It was Thursday 14th October when we arrived into Adelaide city. We had driven along the Great Ocean Road in a hire car and it was now time to return it. After giving the keys back to Avis car hire we walked through the main street looking for a hostel for the night. We checked out a couple of backpacker hostels but were unhappy with them so we ended up staying at a Golden Chain hotel where we got a 10% discount as we were now Golden Chain members. We were only i...

It was Monday 11th October and we were on our way from Melbourne to Torquay to pick up the famous Great Ocean Road all the way to Adelaide. It was about 8pm when we arrived in Torquay and decided that it was best to stay in this seaside town for the night and make a long journey early the next day. After feeling like kerb-crawlers as we did multiple slow circuits of Torquay town centre in the hired Toyota Auris, we stopped at a Motel which is part of the Golden C...

Melbourne We boarded the Emirates flight to Melbourne on Thursday 7th October arriving in the city later that evening. As it was 11pm, it was too late to do anything other than check into our hostel and go to sleep. We would have arrived sooner but for the ridiculously slow airport security. The Australian and New Zealand nationals queue had half as many people waiting but twice as many security staff. So, we were waiting for the best part of an hour......and th...

We arrived at Auckland bus terminal (on 6th October) earlier than expected so we walked down to the ferry port with our luggage and booked ourselves onto the 2pm ferry crossing to Waiheke Island and then went for lunch to waste some time before the scheduled departure. This was our penultimate day in New Zealand before we move on to Australia. During lunch we decided to make a reservation at a hostel (before we boarded the ferry) knowing that we would have somew...

The intercity coach arrived late at Mount Maunganui so not a great start! We had to change coaches 3 times just to get to Whitianga! That said, we did end up arriving earlier than expected. God knows how. It was early evening when we reached our hostel. We were greeted by a very helpful young lady named Sue who took us to our room which was in a lodge shared with 2 ladies from New Zealand and a guy from Spain. We spent the evening walking around the small town ...