So New Zealand, South island, it already feels like we were there ages ago.... So we got off the ferry at Picton, but drove south west, straight to Nelson. On the map of New Zealand there are so few towns compared to England that went you come across one you assume its going to be busy, but no. There wasn´t a great deal going on in Picton so we ploughed on. Yet this wasn´t a chour in the slightest. Having the freedom to just choose exactly where and when t...

For all our previous journals we have written day by day accounts but for New Zealand we are going to do it in two big chunks – the north island and the south island. It seems appropriate that we write it in this way, given the nature of living in campervan for the best part of a month where the days just rolled into one big adventure! Our time in New Zealand will always be remembered for the campervan, who we called Ebony (thanks to her number plate). After ...

We arrived in Cairns, our final stop in Australia at around 6am after another fairly sleepless overnight bus journey. We hopped into a taxi and headed to 'Cairns Beach House', where we would spend our final four days in Oz. Annoyingly we couldn't check in until 1pm so we dumped our bags and headed to the town centre. Cairns is a pretty big place, with its main Esplanade overlooking the beach and very popular lagoon. The weather was hot (34c) and the atmosphere a ...

On the bus we met two of the girls who were in our group for the Fraser trip, so that was good. We arrived early in the morning so just lazed around by the lagoon for the day trying to catch up on some much needed sleep. At 7pm on 27th March we headed down to the pier for our 3 night sailing trip on the Whitsunday islands. The boat, Anaconda III was nice, pretty new looking and a decent size. There were 30 of us on board plus 7 crew. After a quick briefing about ...

So we arrived at Rainbow Beach on Friday 21st March. This is the resort you're based at for the trip to Fraser Island, the worlds largest sand island. Once at the hostel we met the people who we'd be driving/camping with on Fraser. In this respect it was pretty good, and it only got better when we were in the supermarket buying our food for the trip, when one of our party revealed himself to be a chef! Result! So the following morning we started loading up the ...