Adelaide and Perth

We started of Adelaide with a self guided walking tour that took us to all of the prime tourist spots including the museum, library, art gallery, Oval, convention centre and all other sites that the people of Adelaide wanted to brag about. We entered the museum to find a wide range of exhibits from immigration to the South pacific to animals found all over the world. Devon and I really enjoyed the museum as we usually do because we learn a lot and it's always free admission! During the tour we wandered the Botanic Gardens, these are found in every city, and went on a self guided tour of the Wine Centre of Australia where we learned how it is made and where the best places are for growing wine. We walked along Rundle street where the large square full of shops of all shapes and sizes are and had lunch along there too.



(picture of Ben and I)

<------The next day we met Ben who took us up Mount Lofty, which is the highest part of Adelaide. The hike was demanding as the heat makes the climb much more difficult than you would first think. I tuned a lovely shade of red which splotched out after I reached the top. After cooling down at the hostel we went to a wonderful Fringe show with Ben who was reviewing it and another fella from England. It was written, composed, and performed by one girl, with two girls as back ups. The show was phenomenal! Ben took us and a few other people from the hostel to a cricket game the next day. I started to understand the game though I know I only scratched the surface of the complicated and admittedly boring game. We left this 'thrilling' game a few hours and a day early (as these things take three or four days to play out) and headed to a chocolate factory!!!

(Picture of Me at the Heights Chocolate factory)

We were very late getting to the chocolate factory tour. We were so very late because we ended up asking three bus drivers where the free tram was that got us part way there then ran about ten blocks to arrive five minutes late (but only missing the first taster!). We enjoyed the tour and got some amazing chocolate to boot! After our delicious afternoon we headed next door to do an hour of intensive kickboxing!! Lets just say that we were sore for the next few days but felt it was well worth it.

<----- The very next early early morning (ie four am) we headed for the airport to jet off in the darkness to Perth. The sun rose behind us as we flew west towards our next destination.

At the airport we were met by two of the most wonderful women who are a family friend of Devons. They put us up for five glorious nights at their home and were amazing hosts. We got to see so much more of Perth than if we had stayed in a hostel and got to relax too!

The day that we arrived Norma took us around town and Swan Valley. If you thought that a chocolate tour in Adelaide was enough you don't know us very well. We stopped in a a chocolate factory in Swan Valley as well and got even more testers and checked out the chocolate menu available at the restaurant.

The heat in Perth was dreadful. We were subjected to temperatures up to 38 degrees during the day and 24 degrees over night though the humidity during the day felt like 44 degrees. We went to Scarborough beach on our first day for ice cream and to dip our feet into the Indian ocean!!

We tried to do a walking tour of the city the next day but the heat was so heavy that we headed home within a few hours. Thankfully the neighbours were kind and let us use their pool; personally I think this was key to our survival in Perth. That evening we headed out to see a live moving theatre show that paraded through the streets of Perth. It was a french circus show.

--------------------------------------------->
The show focused mainly on music and spectical, with large giraffes that were about 35 feet tall and manned by three people (two inside sweating bullets and one outside guiding their movements). The story was of two people who fell in love, then fell apart and ended up singing themselves to an early death. The loud explosions and fire displays were very engaging while the story was less captivating.

The day after that was fantasitc! I went with Norma to the local wild life centre. I had such a great time I saw a huge range of different animals and I have included some here which are found often in the wild though this is far from the amount of amazing animals I saw.



This is the Kookaburra bird-------->

He sounds like a monkey when he calls. We have seen this bird all over the south and west of Australia.

We have seen many Cockatoos in this country, white, yellow, and pink, but we have not seen the black red tipped Cockatoo. This one was very brave, he came right up on the fence right up to my face and started sharpening his beak on the cage... so maybe he was less brave more mystcevious.

Here I am ->

with a pack of Kangaroos. They are eating food out of my hand. These Kangaroos were extremely people friendly. They would let you come right up and pet them and would jump up on you to smell you out to see if you had any food. It was pretty neat.

Many of the Kangaroos had Joeys (babies) in their pouches. Joeys are born premature with no eyes and no arms. They are put into the pouch to continue maturation until they are much older and have hair as well as the other missing body parts. This one as you can see is pretty big and flexible with his hind legs poking out over his head!----------------->

I also got to see a Wombat. This animal was held by the trainer so that you could see and pet the animal. I felt sorry for this animal as she didn't seem very happy with her job. I couldn't believe her size; Wombats can take out a car if you hit them!

<-----Finally another animal that I have found in the wild but couldn't' see as well and as close as this is the Koala. They are very sensitive animals as they are very picky about their food, water and their habitat, which they destroy as they live there (reminds me a bit of humans). They also have two thumbs, seen in the picture below, and three fingers. I was lucky enough not just to get to touch one but I also hear them 'talking' and one came out of the tree it was in!

On one of our last days in Perth we headed to Fremantle, an area south of Perth on the open ocean. We met a British fellow here who came with us to the Fremantle Markets and to the Fremantle prison. This prison was built by man power only and was open until 1991. During the last few years here convicts were allowed to paint on the walls, the art work was mind bogglingly beautiful! We got to see how the prison changed over the century it was open. In the beginning the cells were so small people died of suffocation so they had to enlarge the cells by combining two cells into one. We enjoyed our time here and headed back into the city to have dinner with my cousin and her boyfriend.

<---- My cousin Shannon and her boyfriend Matt met us at a local Greek restaurant and enjoyed catching up. I was so happy to be able to spend some time with her as she has lived here for the last couple of years.

The next day we took off, you need to rest sometimes as it gets so very busy travelling. The day after that we went to the museum to see the Fem Fetal exhibit that talked about the history of female criminals. We also saw the war exhibit Shell Shocked. Both were wonderful and I highly recommend them if you get the chance. After that it was off to the airport by noon.

We arrived in Alice Springs today where the heat isn't much better and the bugs are much worse. We are off on our tour of central Australia including Ayers rock. We are very excited and I will report on it when we get to Cairns on the East coast. So in the meantime enjoy the snow!!!!!

;)

From Sydney to Adelaide

Hello Everyone!


As locals say here, "how are you going?"

Here are some photos that I wasn't able to post with my last blog.


Here I am infront of the Sydney Opera House in the photo below.

We got to explore the Opera House during a tour and the washrooms there were done up so much that the toilet paper was lighted up and the sings were completely automated (soap and everything) and the water flowed down behind the sink, as you notice in the picture there is no drain.

Here I am in front of the Bridge the day after I climbed it.------>

Below is Manly beach where we laid in the sand for a couple hours, and I played beach volleyball but it all ended with quite a bit of rain.

Now on to new things. From Sydney we caught the Greyhound bus to the Capital of Australia. Canberra was a small town with mostly government buildings, the Mint, and some interesting art galleries. To the right is the steps up to the Mint observatory where you could read about how money is made, how it has changed over time and I could observe the money being made as well.

After going to Canberra we took a 9 hour Greyhound bus ride to Melbourne. I know I have already talked about some of this but I am just going over it again with pictures. Since I already talked about our arrival and the first terrible hostel. Well after that we went to a great hostel and then to our beloved YHA. Now that we were based in a good place we explored Melbourne.

<------We went to a exhibition that featured Children's book illustrations from local authors. This was absolutely wonderful, both Devon and I enjoyed it and got to read a couple of the books too. We also booked our flights to Perth, Alice Springs and Cairns, as well as our tour from Melbourne to Adelaide and our tour of Central Australia. We are thankful that this is all organized now and we can just go along with the ride for the next little while.

In Melbourne we got to go to the Pancake Parlour where we got two for one double stack pancakes with ice cream on top for under ten dollars...twice! This was very yummy and was in a mall where they built around an original building that used to be a factory of some sort, it was a very interestingly designed mall.

Our Valentines was great. We ate our dinner at a Italian restaurant in the little Italian district. We had an amazing pizza and a half decent salad and a hilariously silly waiter. After we went to a gelato place across the street and finish the day with an amazing cold dessert.
After we spent a few days in North Melbourne we went to St Kilda a different area of Melbourne. Here we went to a night market that was wonderful and had even more ice cream! We enjoyed this area and just relaxed for a few days. I think we needed a few days off from the go go go of our travels.

After this we left of a Groovy Grape tour of the Great Ocean Road.

This road followed the ocean and is home to some of the most famous surfer beaches and companies including Rip Curl and others. Along the Road we got to see Koalas and got to feed wild birds.

This was so much fun I was full of energy and very happy. Devon kept her distance from the birds but enjoyed the Koalas and everything.

Here is our bus that we travelled in. Our bus driver was named Lorenzo and we had four others that came from Austria (Christof and Nik), Italy (Rosella), and from the US (Dawn). Picture is below.


(Picture of the group)

Here is a picture of the 'twelve' apostles. There are only six now as three fell down in the last few years. The used to be called the Sow and Piglets where an island out off the coast was the sow and the stacks were the piglets but people who were trying to make it big with tourists thought that the Twelve Apostles sounded better. The day that we visited them it was extremely windy, thus my fantastic hair.

Below is the London Bridge though it is not a bridge as much any more because it fell down too. After four stops on the this route a got a little tired of seeing the same area in the same windy conditions so there aren't too many photos of it all. These photos basically cover it.

(picture of me at one of the beaches)

You can see from our attire that we were dressed for the weather.... not what you would expect from Australia but it is not always over 30 degrees.

The next day we went to the Grampians and Halls Gap, where there was a surplus of Kangaroos. It was so neat to see how they moved and interacted. There were many in this area of OZ and would let you be about five feet away. It was strange to see them like deer on the side of the road. Below is a picture of a joey and his mom, they aren't hugging, the joey is having at it with his mom.

The next day we headed for Adelaide. On the way we climbed to the top of a peak in the Grampians to see over the whole area. Here I am at the top where the wind nearly knocked of the top!

On one of the deserted dirt roads that we traveled we ran into a pack of emus, well almost ran into a pack of emus.

Finally the last strange animal we saw along the way was the white Kangaroo. These animals are a genetic abnormality. They don't live long and are able to contract diseases easier. These animals are so rare because of their issues that they are raised in captivity more often than not. It seems strange to raise an animal that is prone to die, but that's just my opinion...














So that is the end of our travels to Adelaide. We arrived here yesterday and have explored the city a bit and will do more in the next few days. After that we fly to Perth were we will stay with family friends and I will see my cousin. We are excited to go there and see the outback city and lay on the beach. We will then be off to Central Australia after that. This post has been mostly informational and hopefully not to long. I have to say home sickness has occurred at times. I am enjoying myself so much here but it is also making me realize how very special my life is back home and I am excited to return to it in July. I am excited for Perth and Central OZ because it will be different than our city after city south Australia. After that it will be the white beaches of Eastern Australia!!! So until next time friends and family!!!

:)

The rest of Sydney, Bondi, Canberra, and the beginning of Melbourne

Hello all!

Since I last posted Devon and I have moved around a lot. Firstly I would like to talk about the places we stayed in Sydney. We stayed there a week and stayed at three different hostels. I guess you could say we are a bit picky with where we stay. We started in Wake up a converted shopping centre. This place was in Chinatown and was a hub for young adults who like to be social very often. The upkeep of the place was below our par, the kitchen was not very clean and some of the burners were not operational :( In addition to that one of the two elevators for the seven flours was broken creating a significant overcrowding in the elevators and so we would climb the six flights to avoid waiting half an hour to access the elevator. We then moved with in two nights to the YHA The Rocks just off the water side. This was a five star hostel with views from the top deck of the bridge and the Opera House. It was a clean place with kitchens BBQs lots of seating wonderful people and built on an archaeological site that you could learn about who had lived in the area before. The place was great to say the least. Once we had covered a lot of Sydney we decided to mosey on over to the famous Bondi beach. Now that we were fond of YHAs we decided to stay at Bondi Beach YHA which was not as fantastic as the last (you had to put a deposit down for cutlery) but suited us just fine with clean functioning facilities.
The beach down the road was amazing with gorgeous waves and the smell almost reminded me of home, but not quite. During our three night stay in Bondi we also toured the Opera house. This was wonderful the thought and care that went into the building astonishes me despite my recent architectural study of the building during my theatre degree. The roof was designed after the sphere shape as a guide and gluing the cement pieces together with a strong poxy. The seats were designed by a doctor to be the most comfortable possible. There is much more to the purposeful design of the building. We also went to Manly Beach were I played beach volleyball and bathed in the sun while the waves crashed along the sandy shores. However our bliss was short lived as a big shower of rain drenched us after a couple of hours.
We left after three nights and headed on the Greyhound to Canberra. We enjoyed staying at another YHA making yummy hot dogs and taking it easy. We checked out the Portrait Gallery, the Mint and the Parliament building the next day. We enjoyed the art work of local artists and of Martin Schoeller, who has a unique way of taking photos of well known people.
After one night we headed on a nine hour trip to Melbourne. This was not like Magic bus where we could stop every once in a while to see some amazing thing or another and got to know some amazing people. Now we have to rely on the hostels to meet people so we are even more picky about the places we stay.

Arriving in Melbourne at 11 o'clock at night we were glad to find our hostel close by but unfortunately the hostel wasn't in a great area and the facilities were far below standards in cleanliness, kitchen supplies, working lockers, a curfew for sound, and complete bedding. We booked it out of there at 8 am the next morning. This hostel was called Melbourne Connection, do not stay there if you are even in Melbourne. We have learned through out the process that you need to book several days ahead in Australia unlike New Zealand where you can usually book the day before. After a lot of difficulty, frustration, and phone calls we found a place to stay at a brand new (redone) hostel tonight called Bozo's Backpackers. This place is good, small bright and with free internet!!!!! We have enjoyed our stay and like the manager, we recommend it if you can't stay at a YHA or another of your favourite spots. Tomorrow we are back to our beloved YHA for three nights where we explore the central area of Melbourne before we go to Habitat HQ hostel in St. Kilda which is an area near the water. We are excited to explore these two areas including a place that is like little Italy where we might plan to have our one month anniversary of our trip/Valentines dinner. I won't tell you about what we plan on doing anymore so I have things to tell you in the next blog. One of the things we have done here is checked out a local mall that had an old building within it, we presumed that the mall was built around it. Within this mall there was a pancake place that was called Lovely where they served pancakes with ice cream which we got for two for one!!! It was mind blowing. They served ice cream with most of the menu. We are tempted to go there for Valentines but it is up in the air for now.

There are no pictures with this post because I couldn't hook up my camera but I will do that within the next few days, I promise. I want to thank everyone who has checked my blog. Please continue to do so I hope to keep it entertaining and fun to read.

Sydney thus far...

We arrived in Sydney to a hot 34 degrees with a humidity of 40%. We were not prepared for the wave of heat that hit our faces when we walked out of the airport.
We stayed at Wake UP! hostel for two nights but quickly moved on the the YHA The Rocks because of the quality of the hostel and the location. We enjoy The Rocks area much more. It was originally were the Convicts lived but now has been restore and has beautiful shops, restaurants, and apartments.
It is also close to the Sydney Opera House, the Bridge, the Central transportation station and much more.

We did a walking tour of Sydney that told us all about the history of the places and how it became the city as it is now. To the left is the barracks where convicts where held. To the left and down is an anchor from a ship that was one of the first to visit Sydney. During our walking tour we got to see the bridge and opera house from afar but we are going to see but up close and personal very soon. In fact we did the bridge climb today.














It was a balmy 36 degrees with a humidity of 40% with the winds not cooling us off very much! The climb was beautiful. We could see a large portion of the city and were able to enjoy the more open and breathtaking areas in from above. It was a costly adventure but we enjoyed it. The pictures we have of it aren't currently working so I will have to up load them at a later date, sorry about that. In the mean time we are going to tour the opera house, check out Manly and perhaps a few other islands that are supposed to be great. So I will update you when we are heading out of the capital of New South Wales!


(picture of me on the bridge)

National park to Christchruch

I am never going to leave this much of a gap between my blogs again! It takes too much effort to update you when I have done so much since I last blogged. So here is the last eleven days... (sorry about the length and the extensive photos, but I am not really sorry it was great!)

I am officially sick of the bus! Though our drivers are mostly wonderful, funny and usually very entertaining I have grown tired of being on a bus not doing anything and still feeling tired afterwards. The best part of our travels on the bus and off has been the people. We have met so many wonderful people including but not limited to, Jack and Clare from England, Christian, Pia, Anne, and Magdalena from Germany, and a couple of Finish guys who we just kept running into.

We left Taupo and went to National park backpackers.

On our way there we got to participate in an adventure called Blackwater rafting.

I got to go with all of the German people I mentioned above and we had a blast. I got picked as leader and as such had to do everything first from falling backwards into a murky pool, sliding down a river slide, leading everyone along the passage way,

and singing to everyone while we looked at the glowworms on the ceiling of the cave;

and all done in the dark!

Here is a photo of the glow worms, though you can't see them the sticky web that hangs down is how they catch food.

It wasn't very scary but it was a lot of fun and I really got to know some of the people who I went with.

From National Park Tongariro we left to go to Wellington. We checked out the local area which was really nice with lots of fun things to do.

(picture of the Movie theatre)


We ended up watching a movie with our friend Jack, seen in this photo above, in this amazing theatre with leather seats and marble entrance.

We also got to go to the Tie Papa Museum where there was lots of amazing historical art, artifacts and artwork based on and in New Zealand. We also went to Sweet Mother's Kitchen for breakfast which was scrumptious I had waffles with back bacon.

From Wellington we decided to fly to Queenstown. This meant that we missed most of the West coast of New Zealand. Had I known we were going to be so tight for time I would have tried to get one more week in so we could see the Glaciers in Frans Josef and other amazing things along the coast.

The flight was short and sweet so we had extra time to explore the small down town area of Queenstown (in the rain) beforer settling down in our hostel. This particular hostel was a bit outside of town and had the essentials for you. We ended up changing rooms twice during our stay because the first room we were in had a snorer who kept us up and the second room had a few ladies in it who liked to spread themselves and in turn their things all over the room. This was so bad we couldn't access our beds so we changed again and met William a guy from England who was very friendly to us but seemed to argue he didn't like many people (only the people from Switzerland because that is where is girl is from). In Queenstown we book a 12 hour expedition on a bus (again!) to Milford Sound, a must do for anyone travelling to New Zealand. This area took us four and a half hours to get to and three and a half hours to return from, but the two hours on the boat and some of the stops along the way were breath taking. This picturesque area is what I imagined New Zealand to be like. It was filled with huge mountains with lush greenery that would often slip off the side of the steep cliffs and have to grow back eventually. From these mountains beautiful waterfalls would rush into the gorgeous blue water below. This water has so much fresh water running into it that it has several feet of fresh water that sits on top of the sea water causing a lot less light to penetrate the water and giving sea life the feeling that they are a lot deeper that they are. This means that it is one of the few places in the world that you can dive and see black coral and other sea life without having to deep sea dive. During out boat ride we saw a huge pack of dolphins that put on quite a show for us as well. This area was so beautiful I couldn't put just a few photos up so I have posted several please forgive my overzealous posting but it was an indescribable area and I need the pictures to attempt to do it justice...

We also tried some of the local cuisine in Queenstown. We went to the famous burger place called Fergburger.

This place had huge burgers with delicious toppings and a line up that went outside the building. I enjoyed the burger though I wasn't used to having that much tomato relish on my burger and could primarily taste only the sauce.

We also got to enjoy many cookies from cookietime!

After Queenstown we went to Dunedin where we saw the Cadbury factory

(though we didn't do the tour) and we got to see how a local beer was made.

Speights is made using a lot of science and technology as well as traditional methods. It was very interesting to learn about the process and we had a very funny guide.

We left Dunedin and got back on the bus (again!) and headed for Lake Takepo. Along the way we got to stop and walk up the Steepest residential hill in the world. It was a rough climb but so much fun and the feeling of accomplishment was great.

This hill has a gradient of 1 meter distance to 2.86 meters incline!

In Lake Takepo we had a bus BBQ at the local hostel. It was delicious! We had burgers, chicken, couscous, fries, salad, coleslaw, sausages and so much more. After all that food I was out like a light. The next morning we were on our way to Christchurch, the town that was hit by the earthquakes...

Here we stayed the night at a local hostel the Rollesten House YHA but it wasn't very nice and was very expensive so we decided to book at another hostel. Before we did I got in touch we a family friend and they were generous enough to put us up for both of the following nights at their house. This place is like a slice of heaven with beautiful rooms a beautiful view and beautiful people. We had amazing meals and got to work on our tans by the pool. During our stay in the town we ate some mouth watering fudge, checked out the museum and art galleries (both are by donations and well worth the short walk from central CHCH) and mail some stuff home. There have been some bumps along the road including my memory cards for my camera that I bought not working, my glasses being left behind at a hostel and trying to get them sent to me and the internet here has been an expense Devon and I weren't expecting. Suggestions to anyone who is coming to New Zealand; the south island is worth some extra time; bring a cell phone you can buy a Sim card and get cheaper calls; go to the library for internet or walk around to internet cafes or bring a laptop to catch some free wifi at a coffee shop; do some research as some friends who have been to be sure you hit the highlights; and be sure you have more time and money than you think you need!

Tomorrow, well today now, we fly to Sydney Australia. I am excited to spend some time there and not be on the go as much as I was here. I am sad to see the end of my New Zealand trip and will welcome the day that I return.

I want to say how wonderful it was to be in the company of these great people for my time in CHCH and to enjoy their generosity. It made the end of New Zealand a great finish. Thank you!