Into Broken Hill On Tuesday we left Mildura and drove the 300km to Broken Hill, also known as Silver City. As we approached Broken Hill we had to add 30 minutes to our watches; this is due to Broken Hill having a minor altercation with the NSW state government about some public service (or lack of) and deciding to follow central Australian time in protest when they weren't then allowed to 'leave' the rule of the state. As we approached Broken Hill, we could see...

Heading inland On Saturday morning we picked up our hire car and headed out of the city. Of course, getting out of the centre of Melbourne was a lot more difficult than that but I won't go into detail, let's just say the air in the car was quite blue by the time we got onto the Calder Highway . We settled into the 550 km journey and headed north inland to a place called Mildura. We are ultimately heading for Brisbane to spend a few more days with Matt's sister ...

In and around Melbourne We like Melbourne a lot. If we were ever to emigrate then this place would be a definite contender. We arrived here at 7.30am on Wednesday morning and walked the kilometre or so to our motel (picture us, slightly dishevelled and bleary eyed with bags on backs amidst the hundreds of city types smartly dressed on the way to the office). The motel is pretty central and not bad accommodation however we couldn't check-in until 2pm, so we dum...

Catching up with family in Sydney We have spent the past 3 nights in a suburb of Sydney called West Ryde. We stayed in a fairly cheerless Comfort Inn on a pretty busy road but it was cheap so we made do. My cousin Sara, her husband Matt and their unbelievably cute 2 year old, Hannah (and I'm not just saying that because I know they'll be reading) met us on the Sunday morning. I'll tell you a little about Sara as I think it's a nice story how she came to be in...

Road trip NZ Our road trip around New Zealand has been fantastic. Far too busy to blog, sorry! I'm only doing this entry for New Zealand, because although we've had a great time there probably isn't too much to report; I don't want it to end up being a load of place names that you've never heard of (we hadn't heard of most of them before). Plus there aren't the cultural / language differences (on the whole) that there have been in other countries. So, we'll giv...