6 May 2001, Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand
We imagine that most of you will be very relieved to find that this is our last travelling update. No more long posts for you to plough through. And what’s worse is this is probably the most difficult one to write as we cannot find the right words to describe the beauty of the South Island, but we will give it a go.
After Nelson we drove south along the west coast under a little bit of drizzle, but certainly not anything close to the amount of rain that is so common in this area.
By the time we reached Franz Josef the sky was blue and perfect conditions for a heli-hike on the glacier. We had about a 10 minute ride in the helicopter before it landed on the glacier where we were met by a guide who took us hiking on the glacier for a couple of hours. It was a really strange, but good fun experience walking on the glacier going through huge crevices and even ice caves. It could have been a whole lot different if Dave had fallen any further into some broken ice – the bruises on his shin were pretty spectacular. Thankfully, the ice kept the swelling down.
We spent the next few days taking it easy by Lake Wanaka. We managed a few short hikes with some fantastic views of the lake. The town itself was a lovely little laid back kind of ski town and it was just full of beautiful trees all shedding their colourful leaves. Some of the autumn colours we have seen en route have just been glorious – loads of deep reds and golden yellows.
Nap time in Wanaka!Stunning views in the Wanaka area
Our next stop was the explosive town of Queenstown, probably the tourist (and adventure) capital of NZ, and of course home of the famous AJ Hackett bungy jump. Dave had jumped last time he was here 11 years ago and Shaz was not desperate for an adrenalin rush so we gave it a miss. We did really enjoy a trip on the Dart River on a jet boat – the thrills were minimal, but the scenery was outstanding.
Probably one of the best campsites we have stayed at was our next one at Te Anau, which was our base for exploring Fiordland. The standard of campsites throughout NZ is really high and far superior to those we stayed at in Australia.
The drive from Te Anau to Milford was spectacular to say the least. We had met another couple at the campsite who came with us, as the road was not an easy one for them to ride their bicycles on. We were all booked on the Milford Sound overnight cruise on the Wanderer which set sail at 4.30 in the afternoon. Our luck was in again as this time the boat was followed by a pod of bottlenose dolphins. Once the boat had anchored for the night, we both took out kayaks for a paddle.
It was while we were on the water that we felt so insignificant in this place – we were surrounded by steep sided mountains with huge waterfalls tumbling down and baby seals playing under our kayaks. It is impossible to capture the beauty and mystery of Milford Sound in words; it just has to be visited.
As if the cruise wasn’t enough to captivate us, we also flew over part of the Fiordland and Milford Sound. We had a 70-minute flight from Te Anau, and to date, this has been the best ‘tour dollar we have spent. It was just the pilot and us and the scenery – mountains, fiords, and glaciers – it was simply stunning.
Once we got back down to earth, we were off to Invercargill, NZ’s southernmost city and a very depressing one at that. It just looks like a city that is dying and is the root of many Kiwi jokes.
Needless to say we didn’t hang around, but headed off towards The Catlins where once again we had beautiful scenery and wildlife to admire. It was here that we ended up staying one night in a cabin instead of the tent – the rain was catching up with us.
We also managed to view a flock (?) of penguins, the quite rare yellow eyed variety – they were really comical to watch and we were fascinated. Since then we have visited Dunedin where we watched our first game of Super 12 Rugby in a local bar and that brings us to where we are now, Christchurch.
We have a few more days left in the South Island, but must be back in Auckland in the North Island for Friday 11 May.
For those of you that haven’t heard the jungle drums yet, we will back in the UK for a quick trip, arriving on Tuesday 15 May and probably staying about a month. The time of course will be split equally between England and Ireland! We hope to catch up with as many of you as possible.
A few of you in the UK have asked us to bring some good weather back with us – not much chance of that as we would rather leave the drizzle and winter weather here and go back to some dry sunny days – some chance eh?
So as we say that’s your lot! It has been really lovely to hear from so many of you during this trip and hopefully you have enjoyed reading about it as much as we have enjoyed the experience.
New Zealand travel update 28 March 2001, Dargaville, Northland
We have been in New Zealand two weeks today and so far, so good. It is just simply beautiful – it doesn’t quite have the forty shades of green that Ireland lays claim to, but it looks pretty close.
Our first few days were spent in Auckland staying with Dave’s second cousin Marlisa, and it was there that we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by having a Guinness or two!
We are now back on the road again, this time in a rented Toyota estate/station wagon. It is costing us the equivalent of about 6 pounds per day so hopefully it will take us the distance! Our very rough plan is to spend a month in the North Island, and a month in the South Island before we make any longer term decisions.
From Auckland we headed north up the East Coast and apart from a little bit of rain here a there, managed to find some beautiful, sunny campsites with good walks and great swimming/snorkelling beaches – Martin’s Bay and Whangarei.
Although it is the start of autumn here it seems the Kiwis’ Indian summer is hanging on for as long as possible. Our only bone of contention at the moment is the dew (no puns please). The early morning dew makes it difficult to pack the tent away, but we are coping. We borrowed a six-man tent from Marlisa for the times that we spend more than one night at any particular place. It is really huge and like a house compared to our little two-man tent.
The Bay of Islands was our next stop and it was just stunning. We stayed in the small town of Russell for 3 nights and just loved it. We went sailing for a day on a 50ft racing yacht and had a fantastic time. It is Dave’s dream to own a boat, and a sailing vessel of some description is necessary to enjoy New Zealand at its best. No no doubt that will be one of our first purchases as even Shaz enjoyed the sailing! Mind you most days you will find us glued to estate agents windows just in case we spot the home dreams are made of, or the bargain of the century!
From the Bay of Islands we headed to Ninety Mile Beach where we were back to enjoying sundowners and great sunsets on the beach. It seems that even our daily lunch stops are getting more beautiful by the day – we stop at beach sides, lakesides or in forests. We also managed to make it to Cape Reinga at the tip of the North Island where the Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea.
We are now working our way back down the West Coast towards Auckland and plan to be in The Corromandel on the east by the weekend.
Well here we are in Melbourne with only a matter of days left in Australia. This is a long weekend in Victoria (Labour Day) and we will spend it with friends at a house by a lake, a couple of hours north of Melbourne.
Our flight from Perth to Melbourne was fairly uneventful and we arrived safely on a Friday night. Our friends Vito and Natalie took us straight to the buzzing Chapel Street where we enjoyed a fantastic Japanese meal. Melbourne is just full of cafes and restaurants, and the city seemed so big, busy, chic and sophisticated after the more laid back culture of Perth. We were able to spend the weekend catching up with another friend Jan and her family before setting sail for Tasmania on Monday night.
Ferry from Melbourne to Tasmania
Tasmania (the land under down under) is just a fantastic state to visit and we are so glad that we made it there, even if it was only for 10 days. The whirlwind tour was helped by the fact that we had glorious weather for 8½ days which made camping in our little tent a real delight (but of course we did miss Spot and all his luxuries.)
Back to the two-man tent in Tasmania!
Our first stop was the quaint little town of Stanley on the north coast; then two nights in Cradle Mountain where the walking was wonderful and the views just breathtaking. Apparently they only have one clear blue sky day in every ten, so we were thankful for the luck of the Irish to have two consecutive days there with blue cloudless skies – it was just beautiful. From there we drove (we had a hired car) to Strahan in the west, and joined a riverboat cruise on the Gordon River before heading to Lake St. Clair.
Hobart, Tasmania’s capital, was our next stop and what a surprise it was – a lovely clean city that seemed to be a perfect size for living in! The convict settlement of Port Arthur was not what we expected, but in all it’s historical misery was still well worth a visit.
HobartPort Arthur
We spent our last couple of nights in Coles Bay on the east coast and explored a little of Freycinet National Park – again great walking tracks and stunning scenery, and we had the added pleasure of watching five dolphins playing in the bay!
Wineglass Bay, Freycinet National Park, Tasmania
Tasmania is a definite must if ever any of you visit this land of Oz – we have travelled on a lot of roads (none of them yellow brick) and we haven’t managed to find the wizard yet, but we thank our lucky stars that we have been able to visit some of it’s most magical places over the past six months!
We fly to Auckland, New Zealand next Wednesday so that’s it from Australia for now.
This post is just a quickie to let you know that we have found Spot a good home.
After travelling just under 18,000kms (11,250 miles), we sold him yesterday to a couple from Dublin who are planning to drive around Oz for 3 months. We didn’t get quite as much as we initially had hoped for, but with the time on our visa running out we felt it better to take the cash and move on. We had mixed emotions selling him – Shaz was sad, Dave was more glad.
Meanwhile we have had a lovely couple of weeks in Perth lounging around and catching up with friends. We ate out on St. Valentine’s Day for the first time ever and had one of the very best Chinese meals compliments of Alison and James. We were lucky enough to be able to meet up with John and Carole Bernard (friends of Sue & Ilan) who treated us to a fabulous meal during their stopover in Perth. In fact we have done quite a bit of eating out and now desperately need to do a lot of working out! Mind you we did hire a tandem to ride around Rottnest Island at the weekend so maybe that counts as something.
Anyway we will be on our way out of Perth this Friday, and for the first time in almost six months we will board an aeroplane. We fly to Melbourne where we will catch up with more friends, and take a 10-day trip to Tasmania – a first for both of us.
Here we are back in Perth again having completed our tour of the southwest, and bringing to an end our road trip through Western Australia (staying with the Cottons is becoming our second home these days!).
It is also, sadly, going to be the end of our time with Spot – the next leg of our journey is a flight to Melbourne so he is up for sale, but we will stay in Perth until we make sure he goes to a good home!
Many of you will be glad to know that you are not the only ones experiencing inclement weather. We have had some heavy rain, very strong winds and somewhat cooler days than we have been used to lately – we even had to get our raincoats and long trousers out in Albany! But of course more often than not we have the glorious sunny days of an Australian summer.
The cooler weather was really perfect for exploring the southern forest national parks and the tall tree region – magnificent forests of towering karri trees. We both got our adrenalin going by climbing to the top of two fire lookout trees – one was 51m, and the other 68m, and the birds eye views were fantastic. Climbing the trails in the Stirling Ranges was not as much fun as we both ached for days afterwards.
Apart from the weird weather leaving us ‘Spot bound’ on occasions, the last few weeks have been a little frustrating for another reason. It has been very difficult to find maps and up to date information on the national parks – in one instance we were told the roads were in great condition, but were not told that one of the main access roads was closed, and had been for the last year! It meant we had gone way out of our way just to end up really disappointed, but c’est la vie, you win some, you lose some.
Anyway the disappointment was soon forgotten as a couple of hours later we found a beautiful, secluded camping spot right on the beach in Waychinicup National Park.
Camping area in Waychinicup National Park
We arrived in Esperance on 1 February in the rain, but luckily it was gone the next day and we headed out to Cape Le Grand national park – stunning white sandy beaches with the clearest blue water we have ever seen. When we weren’t snorkelling or walking, Dave spent time polishing Spot in preparation for selling, while Shaz just read and watched the wildlife.
The one time Shaz wished we had a video camera was when a kangaroo decided to fight Dave over a box of food which our neighbour campers had foolishly left outside. The scene was hysterical and like something from a comedy as the roo and Dave tried to stare each other out while each was trying to hold onto the box! Eventually the ranger came and managed to chase the roo away by throwing a bucket at him!
Dave and Skippy having a stand off!
The gold mining town of Kalgoorlie was our next stop, where incidentally it was an Irish man by the name of Paddy Hannan who discovered the gold there. It was a lovely town and it was fascinating to go down the pit to see how all the gold used to be mined, as well as seeing how it is done today. Needless to say our travelling budget did not extend to buying any of the local produce!
Kalgoorlie Mine
Our last official night ‘on the road’ was spent at a campsite at Southern Cross, about halfway between Kalgoorlie and Perth and it felt really fitting to finish our road trip on a relatively long drive.
We will now stay in Perth until Spot is sold, but hopefully it won’t take too long as we would like to spend some time in Melbourne and Tasmania – we have about 5 weeks left on our visa. Where have the last 5 months gone??
Here is the first instalment of this year and no doubt there will be more. Happy New Year to you all!
We had a really lovely Christmas with Al and James (and Debbie a friend of theirs from Stamford) – typical Aussie style with a visit to the beach followed by a BBQ. Dave did not let the Schindler family tradition go amiss and did his bit by making the champagne cocktails.
We then spent a few days around the Perth area catching up with friends. We brought in the New Year at the Trots (pony and trap racing) with Shaz having the most successful bet of the night (her only one) – great celebrations with a fantastic firework display to finish the evening.
We had one very stressful day trying to work out the motor vehicle regulations in WA – Spot’s registration was due, but as we bought him in New South Wales the regulations were different. Anyway we eventually persuaded NSW to allow us to re-register by post as at one stage we thought we might have to drive back to Sydney!
We even had one evening apart (the first in 3 ½ months) in Perth, which was something of a novelty if not rather strange. Shaz went on a girls night out with Al and Debbie, and Dave went to watch Tottenham v Ipswich at a friend’s house.
We started heading south from Perth on 3rd January and quickly got back into our ‘on the road’ routine. Al and James joined us for a great camping weekend at a lovely place called Peppermint Beach – we even managed to find an Indian restaurant to finish the weekend off in. The Chapman family who we also know from Perth just happened to be in the campsite next to us!
Our next stop was the Margaret River wine region where we took daily turns at driving so that we could both sample the local wines. We stayed in and around the region for five days and enjoyed watching the massive waves (apparently some of the best surf in the world, but we didn’t give it a go) and we also went ‘down under’ into a couple of limestone caves.
It has been rather strange the last couple of weeks for three reasons.
Firstly the climate has changed dramatically from the heat of the north – we are now enjoying much cooler weather (average 25 degrees) and even have to sleep under the duvet at night.
Secondly the distances we have to travel between places is so short – we have been used to planning food, petrol, etc for 400-600km trips and now we pass a town every 50kms.
And finally it is school holiday time here and most everywhere is very busy – something we are not at all used to, having often had campsites to ourselves. But saying that we are still meeting some lovely people. Only last Saturday night in beautiful Hamelin Bay the Aussie family next to us invited Dave out fishing (and he did catch one this time!), and had us both over to dinner – abalone, cray fish, steak, sausage and kebabs all washed down with some local wine! The Aussie people are on the whole very friendly and hospitable, not unlike the Irish!
We are now in Manjimup, the starting point for our next leg of the journey – exploring the Southern Forests area and getting back into the National Parks which we both love.
That’s all for now folks, please keep your news updates coming, we love hearing from you.
Hi, we're Sharon & Dave an active and adventurous Irish & English couple who've been travelling together for more than 20 years. These posts are our travel stories and personal journeys. Follow our adventures to see where we've been and where we're going next!
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