The weather in Bali was great for most of the time, I had about three off days and seven good ones. The rainy season starts near the end of September - during my stay - but it's a popular time at the moment and given how late I booked it I ended up in an average hotel paying a lot more than you would elsewhere. But I'm at the stage now where I don't really care and I've got a permanent eye on the trip back home, which I'm not looking forward to for more reasons than one. Anyway, in the morning I had a look on the internet and discovered that the exchange rate is about 19,000 rupees to the pound, which means that one million rupees is about £50. Ha. Therefore I paid £13 to enter the country and £5 for my taxi. For a ripoff, that's not bad.

Bali is, quite frankly, a nightmare, particularly if you're on your own. The main street runs from Kuta to Legian (I stayed in between the two) and further west, and is simply a massive run of stalls and shops with hawkers and money changers as far as the eye can see. There's no escape from them, even a simple walk to the shop over the road is like running the gauntlet and it really gets you down. Very quickly. If you look at them, you're theirs, if you don't they'll follow you down the street or grab you by the arm. And there's about three or four per stall so don't think you're getting away. If you show an interest in something then you'd probably like two of them. Or maybe ten for the price of nine? One day I was having lunch in a restaraunt and someone came up to my table, sat down next to me and started showing me some DVDs. When I ignored him he started tugging at my t-shirt. I can't explain how irritating that is, but rest assured it lasted the whole time in Bali.

The hotel seemed strange to me, not sure if it was empty but there was hardly ever anyone around and I spent most of my nights on my own, apart from a couple of nights with some Australians who were decent enough to invite me out. Not exactly an ideal way to spend the end of the trip but again I just didn't care and wanted to get the flight back (sorry, flights) out of the way. Unsurprisingly with so much time on my hands I read a lot of books and watched a lot of films in my time there, not great fun but the time went reasonably quickly and it's pretty cheap living there. The food is okay but very small portioned, you need at least three meals a day here to avoid extreme hunger (well, I do). Traffic on the main road is a problem, moped and scooter riders pay no attention to pedestrians and will often go hell-for-leather the wrong way down the street on the pathway, which can catch you out when you're innocently walking along. Oh, and the 'taksi' drivers beep at everybody to see if they want a lift 10 yards down the street. It's not for the faint-hearted.

I guess I should talk a bit about Bali and Indonesia in general. Bali is a small island resort that forms part of Indonesia, the world's biggest archipelago (collection of islands) and also home to the world's biggest muslim population - the total national population is about 260 million, of which about 220 million are muslims (Bali is a Hindhu island). It's a surprisingly big country. The capital of Indonesia is Jakarta, while the island of Java is the most populous island in the world with about 130 million people living on it. Famous Indonesians include...no-one. Unsurprisingly with so many different races and religions squeezed into lots of different islands Indonesia seems to lack a single identity and is also very dangerous in certain parts such as Sumatra. Bali is extremely popular as a holiday resort, particularly with the 'nearby' Australians, because it's cheap, sunny, most people speak English and the surf is apparently very good. You'll find Europeans here too but the Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005 were undoubtedly aimed at Australians. There's a memorial on the main Kuta-Legian street for the victims although I somehow couldn't find it on my walkabouts.

Well, apologies for the not-very-interesting finish, I am of course writing these musings retrospectively from Alton so my enthusiasm isn't as high as it once was. I might return in the future but for now this blog is closed and I've become one of them again...a normal person...like you.

Bali remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Chopsticks really are a stupid invention. Culture? Tradition? Class? Eloquence? Forget it, they're stupid. I eat to live, not live to eat, and I just want to get it down my neck - even the best chopstick user in the world can't match me with a fork. I looked around on his stall. No forks. I asked him for a fork. Still no forks. So, I sat down, finished the soup with the spoon, uselessly pawed at my food with the chopsticks, and then grabbed the spoon and used that instead, to the horror of all the locals sat near me. Who cares - chopsticks are stupid. I usually deal with facts to back up my smugness so know this - China alone chops down 33 million trees every year for producing its chopsticks. Now try and tell me they're a great idea.

After a heavy, hot day and an early night I slept pretty well and left the hotel raring to go at 10am. Lots to do and see, my guidebook pointed out loads of things that I managed to plot in an orderly line on my map. I didn't have to wait long for a taxi - about half a nanosecond - and in no time at all I was standing outside Lucky Plaza on Orchard Road, just one of many centres in Singapore's famous shopping precinct. I had a quick look around, added an Australia-to-Singapore plug converter to bolster my impressive collection of wires and things, and then set off on my whistle-stop tour of Singapore city centre. And here's my Gordon Ramsay style description of 'Singapore in a day'...

T-shirt. Light trousers. Trainers. Backpack. Taxi. Orchard Road. Hot. Walk. Raffles Hotel. Unimpressed. Use the toilet. Leave. City Hall. St Andrew's Cathedral. Theatres on the Bay. Impressive. Merlion Statue. Weird. Sweating. Badly. Keep walking. Old Parliament House. Old Supreme Court. Grand Prix spectator stands. Fullerton Building. Grand Prix adverts. Lau Pa Sat Hawker Centre. Soup. Spoon. Done. Move. Thian Hock Keng Temple. Sri Mariamman Temple. Clarke Quay. Fort Canning Park. Dripping. Smelly. Disgusting. Keep going. National Museum. Orchard Road. Taxi. Shower. Hawker Centre. Food. Eat. Slowly. Watch football. Liverpool. Two. Man Utd. One. Bed. Done.

Sorry about that, I watched an episode of the F Word a little while ago and it was in my head. My flight to Bali was quite late in the afternoon the next day so I decided to entertain myself by visiting Little India and checking out some of the giant gold Buddha statues in the temples there. This turned out to be a very bad move as not only were the temples shut but I ended up incredibly sweaty again from all the walking. Oops. Anyway, I was fed up so I got a taxi back to my hotel, grabbed my suitcase and spent the rest of the day waiting in the air-conditioned airport, using their free wireless internet service. All in all, a much nicer experience than walking around Little India, and in fact a nicer experience than most of Singapore which I can't say really interested me very much. Plus it's far too hot and sticky. Next (and penultimate update) is from Bali...

Singapore remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I set off from Dunedin at about 11am, once again with no idea of which way to go or indeed how long it would take; a sign saying that Christchurch was still 230km away, even after driving for quite a while, brought my spirits down a bit. I stopped for fuel in a city called Timaru, as always letting the assistant do all the work (they pretty much insist on it here, I don't know why), ate a crappy sausage roll and then began the final part of my journey. Well, I didn't make it very far - so close but no cigar, the van felt very sluggish and dark fumes were coming out of the exhaust. I decided to turn into the small town of Temuka and call the AA.

It didn't take long for him to arrive, and nor did it take him long to tell me there was petrol in the diesel tank. After towing me to a garage to get the tank drained he took his leave and I began the tricky process of working out who was going to pay for this. The garage in Timaru denied responsibility because I didn't tell the woman it needed diesel and I had parked with my cap next to the unleaded pump; my argument, which they weren't listening to, was that she didn't even ask and I couldn't have parked any further up as my van would have been blocking the exit. Well, after a lengthy moan to the rental company (Jucy - take note of that) I ended up not being refunded for the damage. So, another £100 down the drain (as if this trip hadn't been expensive enough).

To top it all off I then stayed the night in a campsite near Christchurch airport, which was by far the most expensive of the whole journey (including Australia), and had one final love-in with the van before dropping it off at the Jucy depot down the road. A quick spruce up after packing all my bits and bobs and then at the depot I anxiously waited for the guy to check the van and hoped that he wouldn't spot the dent on the driver's door that I noticed halfway through the trip and wasn't on the markings sheet. He didn't say anything about it, but in my panic I totally forgot to reclaim the £20 that I spent on the two fan heaters. Doh! And then, even more hilariously, when I arrived at my hostel I realised that I'd left my lavish £50 sleeping bag in the overhead compartment. What a plonker!

Well, all that's over now and after an insane but awesome six weeks I'm back to being a normal traveller again now, crappy hostels and public transport for me and hopefully I won't be spending quite as much money. On that note the first thing I did in my new hostel was book myself a trip to Kaikoura - whale watching, swimming with dolphins, one night's accomodation and a bus either way - which set me back another £140. The best things in life are free, eh?

I have a total of 7 nights in Christchurch, plus one in Kaikoura, so it needs to have lots to do in order to keep me entertained for all that time. Unfortunately that isn't the case and I realised before heading to Kaikoura that I'd pretty much already exhausted all that Christchurch has to offer; I was also going to miss Jamie, one of my old Oz buddies, by booking the trip when I did. On a plus note the girls from Orewa will be turning up before I fly out so they should keep me sane for a little while. Okay, roadtrip over, back to the wildlife.

Kaikoura

My bus, which was one of the least comfortable I've ever ridden on (lack of legroom isn't the word), left Christchurch at just after 7am and dropped me off in Kaikoura at 10am. After being sent in the wrong direction by the apparently friendly bus driver I eventually found my hostel - The Lazy Shag - and checked in. After a stroll through the little town and a low bite to eat at a cafe with just one member of staff doing everything it was already time for me to see some whales (fingers crossed).

Once again I'd failed to do any research and I didn't actually know what I'd be seeing, but I quickly found out that Kaikoura is home to lots of male giant sperm whales. A continental shelf has formed a very deep valley beneath the sea, creating an abundance of nutrients that rise to the surface and tempt in all manner of sea animals; the plankton and krill make it an ideal home for sperm whales.

Once again it was a choppy ride on the boat and several people were making use of the sick bags. After just five minutes of travelling out to sea one of the spotters on the top deck caught sight of something and less than a minute later we were parked up alongside our first sperm whale, admiring its...size. I was going to say beauty, but sperm whales aren't exactly the prettiest of things and are surely the ugliest of all the whales. They're the fourth largest in the whale family (the blue whale is the biggest) but are often depicted as the archetypal whale, as for example in Moby Dick, and as I'm sure you all know they have very big penises - up to an impressive 9 feet long.

We didn't get to see its member, nor its distinctively ugly head, but we did see it re-oxygenate for a few minutes (i.e. bob up and down in the water whilst periodically blowing air through its blowhole) before taking the final plunge into the sea for another hour or so. The record for these giants underwater is about two and a half hours in one breath; they are also the deepest known divers in the animal kingdom, reaching an incredible 2,500 metres below sea level. They can collapse their ribcages and their blubber keeps them warm even at those depths - apparently a human can't go any further than 150 metres without suffering massive & fatal internal injuries.

We had five whale viewings in total - three different whales as two of them resurfaced after an hour - which is a brucie bonus as most trips only get a couple of sightings, if that. But whales aren't the only creatures in the water; as well as lots of birds (seagulls, petrels and albatrosses) there are also quite a few fur seals and dolphins in the water at Kaikoura, the latter of which I'd be seeing close up in the morning (again, fingers crossed). So, fast-forward to the following day and by 9am I was sporting a fetchingly tight wet suit on a bus on the way to the boatyard. A few people at my backpackers had mentioned that there hadn't been any dolphins around for a while and that quite a few trips had been cancelled, but Encounter Kaikoura were hopeful enough to go ahead with the morning trip. It costs $130 (about £50) but you get $100 back if you don't swim with any dolphins, which seems reasonable to me.

The dolphins that you swim with are called dusky dolphins and are resident in the area all year around. It's worth remembering that these are wild animals that aren't fed or trained, hence you're in their habitat and you have to entertain them to get their attention, rather than the other way round that's usually the case when seeing dolphins. On that note we were given a briefing video before we left on how to entertain the dolphins - tricks include making noises and singing through your snorkel, swimming like a dolphin (i.e. with your arms by your side and feet together) and also diving down below the surface. The people on the demo video looked pretty stupid doing it but we were hoping to get a chance to do it anyway.

The trip started well - very well in fact, our first viewing (almost immediate) was of a shoal of Hector's dolphins, the rarest dolphin the world. Bingo! What a bonus that was, they swam about the boat for a little while and then someone realised that there were actually two shoals out there, one on either side of the boat. Apparently that's an extremely rare sighting in Kaikoura so I was happy already; we also saw several fur seals and wandering albatrosses scavenging for left-overs from the seals, and then after an hour's travelling around they announced that unless we spotted some on the way back, there'd be no dolphin swimming today. Booooo. And we didn't see any on the way back, although everyone else on the boat got a bonus by seeing a sperm whale (a bit old hat for this experienced whale watcher). So, I ended up paying $30 to cruise round on a boat for an hour and a half and see the rarest dolphins in the world, a sperm whale, fur seals and the biggest albatross of them all, the Wandering Albatross, swimming across the sea. Not bad at all when you think about it.

I still had a few hours to kill and in a small cafe I unexpectedly bumped into one of the Orewa/Whitsunday girls, Kerry, who had gone ahead of the pack with her boyfriend as he had an earlier flight than them. How random. And then on my bus back a guy to my right started talking to me and led the conversation into rugby; pretty soon I was being asked if I was an All Blacks fan, and then I realised who he was - this was the same guy who tried to sell me an All Blacks shirt way back in Auckland when I first arrived. How even more random. Remember the song 'How Bizarre' by OMC? They were from New Zealand, and of Maori descent, and the singer looked spookily similar to this guy. Crrraaaazy times.

Right, four days to waste in Christchurch before flying out - let's see if I can find anything to do.

Christchurch Reloaded

Well, I didn't find much to do in Christchurch (apart from a trip to the Banks Peninsula, above) when I got back so I'll just sum up my New Zealand experience here.

New Zealand is a country that has pretty much everything - amazing scenery, rare and accessible wildlife galore and all sorts of activities to keep everyone amused, from the most laid back of characters to extreme daredevils. If it wasn't for the harshness of the winter weather here I'd be looking to live here immediately; the standard of living here is much better than in the UK and some of the major cities have plenty going for them. It's a great place to be and well worth all the hype, whoever you are you'll love it here (if you like nice weather then you'd better come in the summertime).

I never finished my history lessons so allow me to summarise what's happened here over the centuries. Although not persecuted by Europeans in the way that Aborigines were in Australia, Maoris were generally ignored as the settlers came in and began to form townships and indeed governments. And the Maoris were happy with this until they realised that not only was their land being sucked away from them, but they as a people were also diminishing due to newfound diseases brought by the settlers. Eventually in the early 20th century a small group of Maoris started to do something about this; as more and more Maoris began to settle in the cities, away from their traditional secluded villages, they began to enter education and employment, and in some cases government. Better health awareness and cross-breeding with Europeans brought immunity to all those deadly diseases, and the Maori population finally started to rise again. And so began a new era in New Zealand with Europeans and Maori starting to form a collective society after over a century of avoiding and sometimes fighting each other - something that could never continue as Maoris owned most of the land and yet couldn't survive forever by their old methods with Pakeha dominating farming and fishing resources.

It's interesting to compare Australia and New Zealand today given the totally different methods used by the British Empire to colonise them. In Australia they sent the convicts over with some officials plus some sporadic settlers and in many cases simply murdered Aborigines on sight (and sometimes did even worse than that); in New Zealand the whole affair was, on the whole, diplomatic and land was bought from Maoris on a piece-by-piece basis. And yet the net result is two very similar nations, both now independent from Britain, speaking in similar accents with similar economies and playing pretty much the same sports. But the main difference is that Maoris are more prominent in New Zealand than Aborigines in Australia; perhaps this has something to do with the advancement of Maoris as a race at the time that colonisation occurred, or maybe it's just that they weren't victimised quite as much and were given a fairer (although not fair) crack of the whip in their own countries.

One thing that stood out for me was that in the late 19th century New Zealand sent troops for the first time to join the British Empire in the Boer War in Africa, and amazingly despite being totally ignored by the government on virtually all matters (and holding several grudges about dubiously sold land) a staggering number of Maoris volunteered for the war effort. They were rejected as apparently it would be 'unethical to pitch blacks against whites', but it says a lot about the Maoris as a race in those days - hence the justifiable name of the book and film 'Once Were Warriors'. Note that Maoris were involved in the subsequent world wars but were largely kept in their own Maori squadrons, and one Maori officer was given the Victoria Cross after standing alone with his Tommy Gun at his hip, firing at allcomers and killing many enemies, despite them hitting him with about twenty bullets, before eventually dying. Brave stuff indeed.

How about some famous New Zealanders? From the world of TV and film we have Russell Crowe, Lucy Lawless (Xena), Sam Neill and director Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings of course). From the world of music we have Daniel and Natasha Bedingfield (born there), Crowded House, Bic Runga, Holly Valance (born there) and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. And finally from the world of sport and activities, non rugby playing sports people include Michael Campbell (golf), Sir Richard Hadlee (cricket, who I met in Sydney) and Sir Edmund Hillary of Everest fame (you could add lots of rugby players to this list of course). Not exactly a grand list is it - that has a lot to do with the relative age of the country and the opportunities for them to become rich or famous by staying in New Zealand (these days that's not quite so much of an issue).

And also a final word about sheep. It's not exactly a secret that New Zealand is full of them, but why? Well, the most obvious reason is that New Zealand lies on a massive fault line that pretty much runs straight up through the south and north islands - hence the southern alps, the mountainous landscapes that you see everywhere and also the amazing Taupo volcanic zone - and this renders much of the land unusable for farming and building, but ideal for grazing. But it's also got a lot to do with history; today sheep outnumber humans by a ratio of 10:1 but look back to the 19th century and you'll see that the same ratio existed (115,000 humans to 1.5 million sheep in 1858). When the settlers first came in there was no such thing as refridgeration so smaller animals were preferred for farming; wool was popular at the time and easy to export; and also cows eat about 10 times the amount of grass that sheep eat. So, a sheep culture was introduced and much of the native bush and forests were burnt down to make way for them (note that most of the grass was painstakingly hand-sewn from seed). So, that's why New Zealand has so many sheep.

And on that note, it's E Noho Ra from New Zealand...goodbye everyone.

Christchurch & Kaikoura remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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After faffing about in Invercargill for much longer than planned I eventually set off for the Catlins at about midday on Sunday and made my way along the highway, fairly uncertain of where I was actually going. You see, planning in advance hasn't been my greatest strength on this trip as I'm always either doing and seeing stuff, driving here and there or resting and sleeping. Well, a quick look at my Lonely Planet guide (whilst driving), followed by a look at the map (whilst driving), pointed me in the direction of two places - Slope Point and Curio Bay.

Slope Point is marked as the most southernly point on the south island of New Zealand - Stewart Island holds claim to the country's most southernly point - despite the intriguing shape of the map that suggests it isn't. It was a fairly long and very boggy walk through a sheep grazing field to get to it, and the little landmark lighthouse (and tacky signpost pointing to the Equator and South Pole) adds nicely to the remote feel of the place. Experience rating = adequate. Near to Slope Point is a lighthouse at Waipapa Point, built 3 years too late after New Zealand's second worst maritime disaster, the sinking of the SS Tararua in which 131 people died. Well, I was in the area so it would be rude not to have a look. But when I got there I was distracted by what I could see on the beach - closer inspection revealed three whacking great big Hooker's Sea Lions basking in the sun on the sandy beach. Jackpot!

These things are seriously impressive, no wonder they're called lions - big and intimidating with savage looking teeth. I'd read somewhere that you should keep your distance and never block their path to the sea, and standing in view of them I decided that was sage advice. I subsequently read on a sign that you should stay at least 30 metres away at all times - I was a lot closer than that but at least I tried to be careful. I moved round this way and that to get different angles of them on my camera, and then when I finally realised that they weren't about to move or do anything exciting I decided enough was enough and moved on to my next target - Curio Bay.

Curio Bay plays host to something very different - a 160 million year old fossil forest next to the sea that's only visible during low tide - and seemed well worth a visit. Some very clever people have worked out that the fossils of the logs, trees and plants date back to a time when most of the world, including New Zealand, was part of one big super continent called Gondwanaland. Amazing stuff, but as cool as that sounds it didn't really do it for me as an experience; I generally had no idea what I was standing on or looking at apart from a couple of obvious trees, the rest could have been a big pile of rocks for all I knew. I decided to take my leave, but then something unexpected happened. Again. I looked up to the top of the beach and there, staring back at me, was a penguin. And not just any penguin, as if that wouldn't be exciting enough - I could clearly make out a distinct, bright yellow band around its eyes and head. This, ladies and gentlemen, was a yellow-eyed penguin, the rarest and shyest penguin in the whole world, staring at me in the wild on a 160 million year old fossil forest with no-one else around. It's not every day that happens to you is it?

Apparently these penguins, of which just 3,000 exist, will do one of three things when faced with a perceived threat - run away or freeze on the spot. This one was obviously doing the latter so I grabbed my camera from my pocket, zoomed in as far as it would go (not very) and took a picture. I had a quick look and the picture looked okay on the screen, not blurred but pretty distant (it looks further away than it actually was), but when I looked up again I experienced the former too - it had scarpered. I've no idea where it went, presumably into the bushes at the top of the beach, but after a quick scout I decided I should leave it alone as these creatures can get very disturbed just from a long distance sighting of a living thing, let alone some nosey foreign tourist stumbling into its home.

Well, what a day it had been, I felt great and extremely smug - some great spots, lovely winter weather and then a free night's accomodation at the campsite as the office was closed when I got there. Honesty Boxes? Not in my dictionary I'm afraid. In the morning my luck didn't extend to seeing a rare Hector's Dolphin in nearby Porpoise Bay as they're only there in the summer, which is a shame; looks like dolphins will have to wait until Kaikoura. I also didn't get any luck at Cannibal Bay (no doubt named after Maoris) where I greedily went to see more sea lions, but my spirits were still high when I arrived a Nugget Point, home to all sorts of things.

At the end of Nugget Point sits a lighthouse and from there you can look down at the little nugget rocks on which many different animals live - fur seals, elephant seals and sea lions all co-exist here which is very rare; yellow-eyed and blue penguins, gannets and shags all breed there too, although I didn't see any of the aforementioned from my perch way up. Right, time to knuckle down and head off to Roaring Bay, a place dedicated to seeing wild yellow-eyed penguins.

I wanted more, more damn it, of these amazing little creatures than that one brief encounter and so I sat myself down in the lookout den - provided in an attempt to keep people hidden from the penguins so they'll actually stay in the area - and waited. And waited. I arrived at 3pm and after over an hour of excruciating boredom they began to arrive. They'd been out 'fishing' in the sea all day and seeing one finally arrive was a fantastic experience. A small black bird bodysurfing the waves straight into the centre of the beach; a bit of a delay and then up steps a beautiful little penguin. A quick shake of the body, legs and fins - and sometimes a repeat after being nailed by another wave - and then they make the long waddle up the sand to their little homes in the bushes of the hill.

I saw six in total, and they all walked back in pairs. The first one to arrive actually stood near the top of the beach waiting for the second one to arrive, and then after some comical hopping up some rocky steps they disappeared into the bush. When the next two arrived one went in the bush and the other waited outside, and a penguin log-jam began at the bush entrance. At this point I decided I'd probably seen enough - well not really but it was very cold and I'd been there for 2 hours - and so I went and stayed the night at Kaka Point, ready to move on to Dunedin the next day.

Dunedin

Much like Wellington, I really liked Dunedin due to its pleasing look and feel, laid back atmosphere and the compactness of its city centre. And there's lots to do here as well, which makes a change from most New Zealand cities - I ended up spending three nights there before heading up to Christchurch. But that's partly due to the fact that when I first arrived there in the afternoon I had a banging headache and felt terrible, totally exhausted, and ended up in a campsite having a nap. Well, that nap turned into a fairly solid sleep and I ended up very, very refreshed the next day and ready to have a really good explore.

Dunedin is gaelic for Edinburgh, so I couldn't resist checking out Lanarch Castle which was a pet hobby for one William Lanarch, a man of Scottish descent who spent most of his life in the British colonies of Australia and New Zealand in the late 19th century. He made his money through banking during the gold rush and, after checking out the views of Dunedin from the Otago Peninsula nearby, decided he wanted to live on the peninsula and build a castle to match his uncle's on the other side of the world. And so began a lavish and unnecessary project to build a castle, complete with a gun room and battlements at the top, in a quiet area of New Zealand in the peaceful year of 1871. Brilliant, I love it.

The castle was bought by the Barker family in 1967 for a low price - it was very run down by all accounts - and they set about restoring it whilst using it as their home (they're self made, they weren't rich when they bought it). And what a job they did, the gardens are spectacular and the inside is pretty much back to its original splendour. Marble sculptors from Italy, wood carvers from all over Europe and local Kauri tree carvers were all brought in by Lanarch to form the original interior, and most of it has been bought or loaned back. It really is a fascinating place, all done by a bank manager in an attempt to woo his wife-to-be and her family. Out of all the little facts about the place, I bring you this - all the family's and horse's excrement was piled up in a building at the back and converted into methane, which was then pumped through to the castle to light all the crystal chandeliers. Ingenious stuff, but I wonder what the castle smelled like inside?

In the city centre itself I went to the free art gallery, had a look at Cadbury World but didn't pay for the tour as it seems like a rip-off, and also took a look at Baldwin Street which is, according to the Guiness Book of Records, the steepest street in the world. I didn't walk up it, in fact the thought never even crossed my mind. Apparently the annual Gutbuster race sees the winner run up and down it in about 2 minutes - that's absolutely staggering, not because of the time but because there's actually people willing to do it.

Last on my list, but by no means least, was a trip to the very end of the Otago Peninsula to see a wildlife king - the Royal Albatross. Before I talk about that, allow me to point out that there are only 150 of these birds in New Zealand, it's the wrong time of the year to see them and also the wind needs to be very strong to actually see one of them in flight. So, my hopes weren't especially high, but I paid the 25 bucks for the tour anyway. Standing a metre tall with a wingspan of over 3 metres, these birds are the largest (but not heaviest) flighted birds in the animal kingdom. They can live their entire life at sea and only need land to lay their eggs, and as they're so large you tend to find their colonies on small oceanic islands such as the Falklands. And so it came to everyone's surpise when, in 1920, one of these birds flew to the Otago Peninsula and laid an egg at Tairoa Head, formerly home to a Maori village, and in the process created New Zealand's first Royal Albatross colony (and still the only accessible one on the planet). And it still baffles scientists today.

I find that fascinating - why on earth would it leave its colony and fly god knows how many miles to lay its egg somewhere completely new? Presumably its old home had been affected in some way but how would it know to come here? And that the land it chose was exposed to the 'Roaring Forties', a channel of high wind between 40 and 50 degrees south in latitude? Remarkable, they blatantly have some kind of inner GPS that we don't have. Speaking of GPS, all the albatrosses at the colony are tagged and monitored wherever they go. One was recently tracked all the way on an incredible journey to...Chile, over 6,000 miles away with nothing but water inbetween. And they've no idea why it went there. I never expected these birds to be so interesting - other facts include their triple-jointed wings (for easier folding up), their ability to dislocate their jaws like a snake and also their amazing weight - chicks weight more than adults and can reach the heady heights of almost 10 kilos, which is very heavy for a bird.

Most of the tour was spent at the top of the hill in the lookout room where they provide binoculars for everyone and also have live TV screens with those self-controlled cameras that are great fun to use. In view were two chicks that every now and again would flap their wings in an attempt to take off - as it happened, the wind was very strong that day. Once again my camera was utterly useless on the zoom front but fortunately some American guy had brought his own telescope and tripod and I didn't need a second invitation to take some pictures through it (it worked surprisingly well). He was hilarious, really getting into it and at one point I thought he was going to have an orgasm - 'Oh yeah...oh my god...oh, that's amazing' in a slow, whispered voice. I think he enjoyed the experience.

I enjoyed it too, another new thing ticked off the list (I don't actually have a list by the way) and some good luck in actually seeing the birds - an adult flew/glided into view at one point. My wildlife experience has certainly been much better than my weather experience here. Well, I'm pretty much done here but before I get to Christchurch I have to spruce up the van and give it back to Jucy. No rest for the wicked...

The Catlins Forest Park & Dunedin remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Okay, Fiordland is done with now and for those with no interest in that sort of thing I apologise and promise to tell a few smutty jokes later. But things aren't about to get any better for those people - the majority of the remainder of my trip is all about wildlife.

Although New Zealand has an incredible variety of animals to witness (kiwis, dolphins, seals, whales, sea lions, albatrosses, gannets, penguins and so on), it doesn't have that many indigenous species to boast of. Australia has all sorts of remarkable things like kangaroos, wombats and koalas, as well as all sorts of incredibly dangerous things, but New Zealand has...the kiwi, a virtually blind small chicken sized bird with a long beak that eats worms. For a national icon, it's a bit rubbish. But why?

Well, for once the Maoris are partly to blame for this. The Moa, at the time the biggest bird in the world (flightless of course), were hunted to extinction by Maoris, which isn't surprising seeing as they were usually about 3 metres high and would feed a small army. And seeing as Maoris didn't have the weapons to hunt quicker animals and birds that could fly, you can hardly blame them for going for the easy kill.

But the main problem for New Zealand's wildlife were of course the Pakeha when they started arriving. Not just Europeans though, Australians were guilty too. The introduction of new plants and animals such as rabbits, mice, rats, weasels, possums and stoats, as well as the destruction of habitat (such as burning down entire forests for sheep grazing) had a devastating effect. A classic example occurred on Stephens Island in 1894. The government built a lighthouse and employed a keeper; he in turn brought with him a cat to keep him company. In little more than a year that one cat single-handedly wiped out an entire species of bird called the Stephens Island Wren (this is disputed by some but it definitely killed most of them).

Stories like that can be found all over the country - not quite as good as some of the extraordinary tales from Australia, like the guy who bought the last two living specimens of a species (hamster or something like that) at an auction and then ate them when he got hungry later on - but damning all the same. Many of the animals in New Zealand now are good examples of two wrongs not making a right, such as possums and stoats being introduced to catch introduced rabbits and rats (swallowed a fly etc). But why would they bother hunting for fleet-footed animals like rabbits when they can just eat defenseless native animals with no natural predators? By the way I'm not ranting, just explaining.

Stewart Island is my next port of call - a spot of walking and bird-watching for this non-walker and non-bird-watcher. After that I'm going to check out the Catlins Forest Park to have a look at sea lions and rare yellow-eyed penguins (hopefully), then albatrosses near Dunedin and then with any luck whales and dolphins in Kaikoura.

Ah, but this entry is about Invercargill isn't it. Well, it's a nice place but really not worthy of more than a few sentences. It acts as a base for trips to Stewart Island, so let's get out of here and look at some birds.

Stewart Island

When Captain Cook found Stewart Island he sailed round most of it and somehow decided it was attached to the south island, naming it South Cape in the process. The fact that the ferry crossing takes an hour at a good pace tells you that it was a pretty big boo-boo for a great explorer; it was renamed when William Stewart, a fur sealer, sailed right round the island and mapped its coast and many small surrounding islands.

Stewart Island is well known, amongst New Zealanders anyway, as a bird sanctuary. An aggressive vermin control scheme is in place and on the small but beautiful Ulva Island nearby they've eradicated them completely. In fact, Ulva Island is one of the prime locations in the world for relocating endangered species of birds - they're introducing a rare type of parakeet there soon and people from the States and Japan have already booked themselves in a year in advance to go and have a look. The world of bird watching is very active it would seem. It's also reknowned as a walking and tramping haven, but don't worry I won't be doing much of that - I booked a ferry in the morning with one nights accomodation, followed by a ferry back the following afternoon. Just a whistle-stop visit.

My ferry was pretty much empty but naturally the only kid on it came and sat right behind me - they're drawn to me you see - and her mum played High School Musical 2 on a DVD player at an amazingly high volume, which annoyed me immensely. But it's for a kid so it's okay to irritate everyone on board, whereas if I had my iPod on, even at a quiet volume, I'd get warned and then thrown overboard. It was only for an hour though, a bit choppy in places even though it was a calm day. Stewart Island is quite large but the township in Halfmoon Bay is really quite small, so in no time at all I arrived at my backpackers to find my worst nightmare...a school trip from near Invercargill had come over and decided that out of all the accomodation options in Stewart Island, my backpackers was the best place for them to run amock. They were all in the kitchen - about 30 primary school kids and 10 adults. Give me a break! All the kitchen equipment was in use or piled up for washing up, and the kids were running around and screaming like mad while the adults just sat about and left them to it, all of which helped me make the decision to get out of there pronto and go and see some stuff. I quickly went down to the visitor information centre near the wharf and booked myself a water taxi to Ulva Island.

There are about 5 forest walking tracks on Ulva Island but they all join up and make a kind of figure of eight, so you can do them all without duplication in less than 3 hours. I randomly selected one to start with and in no time at all I found myself trying to tiptoe along the gravel track to get a decent picture of a rare bird - a South Island Saddleback according to my guide book - and quickly realised that this was going to be a frustrating day, for three reasons. Firstly, the birds in the forest can see you long before you see them and they'll fly away before you can get close. Secondly, the gravel track is very noisy to walk on so there's really no chance of sneaking up on one. And thirdly, my camera is in possession of surely the worst zoom in the digital camera world - it's fully encased (due to it being waterproof) and so the zoom can't come out of it, giving me a 3x optical zoom which is basically rubbish so I can't take pictures of things from a long way away.

As well as the Saddleback I also saw the following birds - Stewart Island Wekas, Tomtits, Oystercatchers, Kakas, New Zealand Parakeets and also a few New Zealand Wood Pigeons, the second largest pigeons in the world and boy are they noisy in flight, if one of them takes off nearby without you knowing they're there then you're in for a fright. I lost count of the number of times I'd hear a flapping noise behind me and turn round to see nothing there; despite having no predators and seeing human visitors regularly, these birds are extremely shy and retiring. Except for the singing of course, very soothing and according to my guide is mostly down to the Kakas and Parakeets.

The only bird that wasn't difficult to see was the Stewart Island Weka, which you can find in the forest and on the beaches. In fact I found one of them stalking me on one beach - I walked away from it, looked back and saw it running after me, but when it noticed me looking it stopped running and pretended that it wasn't following me by strolling off to the left. Then when I walked off again and looked back it was still running after me, and again it stopped when it saw me looking. Spooky.

Apparently there are roughly 40 Kiwis on Ulva Island (over 10,000 on Stewart Island as a whole) but these are rarely seen, and unsurprisingly me of little stealth when it comes to walking didn't spot one (I ended up on my backside quite a few times as parts of the track are very slippy). The Kiwis on Stewart Island are unusual in that they're often active in the day - usually they're purely nocturnal - which is why it's a good place to come to spot one. Despite being virtually blind they're masters at not being seen - they blend into the nearby shrubs quite nicely and also build their underground nests several weeks before entering them, to make sure they're camouflaged from day one. Apparently if you see a Kiwi scavenging for worms the best thing to do is stand completely still - it won't hear you and since it's eyesight is so bad it'll usually just walk straight into you.

I actually really enjoyed my time on Ulva Island, it was certainly something different and it's a shame that more people don't come here - the travel dude in Auckland didn't put it on his list (probably a standard backpacker's list). They're probably put off by the tag of 'bird-watching' which implies lots of anoraked people with binoculars, but you don't have to be into it to enjoy this place. To finish off my visit I took a stroll around Halfmoon Bay (after avoiding the school all night and watching South Park episodes with some very smelly Germans), and at 2pm jumped on my ferry. And guess who was on it? Yep, that's right, the school trip. No worries though, it was horribly rough and most of them were throwing up all over each other - true story - and I really enjoyed it. A word to people who don't like choppy boat journeys - don't go to Stewart Island, apparently it's like that most of the time.

I picked up my van from Bluff, which must be one of the windiest places on the planet (second only to the wind tunnel at the HBOS Aylesbury offices on the way into town), and headed back to Invercargill for the night, followed by a quiet day of strolling around in lovely blue skies (a bit cold though), window-shopping and some pretty lengthy internet time.

Invercargill & Stewart Island remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Sigh...more trials and tribulations.

I was heading for a little place called Te Anau, south west of Queenstown, known as a good base for Fiordland excursions (but nothing else). There's only one road to Te Anau from Queenstown...and it was closed off due to the snow. Marvellous. I had a trip to Milford Sound booked for the following morning, and one to Doubtful Sound booked for the day after - both already paid for - so as you can probably imagine I was pretty desperate to get there.

The road block was at a place called Milburn - I'd already travelled very slowly for 2 hours just to get there - and I really needed to get past it. My map showed a potential route around - south, then west, then north - which I worked out would probably take me about 7 hours to do. No thanks. I asked the policeman at the blockade what I could do, and he suggested that I could get some chains for my tyres and get across the road that way. And the nearest place to get chains is...Queenstown. No thanks. Well, I could stay in Milburn tonight. No thanks. I could go back to Queenstown and stay there. Again, not an option. Well okay, the other option was to wait around in Milburn and hope the track was cleared later in the afternoon.

And that's what I did - and cleared it was too, a grand total of 4 hours later. I spent my time waiting in the only pub in town, shamelessly perched in front of my fire thawing out my toes, reading my book, and not buying a single thing. Eventually, when I could feel my toes again, I remembered that life is good right now, and that it doesn't totally suck balls.

They did a great job clearing the road - not a trace of snow on it but enormous piles on the sides of the road. I got to Te Anau at 5pm, checked into the cheapest campsite in town and was told by the manager that the Milford road had been closed for three days due to snow avalanches near the entrance to Milford Sound, and that it probably wouldn't be open tomorrow either. It just gets better eh.

I decided to take a stroll through the town centre to check out the place - if the Milford road was still closed tomorrow then I'd probably be getting used to it. First impressions were good - a long street with a decent sized pub, lots of restaurants, two supermarkets, a garage, a big electrical store, a newsagents, a massive off license (bottle shop over here), lots of tourist type offices and all sorts of other shops and facilities. But get this - it was 8pm on a Saturday night and...there was nobody in sight, no cars were parked by the street and none of the shops were open. None of them. I glanced into the pub on the way back and there appeared to be just three people inside, by the look of them tourists, watching the olympic on TV. Some people pay good money to go to the old gold-rush places and look at the ghost towns, but I was getting this visit for free.

If I was going to Milford Sound in the morning then I had to be at the coach stop for 10am, so I rang the company beforehand in the morning - no signal on my mobile and no answer when I tried the nearest payphone. Grrrrr. I took the fairly long walk to their office and was told that all the phones and internet lines were down due to the snow, and that an avalanche on the Milford road was still blocking everyone off, therefore all trips were still off. So, my new plan was Doubtful Sound on Monday, followed by Milford Sound on Tuesday - which meant I had a whole day in Te Anau to waste.

I went up to the lookout point just out of town where I was kept company by a snowman (well, snowwoman judging by the boobs on it), then took a stroll around Lake Te Anau, and then to polish off my day I followed that up with a trip across the lake to see the glowworm caves, which were excellent. No pictures are allowed, which is a crying shame, but flashes (accidental or not) upset them and they dim if it happens. A brief word about glowworms - they are in fact the larvae of fungus knats that have been laid on cave walls. Not very glamorous creatures then, but they have a neat little mechanism where if they're hungry a pigment lights up inside them that attracts flies for them to eat. So, the hungrier a glowworm is the brighter it glows.

Right, now for something completely different...

Doubtful Sound

Before we start, we need to answer a few questions (and ask them too). What is a Sound? What is Fiordland? And what's so special about this place?

A Sound is a valley that has been sculpted and sunk by a body of water - that could be a river, severe flooding, tsunamis, you name it. A Fiord on the other hand is a valley that has been forged by glaciers. So, what's Fiordland? Well, most of the Sounds in this area are incorrectly named - they are in fact Fiords, not Sounds. The glaciers that created them were enormous and part of an ice age almost 10,000 years ago; they advanced and retreated to and from the sea over and over again, and the results were devastating (and spectacular). There are 14 Fiords and Sounds in Fiordland National Park, but only 2 are accessible to the public - Doubtful Sound (the second biggest valley in the park) and Milford Sound (the most popular with tourists). To give an idea of the size of this place, Fiordland National Park is roughly the same size as Wales. So, it's a pretty big park.

Fiordland is a tough, uncompromising place; its peacefulness and tranquility is virtually guaranteed with or without National Park status as it's virtually impossible to settle here. The weather is pretty horrible - on average it gets about 7 metres of rain per year (compare that with Manchester, known to be a rainy place, which gets just under a metre of rain per year), and it's bitterly cold too. Apparently out of 10 days in Fiordland it will rain for at least 7 - so, knowing my luck that makes it a guaranteed soaker.

Doubtful Sound is a good old Captain Cook name - he named it Doubtful Bay as he was 'doubtful there was enough wind inside the bay to get the ship back out'. He was probably right about that, but he was wrong about it being a bay and in fact mistook most of the Fiords and Sounds in the area as 'bluffs' - cliff faces that deceive the eye into thinking you can get through, when in fact you can't. But wrong he was, and eventually a few other European sailors would stumble across them and explore their many arms.

Getting to Doubtful Sound is a bit of a mission - unlike Milford Sound it's only accessible by boat across a lake - so here's a quick rundown of the journey. Walk to the coach, get on the coach and drive to the middle of nowhere to pick up some people from Queenstown (yes I could have come from there but it's a lot more expensive), change course and go to Lake Manapouri, get off and jump onto a boat for an hour, then jump on another coach, take the Wilmot Pass around the mountains to the entrance to the Fiord and then jump on a cruise boat. An then do it all again on the way back, but this time with a stop at the power plant on the Wilmot Pass thrown in for good measure. All in all the day takes over 10 hours and costs about £75, which seems pretty good value to me.

So, let's talk about the day. The coach driver was superb, very chirpy and full of interesting but utterly useless facts about everything and anything; for example, I now know what New Zealand sheep eat during the winter when the grass is taken out by the snow or flooded - swedes, turnips and grain. The first boat journey goes across Lake Manapouri, which itself was formed by a glacier but doesn't reach the sea, hence it's still just a lake. But what a lake - surrounded by amazing landscape, crystal clear on sunny days and in parts almost 450 metres deep. And what a glacier it must have been to carve out land that deep.

After that the coach goes across the Wilmot Pass, which was never intended to be used as an entrance to the Fiord - it was created to transport materials to the power plant when it was being built, and took twice as long to finish as anticipated due to the amount of rain that falls here. It's a spectacular road, quite thin and winding with beautiful views at times. And then you reach Doubtful Sound itself. The beginning is arguably the best view - you can see the long and winding valley from its shallowest point with clear water and the sun shining through the clouds. Once you get on the water the view behind the boat is a bit distorted due to the wake and fumes from the boat but can make for some interesting pictures all the same.

It's hard to imagine what this place must have looked like 10,000 years ago when the glaciers were rampaging and forming this amazing landscape. And the thing about Doubtful Sound is its tranquility - it's incredibly quiet, the boat's engines were switched off for a minute at one point to demonstrate it to everyone. Amazing. And finally a quick note about the power plant - it's located deep down in one of the mountains, hidden away from view, and is accessed by a 2.5km tunnel that has a gradient of 10:1; so it's actually located 250 metres below the entrance to the tunnel. I'll say this much about it - you wouldn't want to visit it if you were claustrophobic, and a few people jumped out and waited at the entrance. The plant was quite controversial when they were planning to build it as it's in the middle of a National Park, which goes against the idea of such a thing, but eventually people realised that the power of the water was a great way to generate energy and its creation inside the mountain gave it the go ahead.

Right, enough of that, onto Milford Sound.

Milford Sound

Fellow bargers, I have found a suitable venue for Team Pro Barge. It's called Milford Sound and it's perfect for a good old barge session; there might be a few problems getting a barge out here, and getting permission to use it, but it'll be worth the hassle, trust me. Rudyard Kipling described it as the eighth wonder of the world, so it must be good.

Unlike Doubtful Sound, Milford Sound is apparently correctly named - it is indeed a valley that has been sunk by water (although they're not sure). It was named by a Welshman, the first person to settle here, after his home town of Milford Haven. It's a lot easier to get to - a coach journey straight to the cruise terminal - and is extremely popular, especially in the summer. It's winter here and there's nowhere near as many people around, but three cruise ships took off in the 15 minutes I spent at the cruise terminal.

Apparently the best weather for visiting Milford Sound is heavy rain - allegedly it creates a great 'spooky' atmosphere and also revitalises the many waterfalls along the sides of the Sound, to an extent where the boats can't get close to them because they're too powerful. I, however, didn't get rain - instead, I got clear blue skies, not a cloud in sight. And I couldn't have been happier, I don't care THAT much for waterfalls and to be honest you can shove the rain up your a&£e, I've had enough of that to last me a lifetime. It's amazing really, nothing but rain on the supposedly mild north island and then no rain in two days in a place that rains over 70% of the time. But that's the way it goes sometimes.

You couldn't possibly have a place like Milford Sound in the vicinity of a film like the Lord Of The Rings and not use it so, of course, they used it. Remember the bit where they're in boats and they go past the two massive king statues with their arms held out? That's the entrance to Milford Sound. I won't whittle on about it as much as the last entry, but I'll say this - it might have been the sun distorting my view but I thought Milford Sound was the better of the two days. Mind you, don't let the sunshine confuse you - it was brass monkeys out on the top deck of the boat, my three layers, hat and gloves were barely enough.

Once again the coach driver was excellent, except this one was more interested in tales of wiping out possums and stoats and also explaining how to make beer out of the Manuka plant, and how he tried a remake of the Manuka beer created by Captain Cook all those years ago (and how disgusting it was). You go through the Homer Tunnel on the way to and the way back from the Sound, like the one that leads to the power station near Doubtful Sound. Near the end of the tunnel the driver asks you to shut your eyes, and when you open them again you're greeted by a great view of the valley below with the road winding down ahead, mountains everywhere and most of them white which no doubt enhances the experience.

My first impressions were that Milford looked better than Doubtful, there was something about that initial view that looked better. They're both really similar, Milford has more and bigger waterfalls but is a lot smaller and busier and not as quiet. If you only had the time or money to visit one of the places, you'd choose Milford Sound as it's cheaper and much easier to get to.

Fiordland - Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The following statement seems to surprise, shock and yes even offend some of the people I've spoken to recently. The statement is this - I'm not going to ski or snowboard in New Zealand. Yep, that's what I said. The usual reaction from people here is one of complete amazement; cue uncomfortable smiles and then people slowly backing away from me. Idiot. Weirdo. Freak.

Allow me to explain. Firstly, I only have a limited time here and I want to use it well and see as much as I can - spending 3 days on a ski field doesn't seem to fit with that. Secondly, it's expensive and I've already spent more than my fair share in this country. Thirdly, you can ski all over the world and there are far easier and cheaper places to get to from the UK, and hell from what I hear some of them are better anyway. And fourthly, and perhaps more importantly, I'm not even slightly interested in skiing or snowboarding. So, there you go, I'm just plain odd. The upshot of this is that I won't be spending a long time in Wanaka or Queenstown - in fact, they'll just be little visits like any other place, like Haast for example.

I'm not really sure why the travel bloke in Auckland suggested Haast as a place to see. It's on the road from the glaciers to Wanaka, so you go through it anyway, but it's amazingly tiny and there's nothing to do there. My guess is that it's probably quite scenic but I can't confirm that due to the low-hanging clouds and rain that rather spoilt my brief stay there. So, moving on I drove over the Haast Pass towards Wanaka and hit snow. Not proper snow, more like sleet; wet snow that doesn't seem to settle anywhere apart from in little patches on the grass on the side of the road. But combined with the permanently low temperatures in the alpine region and a biting wind it really was cold outside. Horribly cold. I stopped a few times to take some pictures and even though I was outside for no more than a few seconds each time I had to thaw out in the van afterwards with the heater cranked right up.

I hit Wanaka in the afternoon and immediately checked out the info centre. It's right next to Lake Wanaka, which I'd been driving round for the last 15 minutes on the way to Wanaka, and the very low clouds made for some unusual views of the lake. There was no way I was staying outside in that weather so I drove towards the airport and tried my hand at some rifle target shooting, which I wasn't terrible or awesome at, but it killed a bit of time which is all you can ask for when you're hiding from the weather. That done, I found myself a big and quiet campsite and locked myself in the van with the heater on.

I woke up in the morning and peered out through the window and was delighted to see some blue sky, so I got up and went about redoing the photos I'd taken on the previous day. Just take a look and you'll soon see why I get so annoyed by dreadful weather when I'm trying to travel around one of the most scenic countries in the world. Rainy, cold and indeed snowy days are acceptable - it is winter after all - but not if it's so bad that you can't see a thing. When I saw the view of Lake Wanaka on the second day I wondered exactly how much I'd missed on the north island during that storm.

Oh well, what's done is done and for now I need to hit Queenstown to set up base for a while. Lots to do there - Deer Park and Glenorchy are home to lots of scenic from the good old Lord Of The Rings films (although I don't yet know where they are or which scenes they were) and Arrowtown is apparently a must see place. I should certainly have lots of time to see all that while I'm not skiing.

Queenstown

As hard as other places in New Zealand try, Queenstown remains the number one alpine and activity resort in the country. Without a doubt. How do I know this? Because it's heaving, totally overcrowded and pretty hellish really. There are just 4 million people in the country, and I think most of them are here. Seriously though, most places I've been to would make Alton on a Sunday seem busy, so it came as a bit of a shock when I encountered endless traffic, no parking spaces, loads of people on the streets and lots of vans at my campsite.

But these people don't live in Queenstown. No, this is definitely a tourist resort and the only people who live here probably work in tourism. You can just tell - families walking in and out of expensive ski shops; bleached haired idiots carrying snowboards around; and what is it with these huge, multi-coloured ski jackets? Yep, I'm in a ski resort alright. And what a time they'll all be having right now - it's snowing massively here. I've never seen so much snow in my whole life - who knows how much there must be on the slopes - and it's great snow too, light and crispy and perfect for snowmen and snowball fights. And it doesn't go away, it just builds up, getting higher and higher on the grass while the cars turn the roads into a mess of grit, slush and ice. It's just a shame it's not Christmas.

So, what about the town itself? Well, it seems nice enough, very compact and offers everything you'd want from a place like this, although the prices are a tad steep. Unfortunately I'm here by myself, i.e. I've got no friends to go out with, so I can't really judge the nightlife at all (I'm not the sort of person to go and sit in a pub by myself and try and make new friends). So I'll just say that if you're a ski boff then you'll no doubt love it here, and I'm sure the nightlife would be great too (I've heard it is).

And now onto the boring bit - what I did here. Firstly I checked out the town centre, for a whole day in fact including a trek up a mountain for views of the valley and the town, and then went to nearby Arrowtown to see its famous cobbled streets, its top class but tiny cinema, and to see how it looks in the snow with its old-school phoneboxes and street lanterns. Well, to say it woas a disappointment would be an understatement. There are in fact no cobbled streets; the cinema was only showing chick flicks (no cinema in the world can make them worth watching); and for some geographical reason that totally escaped me there was no snow. I did however notice the lanterns and red phoneboxes, which entertained me for a few seconds, and I also checked out the nearby ruins of a Chinese village from the gold rush in the 19th century, which really was surprisingly enlightening. But all in all it was a bit pants really. Having said that, if my trip to Arrowtown was a letdown then my trip to Glenorchy was a spectacular misjudgement, in more ways than one.

I mentioned in my last update that the Queenstown area played host to many of the spectacular Lord Of The Rings sets, chosen for its breathtaking views and landmarks. Well, whilst glancing through a Glenorchy brochure I noticed that the following sets are all in the Glenorchy area - the Misty Mountains, the Ford of Brunien (where the horse-river-wave-thing comes along and sweepd the black riders away), Isengaard (Saruman's fortress by the lake) and Lothlorien (where they get captured by the elves, and the lake where they subsequently sail off). Unfortunately the brochure was for an expensive guided tour and didn't say where these places were exactly, so I got my van packed off and set off for the Glenorchy visitor information centre, knowing they'd be able to help me - who needs to pay to see nature when it's freely accessible?

There's probably an international standard for driving in the snow but I have my own method - stick the van in low gear, drive a bit slower than usual and just pretend it isn't there. It seems to work a treat; leaving the campsite was a bit ropey but great fun, the first road is massively downhill and covered in ice and snow and there really was nothing I could do - I just slid for a while, drifted to the left, smacked into the kerb and came to a standstill in the middle of the road, pointing to the right quite a bit. As anyone who's driven in the snow will know, the main roads are usually fine and in a place like this, where it's expected all the time, there's grit everywhere and all is good. I got to Glenorchy with it still snowing and approached the girl at the info centre/supermarket - it's a very small town - to find out where I needed to go.

What I'm about to tell you is a secret, and if it gets out then heads will roll, so don't tell anyone okay? Okay. Here's the secret - in the country of New Zealand...home to majestic scenery and famous for the Lord Of The Rings sets...in the town of Glenorchy...THE place to see the best of those sets...a town with nothing else to offer tourists...in the tourist information centre...which should be full of information on those sets...works a girl...WHO'S NEVER SEEN THE FILMS!!! AND HAS NO IDEA ABOUT ANY OF THE SETS!!! HAAAA HA HA HA HAAAA!!!!

You couldn't script it any better. Well, after looking at me as if I was the idiot for asking such a question...in an information centre...in Glenorchy...she pointed to a place called Paradise on the map and said that whatever it was I was looking for, it must be there. I swiftly pointed out that the road to Paradise was marked with a dotted line, meaning it wasn't a properly kept road, but she thought it would be fine for a campervan - 'but watch out for the stream crossing'. I decided that out of her two roles she was a better shop worker than information provider, but I took the road anyway under the knowledge that if it got a bit rough I could just turn back.

The main road was okayish, prett snowy but driveable, but when I turned off and took the track to Paradise it started getting pretty thick with snow and I swiftly decided that I shouldn't be there. I drove on for a bit and eventually spotted a part of the narrow track that looked just about wide enough to pull off a manouevre - steer to the left...reverse...drive forward...drive forward...drive forward...oh.

I was stuck. In the thick snow. In the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the road. Sideways on. Blocking the whole track. I had no phone signal. I was on my own. If someone came along to save me they would probably drive straight into me as I was sandwiched between two turns.

Oh. My. God.

After a quick panic attack the brain started to kick in and I got down on my hands and knees and dug some of the snow out from under the wheels and, cold and soaking wet, realised how I could get out of this. Since I was on my own I couldn't go to the back and push, but fortunately the van is an automatic so I opened the drivers door, stood outside by the steering wheel, released the handbrake and stuck it in low gear whilst pushing. And it moved - very nearly into the ditch off the road. I got it into reverse just in time, and nearly repeated the mistake on the other side of the road, but eventually and with a huge amount of luck I'd managed to slide the car into a position where it wasn't stuck and I was facing far enough to the left that I could drive back the way I came.

Wow, what a little adventure. And you know what? Had I found anything in Paradise, the clouds were so low and the snow was coming down so heavily that I probably wouldn't have been able to see anything anyway. The things you do...

I needed a breather so I went back to my campsite in Queenstown, did some washing including my newly filthy and wet clothes, and got ready to leave for Fiordland in the morning.

Haast, Wanaka & Queenstown remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I needed a good rest and Westport looked like just the place to get it. Not a huge amount to do there but I figured I only needed one night to recharge my batteries and get back on the road.

It was a bit late when I got there - again the drive took ages - and I needed to restock on food so after the usual info centre stop I went for a good old shop around the local supermarket. After spending an absurd amount of time squeezing everything into my cupboard and fridge (yep, just one cupboard in my van) I realised it was really quite late and set off in search of a cheap campsite.

I didn't find a cheap one - there's only 2 and they're both quite pricey - but beggars can't be choosers and I'd already decided that I'd happily pay for power every night just for the warmth of my plug-in fan heater. Well, that night the money wasn't well spent - I woke up absolutely freezing at 4am with no noise coming from the heater. It had died. I was so cold that I didn't even want to get out from under my duvet so I just stayed there in a semi-sleep until it was light, then rang the rental company who told me they'd give me my money back if I bought a new one and kept the receipt. I bought one from town and then decided that while I was there it was about time I updated my internet stuff - 4 hours later I left the internet cafe with photos uploaded and diary entries almost fully up to date. Yes, that's how long it takes to do these things so sorry if I go for long periods without any updates. It's also a pretty expensive business at almost £3 an hour in many places.

Time was really getting on again and I still hadn't seen the town's attractions, so I decided to see those and stay one more night. A quick 15km drive took me to a place called Cape Foulwind, home to a lighthouse an, more importantly, another seal colony. Apparently the males are pretty rampant beasts - the same ones service the females here as well as at Abel Tasman and Kaikoura on the east coast. Impressive stuff. Another little factlet, this time about the females - at Abel Tasman most of the mothers undergo a daily 100km round trip to get food for their pups. That's commitment for you. Seal colonies are usually found in safe havens as their pups are defenseless most of the time; the downside to this being that there's no food to eat in the area. I certainly hope the seals at Westport don't decide to up and leave as they're immaculately signposted at ervy turn from about 20km away - I guess they're pretty well settled.

Another night in Westport so I went for the holiday camp right by the seal colony. Now, do you think it's a good idea to sleep in a fairly flimsy campervan in a place called Cape Foulwind, right by the sea? Well it wasn't too bad at all actually, surprisingly enough, although it was pretty rough in the day.

It's quite a long way to Franz Josef, my next stop, so I took a look at Punakaiki and Greymouth to break up the journey. Punakaiki boasts pancake-style layered rocks along the seafront, as well as beautiful ocean views. Greymouth however was really just a small hick-ish town with not a lot going fo it as far as I could see. The drive itself was spectacular - I couldn't go for more than 15 minutes without stopping and taking pictures - and before I knew it I was on the Glacier Highway heading towards some snow-capped mountains...

Franz Josef & Fox Glaciers

More brilliant naming conventions here. The Franz Josef glacier is known as Ka Roimata o Hinehukatere in Maori, but a German explorer didn't like that much and dedicated it to the Austrian Emperor instead. No doubt the Maoris loved that one. And the Fox Glacier is even better - Te Moeka o Tuawe in Maori but when Sir Edward Fox, then prime minister, visited the glacier in 1872 he liked it so much that he put through a petition to name it after himself. What a modest and shy chap.

A glacier is simply defined as a large body of ice that moves slowly over time. They're usually formed between high, snow-capped mountains and over time they melt and then reform, giving the impression that they're 'moving'. The Franz Josef Glacier is pitched as the fastest moving glacier in the world, moving at a rate of 10 metres every year. That might not sound a lot but in the last 250 years it's moved 2.5km - there's a sign on the way to the glacier showing where the ice wall used to be.

I paid for a half-day hike up the Franz Josef glacier and just checked out the Fox Glacier and nearby Lake Matheson the next day. I really enjoyed the hike, well worth the £35 I spent on it, and our guide (bizarrely a chap from Swindon) was excellent and very informative. And near the township of Fox Glacier you can go to Lake Matheson and see New Zealand's tallest mountains - Mount Cook and Mount Tasman - reflected in the water. Very nice indeed.

One last chance to do a skydive so I rang the company on the evening of the 10th and they told me to check with them at 7:30am as rain was forecast all week and they wouldn't take anyone up if the weather was bad...

Skydive!

Obviously some good news - when I rang the company at 7:30am I was told to get a shifty on and get to the airstrip as soon as possible as some dodgy weather was coming in. So in no time at all I threw on some clothes and made the very short journey over there; before I knew it (after signing a declaration and filling in some next-of-kin details) we were cramped up in the tiniest of planes, me strapped to a Hungarian instructor and an American girl strapped to the Kiwi that runs the joint.

I really wasn't nervous at all, just a tad uncomfortable in the back (those straps intrude where they shouldn't) and excited about jumping out, but at the same time trying to remember everything that we'd been told to do in a quick hurried sentence before take off. We flew around above the glacier and the two big mountains - Mount Cook and Mount Tasman - for about 10 minutes and then all of a sudden, before anyone could possibly say 'no, stop' I was wearing gloves, goggles and a hat and we were jumping out of the plane.

I wasn't sure how it would be in terms of breathing, and it really was quite weird. At first I tried to breathe through my nose, as instructed, but I found that a bit tricky; then I tried breathing through my mouth which really is a bad move as you get that classic wobbly cheeks syndrome and it doesn't work at all. So, back to breathing through the nose again, and then almost holding my breath completely as we passed through a cloud which didn't seem to do anything at all - no sensation, no difference at all. Surprising. And then the parachute came open, I could breathe normally again and the views hit me - absolutely stunning, a few dodgy stomach moments as the instructor sent us round in a few spinning circles, and then pretty soon we coming into land. I lifted my legs up as I'd been told for the landing, stood up and wondered where the last 30 minutes of my life had gone.

I bought a small selection of photos but didn't go for anything spectacular like my own free-falling photographer or DVD - and the whole thing cost me about £140. But what an experience!! Totally worth it, not sure if I'll do it again but I wouldn't rule it out.

I left the airstrip and couldn't believe that it wasn't even 9am yet, so I checked out the Fox Glacier and Lake Matheson (previous entry), went to the internet cafe and then left for Haast.

Glacier Country remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Finally I've arrived at the south island - it's been hard work so far but hopefully it's been worth it. The south island is prized as the top attraction in New Zealand and most people recommend a ratio of 3:1 in terms of time spent on the two islands which is pretty much what I'm doing. Highlights include the stunning Abel Tasman National Park, the amazing Franz Josef and Fox glaciers, skiing and snowboarding at Queenstown and Wanaka, the beautiful Milford and Doubtful Sounds and whale watching and swimming with dolphins at Kaikoura. So, lots to be done, and I'll see if I can squeeze that skydive in somewhere too.

The ferry journey was pleasant enough, 3 hours in total, and I arrived in Picton to be greeted with a bit of sunshine whuch I barely recognised at all. I wanted to make good use of it - it would probably disappear again soon - so I drove straight to Blenheim for a very swift wine tasting session (the Marlborough Region is another big wine producing area) and then set off for Nelson to make base for a few days.

Nelson is a nice little city (town by UK standards), very quaint with an attractive bay and a compact city centre. After a look around that centre and a bite to eat it was getting on a bit and I was shattered from the early start and long drive (and the wine earlier) so I settled down at a campsite and got to work on some of my long-overdue diary entries.

Despite it raining all night I woke up to beautiful sunshine, so no time to waste...my next target was Nelson Lakes, which surprisingly turned out to be 90km south of Nelson and going away from my next point, Abel Tasman National Park. Nevermind, I did the drive anyway and the whole way there I watched as ominous looking clouds loomed ahead of me - bad choice of destination. Ho hum, well at least I got a few nice rainbow pictures out of the journey! Apparently the lakes usually have pretty poor weather due to the surrounding mountains so maybe it wasn't such a bad move after all.

It was all very time consuming - the drive took ages around windy mountain roads - and after a look the WOW Collectable Cars Museum I decided to stay in Nelson for one more night before heading off to Abel Tasman the next morning.

Abel Tasman National Park

Not a huge amount of luck weather wise on this trip so far but I picked a cracking time to visit this protected reserve. I had two days in total and each day had sunshine and a cool temperature, a bit cloudy on day two but I wasn't about to complain. The park was founded in 1942 - it was previously just a remote village with a few houses scattered here and there - and is now a hugely popular place for walkers and kayakers. Despite being 22,350 hectares (that sounds a lot to me) it's the smallest of New Zealand's national parks.

I arrived at Marahau, where I'd decided to make base, at 11am and after some brief deliberation about what to do I decided to walk up to Anchorage (almost 5 hours) and get a water taxi back, and then get a water taxi to Tonga Bay in the morning and followed by a walk down to Anchorage, with yet another water taxi back down again - that way I could cover the whole of the southern track in two days as well as the seal colony on Tonga Island (apparently the water taxi would stop there on the way to Tonga Bay).

In total I did about 9 hours walking over the two days at quite a pace, which is a lot for someone who doesn't like walking. The paths were fairly easy but the bits that caught me out where the little tracks down to the beaches - the walk (more like climb) back up absolutely killed me, particularly just above the knees, and on both days I was pushed for time so I had to really get my skates on. I never thought I'd end up sweating on the south island of New Zealand in winter but I sure did.

Anyone who's seen my pictures on Facebook will have a good idea of what the park is all about - peace, tranquility and scenery. And lots of it. There's hardly anyone about, although apparently it's pretty busy in the summer; the biggest camp on the Tonga to Anchorage track was occupied by just two ducks. It was all very surreal and I found the 9 hours spent walking just flew by (with the exception of the steep uphill bits). If you want to take a break from it all and lose yourself for a while then you could do worse than this place. A lot worse.

Well, I was absolutely knackered after that, my back hurt from carrying a rucksack about, my knees ached and my left hamstring was sore and tight. Time to stay off the tracks for a few days I think.

Before I end this entry, here's a strange phenomena for you - the naming of places. In Australia you find small towns and creeks that have Aboriginal names, yet most of the places have European ones. On top of that a high percentage of towns, bays, points, lakes and mountains are commonly named after the same people - for example, Lachlan Macquarie, a governor of New South Wales in the 19th century, has over 3,000 things named after him in Australia, many of which he never visited or even knew anything about. And New Zealand has its own strange way of doing things - mostly Maori names but European ones for the major cities (e.g. Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch). And get this - the forgotten man of old world discovery, Abel Tasman (he got to Australia and New Zealand long before Captain Cook), never actually set foot on the reserve which now holds his name. And neither did Cook - that honour went to Dumont d'Urville in 1827 who carefully mapped out the whole area. And yet they named it Abel Tasman National Park - go figure.

More strange naming conventions to come, there's some corkers lying around New Zealand.

Marlborough Region & Abel Tasman National Park remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Rotorua really is a fascinating place. It lies in the Taupo volcanic zone and is nicknamed Sulphur City; it's famous for its geothermal activity and is one of the major tourist attractions in New Zealand. It also has 17 lakes which must be some sort of record. And let's not mess about, there's a simple fact about Rotorua that needs to be stated - it stinks. Really, really stinks. A rotten, eggy, farty smell fills the air and at times makes you gag; okay, so it's just sulphur and other gases and it's natural, but sorry you wouldn't catch me living there or even hanging around for a while.

Fortunately I only had a day there although don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed my time there.

I'd read a few things about Rotorua but I had no idea that the whole town would actually be so weird. I went past and subsequently checked out a place called Kuirau Park, near the town centre, which was full of boiling, bubbling, steaming, stinking natural pools; people's gardens have steam rising from them, and presumably their houses smell as a result; all very odd. My campsite offered free thermal baths which I duly tried out, and as enjoyable as they were I didn't enjoy getting out of them into the cold.

In the morning I left Rotorua and headed for Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland, on the way to Taupo (my next stop). The entry fee was worth every cent, $25 (about £10), the place is amazing and certainly not something you could ever see back home. The whole volcanic region is certainly still active and it's something to behold - bubbling mud pools in deep craters, spectacularly coloured lakes, green waterfalls and a strange warming heat around the whole place. The highlight was the Lady Knox Geyser which erupts for about an hour every day at about 10:15am. I missed the beginning but apparently its punctuality is forced a little by some organic soap, which slightly took the edge off it for me when I found out. Mighty impressive all the same.

Next stop is the home of the volcanic area, Taupo.

Taupo & Tongariro

Taupo is a small town off the shore of the massive Lake Taupo. The lake itself has a perimeter of almost 200km and is in fact a crater created by a massive eruption almost 30,000 years ago. The most recent eruption was about 2,000 years ago and was one of the most violent eruptions in the world in the last 5,000 years ago, covering the sky of virtually the whole planet with volcanic ash.

Taupo also boasts a dynamic outdoor scene and in fact rivals Queenstown on the south island as New Zealand's activity centre. Handgliding, parasailing, bungy jumping, skydiving and tearing around the lake and waterfalls in a high powered jetboat are all popular activities here and I had my heart set on doing a skydive here as it's one of the best and cheapest places in New Zealand.

Unfortunately this wasn't to be - once again I was scuppered by the weather. I rang all three skydive operators and all of them told me to wait until the storm had passed as there was no way they could take anyone up in this weather. Marvellous. So, I drove around for a bit, had a look at the Huka Falls and Lake Taupo, then settled down for the night and had a think about what to do next.

I decided to go to Hawkes Bay on the east coast and then come back to Taupo and see if the weather had improved. Fast forward a few days and... it hadn't improved so I gave up and checked out Tongariro National Park, thoroughly depressed.

Fans of the Lord Of The Rings films will know they were shot in New Zealand, and those avid buffs (or those who've visited New Zealand) will know that Mount Tongariro is in fact Mount Doom in the films. Well, I may as well have just stayed in my van all day and watched the films as I couldn't see a thing through all the clouds and rain in the air! Fantastic!!! Fortunately the park has two other mountains - Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu, the latter being the bigger of the three - but just as unfortunately I couldn't see those either. Oh yeah. How utterly, utterly, headbangingly frustrating. More storm-related updates to come, in the next one I'll let you know how I got on in my quick escapade in the Hawkes Bay area, and how much rain there was there.

Hawkes Bay

Rain, rain, go away. Seriously, I mean it. The constant hammering of rain on my van is driving me insane. I can't step outside without getting totally soaked through. My clothes are muddy and so is my van. I can't do anything. I can't see anything. I can't take pictures. Nothing. Talk about a disaster of a trip.

Anyway, Hawkes Bay is a big wine area and although I don't particularly like it I tried out a couple of wineries - well at least they offer something to do indoors. All very pleasant stuff, I was the only visitor at both tours and at the first one the guy left me with 10 bottles of wine for tasting while he took a 30 minute phone call! Ha!! I bought a bottle of white from both although they didn't last long at all thanks to my new found depression. I've actually never had a problem with drinking on my own.

I stayed in Napier that night and then took a look around Hastings the next day. I stayed in a place called Clive overnight and in the morning I heard a big commotion from a few vans down and on closer inspection... it was the girls! And they were stuck again, only this time they'd left the handbrake on whilst trying to reverse out. I had a quick chat with them although they didn't seem too keen, and to be fair neither was I, so I left them to it and headed off to Tongariro after two more thoroughly uneventful days.

Wellington

Windy Wellington, so named because of the winds generated by the Cook Straight that separates the two main islands, is located right at the bottom of the north island and is the capital of New Zealand, boasting a population of just 400,000 people.

I didn't come to New Zealand to check out all of its small cities and towns - in fact I'm pretty fed up with them already - but I have to say I liked the look of Wellington, much more than Auckland. I can't quite put my finger on why but it's a compact, picturesque little city with just enough life about it to keep you interested. It also seems busier than Auckland, although that's not hard as Auckland seemed like a ghost town at times; presumably its smaller size explains that.

I spent the previous night in a place called Palmerston North to break up the journey - that's as much as I'll say about that place - and so I only had a day in Wellington before catching the ferry to the south island at stupid o'clock. I spent my time there driving around the one way system looking for the info centre, going up on Mount Victoria for some nice views of the city and also checking out the Botanical Gardens (I got severely lost on the way there trying to take a sneaky shortcut). Thanks to my inability to navigate the one way system (why aren't they ever marked on maps?) I got to see most of the city in a relatively short period of time. Anyway, that was Wellington and after a 20 minute drive to get to the only campsite in the area I settled in and prepared for my ferry journey in the morning.

As this is the capital city I'll throw in some history. The word 'Maori' basically means 'ordinary person' or 'native', and 'Pakeha' basically means 'white skinned gentleman'. During the 1800s tribes were split between Maoris and Pakehas, with many tribes needing to take Pakehas for their skills with farming, hunting and building (and also their muskets) - in fact a chief of a tribe containing Pakehas was deemed to have more 'mana' (power, respect etc) than a chief without any. And that's how Europeans first started settling in New Zealand - by integrating with the Maori tribes. Compare that with Australia where they just started slaughtering the Aborigines and took over the country, although it probably says more for the advancement of the Maoris as a people than any sort of moral improvements by the Europeans. More boring history later, I promise.

Rotorua, Taupo, Hawkes Bay & Wellington remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I'd taken a copy of the route guide from the girls that a travel agent had given us for free and the first suggested stop was a small sticky out bit of land, north east of Auckland, called the Coromandel Peninsula. Funnily enough the girls had poo-poo'd it as not being interesting so after spending a fortune on foodstuffs I headed straight for it, happy that I was doing something different to them.

It was a good move. The weather had brightened up and sure there was nothing to do there, but that's not all New Zealand has to offer - try the scenery for size too. Stunning, rolling green fields set on a backdrop of coastal edges or lakes as far as the eye can see; winding paths and roads up the hills that give fantastic views of the jagged landscape. I stayed at a place called Thames the first night but only after visiting Kennedy Bay on the north east of the peninsula, a very quiet and remote place which required me to take the van over a 15km gravel path to get to. In all honesty I doubt I was allowed to do that but hey I made it there and back and the van was still in one piece.

The following day, still full of beans at the start of my new adventure and inspired by the newly found sunshine, I decided to something utterly crazy - take the 6 hour trek to the Pinnacles, an activity on the 'Must-do top 100 things for Kiwis' list. Okay, hardly a claim to fame but if ever I was going to climb a mountain it might as well be today. I packed a bottle of water and some food in my rucksack and set off at 11am, in a little bit of a hurry as I needed to get back before dark.

Now, let me clear something up - I hate walking. Hate it. How on earth people can say they enjoy difficult, steep, tiring walks is totally beyond me; I despised every step of that awful trek and am still having nightmares about the flaring pains in my legs and knees. Sure, the views at the top were incredible, breath-taking even and worth every agonising step, but after seeing a helicopter land near the top I decided that there must be better ways to do this sort of thing.

I planned to go to Hot Water Beach the next day where you dig a hole in the sand and sit in your own little hot puddle, but before finding somewhere to stay I stopped at a petrol station where I was warned about an incoming storm that was going to hit the Peninsula really badly. I needed to go to the info centre anyway to find out about tide times at Hot Water Beach so I checked the forecast with them and indeed there was a bad storm coming in - one of the worst in recent history apparently with gale force winds of over 80mph - so I decided Hot Water Beach wasn't worth the risk and promptly took the journey across to the west of the island to Hamilton. I drove round the city for ages trying to find somewhere to camp but without a map, and at night-time, that's pretty hard to do in a city so I eventually settled for a university car park and slept. Not the best choice on a Friday night but beggars can't be choosers.

Little did I know at this point that although I'd escaped the initial eye of the storm it would still manage to plague me for the next 8 days - in fact pretty much my entire trip around the north island.

Hamilton & Raglan

Hamilton is the largest inland city in New Zealand, boasting a simply staggering 150,000 people (about the size of Basingstoke, just smaller than Milton Keynes). Yep, it's pretty small by UK standards, but then again most places are in New Zealand - there are just 4.5 million people in the country compared to 45 million sheep. My Lonely Planet guide didn't have much to say about it, and what it did involved mostly outdoor activities, so what is there to do in Hamilton when it's lashing it down with rain? The storm had hit, and not much was the answer.

I checked into a campsite pretty early after escaping the car park without a fine - I was actually pretty close to finding it without a map, it was only a few streets away - and after getting drenched at a bus stop waiting for a bus to the city centre that never came I went back to my van and watched some Family Guy episodes and a few films.

And that was my day.

No more time to waste so the next morning I went to Hamilton Gardens on the way to Raglan. The rain had eased off a little and the gardens were okay, fairly bland though as no flowers were in bloom, but Raglan was even more unspectacular and boasted even crappier weather. I decided immediately to give up on this area of the country and after getting very muddy tramping up the very average Four Brothers Scenic Reserve I set off for Rotorua, hoping for better weather.

The Coromandel Peninsula, Hamilton & Raglan remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Bro. That's the easiest way to spot a Kiwi from an Aussie - every sentence seems to end in Bro. Hey Bro. Sweet as Bro. See ya later Bro. Men talking to men. Men talking to women. Women talking to women, everyone says it. Obviously those of Maori and Aboriginal descent are easy to spot, but another way to tell the difference is their pronunciation of i's and e's; in New Zealand 'is' is pronounced 'eez' and 'yes' is pronounced 'yeeez'. Or something like that. You have to hear it to know what I'm talking about.

So, 6 days in Auckland before myself and the three girls set off for our road trip around the cold and rugged dual islands of New Zealand. We'd booked a 4 berth camper van through a small but cheap company complete with hobs, grill, kettle, toaster, microwave, heater, shower, toilet and complimentary TV for just £6 a say each, not bad at all even with fuel and campsites added on.

Lisa and I had 3 days before the other 2 girls arrived from Fiji and that time was spent planning, doing a bit of shopping, visiting the museum which was interesting enough but also a little too big, taking a ferry to Devonport and walking up Mount Victoria (an extinct volcano), and finally going up the prominent but slightly disappointing Sky Tower for some views of the city.

I'd been expecting some pretty cold weather after reports of -10 degrees in the south island but Auckland, near the northern tip of the north island, is surprisingly just cool and a bit nippy in the evenings. Still, warm clothes would be needed later so a trip to a cheap shop called The Warehouse led to a complete stock-up without spending an obscene amount of money.

I met the other 2 girls - Sarah and Lydia - with Lisa over a drink or six in our hostel bar the night they arrived. They're both 20, from Leeds, and are engaged to each other. Lisa met them in Africa on her way to Australia. They're a bit different from you're everyday Jo...they look very young, act very young and are always either arguing or are all over each other in a pretty embarassing way. Over the next few days we did a bit more shopping and went to Rangitito, a Hauraki Gulf island just north of Auckland. Rangitito is a 'presumed' extinct volcano that was the scene of a massive eruption about 700 years ago. We took the hour long (and steep) track to the summit, enjoyed the views of the city and the other gulf islands and then strolled back down to get the last ferry via some dark and narrow caves. Judging by the pictures I've seen of New Zealand this was a pretty gentle introduction to some of the walking and scenery to come in the next month or so.

A few notes about Auckland. Although Wellington is the capital of New Zealand, Auckland is well known as the major city. It has a population of approximately 1.5 million, 11% of which are Maori, 55% are European descendants, and 34% are other foreigners. It has two harbours, about 50 extinct volcanoes and is closely situated to the Hauraki Gulf islands (you can get 30 minute ferries from the end of Queen Street, the main street in the city centre), which are very popular visiting spots for tourists and locals alike. Waiheke island, the most visited of all the Gulf islands, is home to some nice scenery, lots of posh artists and museums and some of the best wineries in New Zealand; wine tours are frequent but also expensive. We didn't have time to visit it, opting for the cheaper, smaller and more adventurous Rangitito instead, which is a shame but not one I'll worry about given the vast array of better stuff to do in the rest of the country.

I'll leave this entry on the night before we picked up the van...we went to watch some truly dreadful stand-up acts at the local Comedy Club - it was 'first-timer' night (and hopefully their last) - and then retired about midnight with excited anticipation...

Northland

The Northland lies on the north west of the north island, above Auckland, and has a subtropical climate. A deep Maori culture is steeped throughout; for example, at the peak of the north at Cape Reinga they used to send their dead out to sea on rafts. Among the highlights of the Northland are the Bay of Islands, diving at the Poor Knights island (rated amongst the top 10 in the world), Doubtless Bay, 90 Mile Beach, Cape Reinga and the Waipoua Forest, home of the biggest tree in New Zealand (a very old kauri tree called Tane Mahuta).

Our trip started with a taxi ride to the rental depot, near the airport, which the rental company paid for. After spending ages doing the usual checks we piled our stuff into the van and I sat in the driver's seat ready to go; as a free extra they's given us a portable TV which we thought might be useful, but unfortunately no-one remembered to secure it and as soon as I pulled away it slid off the side and smashed on the floor. Great start. I drove straight up the coast to Paihia, near the Bay of Islands, and we stopped at a campsite in a place called Haruru Falls. Unfortunately the power in the van didn't work so in the morning we decided to move and the van and try a different power supply, but due to all the rain that had fallen we were quickly wheel spinning and then moments later well and truly bogged in. All in all, not the best start to the trip. And it was raining too. The owner came down to help us get out with his two sons but to no avail, until finally someone spotted us from across the falls and came all the way round to tow us using their 4x4. We checked the power on another outlet - it worked - and 2 hours later than planned we were on our way with Lisa behind the wheel stalling the van at every opportunity.

We were hoping to get up to Cape Reinga that day but we'd lost too much time so after checking out Doubtless Bay - a bit gloomy and not very interesting - we stopped for the night in Kaituia, still a bit of a trek from Cape Reinga but about as close as you can stay without going the whole way. The next morning we set off and, well, Cape Reinga was a bit of a disappointment to say the least. Low hanging clouds and fog obstructed all our views which are apparently spectacular, and most of the area is under maintenance with cones and tape stretched out all the way across the entrance and the first part of the lighthouse path. And, to add insult to injury, even the tacky little signpost near the lighthouse that points to places across the world had been vandalised, leaving just a post.

It was Sarah's turn to drive so I sat in the back and carried on reading my new book, the Penguin History of New Zealand, from which I learnt far more about Cape Reinga than I did from visiting it. Pretty soon we were lost trying to find the way to the Waipoua Forest and so I laid back and gave Sarah and Lydia a chance to right their wrong by getting us back on track. Unfortunately they failed by not only trying to take the wrong road but even failing to find that one and taking us away from our destination and into the middle of nowhere. After 3 more hours of driving around and wasting petrol Sarah pulled into a layby for the night with my enthusiasm for the trip at a very low ebb. After another evening of not getting on with the couple from Leeds and generally not wanting to be there I made an executive decision to get the hell out of that van and make different plans. I just can't spend 6 weeks of my life doing something I hate.

The next day I drove us the rest of the journey to the forest and we checked out Tane Mahuta, king of the forest, and it was certainly impressive. It's between 1,000 and 2,000 years old and Maoris believe it is responsible for all life. Not sure about that one but it's a massive tree alright. Next stop was Waitingi for a look around the Treaty Grounds where Maoris agreed to British sovereignty back in 1840, although if you looked into the treaty you'd see that they were actually duped by a pretty poorly translated version which differed from the English version in some very important areas (I'll bore you with more history in later updates). The Treaty Grounds were fairly interesting, although nothing more than that. Finally we decided we'd had enough of Northland and the crummy weather (I certainly had anyway) and so I drove towards Auckland with plans in my mind to stop off in Orewa the next morning, just north of Auckland, and see the 3 girls I met on the Whitsunday Islands in Australia. When we reached Te Hana I veered inside of someone who suddenly decided he wanted to turn right into a petrol station, and then just as quickly changed his mind and turned back to the left, catching the rear drivers side of our van and crunching the front left of his. What a plonker. After taking pictures, swapping details and inspecting the damage (not much wrong with our van, just a dented plate acting as a vent cover) we were on our way again.

We stopped in a layby for the night in the pouring rain and I told the girls that I'd be leaving them the next day. I decided to be tactful and not tell them that they got on my tits, but I think somehow they knew why I was leaving and had guessed that I might do this as I really was miserable as sin. Well, bring on the next day and a new chapter in the great New Zealand adventure.

New Beginnings

I had a great time in Orewa, we got trashed on the Saturday night playing drinking games and then went to a 70s/80s fancy dress bash at the bar Hollie works at, and then slobbed about on Sunday and ate pizza and rented a DVD. Perfect. On Monday I booked myself into a hostel in Auckland and the girls kindly gave me a lift down there, at which point I had a sudden sense of deja vu - on my own in a big city trying to work out what to do next. My energy levels were low and I didn't fancy putting in the effort needed to travel round on a party bus like the Kiwi experience so the next day I started hunting around for vans.

The girls in Orewa were going to be travelling too but for now they were working and saving some cash so I knew I was on my own for at least the majority of my trip, and pretty quickly worked out that I'd have to rent a van by myself. I wanted one with a power point and plug sockets to charge everything up so I eventually settled on a Jucy Cruiza for $32 a day (about £12) with a free ferry journey from the north to the south island thrown it, saving me about $100. That was clearly the best I was going to get do after a few days of downloading films and games to play on my own I was bored of Auckland pretty excited about having the freedom of doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.

A bit expensive but hopefully worth it...

Auckland & Northland remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Nadi

Fiji is a collection of islands, over 200 in total, although the top attractions are the main island, Viti Levu (home to the 2 international airports of Suva and Nadi), and the two groups of islands called the Mamanucas and Yasawas. Life in Fiji varies quite widely - most native Fijians are poor and live in run-down 'villages' which consist of little more than a few communal shacks which sometimes double up as homes and schools, whereas other parts of the country are developed and are usually home to money-making Fijian chiefs, expats or tourist resorts.

I arrived at Nadi airport with no plans other than a nights stay at a nearby hostel, Nomads Skylodge, which costs just £8 a night and is actually quite luxurious. My first impression of Fiji was of a lush, green, tropical and mountainous landscape, mainly given from the window of the plane; that changed a little bit as we drove through Nadi past a few derelict-looking shops with very shady types lurking outside. As always with places like this the roads were at times in appalling condition and the drivers are complete lunatics. I checked into my hostel, had a bite to eat and looked around for someone who looked approachable; I settled for some fairly dull conversation with a Dutch guy who liked walking and hiking. Fortunately some friends of his arrived soon after and things picked up a bit, and I staggered into bed feeling very tired just after midnight.

The next day I went to the hostel's travel desk and booked some packages to occupy my time in the next 3 weeks. I sorted out 3 days on Mana Island, a 7 day unlimited 'Bula Pass' which takes you around the Mamanucas and Yasawas, and a 7 days package featuring 3 nights on Robinson Crusoe Island (to the south west of the main island) and 4 nights at a new backpacker resort called Mango Bay, located on the south coast of the main island. My travels started the next day so I extended in the hostel for one more night and packed a small bag to take with me consisting of a few t-shirts, a wash bag, a towel and a few books. And the didgeridoo had to come with me, of course. After finding the bar occupied by a huge group of Americans playing drinking games I opted for an early night before leaving at 10 in the morning for Mana Island.

Mana Island

Most of the Mamanucas and Yasawas are pretty small in size, some of them little more than a few hundred yards, so comparatively Mana is a big island - it took me almost 3 hours to walk round it and take in all the sights. My package took me to the island on a tiny boat called the Mana Flyer which was full with about 12 people on board, although only myself and 2 other English guys went all the way to Mana - the others were dropped off at Walu Beach and Beachcomber Island, the party capital of Fiji. I was staying at Mana Lagoon Backpackers, one of three 'hostels' in close vicinity, so I said goodbye to the lads and checked into my digs.

Mana Lagoon is a pretty interesting place. There's a big room consisting of a bar and a 10 bed dorm room next door, and also a separate building a short walk away which holds another 10 bed dorm, a few private rooms and a couple of toilets and showers. The showers are actually just thin plastic pipes that dribble out cold water, and the lights inside rarely work, but what actually makes it an interesting place is that it's located slap bang in the middle of a local Fijian village, so you're effectively experiencing true Fijian life. Cool. There's a school nearby that you can visit and help out at whenever you want, and there's always a plethora of kids looking for attention on the beach and in the village - great fun but they always reminded me of my niece and goddaughter who are growing up back home.

Physically I had a tough time on Mana, spending more time than I'd have liked on the toilet. I'm not sure if it was the tropical heat, the food, the water or the booze but I lost my appetite pretty quickly and had little energy during my 3 days, which became 5 after I missed my early morning boat and decided to stay on for an extra few nights. Obviously I was having a good time there - the people and staff were great, the weather fantastic and the snorkelling on the surrounding coral was incredible. An added bonus was the appearance of an Australian of Aboriginal descent who tought me how to circular breathe on my didgeridoo, i.e. breathe through the nose while expelling air from your mouth - not an easy thing to do and I haven't fully mastered it yet.

After my 5 nights were up I was given a leaving song by the islanders, accompanied by the Aussie dude on my didge, and then it was time to leave and finally activate my Bula Pass, 2 days late.

Walu Beach

Taking the big Flyer boats from Mana Island doesn't leave you with much choice in terms of destinations. I didn't fancy Beachcomber, the party island, so I stopped at Walu Beach for 2 nights, still in the Mamanuca island collection. I'd purchased a 5 night accomodation pass to go along with my Bula boat pass and was surprised to see that my free accomodation was a luxury lodge all to myself with a huge hammock and hot tub outside. I was then equally unsurprised when a member of staff approached me an hour later to tell me that my accomodation pass wasn't valid at Walu Beach. Doh! Still, 35 pounds a night in a luxury resort with all your food thrown in seemed reasonable to me after 5 nights roughing it on Mana Island, so I decided to stay there for a couple of nights and waste a bit of my accomodation pass, as well as 2 more days of my Bula Pass - four days in and I'd only got on one boat. Never mind, I'm on holiday.

The resort seemed pretty empty - lots of staff and just 5 guests including myself. I got chatting to 2 girls from Guildford and soon realised that I'd spoken to them before on the Mana Flyer boat that took us out 5 days ago, and within 10 minutes we were playing filthy scrabble with a group of 4 Fijians sitting round us singing us songs and refilling our drinks at the first sign of getting near empty. I decided that I'd made a good choice.

Later that evening I had my first taste of Kava, the local drink made out of the root of the kava plant. It's basically a mild form of drug - it makes your mouth go a bit numb after one cup (half a coconut shell) and apparently can be halucenegenic if you drink enough of it, but there's no way I could ever do that as it tastes like crap. Muddy water would be the best description I could give it, which makes sense given that it's made from the root of an earthy plant. The Fijians love it, probably because you can make a huge bowl of it for about 40p and most Fijians can't afford beer - workers at hotels and resorts rarely earn more than a pound an hour and a smallish bottle of beer will set you about almost £2 in a bar. I could have a guess as to where the money goes, but it certainly doesn't go to the workers who make the places what they are. Fijians are generally incredibly friendly and happy people, and they have the most infectious loud and high-pitched laughs that I've ever heard. I think I'd be pretty happy too if I lived in paradise and never wanted for more.

I'm also yet to meet a Fijian who can't sing and play the guitar. On my second and final night it was one of the girl's birthdays and on his way past the maintenance guy picked up a guitar and sang the full version of the happy birthday song, which goes like this:

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Sarah
Happy birthday to you

Happy longlife to you
Happy longlife to you
Happy longlife dear Sarah
Happy longlife to you

May god bless you
May god bless you
May god bless dear Sarah
May god bless you

And all done with a huge cheesy grin throughout. Awesome. Next stop was Bounty Island, home to that wonderfully classy TV programme Celebrity Love Island.

Bounty Island

Take a handful of z-list 'celebrities', add a terrible plot and watch as a beautiful paradise island is transformed into a horrible mess of a TV show. That's unfortunately what happened to Bounty Island when ITV hired it out to make the dross that was Celebrity Love Island.

Just 2 nights on Bounty for me but at least I'd used my Bula Pass to get there and was also finally using a few nights from my accomodation pass, the only 2 nights I actually used. I bumped into one of the guys, Deano, from the first Mana flyer in my dorm room and we wasted no time in hitting the bar. At midnight everyone else had gone to bed and I lent Deano my wallet to go to the bar; he came back with 3 drinks each, namely a shot of black sambuca, a double vodka and coke and a black russian, one of my least favourite cocktails. Already wasted, I downed the sambuca and took a sip from my vodka and cocktail before stumbling off to bed, leaving him with my camera to give me evidence of him drinking them.

I got up in the morning to watch the second half of the Germany v Turkey match, and then laughed my hangover off when Deano appeared with a camera full of drunken evidence of the drinks being finished. Apparently he comes from posh stock so we grabbed a small catamaran sailing boat and set sail around the island, which turned out to be a bad move as the wind totally disappeared and we had to get off into the water to push the boat back to the shore, past everyone on the beach and by the pool. Smooth. A little later, after a very lazy effort by us on some kayaks, Deano's mate Tom from Mana Island arrived after four nights on Beachcomber, looking particularly subhuman and in my opinion vindicating my decision not to go there. I've never seen shakes and sweats like it, and after going to bed at 8pm he wasn't seen again until 11am the next day.

Back to Nadi the next day (after Spain v Russia in the morning), and to Nomads Skylodge in particular to say hello to Lisa who I'm travelling round New Zealand with, and then onto Robinson Crusoe island for 3 nights.

Robinson Crusoe Island

A 2 hour bus drive from Nadi to Robinson Crusoe jetty preceded a 20 minute boat ride through the mangroves to Robinson Crusoe Island. Typically my name wasn't down and I had a bit of hassle checking in, but I managed to get it done in time to grab some lunch and settle down on the beach for some sun and sleep. The tan was pretty much back by now so I was just trying to cement it on before the harsh cold of New Zealand. The evening's entertainment turned out to be the same every night - a series of Bula dances (the word Bula is used for almost everything in Fiji) followed by some pretty impressive machete and fire dances, the best I'd seen in Fiji. By the time I went to bed the generator had been turned off and I had to stumble into the 50 bed dorm room, find my bed in the dark and also pull down the mosquito net and climb into the top bunk within the net.

There are a lot of people travelling in Fiji and hopping around the islands, yet it's amazing how you keep bumping into the same people you've met before. Tom and Deano were on Mana and Bounty; I met a girl called Vicky in Nomads Skylodge who was in Lisa's room and she was also on Robinson Crusoe and Mango Bay; and on Robinson Crusoe I also met the three English girls that I shared a dorm room with in Cairns back in April. You're never really alone.

The next day I got involved with the coconut jewellery session and made myself a pretty cool ring, which I subsequently lost 3 days later on Mango Bay. Other people were making bangles and pendants so I decided to be a bit different; the trick is to file the fur off the coconut, saw off the top and then drill a hole in the side in increasing sizes. You then saw around the hole and sand it down to the right size before applying some varnish; it took about 2 hours but it gave me something useful to do.

The highlight of my stay was undoubtedly a trip to the mangroves nearby, the only things that can grow in salt water. I'd already kayaked all the way round the island earlier in the day with one of the girls, Crissy, and wasn't particularly fussed, but after a fair bit of nagging from the girls and 2 of the workers, Lex and Missy, I decided to throw a kayak in the boat and join them.

When we got to the mangrove patch Missy parked the boat up and we jumped out into our kayaks. Lex surged ahead and I tried to keep ahead of Missy behind me but the mangroves are tricky to navigate, with low-hanging branches that scrape your body and often try to claim your oar. After a pretty sharp u-turn I found Lex out of his boat and reaching down below the water to grab a slab of runny mud from underneath - this trip was actually a mudfight, unbeknown to me, and pretty soon it was girls against boys. Lex, Missy and I against Crissy, Kars and Sabrina; disgustingly good fun, I ended up caked in mud, including a couple of handfuls down my shorts, and eventually we headed back to show everyone what they'd been missing. We washed the boat, the kayaks and then ourselves in the sea before hitting the showers Robinson Crusoe style - buckets with rope pulleys.

One more journey to make before heading back to Nadi - a local bus to Mango Bay.

Mango Bay

The bus took almost 2 hours to get to Mango Bay but was worth it for the measly sum of £2.50. I was pretty tired so I upgraded from a dorm room to a safari tent, which worked out at £35 a night as I got 4 nights accomodation for the price of 3. The room was pretty decent, consisting of a double bed, 2 single beds, a safe, an ensuite bathroom and a big wooden veranda with a couple of hammock-chairs. Lisa arrived a few hours later and in the evening we joined a few people by the bonfire for some pretty childish truth-or-dare games, including two Canadian bimbos who were possibly the dumbest people I've ever met, despite recently passing their exams with straight A's. How easy must they be?

The next 3 days were spent sun-chasing - which involves moving your sun-lounger every 10 minutes to avoid the coconut trees - eating and drinking, and either watching or taking part in the activities that were going on. The highlights were egg-throwing, coconut bowling on the sand and a table-tennis tournament where the long-term residents got a chance to show everyone exactly what they'd been doing for the past few weeks.

Looking back, I'm not sure what the best place I visited was. Mana Island for the local taste of life; Walu Beach for luxury and being pampered; Bounty Island for a typical taste of backpacker activity on a small sand island; the fire dances on Robinson Crusoe; or the peaceful nature and beautiful scenery of Mango Bay. They were all great and completely different in their own way. One regret of mine is that I never got a chance to visit Monuriki, the island from the Tom Hanks film 'Castaway'. It was a £20 return trip from Mana Island but they cancelled it when I tried to go as there weren't the required minimum of 4 people wanting to go. The trip included food and a complete tour of the island including the cliff where he practices his suicide attempt, and the cave where he spends most of his time with Wilson.

One piece of bad news from Mango Bay - after taking some pictures for Vicky of her dive lesson my camera leaked some water and no longer works. I think - or hope - that it just needs a new battery as it won't charge, but for the time being I'm without a camera for the third time on this trip. Never mind, the main thing is that my memory card survived and I still have all my pictures. Four nights in Nadi remain before my flight to Auckland, and they'll be spent chilling, sorting out all my washing, uploading pictures, writing this blog and planning for New Zealand. For now it's Vinaka and Ni Sa Mothey from Fiji...take care everyone.

Bula from Fiji remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Ladies and gentleman, we have now crossed the border into New South Wales.

If the Gold Coast is Australia's answer to Florida then Nimbin is surely their answer to Amsterdam - without the red light district. It's a tiny little town with a single small street, but on that street lie herbal and hemp shops on either side with stoned old men everywhere offering everything under the sun to all the tourists and backpackers that visit every day of the year. We had great fun looking through all the gadgets and and 'herbal' remedies in the shops - some people have gone to great lengths to make drug products that look like other things. Bongs in the shape of Homer Simpson's head, pipes that look like metal credit cards and even smokeless bongs that are no longer than one or two inches and fit inside the palm of your hand. I won't go into any detail on this blog but we left the town as pretty 'fun guys'. Get it? We decided to book another motel for the night to eat our new toys and after only paying for three people and sneaking Sam into the room we settled down for some Family Guy episodes and...other stuff.

It was a great laugh, but back in reality the next day we were in the cold in a campsite and back down to three people again. Sam has run out of money and her parents are refusing to bail her out again, saying that they'll pay for her ticket home but nothing else. Sounds a little harsh but it's probably a good thing as it'll force her to actually do something but anyway she's staying in Byron Bay with a friend for a few days while looking for a job; should be interesting as she was supposed to be looking the previous day but instead just sat on Facebook for an hour messaging her friends. We went for a goodbye curry after a day by the beach (which is very nice) - I ate a Vindaloo - and then went back to our freezing tent to get some sleep before beginning the final leg of our journey to Sydney.

On a cheery note I came within inches of death in the morning before leaving the campsite. I went to the toilet to lose the vindaloo from the night before and while checking the toilet for spiders I looked to the left and saw a tiny Redback spider about 6 inches from my face in its web - one of the deadliest spiders in the world. Ho hum.

Coffs Harbour/Port Macquarie/Forster-Tuncurry

Hhmmm. The diary entries are really getting short now, and I'm covering several days at a time too. That's not a reflection on how I treat this blog, it's just a combination of our state of mind and the fact that the places we're visiting are really quite bland. Queensland was awesome; loads to see, loads to do and beautiful at the same time. New South Wales, however, doesn't quite fit the first two but almost fits the third - it's quite nice to look but that's it.

Jamie drove from Byron Bay to Coffs Harbour - the nearest place of any note - which was about 150km. Nothing of note there. I then drove to Port Macquarie the next day - about 150km again - and then swiftly followed that with another 70km to get to Forster-Tuncurry after realising it was a bit of a dump. There's a nice lake in Forster which apparently is green but looked fairly blue to me; it also boasts the second smallest cinema in the world, which we didn't go and look at. We're getting quite lazy now - Jamie and Dave didn't even bother to get their cameras out of the car today.

It's nearly over now. Tomorrow we plough on to Newcastle, the second biggest city in New South Wales, and then on Wednesday we finally arrive in Sydney - and attempt to sell the beast. And get a job!!

Some good news - I have 3 weeks free(ish) accomodation in Sydney, by the beach in Bronte (see my previous entry on the Bondi to Coogee walk). Ash, our old sparring partner who travelled with us fo the first few months, and his girlfriend Kelly are heading back to England for a holiday/relative's wedding and they've kindly offered to put the three of us up in their flat. Get in there!!

Talee/Newcastle

What a day!

We slept in a National Park near Forster-Tuncurry and watched the Godfather on the laptop, then sat watching several Family Guy episodes in the morning before starting to get ready to leave. I got chatting to an old Australian couple on the way back from the toilets and noticed Jamie and Dave playing with a bat and ball set we picked up for next to nothing in a reject shop somewhere. I was doing my best to act mature and grown up but in the background Jamie was throwing his bat at a big tree near our tent; the next thing I new he was climbing up it, and the old couple were watching with strange looks on their faces. Turns out that the ball had got stuck in the tree, and when he threw the bat at it the ball fell down but the bat stayed there. Ever heard the expression 'it will end in tears'? Well, it did...Jamie fell out of the tree and landed awkwardly on a big piece of wood below; he seemed okay so we laughed at him for a while, and then he pulled up his t-shirt sleeve to reveal a big hole in his arm near the armpit. Ouch. About a minute later the elderly couple were taking him to the nearest medical centre in Forster and Dave and I were packing up the tents to join them.

We thanked the elderly couple when we got there and then took Jamie to Talee, complete with a dose of morphine and fresh dressing, as that was the nearest place that could fix him up. We sat in the hospital for ages and eventually at about 2pm they took him to sort him out, and so me and Dave drove around Talee for a while attempting to steal wireless internet from people's homes. No joy though, and so at nearly 5pm we picked Jamie up - along with his 6 stitches (which doesn't sound like a lot for such a big and nasty wound) and painkillers - and I drove us to Newcastle for our final stop on the journey. No campsites in sight so we booked into a motel for the night, watched Jackass 2 in celebration of Jamie's stunt and then hit the sack for our final sleep.

You might be wondering where we get all these films and things from. We've bought a few DVDs on the way - the Godfather was a birthday present for Dave - but most of them are copied from people we've met along the way. We did very nicely out of Spotto in Mackay, and Johnny who was with us on Fraser Island and Noosa had pretty much the complete Family Guy episode list barring about 5 episodes. I've added about 4,000 songs to my iTunes collection too, so I'm doing very nicely.

Right. I have to drive to Sydney tomorrow as Jamie's arm is in bad shape - and Dave doesn't have a license - so I'm looking forward to crossing the Harbour Bridge for the first time...

Back In Sydney

We very nearly sold the car today. But first, a quick update on what's been going on.

Well, the car made it all the way to Sydney, which is a result to say the least. It was overheating massively when we arrived - perfect timing for Sydney city centre - but it got there and it still hasn't broken down to this day. Driving over the Harbour Bridge wasn't that great, and we had to pay for it; afterwards we checked into our temporary hostel, got our stuff together (haircuts, showers, shaves, clothes washed etc) and then had a think about selling the car.

We decided to put the car on the market for $2,500. We spent about $1,700 on it including all the camping equipment but seeing as we were anticipating a long stay in Sydney we thought it might be worth a try. A quick trip to the car wash - see picture - and then a long and painful trek around Sydney and its suburbs to put adverts up in the hostels and travel shops.

After 10 days we'd had zero calls, so we dropped the price to $1,500 and did the whole thing again!

Actually there was a reason for the drop in price. Two reasons, in fact. Firstly, I haven't had any luck in finding a 3 month IT contract in Sydney and have decided to move on - that decision is vindicated anyway by the fact that the weather is terrible here at the moment, raining 24/7. The second reason is that I took the car to a garage to have the overheating looked at and was informed (and showed) that there are two separate leaks; one in the water pump and a big one in the radiator itself. After receiving an offer of $300 from the garage we decided to adjust the price - these faults can join the following list which we already knew about:

- Oil leaking
- Odomoter not working (doesn't clock any kms)
- Demister doesn't work
- No reverse lights
- Exhaust blowing
- Hood lining in car needs re-attaching
- Power steering fluid leaking
- Faulty electrics (you have to whack the dashboard for the fuel gauge to work)
- Dodgy automatic gear changes from reverse to drive (sometimes stalls)

Nice. Well, as soon as we put the adjusted advert up we had a call from two Geordies asking to look at the car. They took it for a spin and loved it - it goes just fine and is powerful too (V6 3.8 litre engine) - but unfortunately they asked to see under the bonnet and were greeted by lots of steam and water gushing out from the radiator. Damn. No sale of course, but we did 'fix' the problem by flushing the coolant from the system using nothing more than a Swiss army knife and a drying up towel and adding some radiator stop leak. Thankyou Google, and thankyou to whoever put up the step-by-step guide along with clear photos.

So, we're still burdened by the car and I'm plotting the next step of my adventure. We're still staying at the flat in Bronte, which although free is a real pain as it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere, although there are buses to Bondi Junction every 15 minutes. Dave has got himself a fairly long-term job repairing power tools, while Jamie is in the same boat as me trying to find a short-term IT contract and has pretty much given up hope too - looks like a bit of bar work for him until he goes to New Zealand in a few months time. I haven't mastered circular breathing on my didge yet and my Spanish learning has stalled too, but I'm not giving up on either!

I hope everyone's well and enjoying their summer...I hear it's pretty rubbish in the UK too. What a surprise. And condolences to those who still work at HBOS - not just because you still work there but also the share price is laughable too.

I've no idea what my next update is going to be, or where from - if anyone has any good advice for travelling around Oceania and South East Asia then let me know!

The Last Leg...Nimbin to Sydney remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Time for another part of our package tour. Three days and two nights - although realistically two days and two nights - canoeing in the Noosa Everglades, with the usual sleeping in smelly tents in cold weather and rain, although the weather in the day was great. This trip just didn't have the same feel to it - we were tired of camping, the rain fell heavily and turned our campsite into a bog, all our stuff was left out and got drenched...cue a slight depression all round and thoughts of elsewhere other than Australia. Not even the goon could get us through it. The canoeing itself was nice and tranquil, good weather and as always we had our iPod speakers in the boat with us to liven things up a bit.

A few of the people from Fraser were at Noosa too. Brooke and Vicky started the day before but Johnny and Laura were doing the trip at the same time as us. I also recognised a few other people from various places in Oz - I particularly remembered a couple of hotties from a hostel in Sydney and a barmaid from Scruffy Murphy's, which happens a surprising amount when you're travelling around. Anyway, we chatted to a few people but left most of the group to themselves as we were tired and in all honestly really couldn't be bothered to socialise too much, and were really quite glad to be out of there and be back in 'free mode' - no dates and places to follow, just a map and an idea of where we'd like to go.

Coming soon will be Brisbane, Australia Zoo, Surfers Paradise, Byron Bay and Nimbin, as well as a few other things including an Aboriginal workshop where you paint your own boomerang for 10 bucks and get an hour's didgeridoo lesson. You can also buy a didge for 89 bucks and paint it yourself which I think I'm going to do - Dave actually bought one in Noosa for 139 bucks and took it with him on the trip. It was fun for a while but as none of us can play it that well it became a bit annoying after a while. It's only when you try and play one that you appreciate how difficult they are to play and listening to someone good gives a whole new viewpoint. We're hoping our lesson will get us going nicely.

Oh, and how about this for karma. We found an Olympus camera outside our tent on the final morning of the canoe trip and when noone claimed it as theirs at the site I claimed it as my own as a replacement for the stolen camera. It's 7.1 megapixels, sandproof and waterproof for 3 metres, and even fits my old camera battery charger perfectly. Get in there. I feel for whoever lost it but there's no way of giving it back so I'll happily look after it for the rest of the trip.

Next stop is real civilisation in the form of Brisbane - cue phone calls, emails and blog updates.

Brisbane

Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, sits close to the bottom of the state and is situated between two popular holiday destinations - the Sunshine Coast to the north and the Gold Coast to the south. It's the third biggest city in Australia with a population of just under two million people and enjoys good weather for most of the year; temperatures rarely drop below 20 degrees in the winter (although it's chilly at night) and often hits the 40s in the summer. It's only half an hours drive from Australia Zoo and doesn't have the ridiculous hustle and bustle of Sydney; from the brief time I spent there I'd have to say I quite like the look of it, it has everything you need and is pretty chilled out for a large city.

When we arrived in Brisbane we parked the car and strolled around the Botanical Gardens, and then wandered around the city centre for a while before heading off to try and find a campsite. This turned out to be a bad move; we'd left it too late and couldn't find any spaces in the few campsites that were still open. At about 9pm we pulled into a motel in a suburb called Oxley and decided to book ourselves in for the night - it was a lot pricier than a campsite would have been but it was all we could find and at least we'd be sleeping in warmth for once. After recharging everything, using 6 hours of internet time and getting a good nights sleep (as well as a Dominos takeaway) we set off at lunchtime to find a campsite and were a lot more successful this time; after doing all our washing we went back into the city again for more exploring and a few drinks. On Monday we tried to book ourselves in for the Aboriginal Workshop, part of our package deal, but the guy was sick and so we decided to take our free boomerangs and paint them ourselves back at the campsite. See below - they're pretty rubbish! Oh, I forgot to mention that I also bought myself a rather nice didgeridoo in the city centre. It's unpainted and light as a feather for its size, not to mention that it's very easy to play. So, I now have a didgeridoo and a boomerang.

On Tuesday we went to Australia Zoo and then stayed with someone that Jamie's dad knows through work in Brisbane. A very nice house, accompanied by a very nice barbeque and very nice booze, and then it was off the next day to the Gold Coast - in particular Surfers Paradise.

Australia Zoo

Not much to say really - a great day out, loads to see and pretty good value. For those that have been since he died - the staff no longer wear giant Steve Irwin heads.

Just a selection of pictures that are a bit different from the previous wildlife ones.

The Gold Coast

Blue skies. Beautiful people. Expensive shops and over-priced accomodation. High-rise tower blocks everywhere you look. Theme parks by the dozen. Welcome to the Gold Coast, Australia's answer to Florida. It even has a place called Miami; our own destination was Surfers Paradise, slated by most but loved by party animals. We had no idea what to expect really, but decided to give it a go and do things the true tourist way by going to Wet 'n' Wild water park followed by a night out in Surfers.

Wet 'n' Wild was great, a real blast and when the lifeguards weren't acting like Hitler I got to test out my new underwater camera on some of the rides. It cost just over £20 each but it was practically empty and we had the run of the park to ourselves. Fortunately we were astute enough to take our own lunch in rather than pay the inflated prices inside, and at about 3pm we set off for Surfers to try and get into a campsite within walking distance; alas, yet again to no avail - the two campsites that had what we were looking for were asking for over £30 just to give us a tiny bit of land to pitch our tents on in the freezing cold. We were never going to pay that so instead we found ourselves a cheapish motel again, quite a way from Surfers, and watched Team America on the laptop with a fair amount of wine before crashing out. Not the experience we were looking for but sometimes when you're travelling around like this things go that way. The next day we went into Surfers and I got some tips from a South American guy on how to treat and paint my didgeridoo, and also got some free bees wax from him in case I need to redo the mouthpiece. More freebies - see what happens when you genuinely show interest in something? Good things, that's what. After messing about in the Condom Kingdom shop we set off for Byron Bay, but not before a little detour to a rather infamous place called Nimbin.

Yet More Roadtrippin'...The Sunshine Coast & The Gold Coast remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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There were 11 people in our group, crammed into the car with three in the front and 8 in the back on benches facing eaching other so it was going to be a cosy trip and we'd certainly get to know each other - fortunately we had a good group, mostly from the UK but an American girl too. The other group from the hostel were mainly German but with a couple of Swedes and two Irish girls. A quick comparison of the groups - the previous day each group was given 220 dollars to spend on food supplies; we spent 80 dollars on food for the two nights and spent the rest on goon (cheap wine). The German group spent 200 dollars on food and basically had to pay for their own alcohol, which didn't look like very much. We brought back 10 tea bags and half a box of rice crispies; they brought back more food than we took in the first place. Amateurs. We also had four iPods, two sets of speakers and an iTrip; they had nothing and apparently sat there in silence with the odd conversation muttered in German. We drove past them at one point with our music blaring out and everyone drinking goon, including the driver, banging on the roof of the car and singing along; they didn't look particularly fondly at us and in fact seemed to deliberately avoid us for the whole trip, apart from two of the German guys who were certainly up for a party. I had a hangover on both mornings and they were well earned, let me assure you.

The roads on Fraser Island are, of course, just sand tracks and beaches - it's made entirely of sand. It gets pretty bouncy at times and we got stuck on a few occasions and had to use the shovel to dig us - standard fair and nothing compared to some of the pictures you see of cars wrecked in the washes. There were five drivers amongst our group and I decided not to bother as I wanted to kick back and party in the back. Apparently driving the car was great fun but I had a fine old time in the back anyway so I've got no regrets. Jamie and a guy called Andy did most of the driving but Sarah had a go and Sam took it for a quick spin too. The speed limits on the island are generally 50mph on the beach and about 25mph on the inland tracks so it's all about control and timing to get up the steep inclines without throwing everyone in the back into a big pile. I've certainly enjoyed more comfortable rides before and a few of the girls were sporting some pretty hefty bruises on their sides.

Life on the island is pretty tough; it's difficult to get anywhere because of the terrain, it's cold at night (at the moment), you can't go in the sea for all sorts of reasons and sand gets everywhere; it's also difficult to wash it off and indeed wash your pans and plates etc. because there's really only the sea to use unless you're near some of the bigger creeks or freshwater lakes. Speaking of which, Lake Mackenzie and Lake Birrabeen are some of the most beautiful spots I've ever seen - pure freshwater lakes that dazzle the eye and are simply fantastic to swim in, and they're the best wash you're going to get on the island.

Fraser is pretty famous for its dingo population. In case you've never really read about dingoes or seen them, you have to watch a video before you leave on how to be 'Dingo Safe'; basically never approach them, don't leave any food or rubbish out and stand still if they approach. There have been lots of attacks on humans over the years and a young boy was killed by a dingo on the island a few years back resulting in a bit of a dingo cull. Of course after drinking a bit of goon we spotted one and chased it around the toilets near Lake Mackenzie - pretty stupid but it seemed like fun at the time. We saw five dingoes in total, one of them was on the beach when we drove past it and proceeded to chase the van down the beach for a fair distance. Another piece of Australian wildlife added to the list.

After two nights of drinking, smoking and eating sand-covered food we were back in Pippies on Rainbow Beach and, after some deliberation about how much we were going to drink, I bought a 70ml bottle of vodka and drank it to myself. The place was trashed; we were up until about 3am which is amazing considering how little sleep we had the few nights before, and everyone felt it in the morning. We were due to drive to Noosa in the evening and do the canoeing the next day but eventually decided to sack that off and called to delay it by a day, then did the honourable thing off finding some spare beds in the hostel and staying the night for free, using the showers in the morning and eating the free breakfast. Oh, and hogging the two computers all morning as well just for good measure.

Fraser Island remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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On the 1st of May we stopped at Eungella National Park, where we saw a big carpet snake (tick 'see a big wild snake' off the to do list), and then on the 2nd we went to the small city of Mackay. Something unexpected happened there...

Just how many travellers get to hang out with true blue Aussie locals? You know the ones I mean. People who live in small towns in glorious sunshine, sitting in their yards drinking VB wearing straw hats, driving utes drunk around town and shouting at 'sheilas' in a language unknown to the English speaking world. Well, that's what happened to us - meet Spotto.

We first met Spotto at our campsite in Mackay; we'd just arrived and were putting up our tents when a loud Aussie guy stopped his ute and shouted 'Hey, where are you from?'; that was swiftly followed by a reach into his esky (coolbox), from which he literally threw us all a VB and instructed us to drink them. Meet Spotto.

A few beers later we'd been invited to join this lewd Aussie - sporting a straw hat over some dirty looking dreads and torn, paint-stained shorts - at his unit in the campsite. About an hour later he was back, asking why we hadn't come over and sporting another handful of VBs. After an excellent didgeridoo demonstration, and an intriguing altercation with a 16 year old kid who was walking past, we'd once again been invited over to his unit. We told him we'd be round after we'd eaten dinner; apparently crab was on the menu at his, which we politely declined.

As you may have gathered, Spotto isn't the sort of person to take no for answer. Half way through our dinner he was back in his ute, steaming drunk and with a few mates in the back. We were being chauffered to his place - time to join the party.

It was a small gathering - Spotto, us four and three of his friends - and it was centered around a large fire that was being constantly lit with a petrol can that at one point caught fire itself. Spotto himself was a little annoyed that one of his crabs had escaped and run off; after watching him down endless VBs, goon (cheap wine) and half a litre of black sambuca we decided to call it a night and head off to bed.

In the morning Dave nearly trod on the missing crab on his way to the toilet. We told Spotto where it was as he drove past and he seemed genuinely excited - apparently these crabs are worth 50 dollars a piece and he caught them all himself. Five minutes later we were armed with a hand-drawn map giving directions to Spotto's house. We called round a few hours later before heading off to Rockhampton and within another hour we'd agreed to stay for the night. But just the one night as we had to get going. Meet Spotto.

It soon transpired that this local, unkept, loud, intense and alcoholic Aussie was a millionaire, and his dad owns a boat worth a few million dollars. In fact, they co-own the campsite we stayed in the night before. Never judge a book by its cover.

I wouldn't describe Spotto as a fantastic person. He's rude, intense, obscene, aggresive, has a severe temper problem (he sees many shrinks and told us so) and has been in so many fights that his knuckles are closer to his wrists than his fingers. But I'll say this for him - he was open, friendly, entertaining, honest and genuinely 'stoked' about having four backpackers with him in a small place like Mackay.

After seeing the spectacular views from the Eimeo hotel we went back to Spotto's and carried on drinking; we slept on the floor (he has no furniture) without any curtains and when I got up at 7am I found that Spotto had been up for 2 hours already and was chatting to an old man across the road with about 10 dogs. Spotto then drove off in his ute, leaving us four alone in his house with his laptop, Bose speakers and wakeboard, and returned half an hour later with his friend Paulie, who we met briefly on Friday night. The two remaining crabs were to be cooked, and we were about to learn how to pick them up, cook them and eat them.

Queensland mudcrabs are big. Very big. And their pincers look...well, they look sharp. These two tough local Aussie guys who see crocs every time they get their boat were being very careful around them - I'd guess they can do some serious damage if they're in the mood. To pick them up you slide your foot along the floor from behind, then press their shell down with your toes; now that they're pinned you pick them up by their back legs from under your foot and hey presto, you're holding a pretty dangerous crab. Keep them cold, in a freezer if possible, before cooking them as it makes them dopey, and then boil them in salt water (preferably sea water) for about 15 to 20 minutes. When they're done, throw them in some ice and leave them for 10 minutes. Take them out, turn them upside down, rip out the ass and then wash the guts out in water. Tear up, dish out and eat. Yum yum.

We visited Paulie's house and checked out all the things he'd made from empty bottles of Bundaberg rum - a bar, walls, lights by his pool, even his dog is called Bundy - and then went on to the Eimeo pub to buy Spotto a few bottles of red wine before heading off. We eventually got away at about 4pm after many, many struggles and several 'one more' drinks. It was an experience, but this guy was trying to make us stay a LONG time; promises of crabbing the day after, a trip to the reef on his dad's boat, jobs, beds in his house - and it was all getting a bit too intense for four sleepy travellers trying to get down the East coast. We all took a big sigh of relief as we left Mackay, and also looked back with good memories and talked about how we were going to buy a didgeridoo. Next main stop - Town of 1770.

Town Of 1770/Hervey Bay

A lot of people we met on the East Coast that were heading in the opposite direction said that Town Of 1770 - yes, that's a strange place name - was worth a visit as there are a few pretty funky things to do there. Top of my own list was paying 50 bucks to fly a plane for a while; unfortunately we couldn't find any info on that so we decided to do the other main activity instead - riding around the town on 'scooteroos'.

For 50 dollars you get your own bike but as Dave and Sam were short on funds we paid 33 dollars each to share two bikes between the four of us. Amusingly the South African guy who runs the place asked me and Dave why we were sharing bikes and when we told him we couldn't afford one each he let us both have one anyway; mine also happened to be an uberbike that went faster than everyone elses, and we got given food at the end even though we didn't pay for it. All good. I'd never ridden a bike before but I really enjoyed it, you just cruise around the town for a few hours following him and he opens up on a lot of the roads to let you floor the bikes. Mine had a top speed of about 50mph which doesn't sound that fast but certainly feels it. At the end you watch the sunset - one of the only ones on the East Coast - and then ride back in the dark and get two free drinks at the local bar. A great day all round really, great weather and loads of freebies.

On to Hervey Bay next, where things took a turn for the worse. We went through Bundaberg and took a quick look at the rum factory (we didn't do the tour as it was expensive) and while we were there I snuck out and bought Dave a few DVDs for his birthday from the three of us and a card too. We wrapped them up and put them in my rucksack and in the campsite we nipped round the corner to cook some food, got fairly drunk and hit the sack ready for Dave's birthday; I got up in the morning to give him his presents but couldn't find my bag (a common occurrence when you're living out of a car). We searched around for it but came to the conclusion that someone had stolen it from the car the night before while we were cooking as the car doors had been open - the bag had my passport, my camera, my birth certificate, my drivers license, Dave's presents and the birthday card. Ouch. A bit of a downer on someone's birthday and pretty disappointing for me too.

After some breakfast I went to the police station and reported my bag stolen and was pretty pleased to see someone appear with it in their hand. Someone had obviously walked past the campsite, seen the open doors, tiptoed to the car and grabbed the first bag they could find before running off with it. They went a long way down the road, tipped the contents onto the floor and grabbed anything valuable they could see - the only thing missing from the bag was my camera and camera bag. Fortunately I'd put all my pictures onto my laptop earlier so really everything was replaceable, and we also still had Dave's presents and the card (which they'd opened to see if there was any money it). Not the end of the world but I won't have particularly fond memories of Hervey Bay.

Onto Fraser Island next - with no camera.

On With The Roadtrip...Airlie Beach to Rainbow Beach remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The people you're with make a big difference when you're on a package like this, and we got really lucky - 23 people all getting along and partying for 2 days. The crew were laid back and let everything go, the weather was fantastic and the reef was incredible - see some of the photos that I've stolen from Jamie as evidence to that.

Our boat was called the Habibi, one of the cheaper options for the Whitsundays but it only holds about 23 passengers - a good comfortable number - and you tend to get the more down-to-earth and fun people as a result. And as an added bonus you can help out at time to time as it's a somewhat old boat with sails if the wind's up.

Pictured above is Whitehaven Beach, the only part of the islands that we actually stepped foot on. Coincidentally it's allegedly the most photographed beach in the world - 10km of beautiful white sand that's so fine it's ridiculous; you can clean silver ust by rubbing it with the sand, and when you brush some off your skin it feels baby soft.

The annoyance about the sea her is having to wear stinger suits, which cost 15 dollars to hire and are a pain to put on. It's worth it though - Box jellyfish and tiny Irikandji roam the water and even the little sea lice you swim past leave a little sting on your face. One thing I didn't realise is that the stinger suits don't just protect your body - jellyfish are attracted to humans by the electric pulses our bodies give out, and the stinger suits stop those being transmitted through the water. You've still got to watch for trailing tentacles though!

Believe it or not, all the pictures below bar the last one were taken by Jamie on his normal digital camera using an underwater camera case, which cost above £25. Good, huh?

Lots of good times, memories and photographic evidence; superb stuff. But don't stop reading yet - more adventures to come after eventually leaving Airlie Beach...

The Whitsunday Islands remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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A quick update on our roadtrip. There'll be four of us for a good part of the journey, if not all of it, as we're taking a Welsh girl called Sam with us. We've pre-booked a package for about 200 pounds each that gives us three days sailing round the beautiful Whitsunday islands, three days and two nights canoeing in Noosa, three days and two nights on Fraser Island, two nights in Rainbow Beach and a day at an aboriginal workshop where we get a didgeridoo lesson and a free boomerang to paint, which is a great deal. We have to do the Whitsundays on Monday 27th but the rest is an open booking (most of the other activities are much further south), and we can't wait.

Most of our food consists of pasta and tins so we'll need to make the most of the bigger towns and cities when we come across them. We have 2 tents and are hoping to camp for free as much as possible - not sure how that'll work out but we'll see.

Some sightseeing from the Friday on our initial slightly inland route: the Barron Falls, Lake Barrine and Lake Eacham, where we decided to camp up alongside some of the most annoying animals known to man. Ducks, dogs, cockerels, cows and singing birds galore to keep us awake; one of the ducks took a great big messy poo outside our tents, the cockerels woke us up at dawn and then an enormous trail of caterpillars took a walk straight towards our tents in the morning.

On Saturday we took in yet more waterfalls; Malanda Falls followed by Millaa Millaa Falls, and then we stopped by a creek for some mosquito-assisted camping. The next day would be the beginning of our coastal adventure after our inland start...

Come on, where's the good weather?

Our first stop was Mission Beach, quite a popular stopping point for travellers and holiday-makers alike. After a quick stroll through the local carboot sale we took a look at the beach but the weather sucked; after entertaining ourselves by trying to crack a coconut with a swiss army knife (and succeeding) we went to the tourist information centre where David Bellamy's twin Australian brother confirmed there was nothing (interesting) to do in the area, particularly if the weather was bad. So, lacking in ideas we decided to abandon Mission Beach and carry on down to our next port of call - the Murray Falls.

The Murray Falls are just south of the Tully River, where we did our white water rafting the previous week. Unfortunately on of the two lookout points was closed and there are only so many waterfalls you can find interesting after a while. We decided that we making good progress towards the Whitsundays and took a group vote to set up camp for free, had a long game poker and then pretty much exhausted our supply of games to playing the dark; any suggestions are welcome.

So, what could we possibly do the next day to better the last one? More waterfalls of course! Our Lonely Planet book insisted that we visited the Paluma Range National Park where we found several swimming holes and big boulders to jump in from. We also found a free campsite there, which was nice; it wasn't free of course but once again we got away without paying. What rebels.

Next stop - civilisation.

Townsville

Townsville is the capital of North Queensland, if such a place actually exists, and is also the gateway to the attractive looking and sounding Magnetic Island which we all wanted to go to. After a quick look around Townsville we decided to stay there for the night - and after a look at the island ferry prices we decided not to go to Magnetic Island at all and stayed in Townsville for a few days.

Sydney was cold when I left; it's nearly winter there now and although it's not the same as a UK winter it's still not great at all. Cairns is always hot, but as it's a tropical rainforest area it's often cloudy, humid and wet. Townsville, however, is just the answer to my recent weather woes and fast fading tan. It's hot and sunny most days and there's a nice little artificial swimming pool by the coast looking out on Magnetic Island. The pool is salt water and extremely dirty but the area is nice enough, and given that the sea is full of jellyfish it'll do very nicely indeed.

It's nice to stay at a proper campsite for once; hot water in the showers, lights, power points to charge things, stoves and barbeques, soft grass underneath your tent; all the little thing s you completely take for granted back at home. The downside of decent campsites is of course that you have to pay for them - just over 4 pounds a night each to be precise. That might not sound like much but Dave and Sam are both on a pretty tight budn the Spanishget so we're living as cheap as possible, something Jamie and I don't have a problem with either. As we've already paid for a lot of stuff further down the coast we're not expecting to spend a lot in the near future.

I'm still debating what to do when we get to Sydney, which will probably be towards the end of May. If I work then I'll need to find a 3 month contract - since I'll need a bit of time to find one that'll probably take me through to the end of August, and I can then do stuff like New Zealand, Fiji, New Guinea, Singapore and Thailand. The alternative is to spend more time in those places; like I said, I'm still thinking.

A quick update on the Spanish front - I've ditched the cheap book I bought and have downloaded an 83 track CD by a guy called Michael Thomas onto my iPod. I've only listened to the first 5 tracks but I can already say some basic sentences without trying hard to remember, and I have a pretty good understanding of how to pronounce all the combinations of letters and accents. Apparently at the end of it I'll know almost 2,000 words; in a single edition of the New York Times only 600 or so different words are used throughout it. Maybe a trip to South America next?

Roadtrip - North Queensland remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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This is my last new Oz adventure as I'll be finishing in Sydney, but I've saved the best 'til last. The East Coast of Australia is a long and seemingly never-ending trail of sights, activities and glorious weather and isn't something to be done in a hurry; myself, Jamie and Dave are going to take about 6 to 8 weeks to travel down it.

So, goodbye Sydney - again - and hello to my sixth and final Australian state, Queensland. For once I haven't started in the capital city (Brisbane) and have instead flown straight to the far north of Queensland to the city of Cairns.

Queensland is the home of Australia's rainforests, the Great Barrier Reef, beautiful island beaches such as Fraser Island and the Whitsundays and also rivers suitable for all sorts of extreme activities. No pleasure without pain of course - it's also home to Australia's most dangerous animals; crocodiles, cassowaries, some of the most deadly snakes in the world (including several varieties of Taipan, the most dangerous), and of course an abundance of spiders of all shapes and sizes. There's even some nasty flying things too - wasps, mosquitos that carry Dengue fever and even the flies in Queensland pack a nasty punch (e.g. the Mayfly). And if that's not enough, jump in the water and you might bump into the odd shark or two; take a swim in the sea between the months of November and May and you're almost certain to encounter some unfriendly jellyfish, including the lethal Box jellyfish.

No wonder it's such a popular place. It's also unsurprising that Australia Zoo (formerly of Steve Irwin fame) is based here.

Some good news - we have an old banger to take us down the coast to Sydney. We need to spend about 400 bucks to fix a few problems but in all it's only costing us about £700 between the three of us and it's a V6 estate that's pretty quick. And the cruise control works too - very handy on Australia's long and dull roads. Let's see how far it gets us, and how much we get back for it in Sydney.

Right, time to get moving...

White Water Rafting

No rest for the wicked. On Friday, two days after arriving in Cairns, we took a two hour bus ride south to the Tully River for some white water rafting. The rapids for our booking were grade 4 which is smack in the middle between 1 (a swimming pool) and 7 (certain death). It was awesome, the best thing I've done since arriving in Oz and I can't wait to do it again sometime, hopefully on grade 5 rapids and with a smaller group of people so that there's less waiting around. Amazingly I survived this water adventure intact and didn't even fall out of the boat once, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. It's actually pretty easy - the instructor does all the work at the back of the boat - but it's still amazing how many people fall into the water and have to be saved with a rope. That's where the slowness comes in - every time you finish a rapid you stop, park up on a rock or a bank and set up safety ropes in case anyone slips through the nets. Safety first I guess.

So, an excellent but tiring day. Next update should be good...

The Great Barrier Reef

After the white water rafting on Friday we went out big time in the evening and took a day's well earned rest before jumping on our boat to the number one attraction in Queensland - the Great Barrier Reef. No introduction needed I think.

Dave and Jamie had been staying in a cosy little hostel called Rosie's and one of the useful snippets of info the manager gave them was to book a day tour on a little boat called the Falla. Most Reef tours are big cruiser boats rammed with tourists and little if any outside seatingg; ours, however, contained seven passengers and three crew - the guy who owns (and partly built) the boat, the dive instructor (a guy from Derby) and a girl who volunteers to help on the boat in order to get free diving experience. The boat itself was old school - mostly sails all the way - but it was very personal and everyone chipped in with the sails and you could even steer the boat if you fancied it. Unfortunately it was a bit too old school for Jamie who found it a bit 'sickening' and spent most of the 4 hour round journey to the Reef lying by the side of the boat.

You get two Reef areas on any boat trip; our first was an innocuous looking coral area and the second was called Upolu Cay, an amazing little sand island in the middle of the coral sea. Really spectacular. After donning the dive gear and going under I quickly realised that I wasn't ready for a dive and surfaced to swap into some snorkelling gear - for some reason I couldn't sort out the breathing and decided to give it a miss.

The snorkelling was great, as you'd expect - I saw loads of different types of fish, some very strange looking creatures on the seabed, a few stingrays and a couple of turtles. A nice lunch was put on by the cap'n along with cheese and wine on the way back, and then he sat down and told us about the history of the boat and how he rebuilt it after it sank 5 years ago. And a good job he did too.

So, another water experience survived - next up a trip to the tropical rainforests in the north of Queensland to see if we can encounter any crocodiles and cassowaries.

Cape Tribulation & The Daintree Rainforest

A brief summary of our two night trip to the tropical north of Queensland:

See crocodiles - no.
See cassowaries - yes.
Put the tent up correctly - yes.
Get the gas dual burner to work - yes but only one night out of two.
Get savaged by mosquitoes - yes.
Stay alive - just about.

It's quite surprising to find a big rainforest in Australia but, sure enough, the Daintree exists and is a popular tourist attraction all year round. We decided to spend two nights up there to test out our camping equipment and suicidally try to spot a few crocs in their natural habitat.

After filling up the car in the morning with camping equipment (and spending quite a lot of cash) we set off towards the Daintree via Port Douglas. No spectacular sights on the way - the weather wasn't exactly great either - and we decided to set up our tent at 6pm before it got dark. We asked a couple in a cottage where a good spot might be and they pointed us towards a small enclosure nearby, marked as 'No Camping' but apparently safe to use. After ignoring their warnings about mosquitos we drove over to it and stepped outside to be greeted by literally hundreds and thousands of blood-sucking insects. On with the repellant - but to no avail. I have about 10 bites to show for it but Dave is sporting at least a hundred - ouchy.

We couldn't get our gas stove to work so we had to eat cheese sandwiches, the tent was on an annoying slope and was too small for three people, and the cows in the nearby field mooed all night. And some mozzies managed to get into the tent too. All in all, not a great start to our camping experience.

The next day we took the ferry across to Cape Kimberley and then took the road up to Cape Tribulation. Despite trying our hardest to get eaten by wandering around some particularly dangerous looking places we failed to see a crocodile in the wild, although we did see a cassowary which casually strolled straight past us while we were putting our tent up. Slightly more success with the camping - we got the stove to work after buying a pair of pliers, had a flat pitch for the tent and didn't have too many mozzies to contend with (although I seem to have picked up just as many bites as the night before).

Some bad news on the way back from Cape Trib - I got caught speeding, doing 58mph in a 50 zone, a mistake that cost me 150 bucks (about 70 quid). Ouch. Next time I'll be sure to use the cruise control.

Hartley's Crocodile Farm

Having failed to get eaten by a crocodile in the Daintree Rainforest we decided to pay to see some at Hartley's Crocodile Farm, about 45 minutes north of Cairns, before heading off south on our road trip. It costs less than 15 pounds and lasts all day, very good value for money and I'd recommend it if you're ever in the area.

Lots of crocodiles and feeding sessions, a boat trip around the swamp, lizards, big spiders, cassowarys, a snake show, koala feeding and a crocodile attack show where a guy steps into a shallow pool with a croc and gets it to chase him around and do death rolls. Good work if you can get it I guess.

There's some big crocs there, some of them almost 4 metres long. One of the reasons they've survived so long (60 million years) is that they're perfect at what they do - their ears, nose and eyes are all at the same level and so by having their heads just above water they can see, hear and smell everything without being seen. They're not too dangerous on land as they can only move at a human's jogging pace but encounter one in the water and you're dead meat.

The main part of the farm is, as the name might suggest, a farm where they rear crocs for leather. Not something I knew existed but apparently crocodile leather is the best in the world and is VERY expensive. There's loads of little crocs in a big area, all being grown for slaughtering. Not particularly nice but the guide seemed very proud of it all.

They also have cassowary feeding sessions, previously mentioned in my diary as being the most dangerous bird in the world. There are only 1,500 left alive (estimated) but that's not the only reason they're so protected as a species - believe it or not their poo is vital to the continuation of the rainforests. They eat fruit whole and poo out the seeds, spreading the fruit all over the forest along with some manure to help it grow.

Having seen the world's most deadly lizards, birds and snakes (a taipan in the snake show) we drove down to Ellis Beach, just north of Cairns, and camped up for the night before stocking up on food in Cairns and heading off on our journey.

Cairns & Tropical Queensland remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Welcome back to Sydney. I've had a good week staying in the city centre, it's been better than I thought it would be. The hostel is really nice and I can't hear the main road (George Street) from my 5th storey room, which is a real bonus. I've had a few nights in, a few nights out and it was nice to meet up with both Derek and Bev on different occasions. Dez - I hope the weather in Cairns improves mate!! Ouch.

There's an autumn heat wave going around the south of Australia at the moment (not the east and west coasts though!). Perth is nice and hot and sunny as always, Adelaide is as dry as ever (it hasn't rained for 2 months!) and Sydney is enjoying some great weather right now, high 20s and sunny. Lovely!! What a change it makes to have great weather, as I'd expected from Australia in the summer. To celebrate I did two of the things I never got round to last time - the Sydney Lookout Tower and the Bondi to Coogee coastal walk.

I'm off to Canberra tomorrow to stay with Barbs for 4 nights. Current plans are to see the Brumbies play rugby union on Friday night, go water skiing on Saturday, go to Batemans Bay on Sunday (the weather is great there too!) and then check out what's left of Canberra on Monday while Barbs is at work. Oh, and get drunk regularly and celebrate my birthday of course!! Enjoy St Patrick's Day if you're going out, and I'll be back after Canberra is done. Bye!

Canberra - Visiting Barbs

Not many backpackers visit Canberra, and I'll explain why in the next entry. My visit was a bit different as I was staying with Lynn's friend Barbs who made sure I had plenty to do in the scant amount of time available (three days/four nights).

On Friday night we went straight to Canberra stadium, aka Bruce Stadium (how Australian), and watched the CA Brumbies play a Super 14 rugby union match against the Hurricanes, a team from New Zealand. In time-honoured tradition the home team got well and truly turned over just for me, losing 15 - 33, so the crowd was a bit dead. In fairness the Brumbies were missing a lot of players, including Stirling Mortlock who I've actually heard of. Barbs got the tickets from a friend who used to work for the Brumbies; not only were they free, but they also got us free beers in Captains Lounge. Nice touch, and a good start to the visit.

On Saturday we went down near the coast, about an hour and a half south east of Canberra, to the Nelligen River with Barbs' brother Michael and his girlfriend Sarah. Michael part owns a boat called Legless with another guy who wasn't around that weekend, so I gladly accepted the offer of a shot at waterskiing, which I knew full well I was going to suck at. The only downside to the trip was leaving at 7:30 in the morning to get there...

First of all I tried waterskiing, and failed to master the start four times before hurting my knee (I fell over drunk the week before in Sydney and twisted it a little bit), so my next attempt later in the day was on a wakeboard, basically very similar to a snowboard. I failed at that too, although I did get very close to getting right up on it. Six or seven attempts later I was exhausted and had to take a breather before one final push on the 'biscuit', basically just a little dinghy that gets tied to the boat and then the driver does his best to throw you off it by flooring the boat and driving in a continuous circle until you lose grip and take a flying lesson at over 50km/h. After the early start and the physical pounding I'd taken I well and truly zonked out on the drive back. It was a good experience, I'd love to do it again although preferably with a bit more success.

We went out on Saturday night to see what Canberra had to offer - not a huge amount but it was a fun (and late) night out - and then Sunday was spent recovering and getting ready for the barbie that Barbs was having for my birthday on Monday, which was a great touch. Michael and Sarah came over with the gas barbie and four of Barbs' friends also popped round. Not too late a night - no not because I'm old, but everyone else gets up early to go to work. How easy it is to forget about all that...by the way, thanks for the birthday wishes everyone.

Speaking of work, I hear that HBOS has blocked this site now. How rude. They've probably been monitoring Ballard's web access - he's still far and away the lead logger-on-er. Never mind, I'll plough on regardless and hope that some people can access it at home. A bit of sightseeing in the next update.

Canberra Sightseeing

Canberra, the capital city of Australia, was specifically created in 1913 to end the row between Melbourne and Sydney over who should be the nation's capital. It's a planned city, designed by Walter Burley Griffin, after whom the artificial lake in the city was named. To put Canberra halfway between Melbourne and Sydney would place the capital in New South Wales, something Victoria objected to, so they created a new Territory (not a State) to go with it - the Australian Capital Territory. Jervis Bay was also allocated to the ACT to give it a port - see my previous Roadtrip entry!!

Canberra is spread out over quite a large area, with a population of about 350,000 people. As a result there's a lot of nothingness about and it really doesn't feel like you're driving through a city, let alone the capital of Australia. If I had to liken it to anything it would be Milton Keynes (also a planned town), although Milton Keynes has a good shopping centre and Xscape. Unlike Canberra.

Unsurprisingly the government dominates life in Canberra. Most of the famous attractions are government related - Old Parliament House, New Parliament House, Aboriginal Tent Embassy - and a large part of the population are employed by the government, including Barbs and a few of her friends. The new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, has made himself popular here by moving to Canberra, whereas John Howard previously refused to do so and stayed in Sydney instead.

So, what is there to do here? Well, as previously mentioned you can visit New Parliament House, which is a bit of an eyesore, or Old Parliament House, which is now a museum. If you stroll over the road you'll find the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, a protest by the aborigines against the government which is literally a collection of tents on the grass.

There are lots of National things around in Canberra - the National Museum, the National Gallery, National Zoo & Aquarium, National Botanical Gardens, and so on. The best attraction in Canberra is probably Anzac Street, with the War Memorial at the end. It's just a pity that you can see the steeples of New Parliament House down the far end.

I can't imagine how a backpacker can come here and have a great time. It's vast and spread out, there's not a great deal to do and even that is difficult to do without a car. Public transport here isn't great either which just adds to the problems. Unless you do something like I did then I certainly wouldn't recommend a long visit.

Right, back to Sydney then. Again. Speak soon, and to those of you at HBOS - if you can even see this - sorry to see the share price!! What a joke!!

Illness!!

After I got back to Sydney I started to feel pretty crappy and eventually went to see a doctor, where I was diagnosed with influenza and a bruised rib cartilage. So, not much to say really apart from that the weather has been a bit rubbish and I finished 6th out of 70 in a poker tournament last night. Not bad but unfortunately only the top four got any money. My french roommate won the $370 first prize after flukily knocking me out, but that was okay as he bought lots of drinks afterwards.

I still feel pretty rough but I'm on the mend. Next update from Cairns as I'm meeting back up with Dave and Jamie to begin our East Coast adventure...

Canberra & A Lil' Bit More Sydney remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I've now entered the largest state in Australia, and indeed the second largest subnational entity in the world, Western Australia. Its capital is Perth, home to three quarters of the population of WA. You can fit the UK almost 15 times into WA - it's pretty big. Perth and its surrounding area is famous for a very generous all year round climate - in the summer the temperature is regularly up to 40 degrees with a refreshing breeze, and usually doesn't drop far below 20 degrees in the winter. It really is a great place to live, although house prices have shot up in the last 5 or so years and the cost of living is quite high anyway as it's a long, long, long, long way from any other major city.

Of the original crew that spent a lot of time together in Sydney, and that travelled to Tasmania, only 3 of us remain - myself, Dave and Jamie. The others have either stayed in New South Wales to work, headed off home or have already travelled through the west. I'd already decided to go to Perth after just 3 nights in Adelaide so when the other two guys decided to visit some friends of Jamie's north of Adelaide I was left with a week in Perth to myself.

Hostels in Perth are in high demand at this time of year - probably partly because the east coast has had terrible weather recently - so I booked myself into a hostel in a little beach-side place called Scarborough, about 45 minutes from Perth city centre on the bus. After 2 days of cloud and rain the legendary Perth weather finally made an appearance and I settled in for some serious tanning sessions on the beach - long overdue after 2 months of decidely average Australian weather (I still had the bottle of suntan lotion that I brought from England).

I ended up staying in Scarborough for 5 nights - a bit long for somewhere so quiet, only one pub there - and then spent the next 7 at the YHA in Fremantle where Jamie and Dave made the mistake of joining me. It really was a horrible place, hot and sweaty and full of lunatics but it was the only place with space in Fremantle. The weather remained pretty decent, getting up to 40 degrees at times, but the beach life was getting kind of annoying, not just because it's a bit dull but also the wind in Fremantle is so strong at times that you get covered from head to toe in sand and also might end up chasing your towel half way down the beach. So, we decided to get away from the mainland and spend a few days on Rottnest Island.

Rottnest Island

When Frederik de Houtman visited a small island to the west of Fremantle in 1696 he noticed that a number of marsupials (kangaroo relatives) on the island resembled rats, and hence the name Rat's Nest (Rottnest) has stuck ever since. The little critters are actually called Quokkas and as there are no predators on the island they positively flourish; apparently it's impossible to visit the island without seeing them. And see them we certainly did.

The ferry to Rottnest costs about 25 pounds for a return journey. The journey takes 25 minutes each way so that works out at about 50p a minute - I'm not sure if that's expensive or not. Lots of people take a single day trip but if you want to stay a bit longer, like we did, there's plenty of accomodation in the way of a hotel, a hostel and loads of little apartments. We chose to stay at the hostel, a former army base called the Kingstown Barracks, for 2 nights before heading back to the mainland. We also hired a mountain bike each as cars are banned from the island (only shuttle buses and maintenance vehicles are allowed) and it's the best way to see the whole island in a few days.

We still had our snorkels with us and, since Rottnest is also famous for snorkelling and scuba diving spots, we put them to good use by following the designated 'snorkel trail' as best we could. Parker Point had the best snorkelling area and had a nice touch of mounted plaques on the sea bed for you to read as you move along. I didn't see anything particularly dangerous, unlike in Jervis Bay where there were stingrays galore, but I did see some pretty colourful and also very large fish.

After stopping for an ice cream on the way between beaches we spotted a quokka hopping about outside a shop. We got very excited and tried to get loads of pictures, but had we realised how many there were on the island we wouldn't have been quite so enthusiastic. They're incredibly cute little things and quite friendly to humans too, and when they want to they can hop REALLY fast. It's quite a sight. They flourish on the island because predators such as cats and foxes are banished. Also they, like most of the island's fauna including the coral, are strictly protected. You can't even pick up a shell from the seabed in some places on the island.

We didn't quite manage to get round the whole island - mountain biking and snorkelling in high temperatures is a tiring combo - but we did get to see most of it, and beautiful it certainly is. If you go to Western Australia in your lifetime make sure you check it out, it's well worth the time and effort and is fairly cheap too, our hostel cost about 25 pounds for 2 nights and there's loads to see and do. Right, I'm pretty much up to date now so I've no idea what the next update will be about. I've moved into Perth city centre and am staying here for a few days so I'll probably be back with an update about that soon enough. Take it easy, and I'll see some of you soon, yes?

Sun City

Not a huge amount to report since the Rottnest update. I've had a great time, no doubt about that, but it's been a very hot and subsequently laid back affair that's mostly involved being out in the sun, which has been out in full force for virtually the whole time. Did I mention it's been very hot? Usually upwards of 35 degrees, and not much wind in the city centre until late in the afternoon when the Fremantle Doctor kicks in.

First thing to mention is that we had fun getting our luggage back from Rottnest after we put the wrong ferry labels on our bags - you specify one of 4 destinations by getting a particular colour, and they take your bags and put it on the relevant ferry going to a particular port, either in Fremantle or Perth. We were going to Fremantle on the Rottnest Express but we were hungover after a night of drinking with our roommates and didn't even notice there were different colours when we picked them up. Fortunately, and I mean very fortunately, they arrived 30 minutes later at a port not far from ours in Fremantle - they could have gone to Perth instead, or been left on the island. Phew.

Some sightseeing updates - I've been to the Perth museum, the art gallery, Kings Park, the WACA and the Swan River. And I've also been to the Adventure World water park near Fremantle. We went back to Scarborough for 3 days at the beach as well. As a result of all this I've decided to put some pictures up of my tan.

I've been reading a lot of books on my travels. Current count is 15 but some of those were pretty chunky, over 750 pages. The good thing about reading books in Australia is the abundance of second hand bookshops that will take back the book you bought for $15 last week and give you $5 credit for the next one you get. So you end up spending about $10 per book, which is about 4 pounds. Not bad really, and the second hand shops are excellent, full of all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff. Here's a selection of some of the books I've read:

- The Godfather Returns (Mark Winegarden)
- The Eagle Has Landed (Jack Higgins)
- The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
- Mein Kampf (Adolf Hitler)

Yes, you read that last one correctly, Australia is one of the countries in the world where you can legally obtain copies of it. Amazing what takes your fancy when you've got loads of time on your hands at the beach. Oh, and I've decided to teach myself Spanish. I've started with a simple book but hopefully by the time I rock back to Blighty I'll be fluently covering everyone in saliva when I speak.

I'll be back with one more update from Perth before flying to Sydney on March 6th, where I'll see a few visitors to this blog. Don't forget that it's my birthday on March 17th so make sure you have a few drinks for me. See you later.

Goodbye WA

Transport in Australia is a strange beastie. You can get cheap shortish-range transport such as a bus from Sydney to Canberra (> 3 hours) for just 15 dollars - under 7 quid - yet air and, in particular, long distance rail journeys are extremely expensive compared to the UK. Get this - to travel from Adelaide to Perth you can realistically either get a train or a plane. For the plane you can fly with Qantas or Virgin Blue, and it takes about two and a half hours. For the train, you sit in a single seat with nowhere to lie down for almost 2 days solid. And which costs more? Yep, you guessed it - the train. And yet people actually choose to travel on it!! You can sit and explain that one to me all day and I still won't get it.

So, what was the point in that bit of waffle? Absolutely none, I just thought I'd mention it. It probably comes from reading Mein Kampf, which is possibly the worst written book in history and is literally just pure waffle (and insanity). One amazing point about that book - it appears that the Holocaust, in which an estimated 5 million+ Jews were murdered, might have stemmed from Hitler contracting syphilis from a Jewish prostitute as a youth. Talk about holding a grudge.

So, what have I been up to? Not much is the answer, apart from topping up my tan at Cottesloe Beach. As previously advertised, I fly to Sydney on the 6th (exactly 3 months after first landing there), however I'm doing this with a tinge of regret. It'll certainly be nice to see the likes of Dez, Bev, Jon, Beth and Nick, and Sydney is great, and Dan and Holly will be plus one and I still have friends in Bondi. But the trip means I'm missing out on going up the west coast of Australia with my friends Dave & Jamie, with whom I've been travelling for the best part of 3 months. That would have been a blast - the dolphins at Monkey Mia, stromatolites at Shark Bay (oldest living microbes in the world, over 3,000 years old), and the wildlife at Coral Bay which is apparently almost as good as the Great Barrier Reef and more accessible too. Hopefully I'll get a chance to do that later, but in the meantime it's back to the hustle and bustle of Sydney for about a month.

It looks like I'm going to be spending my 31st birthday in Canberra of all places, with Lynn's friend Barbra who is a lovely lass indeed. Most travellers don't even bother to visit Canberra because its reputation is so unbelievably poor (Bill Bryson even hated it in his book, and he likes Bradford) so I'm eccentrically delighted to be spending 4 nights there and celebrating my birthday in a very original way. If nothing else I've always liked to be a bit different. Incidentally I've booked a Murray bus to get there for 15 dollars - see first paragraph.

I went to Fremantle before flying to Sydney to exchange some books and subsequently lighten my luggage load. I was rather surprised to see the QE2 leaving Fremantle harbour when I got off the train, on its last ever voyage to Dubai. What timing. A few average kodak moments later I was back on the train, the proud owner of a book called 'Danger Down Under', full of tales of woe of backpackers in Oz. How cheery.

So, my little Perth adventure is over. I loved it, it's really relaxed but can also be bustling if you got into the city centre or out anywhere at night. The trick is to get out of the city and down to one of the suburbs, preferably a beach side one. I'd love to live in a place like Fremantle, it has everything, but I think it would be too expensive for a pauper like me. Oh, and don't forget the weather in Perth which is just awesome, probably the best in Australia. You can go hotter, but why would you want to? Anything more would be too stifling. I'm hoping to come back here to work, if I can find something suitable - touch wood.

Next update from Sydney, I'll be staying in the city centre which is a first for me - should be an experience. Bye for now!

Perth remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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To quote Bill Bryson, Adelaide is the driest city in the driest state in the driest country in the driest inhabited continent on the planet. It's quite dry. And yet they still find enough water to maintain over 1,500 acres of parks in the city. If you look at the facts, Adelaide should be a great place. The city centre is nicely laid out, two identical halves opposite each other surrounded by parks that separate it from the suburbs. It has a good tram service, nice beaches such as at Glenelg, it's easy to find things (unlike Melbourne) and has two or three streets that are positively banging at night time. And yet no-one seems to have a good word to say about it, and backpackers often avoid it completely without even seeing it.

I actually liked Adelaide, for all the reasons listed above. Okay, I was only there for a few days but I saw enough to draw that simple conclusion. The weather is nice and hot, about 30 degrees most days, and there's something for everyone. It doesn't have a booming economy and there isn't much work for someone like me there, but I'm sure it's a nice enough place to live.

That's about all I have to say on Adelaide. Oh, one more thing - how's this for a novel idea? There's a bar in Adelaide that let's you play paper-scissor-stone with the bar staff for every drink you buy. If you win, you get it for free, otherwise you pay a slightly over-the-top price for it. How cool is that?

One more thing to report - I've given up on my tank of a camera and have purchased a more modern Nikon Coolpix camera, 7.1 megapixels and a chargeable battery so I won't have to carry round a suitcase of AAs everywhere I go. I got it with a 2Gb SD card for just under 120 quid. Bargain. Hopefully my pictures will be a bit better from now on.

Next update from Perth, home of the great climate. I'm already in Perth of course as I'm backdating but I'll save the gossip for later.

Adelaide remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Onto the next day. The weather was still crappy but improved as the day went on. We started our journey towards our next stop, Warrnambool, by taking in a few coastal points such as Point Danger, Surf Beach, Jun Juc, Winkipop Beach and Point Addis. Next up was Aireys Inlet, home to Split Point lighthouse (the lighthouse from 'Round The Twist!'), and then we reached Coalmine Creek, the entrance to the Great Ocean Road.

The road was built as a memorial to WWI by 3,000 returned servicemen and took approximately 13 years to finish. The idea is that you drive along it, taking in the ocean views as you go, and just pick amongst the umpteen million places and things to do along the way. Some do it in a day, others take weeks. We took about 3 days to do the journey which, given the crummy weather, was plenty of time.

It wouldn't have been a roadtrip for us if we hadn't seen some waterfalls, so we took a butchers at Erskine Falls before stopping for a quick sunbathe at Apollo Bay. Eventually we mustered up the energy to complete the final part of the journey to Warrnambool - via the Twelve Apostles.

The Twelve Apostles are a very famous landmark in Australia, a set of limestone stacks that have been formed by erosion over time. There are actually only 8 left - the 9th fell in 2005 - but noone seems to care about that little fact. The main attraction is the view at sunset or sunrise which is, apparently, spectacular. So spectacular in fact that after checking them out and driving to Warrnambool to check in we drove back to take in the sunset - only to be denied by clouds. We weren't the only ones, mind, there were probably a few hundred people there at sunset. Warrnambool was pretty much dead when we got back so we grabbed some fast food and went back to the hostel for a few drinks before bed.

The next and final overnight stop on the journey was Robe, a small town 3 hours south of Adelaide. The map didn't offer many suggestions along the way so we tried to do our best with the scant offerings we could find.

First of all we went to see the lake at the centre of Tower Hill, which was in fact bone dry from drought. We did however get to see some enormous emus there, very close to the path we were walking along. Having navigated our way past them we drove to Portland and Cape Bridgewater where we tried desperately to find a beach to suit the improved weather but failed miserably apart from a small grey looking beach in Portland that overlooked a massive oil rig. Then, when all hope was lost, we meandered through Mount Gambier, the second biggest city in South Australia, and decided to take a look at the Blue Lake from the lookout point. Finally, something to gasp at after a 3 day journey!! I can't describe the shade of blue of the lake and I doubt my camera does in justice either - it really is something to behold.

The remainder of the road to Robe was a mixture of barren wasteland and - well, nothing at all. Totally uninteresting. We had mixed emotions when we arrive din Robe; on one hand we were glad to be off that boring road, but on the other hand we knew that there was nothing to do in Robe either. Catch 22.

The hostel - the Robe YHA - was certainly impressive. It's like a mansion, only one floor but huge and we had a room to ourselves with 10 beds to choose from (only four of us). There was also a fantastic library with beautiful leather sofas, bathrooms the size of houses, nice gardens and an awesome hostel dog to mess about with, a particularly lively chocolate labrador. And all this for just 10 pounds a night each! For that money you'd be lucky to get a sofa to sleep on in Sydney. As for Robe itself - nothing to report, unless being joint winner of 'Best Medium Sized Town' in 2007 is really the claim to fame that they make out.

And so we reached the final chapter on our journey to Adelaide. We left Robe at 10:30am and arrived at the Hertz depot at 2pm, minutes before they shut the doors. And so now I'm in Adelaide, it's hot - just over 30 degrees - and we're off to explore and see if Adelaide is really as dull as people say it is. After 10 consecutive nights in different places it'll be nice to spend 3 nights in the same hostel; after that it'll be off to Perth.

The Great Ocean Road remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I've met several people on my travels who have told me that going to Tasmania is a waste of time as you can just visit New Zealand for the same price and see similar sights but on a grander scale. Complete nonsense - I had a fabulous time in Tasmania and there's quite a few things that New Zealand can't possibly offer, as you'll see.

We got up in Melbourne at silly o'clock in the morning and after a short one hour flight arrived at Hobart at 8:30am. By the time the others arrived at 9:30am we had our 7 seater car from the rental company and were ready to rock and roll.

Tasmania is a fascinating little place (well, a similar size to England actually) that many people seem unable to comprehend. Two people in our group didn't know Tasmania was part of Australia. It is of course one of the six states of Australia, along with the two previously covered in my blog - New South Wales and Victoria. Its capital is Hobart, a proper city with an economy, a big port and even an international test match cricket ground. Tasmania has a total population of about 500,000 people. There's no international airport so you can only fly into Hobart or Launceston from the mainland.

We checked into our hostel, the Pickled Frog in Hobart, strolled into the city centre for a bite to eat and left for our first destination, the Tasmanian Devil Park, at 1pm.

I learnt two main things from seeing the Devils at the park. The first is that they're nothing like the cartoon character Taz, not just in looks of course but in character. They go a little bit wild at feeding time but for most of the day they just lounge about on top of each other, sleeping in the shade and just generally being peaceful. The second thing is that the Devils are facing a serious extinction threat due to a mysterious facial cancer that scientists are still trying to work out - it's believed that the Devil population has halved in the last decade. It's a big issue for the people of Tasmania having lost their other icon, the Tasmanian Tiger, and having to work out how to deal with the highly intelligent European red fox that somehow appeared in 2001 and is threatening to wipe out the Devils due to their decreasing number - previously the Devils were taking care of the foxes but now the foxes are getting more and more food and increasing in number.

The highlight of the park was the kangaroo feeding. They bring out a huge bucket of green grain and you just fill your hands with it and wander over to some roos and let them munch out of your hands. At one point a massive one came bounding towards me while I was feeding a smaller one, grabbed my hands with its front paws and selfishly gobbled up the rest in no time at all, leaving the smaller one to go and find some food elsewhere. Cool. There was some other stuff going on including a bird of prey exhibition similar to the one I saw in Devon last year, and then we moved on to Port Arthur at the very bottom right of the island, a former penal colony with a rough history and also the home to a gun suicide massacre in 1996.

Port Arthur was advertised as an inescapable prison - like Alcatraz - this reputation was helped by the shark infested waters that surround it. One person managed to escape by covering himself in a kangaroo hide and hopping across the plains but gave himself up when the guards started to shoot at him so they could have something for dinner. Prisoners were hooded and forced into complete silence, and also had to build most of the buildings that make up the colony. Boys as young as nine were sent there for stealing toys. Prisoners were subjected to psychological rather than physical torture and many inmates tried to kill themselves or others in an attempt to escape it. 1,646 people died in the penal colony during the 40 years it was open.

Looking around the old buildings was interesting without being exciting. We were a bit late and so we only got a twilight pass and a few of the buildings were closed when we got there. Still, we saw it and ticked it off the list of things to do in Tasmania, then drove back to Hobart with some beautiful sunset views on the way.

In the evening we had a few drinks and a fantastic curry that gave me truly horrendous wind, then it was off to bed ready for a busy day - as they'd all turn out to be in Tasmania.

Day 2

Today we checked out the east coast of Tasmania. We started off by taking a 2 hour drive to Coles Bay/Freycinet Park and marched confidently up the walking path to check out Wineglass Bay, one of Tasmania's most famous attractions. Pretty soon we were reduced to piles of sweat crawling up the steep and seemingly never-ending trail, battling against the humidity and the slippery path. We reached the lookout point after about 45 minutes and discovered, to our absolute horror, that it was full of Chinese tourists who had no intention of getting out of the way. Marvellous. Just in case they were about to head down towards the bay we grabbed a quick kodak moment over their heads and quickly rushed down the path ahead of them.

The weather wasn't the greatest, overcast and humid, so we didn't spend very long on the beach. A quick bit of snorkelling, spoilt by some pretty meaty waves, and then it was time to walk back up the path to the car. Ouch. I had to change t-shirts when we got back as mine was drenched with sweat. Pretty gross but unavoidable.

From there we drove all the way up the coastal road to St Helens, our stop-off for the night, where we checked into the YHA and went to the RSL for some food and, to our great surprise, some live entertainment from a local band. I really can't describe how bad they were - we were literally in tears, the (old) singer couldn't sing at all and the guitars were hopelessly out of tune. I immediately didn't want to stay in St Helens for more than that one night.

One more journey before we tucked into some drinks - to Binalong Bay to see a bit of the Bay of Fires, a stunning stretch of coast formed by huge rocks turned red by iron ore. We spent about 15 minutes there until it went dark, and then went back to St Helens to see what was going on in terms of evening activities - it was, after all, Australia Day, so surely there'd be something to do?

If you're ever in Tasmania do not, under any circumstance, stay in St Helens. It's the hickiest of hick towns, everyone is related to each other and there's an ongoing competition for best mullet that even the women take part in. As you can probably tell, I wasn't impressed and couldn't wait to get out of there. Fortunately we only had a few hours to suffer before we all flaked out at the hostel and got up even earlier in the morning for a huge journey to the west side of the island.

Day 3

It took just over 4 hours to reach Cradle Mountain National Park from St Helens. Our accomodation was in the park itself - Cosy Cabins YHA Lodge - so we checked straight in and headed down to the various walking routes, which we did in the following order:

- Pencil Pine Falls
- Knyvet Falls
- Enchanted Stroll
- King Billy Track

The walks were quiet which gave us poetic license to explore off the pathways in a few places, in particular the two waterfalls where we got as close as we could by jumping across the rocks in the streams, sometimes a bit precariously, but that all stopped for me when I spotted a big black snake disappearing into a crevice on a bank near one of the falls.

Fairly exhausted and hungry, we strolled into the main Cradle Mountain Lodge for some expensive food and drinks in front of a steaming hot fire in leather armchairs overlooking the lake. Lovely. Then back to the cabin for drink, a few games of cards and a well-earned sleep. Trekking around Tasmania is certainly hard work.

Day 4

Monday was pencilled in as a day of boozing in Tasmania's second city, Launceston. First of all though we had to get there, and on the way we stopped off near Mole Creek to check out King Solomon's Caves.

I'd never been to a cave before and it was pretty much as I expected, although I hadn't anticipated having to hand over quite so much money for the pleasure. The caves were cold, about 9 degrees, and quite narrow and tight in places. One thing's for sure - I was soon wishing I'd worn a bit more than a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops down there. By the way, in Aussie lingo I was wearing a tee, boardies and thongs. Mate.

As good as the caves were I was glad to get out of there to warm my feet up in the sun, and to get away from the tour guide who spooked me completely. Within 2 hours of driving we had arrived in Launceston and checked into our hostel, the Backpackers Hub. And within half an hour of that we'd started drinking in the bar.

We broke off the drinks at 5pm to get some food from the city centre. It was Bank Holiday Monday, after Australia Day, and so a lot of places were shut but we found somewhere reasonable and stuffed our faces before heading back to get changed for a night out in Launceston.

Everything was shut when we went back out. Everything. Not a boozer in sight had an open door. When they have a bank holiday in Launceston they do it properly, no exceptions. Deflated, we went back to the hostel to drink at the bar (thank god they had one, most don't) and the night petered out into one of tiredness. A bit disappointing, especially as we'd been assured that there'd be stuff to do, even on a Bank Holiday. Never mind, the next day would prove to be much more fruitful.

Day 5

Launceston is a great place. A bit too quiet for my liking but from what I saw it was much nicer than Hobart and there's plenty to do. We strolled up the road from the hostel in the morning and checked out the Chinese monkeys in the city park. They were great value for money (free), fascinating creatures to watch in a strange sort of Big Brother way. And then we drove to Cataract Gorge, the highlight of the day and one of the best bits of the Tasmania trip.

The Gorge is a beautiful piece of scenery and they've enhanced it by introducing and maintaining lush grass, a big swimming pool, walkways and wildlife such as peacocks and wallabies.They actually make the money to pay for all this by charging just over 5 pounds for a return ride on the cable chairs across the gorge. It's great value for money, well worth it for the views, and the locals get to enjoy the water or the pool for free. There are even spots to jump off the rocks into the water. Unfortunately we had to leave at 1pm and make the 3 hour drive to Hobart so that the girls could get their flights back to Sydney.

Before going to the airport we checked out Salamanca Square in Hobart, which was very posh although affordable to eat. Then, when we'd said goodbye to the girls at the airport, we drove west in the vain hope that we wouldn't be too late to see Russell Falls, one of the main features in any illustrated Tasmania book.

Not only were we there in time to see it but we were also late enough to sneak in without paying. Brucie Bonus. More leaping about where we shouldn't have been, and yet more steep paths, and then back to the Pickled Frog in Hobart for our last night in Tasmania.

Next step - fly out of Hobart to Melbourne, grab a hire car from Hertz and head to Adelaide along the Great Ocean Road. Bring it on.

Tasmania remains copyright of the author matchman, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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