Blog to follow. .... I am so tired I could sleep forever.

Well our hour stopover in Australia was interesting. We all had to leave the plane and take everything with us and then go through security and out again, even though we had already been checked twice and we're not even staying in the country! Not a good introduction to Australia. Anyway after an hour of queing we were off again and next stop Auckland, New Zealand.

We have worked through the jet lag and have spent the last few days in Auckland. The first night of our stay Auckland was hit by a huge storm that dropped enough water for a month causing flooding, so everywhere was a bit wet and lots of rivers flooded. Luckily on Thursday it stopped raining so we visited the zoo although it was a little cloudy but stayed dry for the day and we had a really good day, mind you it helped that it wasn't a school day and was nice and quiet! We even saw a Kiwi which was the reason we went. The bird aviaries were the best we have seen (and so was the zoo) so far in our travels.

On Friday we visited MOTAT, the Museum of Technology and Transport, which has some good exhibits including a tram line, so guess who was really happy, even though we got a bit wet.

Our B n B was out of town so we spent our time travelling on buses and trains about the city. However on Friday we relocated to a city centre hotel as we were going to catch the Northern Explorer train down through the North Island to Wellington, which left early on Saturday morning. As we checked into the hotel it started raining again and it was still raining the next morning so we took a taxi to the station and when we arrived we were told the train had been cancelled, which was bitterly disappointing as there were no other trains and we had really been looking forward to the trip. The Northern Explorer only goes three times a week and they gave us a choice of going by coach or cancelling and getting our money back. We weren't sure if we could get a flight at short notice, so we went on the coach. ELEVEN hours later here we are in Wellington. We plan to stay here a couple of days before we start our next workaway on Monday. Hopefully it will stop raining before then.