Howdy Bloggeroonies!

Here we are in country number 8 then! New Zealand!

We arrived in Auckland last night and having had an ounce of foresight we headed straight to the Base Hostel that we'd already booked!

Although we arrived late at night, it didn't feel it because we lost a couple of hours with the time zone-ness. So, we headed out into the Auckland night and took a look around and from what we've seen so far it seems very pleasant!

Anywho...to our last days of Oz, and they were mildly adventurous for us! Cooper finished up at her place of employment, a sad day for Wood & Grieves Engineers indeed! She received a card and was taken out to lunch and EVERYTHING! Very nice! I meanwhile was persevering with selling the car...a hopeless task it seemed!

On Katie's first day back on our holiday, we trawled dealerships to see who would have Brucie in case nobody would buy him privately...for some reason nobody wanted him and we thought they were most ungracious at the opportunity to purchase such a fine vehicle!
So sadly he returned to Travellers Autobarn who more or less robbed him from us rather than bought him! Katie did manage to haggle us some cashola though, so it wasn't as bad as it might've been.

As we were going through our belongings that had accumulated over our last three months we decided to send some stuff home...which will return home some time after we do as we went for the cheap option of Sea Mail! I prefer our route I think!

On our last night we met up with a friend of a friend, Dom Walker which was good and saw out our time in Australia nicely. We met up in a fine St Kilda pub...we know it's fine because that's where the Neighbours Night is held and in our final week, we'd gone again! We had a good time, although some of the night's entertainment was somewhat more predictable, though the highlight for me really was finally, after seven months of travel, meeting someone who'd heard of Bourne! Hurrah! Brad and Vicky who were celebrating their honeymoon (and Vicky's birthday) are from Sleaford! Excellent news, and you'll be glad to hear, Brad teaches diving!!!

We will put more photos up soon as I'm sure you can't wait to see more Neighbours stars including Malcolm Kennedy, more of Dr Karl and Declan Napier!! Woo! It turned out to be rather worth returning to the night as we won the quiz and with it $200 for our team!

So anyway, we had a good time in Oz, Melbourne particularly was our fave, though of course various other places had their charms. It's a bit odd to think we've actually changed country now, because New Zealand is rather similar to Oz so far!

We're hoping to hire a campervan in the next day or two and we're eager to get off and 'discover New Zealand'. Personally, in the same way I wanted a cork hat in Oz, I would like to see a Kiwi bird, an All Black complete with Haka...and various other New Zealand cliches!

In the interest of keeping these short and sweet, that's all for now and we'll no doubt be updating you once we hit the road!

xxx