Kaikoura30th SeptemberWe hopped on the Kiwi Experience, much like the Oz Experience but bigger buses and shorter days.  Our first port of call was Kaikoura, where the mountains meet the sea.  It was a lovely day, so we took the opportunity to go swimming with wild dolphins out in the ocean.  It was an amazing experience and there were hundreds of Dusky Dolphins swimming past just a few feet below us as we looked down at them through our goggles.&nb...

Christchurch27th - 29th SeptemberPhew!  Sorry for the long delay, we've been non-stop!  We started our 5 week Kiwi adventure in Christchurch, the most English city outside of the UK.  One of the first things we did was visit the Antarctic Centre, the main attraction (for Jus) being the penguin rehabilitation centre, with its paralysed and blind inmates - ultra cute all the same!  We also experienced a simulated Antarctic storm, as wel...

Melbourne and The Great Ocean Road 19th - 25th September In Melbourne we were staying with Phil's Mum's cousin! These distant relations are very confusing, but very handy all the same! We spent our first day in Melbourne planning out our 3 day self drive tour of The Great Ocean Road and the Mornington Peninsula, but we still managed to squeeze in a few of the sites! First up we strolled around the funky Federation Square, where they hold big outdoor ...

Oz Experience Tour to Melbourne 15th - 18th September To get to Melbourne we had a 4 day tour through the countryside and mountains on the good old Oz Experience. To our surprise we got the same driver that we had between Byron Bay and Taree. So that was good news as he was our second favourite of the whole trip so far. It's a good job too as the other 5 passengers were all German speaking girls. Our first stop was Canberra, Australia's capital, a pla...

Sydney 4th - 14th September We came down to Sydney from Taree on the not so speedy "Express" XPT train. It was the same day that Steve Irwin was killed in Queensland by a Manta Ray, quite weird that we were at the zoo only a few weeks ago - a sad day for the crocs. We were staying with Phil's distant cousin Ben and his partner Jonathan, who both emigrated to Oz earlier this year. They're renting a nice 3 bed house in Glebe, a very pleasant suburb of ...