And now, the end is here And so I face the final curtain... well, not really the final curtain - just an interval really :-)

But yes, I am now home in the freezing cold that is good old Blighty (more on that to follow)... I need to update you all with the last month of our travels, having left Perth to see the other side of Australia and New Zealand.

So, after a lovely month spent with our families, we did finally make a plan and booked flights for the last leg of our journey. We departed Perth for Sydney on the 26th October. I said a teary farewell to my cousin Jodi (even though I was going to see her again for one night before heading home).

We had a whistle stop tour of Sydney in the 2 days we were there before our flights over to New Zealand. And we managed to fit quite a lot in. The weather was a bit windy and rainy, but we still managed to catch a ferry over to Manly beach, catch a bus to Bondi beach (Linds wanted to see the boys from the Bondi Life Saver programme, but all we saw was a wrinkly old crispy brown man going for a run in his speedos! Yuck!), we walked over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and took rather a lot of photos of the opera house. We went up the tower and took more photos of the bridge and the opera house. Wandered through the botanical gardens and saw the fruit bats hanging from the trees - boy they are big bats! Linds did really well with her fear of bats! We managed to make it to Darling Harbour one night for dinner, although we were so late getting there we were lucky to get a meal (but it was another tick off of the list).

Then it was off to New Zealand and Christchurch where we were hoping to feel the earth move - Christchurch were still experiencing after-shock tremors from the earthquake that happend a couple of months earlier. We stayed with the lovely Christine who we met in Laos, and she put us up for a night and day while we sorted out a camper van to hire for the duration of our stay in NZ.

We were really lucky and got a relocation camper that needed to go to Auckland. We picked up big bertha the next day and we loved her. She was a 6 berth campervan with toilet, shower, pull out BBQ, TV & DVD... boy were we styling it with Bertha!! (we nicknamed her Big Bertha!). So loaded up with maps and winter coats and scarves (on loan from Christine as it was a bit chilly in NZ!) we headed off around the South Island for a week.

What an absolutely stunning place the South Island is - breathtaking! I don't think either of us had ever seen such beautiful scenery. The lakes and mountains and rivers were just amazing, and the water was soooo Blue!! Icy blue... fantastic. Our first night camping in Bertha was just so exciting. We were parked up on the side of Lake Tekapo with a breathtaking view of Mount Cook and the sunset going down - Wow!! We pulled out the BBQ and the red wine and had our first meal looking out onto this stunning vista.

And the scenery continued to take our breath away as we continued on around the Island. We stopped at Queenstown and Te Anu, then on to Milford Sound for a boat trip out through the Fiordlands. Then back past Queenstown, where we did stop at the A J Hackett bungy bridge, but they were closed!!! Oh well, next time hey!
Then on to Wanaka and up the west coast. We stopped to go and look at the Fox Glacier which was amazing! It was beautiful and not how I imagined a glacier to look at all. Then on to Franz Joseph where we contemplated doing a sky-dive, but ubfortunately the weather was bad so that was a no go.
Then we headed back to Christchurch and stayed with Christine again - on a rainy November the 5th (much like bonfire night in the UK!). And then we were off again up through Kaikoura, Blenheim (where we parked at the top of a hill looking out for whales in the bay, but no luck), then on to Picton. We camped for our last night in the South Island on a lake between Picton and Nelson. We drove down to Nelson for a fish & chip lunch before heading back to Picton to wait for the night ferry crossing to Wellington.

We arrived in Wellington at 2am in the morning and found a delightful camping spot - a car park in the city centre! But we were grateful to find somewhere to park up and sleep. Luckily we managed to get two nights for the price of one, so took advantage and left the campervan there while we took a day off from driving and did a spot of sightseeing. We could have spent at least two days going around the Museum, it is a great museum with lots of history about the discovery of the island, the Maoris, the volcanoes and earthquakes and sunamis!!

We were running out of time by now and had to hot foot it up through the middle of the North Island towards Rotarua. We stayed one night in a campsite just outside of Rotorua as we wanted to spend the next day there before going on up to the Bay of Plenty. And so finally we did something in true Kiwi style and we jumped out of an aeroplane at 12,000 feet and sky-dived!! Right over lake Rotarua... it was bloody fantastic! Afterwards we couldn't believe we had actually done it, but we have photos and the dvd to prove it (and to remind ourselves of how crazy it was - brilliant!). After the jump, we went to a Maori village/museum to do some cultural stuff. We watched a cultural performance, searched for Kiwi's in the nocturnal Kiwi House, and went to look at the Thermal pools and geysers.... and we had a lovely time, but to be honest with you.... we'd just jumped out of an aeroplane at 12,000 feet!!!!!!!!!!! Nothing you could beat that!

So still on an absolute high we headed up to the Bay of Plenty and to Mount Maunganui where my cousin Beth and her family live. We spent a lovely two nights and one day with Beth (the one day was completely wasted though, I have to say as we were complete losers with massive hangovers!!). We did however manage to walk up the Mount on our last morning before heading up to Auckland to drop off the campervan. We also managed to have a half hour catch up on the same morning with Paul nelson who used to work with us back in the day at Black Sun - what a coincidence he lives in Mount Maunganui too!

So our last day with Big Bertha and we were really sad to leave her behind. We had one night in Auckland before flying out to Cairns the next day. Bye bye New Zealand and Bertha, we loved every minute of our time there :-(

Back to Australia, and the tropical warmth of Cairns! It was nice to be in warm weather again, although it did rain rather a lot!

So this was the last leg of our journey, and we wanted to hire another Bertha to drive down the East coast to Sydney (in approx 10 days!!!). We found a tourist information office where they were really helpful (thanks Jason!) where they basically organised our lives for the next 2 weeks. Before we knew it, we were booked onto a dive trip out to the barrier reef, we had maps of the east coast with lots of places marked off to visit and we had a trip out to the Whitsundays booked... now all we needed was a camper van!!

But before we got the camper, we had our day of diving on the barrier reef... it was fantastic! On our first dive we saw turtles, which was one of the things on our wish list to see. On our second dive we saw a SHARK!!! which wasn't on our wish list of things to see, but we were really excited having seen it (and seen it swim past without eating us!! Phew). More turtles and lots of lovely corals and fish... we did 3 dives in total and had a fantastic day.

We finally managed to get a camper van (it would appear it was the last camper van in the world, as apparantly everyone was driving from Cairns to Sydney at the same time). It wasn't Bertha, but we would just have to cope with Bonnie (Bonsai Bertha, shortened to Bonnie). However, we did struggle a bit after the luxury of Bertha, and it didn't help that it poured down with rain most of the way down and we got a chipped windscreen from the huge bloody trucks chucking up stones on the Bruce Highway!

It was a heck of a drive down the east coast, and we were only able to stop at a few of the sights along the way. However, we did have our trip out to the Whitsundays on the lovely Waltzing Matilda. Slightly marred by the rain, but we still had fun and did lots of snorkelling and sitting around in Sou'westers on deck. We dropped off to see the beautiful Whitehaven beach on Whitsunday Island and spent an hour huddling under the trees sheltering from the rain - such a shame!! Our moods were brightened once back on board though as the sun came out for beer-o'clock and our skipper BBQ'd some steaks for dinner.
The next day was a day of snorkelling in stunningly sexy stinger suits (it was 'stinger season'). We saw lots more turtles, a baby shark and some Rays and lots of other coral fish. Then it was back to land and Bonnie to carry on down the coast.

We stopped off at Byron Bay where all the schoolies were partying (traditional one week of the year when all the school leavers head to the coast to party). I bought a pair of real Australian Shearers UGGS in preparation for the cold weather back home. Very pleased with my purchase - thank you Lindsey for persuading me to buy them!

Then we took a little detour out to Nimbin to visit Shanti who we had met in Bangkok. They say you should visit Nimbin for the alternative lifestyle, art, music, festivals and rainforest.... yeah, whatever... its the alternative medicine that you really go for!!! Needless to say we had a very giggly night chatting, laughing, talking absolute rubbish, laughing some more and talking absolute rubbish! Thank you Shanti for putting us up and for the cookies :-)

Where next.... oh yes, then it was a crazy mad dash down past Brisbane (no time to stop), through Coffs Harbour (sorry Stenna, no time to stop for a cuppa) and on to Port Macqaurie for one night before the final run down to Sydney. We made it into Sydney in time to fix the windscreen and drop off Bonnie at the allotted time - phew! What a canonball run down the east coast that was! I think it was around 3000 kilometers!

We were picked up at the campervan place by Tuart (close friends of my parents who emigrated to Australia about 24 years ago). Sylf & Tuart put us up for two nights and gave a us a whistle stop tour of Wollongong and the rainforest and beaches and view points. We had a lovely two days with them and Till the dog, and then they took us off to Sydney airport where the dreaded split was to happen!!

I was headed for Perth for one night before flying home, while Lindsey was headed to Tasmania and then Melbourne to visit family before she went home to Cape Town. It was an emotional departure to say the least.... 8 and a half months together, sharing so many wonderful and AMAZING experiences. We have laughed our way around South East Asia and Australasia and I personally have loved every single minute of it.... now I can't wait for series Two! I want to say a huge thank you to Lindsey for putting up with me and my obsessive map reading for all of that time! I've had a ball....

And so, it was one last night in Perth with my cousin Jodi. I arrived in Perth at 5.30pm and flew out again the next morning at 4.30am!! Needless to say I think I was still a little bit drunk when the taxi picked me up for the airport!

I arrived back to Stansted airport and snow! My brother Reece along with Kelly and the kids picked me up and I stayed with them for a couple of days - my parents still didn't know I was back in the country. In fact I spoke to Dad on the phone whilst standing in a playing field of snow, telling I was in Tasmania and would be home some time in January... needless to say when I arrived on the doorstep two days later with my backpack on, they were a little bit surprised and there were a few tears!!!

It's lovely to be home and I'm looking forward to catching up with everyone and spending Christmas at home with my family - ahhhhh.

But watch this space.... Part Two of Linds and Trace around the world will be coming soon...... Thanks for reading!

Tracey
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