Melbourne and The Great Ocean Road

Hi Guys

Firstly, we'd like to say that we do hope everyone is well? We miss you all and are often in our thoughts. Please do post a comment or email us directly if you have any news, or just to let us know that you're okay and enjoying our blog.

Right, let's get started telling you about Melbourne....

We flew in on Saturday 24th May and got a cab from the airport, our driver was from Ethiopia and liked to keep his cab set at his home temperature; very hot!

We checked into our accommodation, which we booked back in Perth and immediately took a dislike to it, both in location and smell.

We decided that the next day we would explore alternatives, which we did and found somewhere much nicer and nearer to the centre.

It meant that we had a lovely stroll into town every day through Fitzroy Gardens, which is shown in a couple for the photos.

The main difference from Melbourne to Perth, is all the fab old Victorian buildings and green parks everywhere. Plus everyone had a much more laid back attitude.

We visited Victoria Market and picked up lots of fresh goodies and we watched a live band perform, who were very good and incorporated a didgeridoo into a very chilled jazz style.

Andrew bought the CD they had to sell and Shivani calls it his 'Didgeridoo music'.

Whilst in Melbourne, we went and had a couple of Yoga sessions. It was a sorry state of affairs, as poor Shivani tried to get into the postures, couldn't and then after day 2 decided not to go back!

We did thoroughly enjoy Melbourne and it's relaxed atmosphere, but eventually had to leave. We got a car and after much deliberation we decided to go via a scenic route. We drove down the Mornington Penninsula, crossed over from Sorrento to Queenscliff and proceeded a little bit down the south coast on The Great Ocean Road. We stopped for the night at a beautiful seaside town called Lorne and stayed in a lovely B&B. That night was spent quietly reading our books by the open fire and relaxing from the days driving.

On the subject of driving we have to mention our Sat Nav. Before we left Sandip(Shivani's brother), with the assistance of Bhavini's(Sandip's Fiance) brother, downloaded onto memory card the TomTom map of Australia. This has proved to be a massive life saver and arguement stopper, so thank you!

Back to Lorne....

We woke up the next day and before our hearty breakfast we walked along the beach, which is one for the photos.

We then drove along to the Kennett River and stopped at a well known Koala spot. We arrived just as a bus of Chinese did. We spotted a Koala sleeping low down in one of the trees, which hopefully, you can make out in the photo. Surprisingly, even with all the Chinese taking photos and making noise, he never woke up.

We then started our drive to Canberra. All the Australians we have met along the way have told us there is not much to see and do in Canberra, but we wanted to visit, as it is their capital, plus we might be able to sort visas out whilst we are there.

We drove through a forest, then bush and arrived in a town called Albury, not much to say about it, so we left the next day and drove straight on to Canberra, which is where we are now.

Andrew's didgeridoo music was on repeat in the car for the 5 hour drives to Albury and then to Canberra, so we are a bit sick of it for now. Maybe we'll listen to the radio for our drive to The Blue Mountains and Sydney?!

I don't think we're in Kansas any more!

Welcome to Oz!

We arrived in Australia on 17th May and our 1st taste was of Sydney airport, as we were getting our connecting flight to Perth.

Lovely airport, 'nuff said.

We stayed just outside the city centre of Perth in the Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese district, which was a bit like being in heaven, with all the great food on offer in the restaurants and cheap supermarkets.

The first really striking thing here is the birds and we do not mean the Australian women!

Whereas in London the most exciting bird you'll see is a pigeon, here there are beautiful white and brilliantly coloured parrots that are as common as pigeons back home.

The city of Perth was alright, but the highlight of our stay in Western Australia (W.A.) was our 3 day jaunt to Margaret River and the Wine Tasting Tour.

We stayed in a fab B&B, right in the heart of all the vineyards, a perfect place to pick up our tour. Bushtucker wine tours collected us on their bus and took us out for the day. Our driver and guide was a chap called Sylvano, although Shivani insisted on calling him Sylvador - we still haven't got over her speech impediment!

At lunch we realised why it was called "Bushtucker Tours". We tried a variety of bush foods anti-pasta style, including Kangaroo and a couple of brave souls even had the raw Widgety Grub on offer.

Anyway, 4 vineyards, 1 cheese factory. 1 chocolate factory, 1 brewery, 32 wine tastings and 6 beer tastings later, the bus was very noisy. We blame the Irish group on the tour!

One day we saw a whole load of Kangaroos in the wild, so Andrew tried to sneak up to them to take a photo. We're not sure what gave Andrew away, either his pungent aftershave, or shiny bald head, but the roos made a run for it, so the photo's are from a distance.

As with all good things, they must come to an end, so we headed back to Perth and our Motel, who had kept our room for us. On our last day however, we had an unexpected brush with wildlife - a small mouse had found it's way into our room, just as we were due to check out, thank goodness!

That's it for today's entry. We are currently in Melbourne and it is a fantastic City, very different from Perth, but we'll tell you all about that next time.

Bay of Islands to Auckland

Above you'll see a few more photo's from The Bay Of Islands, plus we had to get one in there of sheep, just to remind you all that we in New Zealand.

The happy chappy with his arm around Andrew is Jason Szabo, who was mentioned earlier in the blog for collecting us from Aucland Airpot on our arrival in NZ. When we finished in The Bay Of Islands on 15th May, we drove down the East Coast, arriving back in Auckland and back where we started at Apex Car Rental. Dropping our trusty Nissan Wingroad back, Jason kindly came and collected us from Apex and took us to stay with his beautiful wife Clare and even more beautiful children Charlie and Thomas in their home in Mission Bay.

Whilst there we got to explore Auckland a bit better (and in the sunshine), plus Jason and Clare took us to see a rugby match on 16th May in the evening.

It was great fun, even though Andrew spent most of the night trying to explain the rules and what was happening to Shivani and was getting it wrong himself most of the time!

A massive thank you to Jason and family for putting up with us for a couple of nights and good luck with your own return to the UK.

Finally, do take a look at the map of New Zealand to see where we have been, as that now concludes our tour with Australia beckoning.

Bay of Islands

Sorry the last entry was so riddled with spelling and grammer mistakes, but it was done in a bit of a hurry and so is this entry, so apologees in advance!

The Bay of Islands were amazing, so much so that we stayed here for 4 nights, the longest, we've stayed anywhere in New Zealand.

The weather was on our side and did lots of things for the 1st time here, such as:

Seeing Dolphins in the wild (a 1st for Andrew at least)

Seeing Penguins in the wild

Seeing stingrays in the wild

Being an integral part of the crew on a yacht (Andrew more integral than Shivani!)

Shivani eating fish!!!!

Just have a look at some of the phot's to get an idea of what we have been up to.....

Sneak Peak of Bay Of Islands

Have a look at this 1st teaser picture from The Bay Of Islands and this other photo we took of a chap who we believe to be a cross between Andrew's friends Dan and Matt. We have named him Damat!

We have also made it easier to leave comments on the blog. Just click to leave a comment and you should no longer have to sign up and input a password. Happy Days!

Motueka, Abel Tasman, Nelson, Wellington, Napier and Hamilton

We've done a lot since last posting, but we'll keep this brief.

We drove to Motueka and based ourselves there for a couple of days. After hunting around for accommodation we found a couple of nice place to stay. One was a backpackers, where we could have a double en-suite room for $60(about 24quid), but Shivani didn't fancy hanging around with soap dodgers, so we opted for the nicer and more expensive nearby hotel with 40" flatscreen TV, Spa bath and luxury kitchen. So much for that budget of ours!

The next day we headed up to a plave called Marahau, which is the base for exploring Abel Tasman and got a water taxi up to Bark Bay, a favoured walking spot. We then walked back through bush, across streams and over a swing bridge, which really did swing(Sivani was very brave!). Once back in Motueka we treated ourselves to a bag of greasy chips and settled in to watch Lord Of The Rings on the flatscreen mentioned earlier.

After all that we drove to Nelson the next day, which was pretty uneventful and prayed for good weather for the following day and our ferry crossing.

At the port in Picton, before the crossing we had a bite of lunch at a traditional Indian restuarant, where Andrew had the best chai he'd ever tasted in a restuarant, but still not as good as Ila Ji's!

We crossed to Wellington nice and calmly, which was good after our lunch and arrived in Wellington.

Drove to Napier the next day and stayed in a B&B recommended in the Lonely Planet Guide called "Sea Breeze", where the rooms are themed. We stayed in the Chinese room, just to get us in the mood for China later on our trip. Napier was nice and styled in art deco, but as the weather was not great we didn't hang around.

We drove to Hamilton the next day, which is pretty much just a stop-over town and then headed up to The Bay Of Islands, which is where we write this from.

It is beautiful here, but more of that in the next blog.........

Video (hopefully!?)