So long time no writing... we haven't forgotten you all we promise just been rather lazy!

We're now in beautiful New Zealand stacking round the country in our campervan, but before all that a bit of an update.

Since the last blog, we travelled down to the south of Australia to Melbourne where we spent a few days exploring the city. As luck would have it we arrived at the start of the Melbourne International comedy festival, so we managed to catch a couple for acts at discount prices! Melbourne is a great place, a lot more relaxed than Sydney and more cultural things to do which was a nice change. We also hired a car and spent a weekend drivign along the Great Ocean Road, which Amy loved gunning the huge car we had round the windy mountain roads! We did a round trip back to Melbourne and stopped off at the Grampians national park for a night, where we finally saw some wild Kangaroos and Emus.

After Melbourne we took a flight up to Brisbane to stay with our friend Sam who's been living out here for a year or so. It was good to catch up with him and his gang getting rather pizzled and playing guitar hero and a bit of respite to not have to live out of backpacks and live the whole hostel life for a few days. While he was working we had a wander around Brisbane which isn't the greatest city in the world by any means but there's enough to keep you entertained.

We arrived in Christchurch a week last Wednesday, after a nightmare day of missing our connecting flight out of Sydney, meaning we had to be bounced around most of the Southern hemisphere to arrive 8 hours later than planned about 10 at night. Luckily Sam and his girlfriend Jess had arrived on time and got the campervan sorted so we had somewhere to sleep, but I still need to write an angry ranting letter to Quantas...

Anyway, the anger and fustration soon passed as New Zealand really is as good as everyone says it is! The place is immense, breathtaking, beautiful and any other cliche adjective you can think of. Everywhere you go there's amazing landscapes and lots of sheep.

We pretty much drove straight out of Christchurch and headed south towards Queenstown in the van which for reference has me, ames, sam, jess, our mate ryan from home and cath - amys old housemate from Leeds. The van life has been great, bar a few flatulent moments from Ry everyone's been getting on swimmingly and we've played a lot of cards and drank a lot of the local brew.

A couple of days ago me, sam, jess and ry, talked ourselves into doing a Bungy jump of a rather large bridge! After physcing ourselves up to a lot of thrash metal music we took to plunge literally and we all agreed it was rather fun. Amy and cath we a little bit more sensible and took the role of official photographer and cameraperson (I know photos have been short coming, but as soon as I can the photos and videos will be up!) So as not to outdone, Amy, Cath and Jess did a massive paraglide over Queenstown which as you'll see from the pictures is not a bad place to do that.

We've just got back to Queenstown today after travelling further west to Milford Sound, which a beautiful mountain range which can't reallly be done justice by my ramblings - again the photos hopefully will...

The plan now is to take the road back north along the west coast to the Fox and Franz Josef Glacier for a few days then even further north to make the ferry crossing to the North Island. I will update again soon, but the internet here is very hit and miss - the computer I used yesterday took 10 mins to open my email.

Finally today is pretty much halfway through our trip which feels a bit strange, but plenty more adventures to be had!

Love Tom and Amy xxx

P.S. Happy belated birthdays to my Auntie Tricia and Amys brother Sam!