I'd like you to review your statement [you were correct golf is crap] and while your at it, have a word with Mother Nature - please don't cast bad weather on the people of Katoomba, this is the one place in the world that needs sun!!!