After leaving Christchurch I boarded the first of my Kiwi buses to spend the next five days travelling down the west coast of the south island towards Queenstown. I'd heard various reports about the whole 'Kiwi experience' bus mentality and was wondering if I'd made the wrong decision about the way to travel here, but I soon found I had nothing to worry about. The nightmare of a bus full of 18 year olds never materialised and right from the start ...

The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Christchurch was how English everything was. Even on the shuttle bus from the airport I seriously thought I'd stepped off the place in the wrong country and somehow arrived back home! The houses all looked English, the streets very green and full of trees, we passed an old college that looked just like it was in Oxford or Cambridge and I even saw an old Sierra Sapphire (anyone remember those?!).So I wasn't surpr...

Back to Sydney for my final few days in Australia before I sadly had to leave and move on to the next part of the journey, but I couldn't think of many nicer places to spend those remaining days. I also used my time in Sydney to catch up with some good friends I'd made along the way... My first day was fairly uneventful as I tried to get my journal as up-to-date as possible andwent to practically every internet cafe in Sydney to try and find one that wou...

So it was down to just two of us now in Alice Springs and after a nice lie in, John and I decided to hire some bikes and explore a bit further out of town. We'd heard reports of all sorts of dramas going off in this rather strange little town so we were prepared for anything, but after cycling along the Todd River to the famous telegraph station we found a peaceful little oasis, not at all like we'd been told to expect. At the telegraph station you can wa...

Now the Kakadu family was down to just two - John and I were the only two remaining from the start of the trip, with some of the others choosing just a three day trip around the red centre and others travelling on down to Adelaide in the south. But it wasn't all bad as we actually had to leave on our trip to the red centre a day earlier than planned because the one we were originally booked on was cancelled. No real dramas there, it just meant an extra day in...