We are back in Cairns now after spending the last three weeks working in an outback pub in North Queensland, about half hour outside of the nearest civilisation in Cooktown. We arrived after a six hour bus journey from Cairns to find out that the girls who's jobs we were taking had only been told that morning that they were now unemployed, so to say it was a little bit awkward would be one hell of an understatement. And things got even better the next day when t...

We have now been Australia for a few days and Cairns is not exactly what we were expecting! We made our horrendously early flight from Christchurch and after a hectic transit in Melbourne where we almost didn't get let through to departures, we were back in the air flying along the East coast to Cairns. Whereas the flight from Christchurch was one to forget (the cold of the mountains causing just a bit of turbulence!!) the flight up to Cairns was brilliant as ...

The last few days in New Zealand have been filled with more activities and sight seeing as we have been exploring Christchurch and trying to maximize what little Kiwi time we have left. The journey from Queenstown took just under eight hours but we stopped at some amazing little pit stops en route and the scenery was breathtaking as all around us were snow capped mountains and crystal clear lakes. When we arrived we managed to find a great little hostel just a te...

The third section of our trip around the bottom the country, was up towards Te Anau. It was a pretty lazy drive up through the countryside with a stop at one museum and information centre that employs the dumbest staff ever. Once in Te Anau, it was time for a group meal and we managed to cook enough Lasagne to last us until we leave New Zealand!! Today's section of the trip was the highlight, as we went to Milford Sounds, which is a huge area that has been carve...

This morning we left Dunedin behind and headed for Curio Bay near Riverton. Our first stop was Nugget Point, where there are several rocks jutting out from the ocean that are supposed to resemble gold nuggets. Although we couldn't see the resemblance ourselves, the views were pretty good. Then it was a short drive around to a beach where we came face to face with a few sea lions - bloody great fat ones! Next it was on to Lake Wilkie where we did a very short wal...