Christchurch, New Zealand

I'm in my eighth country! I flew into rainy Christchurch yesterday, and though I haven't seen much of it, I like New Zealand so far. Last week when I looked up my flights to find out which terminal I was flying from I noticed my flight times had been changed, and after ringing Trailfinders it turned out the morning flight with Jet Star had been cancelled and they'd reserved a seat on the Jet Star evening flight for me. I didn't want to get in that late though, so I got them to book me in on the Qantas flight in the morning, which they agreed to. That's before I heard about exploding oxygen tanks and other recent 'complications' on Qantas flights! But it all went well. My peanut butter and strawberry jam I tried to smuggle into New Zealand would probably have gotten through if they hadn't been classed as a cream and a gel respectively and hence weren't allowed through security! It made me laugh quite a lot. Has anyone ever blown up a plane armed with peanut butter and strawberry jam? My pasta was okay though, obviously little hard spirals are not a weapon. After landing in Christchurch I felt up to taking part in a University of Otago study at the airport to find out about how often influenza was being brought in by travellers. After filling in the survey (and stating that I didn't feel ill) I was an eligible candidate for a throat and nose swab (lucky me!), which I also agreed to. I now know that a nose swab is really really unpleasant. But all in the name of science. My results will be posted to Edinburgh!

Australia defintiely grew on me as I went along and after comparing Sydney and Melbourne I'm a Melbourne fan! (boo hiss from the Sydney fans)... In Sydney I stayed in an overrated huge hostel where my food was stolen twice in a row from the fridge! My friend who was staying there as well said some of her makeup was stolen from her bag and she saw it in her roommate's bag and stole it back! Hence I nicknamed it Kleptomaniac Hostel. Also there was a guy in the girls' bathroom (which you can only get into with your keycard so I don't know what the point is if all keycards work!) who was happily shaving there. He said he knew he was in the wrong one but it was just 'so nice'. Right.
On my first day I wandered through town and photographed Harbour Bridge and the Opera House in the smirring rain, and strolled through the Botanics. I didn't see a single flying fox although Lonely Planet said 'you can't miss them' - yes, watch me! On day two Charlotte my Dutch friend and I did the Coogee to Bondi beach walk, which was good fun, and the sun actually peeped through occasionally! We went out to the Ivy club in the evening and had to beat yuppie-ish men off with a stick. We were with our (female) Irish friends who were not so good at beating men off, so we enjoyed the company of a mad Irishman for most of the evening!
On my last day I was walking through the Queen Victoria Building with a steaming pretzel from the German bakery and someone tapped me on the shoulder... it was Yvonne, the German girl I did the very long walk with at Mission beach! Pretty funny. We went for tea and coffee and caught up, then I had to get my bus to Melbourne... 17 glorious hours! I've never had such a bad crick in the neck. Thanks to chosing Premier bus service, the less popular one, I had room to spread out, but sleep was rather intermittent! I think the bus drivers all take a course in Torture 1.0.1, as they seem to know exactly when you've just dozed off and chose those times to throw in a 'meal break' at a McDonald's or a pokey petrol station! Good times to do this are at 10.30pm, 1am or 3am. I (or the zombie that passed for me) got in at 7.30, stored my bags and went exploring. First stop was the Victoria market, which had a huge fresh food selection, yum. Then I took the tram (loved the trams!) down to the Botanics, which were fab, and went to the National Gallery. The Art Deco exhibition (all the way from the V&A!) was a bit too pricey for me, but saw the permanent collection and they had some gruesome Otto Dix war etchings, inspired by Goya's, which I've also seen (in Vienna.. or was it Madrid?) so was interesting to compare.
In the afternoon I made my way to Altona, where I was met at the train station by Alistair Brown, his wife Liz and their lovely boys. Scotty is ten and Jamie eight, and they have a menagerie including a blue-tongue lizard called Bluey! Had a great time staying with them and on Sunday went to the very good Museum with them, which has a huge variety of exhibits, from the Natural History section to the history of Melbourne and a cute dinosaur eggs exhibition. I discovered my inner child and joined in with drawing dinosaurs. The kids' ones were better than mine! Afterwards I went up Brunswick street on my own, which is charmingly shabby and has loads of quirky little shops and cafes, and an 'alternative' crowd - though I noticed it might be getting too trendy for its own good as some expensive looking restaurants had sprung up and seemed to be popular with the monied tourists for Sunday dinner. Doesn't quite work when there's a homeless guy sitting outside it! On Monday I checked out Federation Square, the Southbank area and St Kilda (which has a beach), where I tried Cold Rock ice cream - they mush it up with your choice of sweets so I selected butterscotch ice cream and chunks of soft caramel - yum!! Even though it was very cold outside and raining a bit! Then I hopped on the bus again, overnight back to Sydney, and got in mid-morning. I took the ferry over to Manly, where I was met by Sara, Dorothy and Chris' (or should I call him Fitzy!? he he) friend from Hong Kong, who was lovely and great fun to chat to. I borrowed her bike for the afternoon and explored Manly and watched the surfers being buried beneath huge waves at the beach and was very glad to be wrapped up in my jacket and not in the sea! But there were so many of them it can't have been too cold - most of them seemed to have drysuits on anyway which must have helped. I met Sally-Anne briefly and had a delicious dinner with Sara and Vic and helped make rhubarb and apple crumble, then watched a (BBC) programme called Wild China - beautifully shot and highly recommended if you can see it! Got the ferry back to Circular Quay with Vic in the morning and he saw me onto the airport train, so nice and easy... and as Vic said a fab journey every day for him - seeing Harbour Bridge and the Opera House as you come into work!

Tomorrow morning I'm on the Tranzalpine train and reach Greymouth around lunchtime. Very much a stopover town apparently so am not hanging around and will be off on the Magic bus (I feel like I'm on a kids' TV programme every time I say it) in the morning to Franz Josef, where I'm hoping to do a glacier hike on Sunday! Should be another highlight and am really looking forward to it.

Byron Bay, Australia

I really enjoyed my Fraser Island jeep safari last week, thanks to having a great mix of people (11 of us). Amongst others were girls who had been studying in Syndey (a Dutch girl as an exchange student at Syndey University and three Swiss girls at a language school in Manly); one girl who worked at the hostel organising the trip (very useful as she knew what to do, where to go..); a Swedish hitchhiker, and a Scottish girl who'd been working in Syndey and Brisbane. We squeezed into the Toyota Troop Carrier, with our luggage and obscene amounts of food (we ate most of it over the three days) strapped to the roof. Got the ferry from Hervey Bay to Fraser Island, switched into 4WD and bounced along... I felt pretty nauseous by the third day! Great fun though. Fraser is the biggest sand island in the world, and there are inland tracks past stunning freshwater lakes and through rainforest, as well as the 'highway' along the beach. We soon worked out that driving as close to the sea as possible on the hard wet sand (without driving IN the sea!) was the way forward, but sometimes the softer sand was unavoidable and we got stuck. Whenever that happened we all screamed, then got out and pushed while the driver revved the choking engine! Most people had a shot at driving, and it was always easiest first thing in the morning when hardly any vehicles had made deep tracks in the sand, and it was wet from the receding tide. Everyone chose to swear loudly in their mother tongue when things went wrong. 'Holy mother o' God' (and worse) was popular with the two lovely Irish sisters, and 'Scheisse' was the Swiss girls' top choice. As a primarily female group we also got really good at screaming all the time, at every bump, or when it seemed the vehicle might tip over. At the 4WD hire place we'd been shown enticing photos of a tipped over jeep and were told 'help was hours away' and 'luckily no one died'. True Ozzie optimism. Apart from admiring the stunning landscape and screaming a lot we were also looking upwards for airplanes as the beach was not just a road (80kmh max) but also a landing strip! There were also a lot of suicidal fishermen standing in the shallows in their waders and sitting ducks for jeeps to hit. Luckily we didn't hit any. Fraser Island also has a dingo population which is apparently the most purebred in Australia, but we only saw one, which was extremely inquisitive and came up to the jeep and rolled around in the sand. It had clearly been fed by humans. We had also been warned not to approach dingoes and not to be aggressive towards them unless they attacked us, in which case we should give them a proper beating. Lovely. Other dangers included the rip tides and sharks in the sea, and of course spiders on the campsite.
The first day the weather was mixed. We stopped off at Lake Wabby and those brave enough took a dip, but soon after we got there it started raining so we walked back to the jeep (not a short walk). We also stopped at Eli Creek and waded along it - crystal clear water here too. We got to the campsite in the afternoon and pitched our tents. It was quite a good site with hot showers (2$ for 4 minutes!) and gas stoves, BBQ and several tables under cover. We barbequed the first night - absolutely delicious and had so much left over that we enjoyed chicken and sausage sandwiches the next day. There were several other groups and a fair bit of drinking, though curfew was at nine, after which people were asked to move to the beach if they wanted to continue drinking. Most of us crashed early though as we were exhausted, apart from an annoying German group - one guy in particular was intent on waking the entire camp in the middle of the night. We could hear him shrieking like a mad chicken and when people shouted at him to shut up I heard him say he would go over and kill them, or collapse their tents. Think he might have had too much goon (cheap wine made with fish guts - apparently long-term effects included mental illness, so maybe he'd overdone it a bit).
On day two the weather was worse, and it rained heavily in the afternoon when we were at Indian Heads (a lookout point from which we could see mantas and dolphins in the sea before) and Champagne Pools (a natural rock pool into which the sea bubbled). We were back at the campsite by two pm! We spent the rest of the day eating and drinking and warming up under hot showers.
On day three it cheered up considerably. We packed up the tents and stopped off at a shipwreck on the way to the lakes. One of the roads was blocked by a fallen tree trunk (and one poor group was stuck on the other side without enough fuel to detour - they made it to the ferry though) so we only went to one of the lakes, Lake Mackenzie, which was stunning - white sand and clear water. But only just warm enough for sunbathing and only the mad people swam! When we stopped for lunch we saw two very tame Kookaburras and they sat and watched us for ages. Again, I think someone fed them...

I set off for Brisbane the next day, where I had almost three days. I really enjoyed being back in a city, and had company from the jeep safari (everyone does the same route) so that was great. Brisbane is a little bit flashy sometimes, especially some of the younger guys in their stupid sportscars, but the river is nice and it has green parks on the South Bank, where I went to the Art Gallery, and there are loads of nice shops on Queen Street. A lot of business people around as well, so tons of bars and restaurants aimed at that sort of crowd. On the last day I went out to the Lone Pine Sanctuary, which houses koalas, kangaroos, wombats, and a couple of other critters. Took lots of pictures as you could get up close and feed some of them.

I'm now in Byron Bay, leaving this evening for Syndey. It's the nicest beach town I've been in, with lots of trendy boutiques and cute cafes and restaurants. The beach is beautiful too but wild horses couldn't get me into the water as it's very cold here (have crossed the border into New South Wales), so no surfing lessons for me! Yesterday I walked up to the Lighthouse and watched the sunset and am just puddling around town today, trying not to spend any money! I also booked my bus pass for New Zealand yesterday (can't believe I'll already be there next week!) and am going with Magic Bus. The ticket includes the Tranzalpine train journey which is the first thing I do when I get there and promises to be absolutely stunning.