We landed in Christchurch local time 1am to heavy rain and got the airport shuttle to the hostel. The reception had left us our key on a notice board so we crept upstairs and into our room expecting the 5 bed dorm that we had booked but were very excited to open the door and see a twin room with electric blankets and a flat screen TV; a very good start to New Zealand! We slept all the way through to 11am the next morning and then walked into town wearing our rai...

Brisbane, Byron Bay, Spot X, Sydney, Ayers Rock Nat and I arrived in Brisbane mid afternoon and checked into our hostel in the centre of Brisbane. I picked up free WiFi standing outside of a random restaurant and contacted my cousin Lucy to arrange to meet at the Botanical Gardens. Nat and I explored the city a bit on the way there and bought a cookie and caramel McFlurry- this has since become a regular occurrence. Meeting Lucy was a little harder than expected...

Cairns, Magnetic Island, Whitsundays & Fraser Island Kate dropped me at Sydney airport early on Monday morning. Originally when I booked my flights I had intended to arrive in Melbourne later and then fly directly from there to Cairns but my plans changed a bit and I decided to add in Sydney before Cairns. Unfortunately I couldn't change my flight destination so it worked out cheaper to return to Melbourne and keep my existing Melbourne to Cairns flight- a l...

Melbourne & SydneyI landed in Melbourne at 7.30am and Tessa, a friend from my Borneo trip who lives in Melbourne, picked me up from the airport. I was so excited to see her and we spent the morning catching up and watching TV. In the afternoon we went in to the city because Tessa had an internship interview at her university. I sat in the library for half an hour surrounded by uni students; I felt very nostalgic! When she had finished we walked aro...

I arrived in Bali airport at about 6.30pm and then waited a long time to get my visa and through customs. I had pre-booked an airport pickup by my hostel and so went into the arrivals area ready to look for the sign with my name on it. It was manic! There were about 50 people crowded around the door holding signs and another 50 shouting "taxi taxi taxi". I eventually found my guy and was driven to the hostel. The hostel owner showed me around and explained that ...