Alex & Lizzy's (Travel) Blog

We spent day 3 driving towards Milford Sound, enjoying the stunning scenery changing as we headed into Fiordland. We stopped en-route at a couple of places for lunch and for some short walks and eventually arrived at Milford Sound in the evening. Unfortunately, there’s no-where to camp in Milford Sound is itself (which the Lonely Planet unhelpfully fails to mention) so when we arrived in the cafe car-park/Ferry Terminal area, we spent a while debating whether we should ignore the ‘no overnight camping’ signs or drive 70km back to the nearest campsite with spaces… we chose to risk the $400 fine on advice from a helpful bar tender who told us that in the 18 months he’d worked there, the wardens had only moved people out once and without a fine. It turned out to be the right decision as we were able to get the first boat out the next morning which was not only cheaper but also very quiet.

The views were spectacular as you can hopefully see. We were also incredibly fortunate as the weather was unusually dry and sunny. The fjord has an annual rainfall of over 7m and there are over 200 days of rain here per year. As well as that we also saw three different schools of bottlenose Dolphins! If it hadn’t been so cold, I’d have been very tempted to jump in and swim with them- they’re amazing . We also saw some seals but having been brought up predominantly in Norfolk near Blakeny, they didn’t wow me as much- though they are pretty cool.

After a slight mix up with the campervan (we’d mistakenly put to pick up from Christchurch city not airport- oops!) we set off towards Timaru where we were planning to spend the night. Not a particularly picturesque place but it was en-route to Mt Cook where we were heading toward the following day. After waking up with cold faces the next day, we headed out. En-route we stopped at Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki- both incredibly beautiful even in the gusty wind. We’d planned to spend a couple of nights at Mt Cook and do some treks but unfortunately the weather was terrible and forecast to remain bad for another few days. Instead we settled for a short walk up to Lake Tasman where we saw our first ever Icebergs, and decided to move on and get a bit ahead of our planned schedule so we continued southwards. We stopped overnight at a Lake Dunstan, which reminded us both of the reservoir near Snake Pass en-route to Manchester. It was stunning waking up in the morning and having breakfast overlooking it with not a soul in sight.

More photos @ Picasa

Since Auckland will be our home for the next year or so, we were keen for it to make a good first impression on us. Unfortunately we arrived in the grey & drizzle after having got up at 3.45am for our flight from beautiful Sydney… probably not the best way to enter our new country! Fortunately there was a familiar face to see on that first evening in the shape of Lizzy’s ex-colleague Nick who made us feel very at home and even took the brave move of introducing us smelly backpackers to some of his friends. They seemed to not notice our odour and were really friendly & positive about NZ. We went back to our hostel in better spirits that night.

Over the next few days we took care of practicalities to do with banking, tax, jobs, phones, housing and many other boring things (and exciting things like signing up for a Subway loyalty card!). I was amused as we did some shopping in the supermarket – the brands of fabric conditioners were Fluffy, Cuddly and Snuggly (or similar)… I figured I could come to like a country where things had such cute names!  Whilst exploring areas to live (in North Shore City – a part of Auckland, cunning on the shore to the north of the city) we did manage to scout out the beaches at Takapuna, Castor Bay and Milford, which were nice (if a little windy on the days we saw them), but will have to be explored more thoroughly in the months to come. We have settled on a furnished place in between Milford & Castor Bay which has access to a pool & hot tub as well as all the usual stuff. It’s in a very quiet area (not a great thing when wanting to meet people) and a bit of a slog back from the beach (30 mins uphill), but it’s fine for the time being.

On the Sunday we popped to a local church where some people from our church back in Nottingham are involved. We not only caught up with them briefly, but met another couple of people from Nottingham – one of whom had actually lived in the same house in Mapperley – in fact the same bedroom – as Lizzy had done, just a year or so later!

With our feelings about Auckland gradually improving, we headed off to the airport to catch our flight to Christchurch where we’d start our 17-day exploration of the south island.

We had a fantastic time in Sydney, catching up with friends (Karen, Jill, Lou & Jake) all of whom took it in turns to be our tour guides & hosts. Jill took us for breakfast and then on a walk from Darling Harbour, round to Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Rocks (where we stopped in a museum with the best air-con we found all day), Circular Quay and then the Opera house which are all really impressive. We decided en-route that Sydney is our favourite city so far. Karen & Matt took us on a walk round the North Heads and also a costal walk from Coogee to Bondi and cooked us our first Aussie Barbie which was lovely. We also went up to see the view of the city from Karen’s office  on the 37^th floor which has got to be better than we’d have seen from the Skytower as the buildings closer to the harbour. And poor Lou and Jake had to put up with us for the five nights, cook for us, chauffer us around and take us out for dinner . We also made it down to Manly where we spent an afternoon on the beach.  It turns out though that spending time with friends and enjoying Sydney made leaving for Auckland harder than we imagined…but that’s another post.

Bonus stop: Forster- The best and worst diving so far!

After  a brief farewell stop to drop Jules and Tom in Newcastle, Alex and I headed back up the ‘freeway’ to Forster  where we checked into a cheap hotel, slightly reminiscent of a retirement home, and then headed to the beach for a couple of hours.

Grey Nurse Shark

Diving the following day, was the best and worst dives of our trip so far. Whilst diving in Asia, we’d naively expected to be surrounded by dolphins, huge manta rays, sharks and even whale sharks  at every turn, (yep we know- stupid but nevertheless true!). We’d almost started to doubt that there really where loads of big things in the ocean for us to see. Fortunately, this dive resolved any disillusionment we had! On the first dive, which was also our deepest so far at 33m, we spotted about three 3m long Grey Nurse sharks as well as lots of jack fish… On the second dive, we saw 25-30 sharks, an eagle ray and a logger-head turtle and it was AMAZING!! We had to swim through the kelp, creep through a crack and hide ourselves behind a ridge half way up and looking into a bowl shaped hole. There we were metres away from around 15 1 ½ -3 ½ m long Grey Nurse sharks that were circling the bowl. It was one of the most awesome experiences of our trip. Possibly one of the most frightening experiences for Alex was when he narrowly avoided grabbing the tail of a Wobegong shark that he’d not seen resting on the bottom! The dive instructor later told us that the ‘shark attack’ in Sydney the previous week had been by a Wobegong- although apparently it’s one of the first ever reports of this type of shark being aggressive. Oh and the Grey Nurse sharks are also very docile and aren’t man-eaters for anyone questioning our sanity at this point! We’ve no photos as we don’t have an underwater camera that works below 10m BUT we’ve found some photos online to show what the sharks we saw looked like.

Wobbegong Shark

The reason the dive was also the worst so far was mainly because of the company we dived with who where quite unfriendly telling me not to tell anyone I’d ‘fed the fish’ when I was vomiting over the side due to sea sickness and they were also snobby about us having predominantly dived in Asia, which apparently isn’t ‘real’ diving. Fortunately, the highs definitely outweighed the lows- by about 25 sharks

(Photos courtesy of Richard Ling – they’re not ours! Licensed under Creative Commons)

Mid-route stop: Nimbin. This random hippy town about an hour from Byron Bay is a bit kooky, but full of its own character and charm. After almost running over a few long-haired old guys on the way into town, we popped into the House of Hemp and the Hemp Museum before going on our way…

Final stop: Hunter Valley. After an epic 12-hour drive (to allow us increased wine-tasting time the next day), we arrived in Cessnock absolutely parched. Fortunately we had a long day of drinking ahead of us, so we went to bed safe in the knowledge we’d have our thirst sated soon. As it turned out, we could have spent a week tasting wine here, but still managed to cram in 6 wineries, a smelly cheese shop (that’s their term, not ours!), a British Lolly shop and an olive-vineyard-allsorts place. Unfortunately for her, Lizzy ended up doing most of the driving and little of the tasting as she was the scheduled morning driver and with lunch not until 3.30, she was only able to make the most of 2 late afternoon tasting sessions whilst the rest of us gradually fell asleep. That night, we reminisced about our time in Asia with a meal in a Thai restaurant to celebrate Tom’s impending birthday.

Photos from the whole road trip @ Picasa

After allowing our rumps to recover from the bumpiness of Fraser Island, the four of us set out to explore the east coast of Australia between Hervey Bay and Sydney. Stops en route were scheduled for Noosa, Byron Bay, Hunter Valley & possibly somewhere for diving with sharks…

First stop: Noosa. Arriving in the town centre late afternoon, we managed to bag ourselves a bargainous 2-bed apartment for 2 nights – air con, pool, bbq, washing machine, full kitchen (we used them all)… what more could you want for AU$99? Noosa seemed like a really nice, relaxed seaside town , but we’d come here for one thing – the waves . Only having one day we decided against surf boards and instead opted for their smaller and easier cousin – the body board. We spent pretty much a whole day in the waves before retreating back to the flat, satisfied and only a little sore from our exertion. We also saw a man standing on a surf board… with a dog as passenger – very weird & impressive! Here’s a video of my expert body boarding

Next stop: Byron Bay. We visited the Arts Factory, stopping for a coffee and, later in the day, for some beer tasting (they have their own brewery). Byron Bay has a lovely sandy beach with an inviting wavy blue sea. The sea, however, was misleading – in fact there was an immensely strong current running along the beach – so strong that it was like wading through a strong river. Any time you lost your footing or tried swimming, you were very quickly 10m down the shore from where you’d just been. We had some fun jumping in the waves though and then trekked back up the beach to top up our tans. As the sun began to sink behind the hills, we headed up to the nearby lighthouse for sunset. This is very nearly the most easterly point of Australia; it’s a little walk to the actual spot, but we figured we’d got close enough. As you can see, we enjoyed a sunset over hills and sea with lighthouse in the background.

To be continued…

More photos (& videos of body boarding!) from the whole trip @ Picasa

Fraser is home to seven of the most deadly spiders and snakes in the world, its waters are patrolled by sharks* and jelly fish and the land by dingos. The only way to get around is by 4WD and the nearest emergency help is air ambulance 1 ½ hours away. If that didn’t make us feel a bit nervous, the risk of losing our vehicle excess if we got stuck anywhere certainly did!

So off we set, Tom, Jules, Lizzy and Alex on a mini 4WD adventure around this beautiful but apparently deadly island. I was quite happy to leave the driving to Alex and Tom who both loved navigating the sandy, rutted tracks- I was content to drive only on the easier beach section where we invented the game ‘Jellysquish’ . Fortunately, despite this leading to a very messy under carriage, we weren’t fined anything on returning the car. We managed to blag** a campsite spot which normally should have set us back $40 for the two nights so we enjoyed the luxuries of flushing toilet and running water and didn’t have to use our shovel once

The sights on the island where very pretty and we enjoyed swimming in lakes and in the ‘Champagne rock pools’ (the only bit of sea safe to swim in as sharks can’t get in), climbing the dunes, walking through the rainforests, wandering round the Maheno shipwreck and of course all the 4WD. We also enjoyed swatting and then feeding giant March flies to the catfish in Lake Wabby which gave us a great deal of satisfaction as they had bitten us to shreds by then- Ouch!

Bugs aside, a fantastic trip

More photos @ Picasa

*nope- despite looking, I didn’t see any

** read trespass- although admittedly we didn’t actually know it cost anything to start with- we only found this out as we were leaving