More of the Same

Sorry, guys, I am exhausted today- with no good reason at all. There has been a lot of walking in the last couple of days though not today. So I am not updating today- just posting some photos since you liked the last one so much.

Enjoy.















The one of the rainbow and the one of the kayaks were not taken by me but by the guide, Wayne.

The House of Pain

The rugby last night was fantastic! I have to say that the crowd at Dunedin is nothing if not as biased as hell! Booing the Springboks' every move, playing Crowded House every time the All Blacks scored etc, it was great! It was also very cold but worth the hours out in the cold night air to watch this closely fought match between two fantastic teams. Right at the last minute the All Blacks sprang ahead and walked away with the trophy- much the joy of the home crowd filling the Carisbrook stadium which has never seen the Springboks win in its ground.

This morning I went to Cadburyworld and later I am going on a wildlife tour. More on that another time though- now here are some photos



This is the last view of Sydney as the plane circled the city on its way East.

This was my first view of New Zealand as the clouds cleared a little



The very civilised centre of Christchurch with its cathedral and some ugly statue

The sheep room at Noah's Ark in Greymouth



A lake we stopped at on the way from Franz Josef to Queenstown

Mountains and lakes



AJ Hacketts- the original bungy jump near Queenstown- no, I wasn't even tempted.

And that is all for today as I have a lot on.

The Tension Mounts

I am in Dunedin now- one of the lucky few to get accommodation. Well, jammy more like as I bought my ticket and the bus driver had heard of a cancellation and so booked me into a hostel immediately. I arrived here from Queenstown around lunchtime. It is cold as hell- there was fresh snow on the mountains surrounding Queenstown when I woke up this morning and I have been wearing pretty much all of my clothes to walk around town today.

There is a bit of a festival atmosphere here in Dunedin. Now, I don't know if it is like this every weekend because this is my first visit but I am sure that the pockets of green rugby shirts are caused by the Tri-Nations tonight. There is a place in the centre of the city called the Octogan, basically a road intersection circled by bars, and it appears that the South Africans have set up shop in one bar and the Kiwis are in the bar next door. It is all very jovial- I just saw some mock jousting with the flags and there seems to be some people dressed in black intent on playing the ball all the way to the stadium at the other end of town. There is a band playing and people just seem to be having a great time.

Everyone in the hostel is going to the rugby tonight. Not even the lure of CadburyWorld just down the road has stopped me in my determination. I have even bought a new warm as anything fleece to wear tonight as I think that it will be very cold indeed. And I found a hat in the last hostel which has the double benefit of keeping my head warm and making me look like an adventurous type as it has 'Tandem Skydive' written across the front of it.

And the colour of my new clothing??? Sorry, Neil and Annette, it is all black!

Breakfast

And a quick one of the view that I had while eating breakfast this morning. I went up to Bob's Peak here in Queenstown by gondala (small cable car). Awesome views

Somewhere under a rainbow

Just a quick photo to show you the rainbow. Rugby tomorrow :)

Sheep

Now I am not saying that all Kiwis are sheep shaggers but.... I am in Queenstown now and there is a statue of the first settler here. He arrived with his wife and set up a farm and the town. Now who do you think is standing on the plinth next to him??? Hint- it isn't the wife! There really does seem to be rather a lot of sheep around. And deer. And llamas- weirdly.

So I did the kayaking thing yesterday, in the rain. I was glad that I had signed up to do it while I was still on the bus and the day was beautifully sunny- if I had seen the rain I think that I would have just spent another day in the hostel complaining about the rain. As it was, not only had I signed up already but had paid while standing in glorious sunshine. I ran through the rain to get to the meeting point and even believed their reassuring murmuring about it being sunny on the lake when it is raining in the town.

Turned out to be a great day. All clad in safety gear and floatation devices (rather better than the lack of anything secure when we went kayaking in the OCEAN in Vietnam) we were launched onto a wonderfully still lake. I was sharing my kayak with an English lad, Steven, he was in charge of the steering but that didn't help. We across the lake and into the forest on the other side. It was here that things started to get interesting as we managed to get wedged a fair few times with both ends of the boat stuck in some kind of weed or tree or both. It was frustrating trying to get out- you just want to get out of the kayak and give it a push but since the lake is 82m deep, it wasn't really an option. Frustrating or not, it was very satisfying when we managed to manoeuvre our way out with a lot of frantic back paddling and cursing.

It rained pretty much the whole time we were on the water which did mean something wonderful happened- as we came back out onto open water we saw the most brilliant rainbow I have ever seen. It rose from the lake, shimmered in front of the trees and arced its way over to the other side of the lake where it met its reflection on the surface. And, as if that wasn't enough, it had asked a mate to join it- two rainbows of colours not normally seen outside of a paint pallet. It was worth every swearing, cursing, getting stuck in a low slung tree just to see it.

And it was so awesome that none of us noticed how wet we had got. The drip skirts hid the damage until we all de-kayaked to discover that the rain had collected in such a way as it make us look like an incontinence meeting. And there was no way that my clothes were going to dry in time for the bus the next morning so I ended up with a bag of wet clothes sitting on the seat next to me all day.

Up early we drove for around 45 minutes and stopped to go and see a lake that mirrors its surroundings wonderfully. We walked through the forest to get there, oohed and ahhed for a bit, took a million photos and off we went. And that was pretty much the routine for the day. As we passed from West Coast towards the middle of the country the landscape changed. There was still great big mountains and gushing waterfalls rushing down their sides but the trees and general fauna changed a lot. We passed some beautiful lakes- which I can't remember the name of now- before finally arriving in Queenstown.

We also did a quick stop off at the home of bungee jumping- AJ Hackett's. As we got there a man was perched on the platform stuck to the edge of the bridge over the river. A women was watching him and telling a one year old and four year old 'look at daddy!'. The kids were quite into it until Daddy jumped, then the four year old burst into tears and needed a lot of reassuring that Daddy was OK. The next guy didn't have the same family support and jumped unheeded. The third guy lept off the edge and plunged into the water below up to his shoulders- remember that he was upside down. I thought I had seen bungee jumping before but hopping off a small platform on a beach in the UK is pretty different from this leap off a bridge. It was much scarier than I thought it would be.

Not tempted at all, before you ask!

I have tomorrow in Queenstown and then onto Dunedin and the rugby! I have been very lucky to get a bed for the night in Dunedin, apparantely. Luckily for me, Scotty the guide was in the internet place when I booked the ticket for the game. As I was leaping around telling people I was going, he got straight on the phone and found me a cancellation- phew! Others on the bus have not been so lucky but I think that I have been a bad influence and they are going to go there anyway.

Should be fun!

Guess what!!!

I just bought a ticket to go to the rugby on Saturday- All Blacks vs The Springboks!!!! I am so excited, even though I am going on my own!

Today I went kayaking in the rain. It was awesome. I have loads of photos but here is one

I just want to point out that I was wearing a life jacket under that rain coat. Will get back to you with more photos another time but now I have to think about the rugby some more....

Another Country, Another Cold

Here is another map I ripped off the Lonely Planet website

Of course, it is colder here in New Zealand than Australia so I have the start of a new cold to look forward. My nose has already got a bit dribbly and my throat is threatening some all out strike action shortly. Ah bother!

I left Christchurch yesterday morning and caught the Tranzalpine railway through the mountains to Greymouth on the West Coast (having started on the East Coast). The views from the train were amazing, rivers, snow-capped mountains, sheep, the lot. Until we got halfway there and it started to rain and the clouds came in.

I could see where the 'grey' in Greymouth came from as it was raining and crappy yesterday. The hostel was interesting though. It is called 'Noah's Ark' and each room is decorated according to an animal theme. I was placed in the Sheep Room and sure enough there was a big fluffy sheep on the bed when I got there. Since it was a bit damp outside, I just went out and bought some food before heading back to the hostel for the evening.

The thing that NZ seems to have over Oz so far is the belief that there should be some kind of heating available since it is winter and all. But they don't have anythig as sophisticated as central heating in the hostel- it is all down to log fires. Which is pretty nice. And what could be more like home than walking into the lounge to discover a cat laid out on the hearth rug warming his belly? He was lying on his back with his front legs stretched out ahead of him and his back legs all curled up in the air. He lay there for a few hours and then woke up suddenly. Twisting himself back into a cat-like shape he looked around groggily before going back to sleep. T'is a cat's life.

Got up early this morning to find a sunny day awaiting me. The Magic Bus picked me up at 8 and off we went. We stopped at a place called Hokitika to buy some food then onto Ross to watch a gold panning demonstration before arriving in Franz Joseph, our destination for the night. Most people are going walking on the glacier this afternoon or tomorrow but I am going kayaking on a beautiful looking lake in a couple of hours.

Wish me luck!

I spy something beginning with 'K'

I arrived in New Zealand yesterday afternoon. I must say that Air New Zealand had better rethink its portion sizes for the inflight catering- they appeared to have only put half of my sandwich on the tray! And a mere quarter of the cake. Not good enough!

Haven't really seen much of the country yet- decided to give myself the day off yesterday so just got the shuttle bus to the hostel (Charlie B's) and then bought my Magic Bus ticket which will whisk me around the South Island, over to the North and up to Auckland and no doubt try and sell me lots of extras on the way. But the Magic Bus comes recommended from several people that I have met on the way and there is a 20% sale on at the moment because it is winter and sale prices are my favourite kind.

Apparantely it is winter anyway. People had got me so worried about the weather here that I was expecting my ears to have fallen off by the time I reached the Arrival Hall due to frostbite. But, in fact, it was a balmly 18 degrees here in Christchurch yesterday. Got some great views over Sydney from the plane (and maybe let myself take another couple of photos of the Opera House) and then fantasticly amazing views of snow covered mountains in New Zealand.

The tourist information centre at the airport booked my accommodation for me- even after I bugged them asking when I would get to see a kiwi. Last night I booked my bus ticket and then just chilled out for the rest of the night- blaming jetlag, we are two hours ahead of Sydney here after all. I called my sister and had a good long chat then went back to the hostel and watched telly.

Today I strolled into the City centre- it looks a lot like home apart from the numerous Korean restaurants everywhere- and not a single one of them sells dak galbi, dammit! I watched some ducks cross the road and some people punting down the river. Called my brother only to have the Cathedral bells interrupt the call. It is seriously civilised here.

After speaking to my brother for a while, I got off the phone and turned around only to see a sign that said 'live kiwi here'- not one to miss some live kiwi action off I went. Sure enough, I was escorted into a room and allowed to watch a couple of North Island Browns running around (yes, I didn't know that there were different makes of kiwi either). They are very cute if a little pampered- no talking in the room, no phones, no grabbing one and yelling 'I have a kiwi' while asking people to take a photo of you- very fussy indeed. Not like the hardy Aussie animals which they encourage you to get photographed with. But cute anyway.

I am also sporting a brand new pair of walking boots- or tramping boots as they seem to be known here, or at least in the shop I went to. I love shoe shopping and get girlie about it even if the end result is a macho pair of supportive walking boots. I need something to cheer me up after the loss of my sandals in Surfers after all. But after a couple of weeks of wearing shoes that I can feel every bit of grit through the sole of, I feel a little disconnected from the world. But happy with having some new footwear.

Sweet as!

Leaving Australia- on a jet plane, of course

This will (probably) be my last post from Australia. I am leaving tomorrow morning on the 9.50am flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. So this seemed like a good time to put the last of the Oz photos up for you. Nice and tidy. Here we go



This is part of the Chinese Friendship Gardens

and so is this. If you look carefully you should be able to see two turtles on the rocks in the pool. They were just perched up there with their legs pulled in and it looked a lot like they were glued there

more of the garden



and again

It is very pretty and relaxing. You can hire the place out for special events and can even get married there. I used to think that I would like to get married there but these days I think that if I find a man who wants to marry me and who I want to marry, I will just drag him to the registry office as quickly as possible before we change our minds- or sober up.

This is a great fountain at Darling Harbour



Monorail station

My new friend, Wally the Australian rugby Wallaby. I intend to take him home, sit him down in front of the telly and force him to watch the final of the 2003 Rubgy World Cup over and over. I bought him on the way to Manly Beach (so named because the Aborigines there looked so manly apparantly) so that is where he decided to pose. During my day out at Manly I managed to do two things that I had never done before 1. didn't take any photos of the Opera House from the ferry and 2. didn't get sunburnt on the ferry!

I like to go to Manly because you go by ferry and it takes about half an hour across the harbour and round the corner. The water is so clear that you can see the seabed near the dock. But my two worst cases of sunburn happened there. Mind you, it was in the summer so I was in with a fair chance this time.

This is just a small selection of the flying foxes that live in the Botanic Gardens. They hang in the trees like overripe fruit about to fall at any moment. They chatter away amongst each other and occassionally have a bit of a scuffle if one gets too close to the other. There are thousand of them living in the trees. The Park officials have put a sign up saying that the bats are trying to establish a home there and that they are using humane means to stop them as they destroy the trees that they roost in. Unfortunately, this sign was also there six years ago and I think that if the officials look up at the trees at any point they will notice that they seem to have lost this battle.

Having been good yesterday and not taken any photos of the Opera House I decided to reward myself with the opportunity to take one last shot today. The Opera House stands on a piece of land known as Bennelong Precinct. Bennelong was one of the local Aboriginals kidnapped by the first settlers in order to learn more about the culture. He even went to England with the Governer but later died, succumbing to alcohol and loneliness as he could no longer relate to his own people or those who had kidnapped and 'civilised' him. The first guy that was kidnapped died of smallpox while nursing other victims of the disease. Many of the original inhabitants lost their lives to introduced diseases such as smallpox.



These are some great Christmas decorations that I saw today at Circular Quay. They also had kangaroo ones and some of the koalas riding the kangaroos- how much more Christmassy can you get?

And today I went to the market at The Rocks. I stood under the Harbour Bridge to take this photo, you can see it at the top. When standing under the bridge it to hard to ignore the clanking of the groups of tourists chained to the bridge at the start of their bridge climb. This was only started a few years ago but is one of the most popular things to do in Sydney. Looks kind of scary to me.

And I guess that is that. I like Sydney. For the last six years I have told people that I would like to live here. It is a beautiful city with more water than you could possibly need. There are a lot of parks and you are never too far from the beach. However, I don't want to live here anymore. Having been around Australia (twice) there are other places that I would rather live and the older I get the more I succumb to the idea of small town living. Cities don't interest me in the way that they used to. The biggest downside of country living though is that I might have to learn to drive- and that could be bad news for road users everywhere!

Victorians

Victoria is a state in the south of Australia. Its residents are known as Victorians. I am always mildly disappointed when I meet Victorians. I have a picture in my mind that Victoria is populated by a people who get from place to place in horse-drawn cabs, the men have moustaches and wear top hats, the women are tightly laced into corsets and suffer attacks of the vapours and frequently have to be brought round with smelling salts, the children work up chimneys and table legs are covered for fear that the men won't be able to control themslves at the sight of a nicely turned wooden leg.

Alas, they tell me that it isn't so.

Kids, monorails and gardens

I went to the Australian Museum yesterday. I remember when we went there before it was informative and interesting, giving a good insight into Aussie history and the impact that the European invasion has had on the land. Well, it must have a temporary exhibition as all I could see yesterday was skeletons, bugs and a ridiculous amount of kids on school trips. Anything that I did find interesting was immediately swamped by these kids to the point where I had to leave the museum or kill them! I was watching a video about how Australia separated from the land mass Gondwana many millions of years ago and a bunch of kindergarten kids ran over yelling 'look, a telly!!' like the little buggers don't have them at home! Honestly. I hope they learnt something because I didn't.

So a rather disgruntled H left the museum, resenting the 10 bucks that she had paid to watch a bunch of kids run riot- I used to get paid to watch that kind of thing after all. I went out to Hyde Park and started to read the book I had bought in the museum shop- the only good thing to come out of the trip- it is the tale of an Aboriginal woman who was taken from her mother and white father and set to be basically slave labour wherever people felt like sending her. It is called 'When the Pelican Laughed' or something like that and is fascinating stuff.

After a while, I moved myself out of the park and to Darling Harbour- since I am down to my last couple of days here I thought that there should be other things I could do. And I spent the best six bucks I was going to spend all day getting into the Chinese Friendship Gardens. They were built to mark the Australian Bicentennial in 1988 by the Chinese as an expression of their friendship with the people of New South Wales and Australia in general. It is a gorgeous oasis of calm in the middle of a noisy city. Little pagodas litter the edge of a pool which is fed by several small waterfalls. You can walk around it pretty quickly but then you have to go back and see all the bits you missed the first time around. Helen's recommendation for the day.

But it closes at 5 so I went out and onto the monorail. The monorail takes 15 minutes to do the entire circuit so I went round twice. It is supposedly a feasible form of public transport though I am sure that it is mostly for tourists. It runs around the harbour and along George Street for a bit before cutting back to the harbour. I went around and got off at George Street so I could go to the cinema.

Hoyts cinema is the largest in Oz with 17 screens. And they seem to have the biggest price too- twice the price that I have paid elsewhere in great little independent cinemas. I saw 'The Wedding Crashers' which was disappointing.

But the Chinese Gardens helped me keep my inner calm and I went home for reading and bed. Today- who knows! I have two days left here- today and tomorrow so I guess that I should get to a beach sometime.

Stuff and Things

Just saw a group of goths outside. It must be hard to be a goth in Australia, very hot in the sun what with all that black and it must be a nightmare trying to keep that pasty complexion. It is a really warm day here in Sydney, much warmer than the last couple of weeks travelling down the coast. I only need one blanket on my bed and the room has a HEATER- first one that I have seen over here. The only downside with the hostel is that I am in a long term dorm. Now, it occurs to me that some of you don't even know what a dorm looks like so here is a photo of a common or garden variety holiday dorm



and here is the nightmare that is a long term dorm

You can see the immediate difference. Long termers live in the hostel and so treat it like home, like a student home anyway. I know because I used to live in one in Dublin. We had our own posters on the walls, people had hung curtains on their beds and we had made a chair out of beer cans. The cleaner never visited it and I don't blame them. Weirdly, out of all the dorms, we were the only one that didn't get robbed. I think that this was due to the construction workers' shoes that they used to leave outside the door- guard shoes, if you like, that snarled and growled everytime anyone came near.

This is the corridor in Coffs Harbour that I used to fly up with the hoover every day back in June of 1999. I think that I did more vacuuming in that ten days than I have done in the subsequent 6 years (we sweep in Korea before you start to pass judgement!).



This is Coffs Harbour. I used to go down there a lot as there were so many dolphins around the harbour back then. A few weeks after I left I read a story about someone leaning over the side of a boat and stabbing a baby dolphin to death. I will never understand these people.

If anyone knows the name of this flower then please tell me. It just caught my eye in the Botanic Gardens at Coffs for the colours against the sky.



This is Sydney Tower through the trees in Hyde Park.

A view out of the tower but mainly a reflection of my camera- sorry about that!

The monorail at Darling Harbour. It also goes around the city. And that is pretty much all I know about the monorail.



Darling Harbour, playground of those with boats.

A platypus in Sydney Aquarium. Platypus and echidnas belong to a very exclusive family called the monotremes. Which means that they have one hole for excretion and reproduction. They both lay eggs and breath air. Monotremes are unique to Australasia. In common with most of Australia's wildlife they are nocturnal. Now some people will tell you that this is because it is so hot during the day but I think that it is all a ploy to not have to really have any animals in the Australian part of the zoo

'Oh, you see they are nocturnal which means they are in the burrows now so you can't see them. But they do exist. Honest. We really have some, we aren't just taking your money and showing you an empty enclosure...what's that? Prove it? Can't, you see, they are nocturnal..'

This is one of the tunnels at the Sydney Aquarium. It is the best aquarium that I have ever been to. It has three large floating bits in the harbour itself which are filled with seals, sharks and a bunch of other stuff. This is the seal tunnel. The shark one was filled with shrieking kids so I didn't hang around to get a photo.



OK, I did get a photo of the shark. There are loads of sharks in the place. This one is a nurse shark, I believe, though feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

This was my favourite statue of Queen Victoria. I liked it because I was told that it used to stand in Dublin but after Ireland became a Republic it was simply 're-gifted' to the Australians. I like to think of the Australians' faces falling on Christmas morning when this fell out of the wrapping paper, realising that they would have to hold onto it for a decent amount of time before passing it off to another Commonwealth country. But I read the plaque on the back this time and it said that it was acquired by some guy involved in the restoration of the Queen Victoria Building (QVB) in front of which it stands. It still came from Ireland and I still prefer the original story.



This is the very famous indeed Sydney Harbour Bridge. And a ferry in front of it. Those little green and cream boats zoom all over the harbour.

This is the Opera House with some goon in front of it. Shame really, would have been a nice photo if that lady hadn't got in the way. And I use the term 'lady' advisedly.

This is the inside of a double decker train that takes commuters all over Sydney. I guess that is the benefit of having an underground rail network that wasn't carved out of stone by small children with mucky faces in Victorian times.

This is a giraffe doing a passable impression of the Sydney Tower in Taronga Zoo- the tower is just behind it for comparison



and this is a less convincing effort from a meercat

The kind of beast that doesn't lower itself with cheap impressions of tall buildings though it is rumoured that it does a mean Barry White after a couple of whiskies.



Me feeding the giraffes. Giraffes are just cool.

This is for those of you asking about the colour of a giraffe's tongue. They come snaking out of their mouths to wrap around the food. Most of the people doing the feeding were a bit scared and got the longest carrots they could find. I wasn't scared- or at least, was too far back in the queue to get a choice of carrots.

And a wombat that is no doubt occasionally shoved out of the burrow to prove to us punters that they actually exist. They look as solid as a tank and are bigger than you might think. I wouldn't pick a fight with one anyway.

There were koalas and kangaroos there too but I got closer to them at the last place so didn't take any photos this time.

(all educational content is for the benefit of Les's daughter, everyone else please feel free to just look at the photos)