It was off to Melbourne and the journey was a LONG one - down the east coast and into the mountains to avoid the floods. We left at 8am and arrived in Melbourne at 1am! Now thats a long day... we also had to leave Ange and Drew in a place called Albury and catch the Greyhound to Melbourne (but hopefully we will see them again at Christmas). We are staying at Nomads hostel - which is smack bang in the centre of the city and to be honest we were dreading the 10 p...

We got over to Sydney with loads of problems - not customs like we thought - but with Visas (who knew we needed visas???)(We are english we thought we could travel anywhere!!!). Dave also lost his penknife because he didn't pack properly... and it ended up in his hand luggage... doh! Anyhow our arrival was fine and we caught the ferry over to Manly to meet with Flick and Dave - our friends who live there. Dave met us and we stayed with them for 2 nights with t...

So we have had a wicked time in Auckland with Daves college roommate Ryan, his wife Jill who is pregnant with their second, and their little angel Isabel. We have mainly chilled with them, visiting town once for some Diamond shopping!(but with no luck). Jill has been the perfect hostess - we have really vedged with her - having a BBQ, Brownies and lots of homemade amazing cooking. We also went to see the new Harry Potter movie and sat in a beanbag cinema - so c...

We camped for one more night in the carpark at Pahia for another night (as it was free!) and left stupidly early for the furthest north town in New Zealand, at least we think it is... This was the gateway to the far north, 90 mile beach and a place called Cape Reina. We were not insured to drive on 90 mile beach which is actually designated as a road, so we had to catch a very cheap tour. And cheap it was, the driver of our beach bus was so annoying - he reall...

So the next location on our list was the legendary Bay of Islands, which is one of the most northernly tourist places in New Zealand, just 3 hours north of Auckland. We were told by so many people that this was a must do in New Zeland, although neither of us have done it before.We actaually camped in a car park in the middle of a town called Pihia for the 2 days we were there - $12 for 24 hours, and we got our first ticket for free :-)We booked on what was called...