LizIsHere

Hong Kong - thronging, colourful, buzzing and altogether not too good for a person with jetlag....
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
I arrived in Hong Kong closely resembling a person who had been trapped in a box, breathing re-circulated air, being fed microwaved food and having bad TV pumped into their eye sockets for twelve hours. Perhaps this was unsurprising, as that was exactly what had happened to me. The less said about the flight the better – I suppose ‘not fun’ would fairly sum it up, but since we landed safely and my bag turned on the luggage carousel, I will just say that I fully appreciate the miracle of flight, despite the short-comings on spending a day on aeroplane. (Side-note: to the English lady next to me - please book 3 seats for yourself next time so no one else has to hear you complain about minutiae for twelve hours! Or follow my dubious lead and wait until you’ve got a blog through which to broadcast your woes to much wider audience).
Not having slept in 26 hours, the task of escaping from the airport, finding a bus ticket, and then locating the correct bus for the sixty minute ride into Kowloon (the bit of Hong Kong attached to mainland China) was surprisingly easy. Even better, the buses here are just like English ones - even down to the red 'stop' bells. One of the better, if minor, hangovers from colonialism, I guess
My hotel (I was starting off my trip a little extravagantly, with my own room) was just off Nathan Road - a manic, Chinese-style Oxford Street, heaving with people, cars and shops, and cluttered from first-floor level upwards with neon signage. It was a quite a sight at nighttime, the signs competing for attention in a mash of garish colour, neatly concealing the cramped, grimy apartment blocks, each with their own window-mounted air-conditioning unit.
However, in daytime, severely lacking in sleep and lugging my ridiculously heavy backpack in the muggy heat, it was just slightly overwhelming!
The Evergreen Hotel is on a side street mostly taken up with street cafes and cheap restaurants, a stone’s throw from the buzzing Temple Street Night market. It was a small place, with rooms like shoeboxes, but at least my little box had a window - a luxury which is apparently frequently absent in the cheaper HK hotels.
The night market, which runs from 4pm-12am over three blocks, was just one street over from the hotel. Going out to explore I found it sold everything from padlocks and mobile phones, to cheap jewellery, t-shirts, chopsticks and the ubiquitous red & gold Chinese New Year decorations. When the streets got crowded – and they mostly always were - it was a faily manic place to be, with every stall-holder fighting to entice you in, typing prices into calculators to bypass the language barrier, and pushing goods into your hands while describing exactly how they would improve YOUR life. Haggling is encouraged. The streets around the market were similarily crammed, with busy, slightly ramshackle street cafes and small shops full of chattering locals and slightly more wary tourists poking suspiciously at their bowls of noodles. The main roads, Jordan and Nathan road, were more similar to cosmopolitan thoroughfares the world over, with larger shops, massage places, department stores and 7-11s. The streets stay busy and noisy late into the night.
Searching around for dinner that didn't come on a little plastic tray and taste like airplane, I encountered a problem which would dog me for my four days in HK - finding something vegetarian. (It was only on my last day that I noticed at least 2 veggie restaurants in the immediate area of my hotel - I blame the jetlag.)
I ordered something that look veggie at a street cafe on the first night, but after eating a few mouthfuls, an exploratory poke around in the bottom of the giant soup bowl turned up something that look like squid (well, I hope it was squid). It’s considered a little odd to eat on your own in China - all restaurant food seems to come in large, shareable portions, and everyone serve themselves from different dishes and eats from their own small bowl with chopsticks. It's considered rude to order a dish just for yourself if you're in a group. I got some odd (or perhaps just sympathetic) looks from staff and other diners when I sat down on my own, and soon learnt to ask for smaller portions when ordering. One of my favourite things about dining out in Hong Kong – apart from the staggeringly cheap prices – was the Chinese tea which is served with all meals, from the delicately painted blue and white teapots in the restaurants, to the chunky, yellow-lidded jugs at the pavement cafes.
written by  LizIsHere on January 25, 2010 from Hong Kong, Hong Kong
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010

markets and temples
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
After losing half a day to jet-lag (got up, had breakfast, went back to room and decided to have a little lie-down, woke up four hours late), I decide to check out some of markets and temples in Kowloon. I check the map and then wander about slightly aimlessly - it suits my groggy state and also, with pretty much every shop and street holding something interesting, makes the walk less of a mission.
On Reclamation Street (there's a mesh of english and chinese street names here, understandably), a food market stretches for three blocks, with stalls selling all types of fruit and veg, dried fish, tubs of pick'n'mix, incense, electronic goods and metal bits and bobs. I see men cleaving up whole ducks and chickens at make-shift open-fronted butchers shops, the wood frames hung with different cuts of meat, whole birds and dried-out pig-head skins (yum). At a fishmonger-type place, live fish are kept in tubs which spread out onto the pavement, a filter-system rigged up to them from a hosepipe, spilling water over the pavement and into the gutter. Down a small alleyway a man beats metalwork on a wood block, and at the market stalls the women stall-holders knit, yell across the road to each other and even, at a couple of stalls, doze off in chairs until a customer wakes them up to be served. It's busy and colourful, noisy and at times pretty smelly - the stink of fish, meat, cooking and rice filling the air and mixing with traffic fumes near the main roads.
I stumble across the Jade Market first, and immeadialy upon stepping inside am verbally mugged by stallholders eager to sell me bracelets, necklaces, rings and other trinkets made with jade varying in authenticity. Apparently jade has been used for thousands of yars to ward off evil spirits and calm emotions. Feeling a little too calm (sleepy) already, I leave and head on towards the Tin Hau temple.
The temple is set in a courtyard park, off a busy road, but although there are only low metal railings between the road and the park, it feels quite tranquil once you step inside. Huge Chinese banyan trees trail over the ground, tourists and locals take a few minutes rest on the two-seater, polished-marble-style benches, and groups of old men crowd round tables watching others play what looks like checkers - a sight which becomes familiar as I visit other parks in Kowloon and on Hong Kong Island.
The temple itself is traditional Chinese style; a green roof, gold-painted characters above the door, and red embrodiered panels hanging on either side of the entrance. The building actually houses four temples, but the largest is for Tin Hau, goddess of sailors and fisherman (the temple used to be by the sea, but was moved), but who was also named Queen of Heaven by the mongol emperor Kublai Khan after she survived a great tempest. Inside the temple it is smoky and the air is perfumed from the incense stick bundles burned and wafted by worshippers, and from the large incense coils which hang from the ceiling in the centre of temple, with small trays beneath to catch the falling ash. A translated Cantonese sign says that these coils can be bought to bring good fortune to friends and family; they will burn for ten days once lit.
The atmosphere of the temple is so unlike that of cold&staid Christian churches; there is a sort of reception desk with a telephone, worshippers talk and guide each other through ritual and prayers, in one temple later on one woman even answers her mobile phone in the middle of a prayer! It's a bit chaotic inside, the backwall is cluttered with statues of other gods and goddesses apart from Tin Hau, though her statue has pride of place. The walls are hung with red material embroidered in gold, and ancient oblong finebrush paintings hang in glass frames. Bundles of incense are lit and wafted towards the statue of Tin Hau as part of a prayer ritual; these are then placed in a bucket of sand on the steps outside the door. Some worshippers also beat the large gold gong which stands to the right hand side of the door a couple of times before they leave. It's hard to know what these actions stand for without being able to speak Cantonese, but they were fascinating to watch.
The Tin Hau temple is flanked on it's raised platform by the temples for the city deity, Shing Wong, who ensure justice on earth and in the undeworld (a god of judges and soldiers), the Fok Tak Temple which hosts a number of deities, and the Shea Tan Temple, which is for the local gods of Kowloon.
After the temples I walk down Nathan Road and then along Prince Edward Road West to the flower market and Yuen Po Street Bird Garden. The lush perfumes of the flower market are a welcome relief after the backstreet smells around Temple Street, and the flowers themselves are a splash of colour in a area crammed - like much of Kowloon - with cramped, grimy apartment blocks dotted with dusty air-conditioner units and hung with washing, jammed up incongruously against modern, shiny glass office blocks and hotels.
You hear the Yuen Po Street bird garden and market before you see it. Or, more accurately, you hear the clamour of the hundreds of birds there. As I walk up the slope to the raised area where the garden and market are, a slightly mangy parrot peers down at me from a parapet, squawking at me - it takes a while of me trying to work out what it's saying before I realise it is talking in Cantonese!
The noise of the birds is unbelievable; there are hundreds here, most caged, some chained or wandering about with clipped wings, from tiny sparrow-types to cockatoos. Songbirds have always been popular pets with the Chinese, and some men have brought their birds along today to hang their cages from the trees which run along the walkway next to the market to show them off and let them sing. Their cages are intricate - even their food and water bowls are decorated, painted in blue on white china like a restaurant teapot, but their cages are small, and it's kind of sad to see birds contained in that way and unable to fly even a small distance.
On the way back to the hotel I go through a fun but quite complex process of trying to buy a few oranges from an old man's stall. There's lots of sign-language, great use of the ubiquitous calculator, a bit of confusion, and then finally smiles and relief as I get my oranges and he gets the correct money. Being white and blonde, it's impossible not stick out here, particularly on the backstreets; trying to pretend not to be a tourist as you might in Italy or America would be both hilarious and useless. Hong Kong seems intensely and excitingly foreign in parts, particularly on the backstreets, and yet amazingly familiar (the buses, Macdonalds - noooo!, H&M etc.). It makes for both a confusing and pretty fascinating experience.
written by  LizIsHere on January 26, 2010 from Hong Kong, Hong Kong
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010

nice suit for you? ...um, no
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
I headed down Nathan Road to the Star Ferry terminal today, dodging the tailor touts and fake designer watch/bag sellers ( i perfected my thousand-mile stare in a number of trips up and down the road; do I really look like the kind person who wants a suit or covets fake Gucci arm-furniture?). The bulk of the touts hang about near the notorious Chung King Mansions (a cramped, towering grimy block of apartments, cheap hostels, money-changers, drug-dealers bolt-holes, and food / cheap goods stalls.) It's where the majority of the cheap backpackers accomodation on Kowloon is, and the ground floor is dark, cramped with stalls and touts, and had an extremely 'masculine' air. I didn't feel exactly threatened when I wandered in for a look, but despite feeling a little spoilt starting a backpacking trip with my hotel in a nicer part of Kowloon, I was glad I hadn't opted to stay in CK; it definitely verged on the extreme side of seedy.
At the ferry terminal, still a bit messed up from jetlag (it's a good excuse!), I made my first entertaining mistake of my trip, managing to pay out $85 HK for a harbour tour (complete with humourless audio), instead of the $2 cross-harbour trip to HK Island I'd been aiming for. Not only that, but I didn't realise you had to tell the boat steward where you wanted to stop, so I missed the Central pier and ended up trapped on the boat for the full hour round-trip, learning a few facts about HK and catching some pretty good views despite the mist, but mostly getting pumped full of info on where was best to spend my dollars whilst in HK (I'd spent enough on the tour, cheers). When I caught the commuter ferry back across later in the day, it was so much better; open sides to the boat, a buzz of people, and, of course, no freakin' commentary!
Once I finally escaped onto dry land I caught the bus up to the Peak Tram terminus to take a ride up Victoria Peak, the highest point on HK Island (1,817 foot, if you're interested). It's where the super-rich of HK live and it's really, really steep - to think in the 1800s European settlers expected to be carried up the in sedan chairs! It was steep enough for the tram ride to even be a little scary at first, especially when the ground falls away to the right and you could see right down onto the top of the skyscrapers of the city. But the views were awesome; across the forest of skyscrapers. At the top (the actually summit is out of bounds) you step out of the wood-panelled tram and into the Peak Tower - which is basically a shopping mall (yes, with a Starbucks even, gotta have that caffeine fix...) with a viewing deck slapped on top! Nice.
Since I hadn't bought a pass to the desk, I went to the outside viewing areas. It smelt so green - the slopes of Peak are mainly covered in forest, and nature trails weave off around the area. I spotted a couple of eagles circling below the stone viewing area as I looked down over the buildings below. It was too misty to see further than the island city itself, but still pretty stunning, and to be out in nature after the city was great - real fresh air!
After riding back down, my next uber-touristy goal was the Man Mo temple on Hollywood Road (odd street name). The temple was built in 1842 and is dedicated to (can you guess?) the gods Man, God of Liteature, and Mo, God of War. It's highly traditional in style again, and nestles incongruously on the shopping street, opposite a childrens playground, with towerblocks and sky-scraping buildings towering over it.
Inside the incense smoke and smell is even more overpowering than in Tin Hau; after a few minutes your throat tickles and your eyes water. Here there are piles of oranges on the platforms in front of the statues of the gods, and the chairs which carry the statues through the town during the temple festival are on display in glass cabinets. Outside in a large open-sided fire are piles of burning paper offerings.
Returning to the ferry terminal I cut down steep side streets with market stalls (where an old man drags a heavily laden cart upwards, fighting the gradient), and then come into the business-district centre of HK - here you could be in any city, except for the bright red & gold Chinese new year decorations everywhere.
Tonight I returned to the Avenue of Stars on the harbour to watch the Symphony of Lights, where buildings on both sides of the harbour are lit up and some shoot lasers into the sky. It was pretty good, for the view of the harbour at night, if nothing else; a very urban type of beauty.
written by  LizIsHere on January 27, 2010 from Hong Kong, Hong Kong
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010

stop doing that - whatever it is!
My last day in Hong Kong today.
Get up, check-out, get my backpack stowed away by the incredibly efficient hotel staff, and then return to the Jade Market. It's really muggy today, a change from the past few days where it has veered from warm to chilly enough for a hoodie.
Despite having been to the market once already, I still wasn't quite prepared for the tenacity of the middle-aged ladies who run most of the stalls - within minutes I find myself in possesion of three bracelets. I did manage to haggle a bit in the whirlwind, via calculator, as always, so i leave with a little bit of dignity.
I've got three hours to kill before I have to catch the bus to the airport, so I head to Kowloon park for an explore. It's a pretty place, a quite peaceful oasis just a step away from the madness of Nathan Road, with lots of pools and fountains. Today there's a woman instructing another in Tai Chi, an older lady using the arm-exercise equipment near the low-hedged maze, and as always groups of men clustered round checkers games. There's also small lake with flamingos and an aviary with cockatoos, parakeets and Chinese pigeons - the poshest-looking pigeons I've ever seen, with long luscious ruffs of feathers round their necks and a haughty look to go with it (if bird can look haughty, these ones did).
....One thing I have notied in the Hong Kong is the huge number of notices prohibiting things, and warning of prosecution for even the most minor infringements - you can be wandering along a peaceful avenue in a park when you are suddenly confronted with a large sign saying stop that - don't do that - you will be pun-ish-ed! It's kind of unnerving, though there seem to be hardly any police about here.
I jump the bus to airport in late afternoon for my flight to Auckland via Sydney. Only nine hours + three hours left. Easy-peasy.

Auckland - being a beach bum for a few days...
Auckland, New Zealand
So I'm finally on 'the other side of world'! My aunt picked me up at the airport after what turned out to be very long-seeming journey from HK - complete with a late connection at Sydney and a lot of turbulence! Still, I'm feeling pretty blase about flying now - at one point on the HK-Sydney leg I was convinced I was on the flight from London-HK; time has a weird way of expanding and contracting when you're on long-haul, it seems.
Auckland is HOT! We drove to my other aunt's house where I met my cousins, who I haven't seen in over ten years! It was pretty surreal, we all look and are a lot different! It was great to see family though, and to have a chance to chill out a bit and plan my backpacking adventures. I'm staying in their garage conversion, which is really comfy, and also means I won't get under their feet too much!
The next morning we headed out early to a holiday home by the sea (or 'bach', pronounced 'batch', as they call them here) for the long weekend (like a British bank holiday; this one was for the last official weekend of summer); me, my aunt and uncle, my two cousins and one of their friends. The bach was at Matheson Beach, about an hour-thirty's drive North from the Auckland suburbs where they live. We passed through some pretty countryside, and lots of vineyards, on the way.
The bach was really nice, on two floors with a big wooden deck and only five minutes walk down a very steep winding hill to the sea (it was about ten minutes walk back up!). We arrived, unloaded the two cars and then went straight down to the beach, with our jandles (flip-flops, though wearing shoes round here, in summer at least, is definitely highly optional, which I love...shoes are annoying once you get used to not wearing them - well, unless you're walking on hot tarmac, as I found out!!) and togs (swimming costumes). It was a quite small but really pretty beach, the sea was deep blue, and there were high hills behind and to the right, and a tall rocky island out to the front, with smaller rocks with rockpools at low tide closer to the beach. Us 'kids' lay on the beach for while in boiling sun (it's real harsh sun here - you can get burnt in 10mins) and then went for a swim in the sea, which was pretty warm. Later on we drove to another beach with proper breakers, and body-surfed a bit, which was ace.
On the Sunday we drove out to Goat Island, further North of Matheson. Goat Island is a marine reserve area; the whole area is known as Goat Island even though it's actually only the island in the bay which has that official name. European settlers used to call any grazable island 'goat island' as a shorthand, because you would be able to graze goats there (simple!). As a marine reserve, the area around the island is great for seeing fish and other marine life. There lots of kids and adults snorkelling, and even a few proper divers, and I was really excited to snorkel. Although it took a while getting used to breathing through the tube, and there weren't as many fish as usual about because of earlier rough seas (sometimes you swim there and literally hit fish as you swim because there are so many!), it was still amazing to glide through the water with the fins and see different fish like maomaos (which used to come right up to the beach to be fed on dried peas by visitors, until the practice was banned when the fish started mobbing snorkelers!).
After Goat Island we went back to the bach and met up with some friends of my cousin who had come to stay overnight. We took the bodyboards down the beach and messed around on them, attempting to board on the small waves and jumping off the pontoon in the bay, before having a bbq in the evening and playing cards (they have a game here called 'Scum' which is basically the New Zealand version of 'S***head', and a really complex game called 500 which I can't even begin to explain... I'm no better at cards here than I am in the UK!). The Kiwis found the glossary of NZ slang in the back my guidebook which caused a lot of hilarity; they agreed that most of it was actually used in NZ, so I better get learning it! (I'm already starting to pick up their habit of saying 'ay' or 'eh' after every utterance!). Turns out a lot of English music is popular over here as well, one of the guys is a big fan of UK dubstep and d'n'b, including Caspa and Rusko, and one of his ambitions for a European trip is to go Glasto.
Talking only to my cousin, who's the same age as me, it had seemed like a lot of Kiwi kids were unambitious about travelling, but it seems that's mainly because NZ has so much to offer (these guys have a pretty cool lifestyle, lots of outdoor sports, beach-life, exploring the bush and hiking); but these guys had travelled and were keen to travel more (they called my trip me 'OE' - overseas experience) in particular. In fact one of them asked me, half-joking, half-serious, 'why did you leave Hong Kong to come here???'. I guess I'd probably ask them the same thing if they turned up in Nottingham or Liverpool!
Overnight it chucked it down, monsoon-style, so this morning we packed up the house and drove back to Auckland via a quick trip to Omaha beach, which looked like it would have been an ace beach if it hadn't been blowing a gale! The weather changes fast here in NZ!
written by  LizIsHere on February 1, 2010 from Auckland, New Zealand

chilling out in Auckland
Auckland, New Zealand
I've been in Auckland a week now, and it's been pretty nice to chill out, get my bearings, hang out with my family (and my aunt's two cats), and sift through the hundreds of leaflets I've collected from the Auckland I-Site centre (basically tourist-info centres that are all over NZ). Oh, and get a little bit sunburnt through disregard of the constant warnings about sun exposure times and sunblock, oops.
After spending the weekend at the bach, I took a couple of trips into Auckland city and around the area with my aunt and cousins to do some touristy stuff. We checked out One Tree Hill (the name is misleading, there used to be one tree which was significant to the Maroi, then a few trees planted in it's place by European settlers, then one - then zero when a Maori chainsawed it down in a belated act of revenge), Mount Eden, which has a massive (possibly mined?) crater in the middle, and some Maori stonefields where they used to live and build oven, caves and storage areas from the volcanic rock there. We collected some avocados off the trees in the public orchard on that excursion. While it probably shouldn't, given the temperatures, it amazes me the stuff that grows here: peppers and abundant lettuce in my Auckland aunt's garden, lemons and peaches at my other aunt's place in the countryside, NZ melons, blueberries and countless other fruit that I'd avoid buying due to air miles in the UK laid out in the fruit&veg shops).
We took a couple of short hikes around the area too, up through a golf course to the coast opposite Brown Island, with fantastic views across the water to the islands which dot the bay near Auckland; along the estuary; and up Pigeon Mountain (which is less mountainous than the name insists) on a gorgeous, cool evening. The views, the blueness of the sea and the beaches here are impressive enough, and these are nothing, according to my cousins, so I'm looking forward to seeing what else New Zealand has in store!
Me and my cousins also went up the Skycity Tower, the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere, one day. It had a lift-ride which would do nothing for any vertigo-sufferers who had braved the trip - the floor of the cabin had a glass panel in the floor, allowing those riding upwards to see the floor of the lift shaft receding further and further away! The viewing decks which circled the tower also had some 38mm glass panels embedded in the floor, allowing those who had confidence in engineering and physics to stand and gaze ever down to the ground far below [I took the leap/step, naturally - see picture]. Auckland's a nothing-special city (does anyone really come to NZ for the cities?), but it's close to the beach and some pretty awesome scenery, and AC/DC played here last night, so it can't be all bad!
written by  LizIsHere on February 5, 2010 from Auckland, New Zealand

Out in the sticks!
Manukau City, New Zealand
Today I catch my flight to Christchurch to begin my backpacking adventures! (though, as my aunt has pointed out, most people 'backpacking' only carry their backpack's between bus/train/airport and their hostel/hotel/campsite --- we're not talking climbing mountains here). I'm really excited to get going exploring South Island - I have some accomodation pre-booked up till Picton, then I'm not sure where I'll be or for how long.
I've spent the last few days at the my other aunt's property, near Clevedon, Manukau City; in the countryside about an hour's drive from Auckland. I'm writing this from their front deck, looking out over their property, which is edged by native bush. It's a really nice spot, up in the hills above a valley, and possibly good pre-intro for any WWOOF-ing I might do here or in Oz (though the bugs will be bigger in Oz). Well, I've at least had a go at picking peaches,held a just-laid egg (the chicken was still doing it's "I've laid an egg - look at me" dance - either that or it was an "Oi! Who stole my egg?!" dance) and doing some extremely minor sheep herding (standing on a track flapping my arms slightly).
They keep eleven cows, twenty-something sheep, chickens, Muscovy ducks (which don't quack and have claws on their feet, making them quite a sinister proposition in duck terms) and guinea-fowl on their ~11 hectares. The cockerel here and the ones at the neighbouring property haven't quite got the hang of crowing at dawn; they like to keep some variety by choosing any time between 9pm-7am to make a racket! It's a pretty great way to wake up though; my first morning I was woken early first by the cockerel, then by some other birds joining in, and of course by the ever-present cicadas, which are even louder here than in the suburbs of Auckland - the sound varies from maracas-like rattle to a crazy loud fizz like sausages frying in hot oil. So, while it's peaceful here, with the lack of road or air traffic, it's definitely not silent.
Meeting the animals here was interesting, although apparently the sheep, which my aunt is very knowledgable about, have accepted me in the some way, because their leader Black Nose (who has his own facebook page!) actually took a few steps towards me when I went to their field. So at least I have one friend in NZ to start me off! There was also the Muscovy duck that was sitting on a nest of guineafowl eggs; the result of the eggs being abandoned by the original guineafowl. Unfortunatly the duck, being a lot bigger than a guineafowl, had crushed some of the chicks to death, but two had survived. An attempt was made to swap the duck for an extremely angry hen (aptly nicknamed Angry Hen), who had been nesting up near the house. But the experiment didn't work out when the hen started pecking at the chicks. Cue swapping by the now extremely annoyed duck back onto the nest, while Angry Hen was returned to her own eggs up by the house. Messing with nature gets complicated!
While here I also got to go on the bushwalk, which was great - clambering through undergrowth and pushing through massive dead fern fronds. I even got to see a possum which Rusty the Jack Russel sniffed out in a fern-top. Normally the possum would have been shot, but this time, since Bruce didn't have his gun, it was left - with Rusty still barking madly at the foot of the fern, ripping off chunks of foliage in a valiant but ultimately fruitless effort to demolish it and bring the possum down to his level so he could sort it out. Rusty remained in the bush for two hours after we left, haranging the possum - that's dedication for you.
written by  LizIsHere on February 7, 2010 from Manukau City, New Zealand

a 'pretty', 'quaint', 'quite English' city
Christchurch, New Zealand
Another flight, this one a measly 1 hr 20mins and thus the most guilt-inducing of all the ones I've taken so far.
I took the airport flyer bus to the centre of Christchurch, Cathedral Square which, unsurprisingly, has a cathedral in it. It's a pretty area ('pretty' may be overused in descriptions of Christchurch, along with quaint and 'quite English'), and functions as a lunch-spot, meeting place, skateboard park and general gathering place for entertainers (including a couple who can only be described as 'crusties'; the guy playing bongoes while his girlfriend juggled inexpertly) which gets busier towards lunchtime, and in the early evening. There's also a giant chess board, where small crowds gathered, fascinated, throughout the day to watch people play with the large plastic pieces. The tram stop is to one side of the square, and around the edge are the I-Site information centre, cafes and shops, and it's near the tramstop where I get off the bus.
It took about two minutes from reaching the corner of the square for me to get lost (I'm getting almost comfortable with getting lost... it's seems unnatural to arrive anywhere without having had to backtrack, peer at the map a few times, and possibly ask directions), but eventually I made it to the Around the World Backpackers, which is only about fifteen minutes (a looong fifteen minutes with a heavy bag!) from the Square itself. I went straight from dumping my bag there to Pak'N'Save, a twenty minute walk away. Pak'n'Save is the super-budget supermarket of NZ - the shelves filled with all kinds of discount goods, kind of like Macro or somewhere like that, but bigger - you feel tiny wandering round the towering aisles with an equally giant trolley. But it is very, very cheap.
The hostel was busy, mostly with long-termers (some had been living there 3 months!), who were working either at the hostel or at various jobs in town. This gave it a chilled out, homely atmosphere (they even had a cute, fluffy, very affectionate cat called Oreo), but also a slightly cliquey one. The kitchen was packed at dinner, but it was kind of hard to talk to people when they all knew each other. Still, my roommates were pretty nice, luckily, because the room was 'cosy' to say the least - made the more so by all 3 other girls being long-termers who had, understandably, unpacked and moved in properly.
One thing I did notice though, was that all the people I met at Around the World who had been travelling long-term (6months-2years!) were absolutely useless at listening; during every conversation you could just sense them waiting for their turn to speak. I don't know if it's something to do with them travelling on their own, or maybe they're just so excited about their adventures that they need to spill them all out without interruption, but it got a bit tiring, so in the end I just let them talk. Maybe I'll be the same when I've been travelling for a while (hopefully not).
I crashed out early and got up even earlier when one of the other girl's left for her job at the ANZ bank call-centre. First stop was the Cathedral, which was... cathedral-like. Pretty, though. Then I walked down Worcester St to the Botanic Garden, passing by some very cute and quaint houses on the way. Most of the main 'sites' are in the older part of town, characterised by the old colonial-style houses and grey-and-white stone buildings, which are quite 'English', but with a twist. The Botanic Gardens were a really nice spot to chill out for a couple of hours; a massive area of greenery with the river Avon flowing through it, carrying along ducks, tourists on punts and kayakers (i got slightly mugged by ducks when I decided to donate some bread to two who were nearby; cue ten others waddling up to me, quacking expectantly).
I also checked out the Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna O Waiwetu where there were some pretty good modern exhibits, including one on The Naked and The Nude (a helpful sign outside the door warned, "This exhibit contains, well, nakedness and nudity").
Near to the gallery was the Arts Centre, a collection of art galleries, craft shops, cafes and artists workshops in a pretty (...) maze of white-and-grey stone buildings with trees and squares dotted about.
After resisting the call of craft shopping, I headed back to the Cathedral Square to chill out for a bit, before going back to the hostel for dinner, repacking my already totally disorganised bag, and then crashing out, before creeping out at 7am to catch my Magic bus to Kaikoura.
And that was Christchurch, a very pretty city, but still a city. Everyone at the hostel told me that it's a great place to live but not so fantastic to pass through, which I can believe, since so many of them had stayed there so long.
written by  LizIsHere on February 9, 2010 from Christchurch, New Zealand

All things marine-related!
Kaikoura, New Zealand
Caught my first Magic bus to Kaikoura today. It was a pretty painless trip, our driver Lisa was good fun, giving us some commentary on the places we went past (including Cheviot, which we had a rest stop at) and playing some good-to-bad-to-awful music on her ipod over the coach speakers! We passed through some gorgeous scenery on the way, high hills of bush with the tops wreathed in mist, and some interesting towns, including one which had a sign reading "What if God was one of us?" with a picture of a sheep underneath it... not sure what they were trying to say there, but anyway.
When we'd almost reached Kaikoura, Lisa pulled over to rescue a group of Chinese tourists who's bus had overheated - the driver said they'd been stuck on the side of the road for two hours and no one had pulled over to help! Luckily they were headed to a whale-watching trip in Kaikoura, so we could take them straight there. After parting ways with them, we had a brief stop at the seal colony on the Kaikoura penisula, where the fur seals were basking out on the rocks right by walkways, apparently unaffected by the small crowd of tourists taking photos and pointing at them. We were soon driven back to the bus by the chilly weather and light rain, but still it's a taste of what I'll get tomorrow when I go on the Seal Swim!
Lisa was nice enough to drop me off near the Dolphin Lodge (Magic have contracts with certain hostels in each town they stop in, and won't generally drop travellers off at other places), but unfortunately that still left me at the bottom of a short but extremely steep hill! I made it though, out-of-breath and a little worried by my apparent lack of fitness.
The Dolphin Lodge is a cosy, homely place; a little run down and perhaps in need of more toilets and showers (and maybe slightly better security; my 4-share dorm was near the frontdoor which was open all day, and out of view of reception desk), but a great place to chill out and meet other people, with friendly (British) staff who were happy to bend the rules and help out in whatever way they could. The main room is an amalgamation of kitchen, lounge and dining area, with the reception area leading off it, with a staircase leading up to the quarters of the british couple of managed it behind the frontdesk. In the evenings people tend to congregate in this room (the dorms are a little sparse) and cook, eat, or lie on the sofas or chairs reading, talking, playing chess or planning their next days or week's adventures. I took a wander round the town, which is clearly and absolutely based upon marine-related activities - whale-watching, seal-swimming, dolphin watching-and-swimming, seabird watching etc - if you don't like marine-life it's not the best place to be, although there are some hikes up into hills and along the peninsula, and the stony beach itself.
After exploring a bit, I spent most of my first afternoon in Kaikoura at the kitchen table at Dolphin Lodge planning some things out, since a massive raincloud had settled over the town for the afternoon - it even blocked out the stunning mountain and sea view from the back deck, only revealing itself the next morning when the sky cleared.
written by  LizIsHere on February 10, 2010 from Kaikoura, New Zealand

Seals!
Kaikoura, New Zealand
My morning seal-swim got cancelled because it wasn't sunny enough (the seals get too warm on the rocks in the sunshine, after returning from long hunting trips with bellies full of food, so they're much more likely to be in and out of the water if it's a warmish day), but luckily the cloud cleared and sun came out enough for me to go on the afternoon trip.
The ten of us got fitted for wetsuits, fins and snorkel masks at the Seal Swim shop in central Kaikoura, then took a short bus trip out to another part of the peninsula to get the boat (driven by our guide and the company owner's dad, nicknamed Herbie). We got a short lowdown on the history of fur seals in the area: hunted almost to extinction point in the early 1900s due to their highly-prized fur, they were finally protected in the 1940s. Since then their numbers have flourished; an endangered animal rehabilitation success story.
Then we got out on the boat - it was a pretty rough ride! Sitting at the front clearly hadn't been a good idea as me and another girl got the full force of the waves splashing over the bow and the hard slap of the boat against the rough sea. One the way Herbie pointed out a tiny blue penguin bobbing along on the waves.
We stop the boat at an area of rocks a little offshore, stick on our masks and flippers and jump in. The water is cold, but nothing like the UK! At first we have little luck spotting seals in the water; they are mostly contentedly stretched out on the warm rocks sunny themselves. We spot only one under water and bob up just in time to see it leap out of the water and dive back in again. The Herbie signals that he has found some in the water around an outcrop of rock facing the open sea.
When we all swim round there we find 4 or 5 (it's hard to keep track, they move so fast) young seals in the water. The first time I see two of them dive and spin underwater is breathtaking ; they come so close, and are so graceful and swift - a huge contrast to their lumbering clumsiness onshore. The young ones seem curious - getting close enough for us to almost touch (though we've been warned not to), then spinning away, swimming underneath or around us, the whites of their large eyes glinting in the underwater gloom. Sometimes when the visibility is lower they would suddenly appear in front of you, then zip off leaving a trail of bubbles behind them. In the end we swim for about an hour with them before clambering back on the boat, everyone grinning and feeling high off the experience.
It was one of the coolest things I've ever experienced, made so much better by the fact that the seals were completely wild and did not need to be around us, or stick around in the water with us for so long.
written by  LizIsHere on February 11, 2010 from Kaikoura, New Zealand

the best hostel in NZ?
Picton, New Zealand
An energetic start to today - after being told the wrong pick-up point for my bus, I stood and watched the coach drive past on the opposite side of the road, pulling up at a hostel quite a distance down the street. Cue me running madly after it, heavy rucksack banging on my back, smaller backpack hanging from arm, with my baggy shorts in danger of falling down and causing a scandal on Kaikoura main-street.
Luckily I (and my shorts) made it, no thanks to the driver who was unsympathetic verging on the obnoxious. But still, made it! It's funny in retrospect!
We stop off a seal colony on the way out of Kaikoura - it was a breeding colony, with a raised platform from which you can look down on the tiny seal pups frolicking in rock pools and, in one case, chasing a seagull. They are unbelievably cute, and all the girls react in a chorus of 'ahhhhs', much to Carl the bus-driver's feigned disgust. Another quick stop at The Store at Kekereng for a breakfast of tasty muffins, seated at tables on a terrace looking out at the beautiful, deserted beach, and we're on the road again headed for Picton.
I get the usual half-serious mini-lecture from the bus-driver about not staying in Magic-affiliated hostels, but there is no way I would be changing where I'm staying here - Picton is the location of the hostel I've most been looking forward to staying at, The Juggler's Rest!
Luckily Carl drops me off at a hostel nearby to JR, and it's only a five minute walk along the residential streets to find it. The street it's on is backed by hills of bush, and the 140yr old villa can't be seen on the approach due to the ivy-covered fences surrounding it. I step through the open gate and it's better than I could have imagined. An old house with a wooden deck with sofas and chairs, a sunny courtyard in front, and a garden/tiny camping area half-encircling the building. There are hammocks strung between the trees, prayer flags hanging over the bbq area, and best of all, a large sign saying simply 'Poi' hanging over a green shelf crammed and hung with juggling clubs, poi, a basket of juggling balls, devil sticks and diablo. There are a few guys lounging on the deck area, and it all looks so bohemian and cosy that I immeadiately want to move in permanently!
Inside the hallway opens up into a large kitchen-lounge area with a wood-beamed ceiling; there is heavy dining table and chairs, sofas, easychairs, two giant beanbags, fire-staffs hanging on the wall, and signs all around advertising the veges available from the garden, the fresh-baked bread and homemade jam available for breakfast, recycling info, poi/juggling workshops, and a basket of eggs on the counter-top with a little jar to hold the 50c charge. There is an honesty-box of sorts for the internet and for donations for vege use - the owner Nikki shrugs off formal charging by saying that 'it's their karma whether they pay or not'. She is originally for Derbyshire, and bought the hostel after working there for two years. She's a fire poi spinner, and very cool and laid-back.
I love it - it feels like staying in a large, multi-national home rather than a hostel. When I go out and start attempting to juggle, Per, a Swedish guy working here for a few weeks, immeadiately helps me out, showing me a simple way to learn, though I'm still dropping the balls all over the place! In the evening everyone sits around in the kitchen-lounge, playing music on the stereo, cooking together, surfing the net, reading, or chilling out on the deck outside (swatting sandflies constantly!). I've booked two more nights, even though I know nothing about what else Picton has to offer but the QCT and the Queen Charlotte Sound kayaking trip I've booked for Sunday.
written by  LizIsHere on February 12, 2010 from Picton, New Zealand

Kayaks, jellyfish and stingrays
Picton, New Zealand
After a lazy day involving a short hike to Bob's Bay off Picton Harbour, and lots of chilling out and juggling practice around the Juggler's Rest, I had my kayaking trip about the Queen Charlotte Sound on Sunday. It's a beautiful day, sunny and calm, with no wind at all until early afternoon, something our guide Harry told us the water was exceptional.
Still, the paddling felt like hard going for the first half an hour out of the harbour area and into the Sound itself as we got used to movements; with motorboats speeding past and the huge Strait-crossing ferries towering over our group of four kayaks. Luckily, as a billy-no-mates, I had Harry in the back of my canoe, taking care of all the steering! \
We paddled about 10 miles in all, crossing the Sound at the tiny Marble Island, where we drifted up to the rocks in the shallows, which were encrusted with mussles. Harry scooped up harmless Four Crescent (Four moon? something like that) jellyfish for us to hold - they were really slimy but it was cool to hold something that you've always been warned will sting you. We paddled to a tiny deserted beach for a ten minute 'morning tea' stop, then on for a tougher hour-long paddle, past more deserted beaches, and quiet bays with large, expensive houses on them, to Ngakuta Bay for lunch. Harry explained that many people see the Sounds in the idyllic summer and decide to move there; then when winter sets in they go almost crazy with the isolation (the majority of Sounds properties are only accesible by boat), and many last only 1-2 years living there. He also pointed out that NZ has very few colourfully flowering plants, because there were no bees in the country until they were introduced by European settlers (a slightly more successful introducton that possums or stoats!).
After lunch we crossed the Sound again, to follow the shoreline which is crowded with bush and rocks, birds and sealife, and silent apart from the clamour of cicadas and the slap of the water against the rocks and our paddles. Harry pointed out greenlipped mussels, starfish, and coolest of all, stingrays and eagle rays, sitting in the sand in the shallows, their barbed tails clearly visible. If we approached too closely they would glide away, dark shadows moving over the seabed, under our boats and out into the deeper water.
Our final paddle of the day took us across back to Ngatuka Bay, a rougher crossing with a sidewind - we got pretty soaked! It was tiring work, even with Harry, who could paddle the kayak all day on his own, and by the time we reach the shore we're definitely ready to finish for the day.
That evening two guys motorcycling around the South Island turn up, and it turns out one of them is from Basingstoke, having moved over to NZ with his family ten years ago. A pretty cool coincidence; I didn't think to ask but I'm pretty sure not much would perusuade him to move back to the UK (particularly Basingstoke?) now
written by  LizIsHere on February 14, 2010 from Picton, New Zealand

hippies!
Picton, New Zealand
Today I took a hike up to Essons (?) valley to Harbour View - about 40mins fairly steep uphill in the heat - but the view of the harbour, and, on the way up, of the valley and the mountains/large hills were fantastic. On the way down the track meandered through cool green bush to the streets of Picton. I stopped for about ten minutes to watch, but mostly listen to a group of bellbirds in one of the trees there - their range of calls was amazing, from a normal tweet-tweet to a weird sound that wouldn't be out of place in a dance mix... very strange but very cool.
Back at the hostel, where it's too easy to just chill out all day... I... chill out at the hostel for the rest of the day (after having my first NZ pie from the local bakery!). I meet a German guy called Marco and we talk for ages about NZ, Germany and hiking - he's a serious hiker, having done the Tongariro Circuit and the Abel Tasman Coastal track. He also had some pretty wild stories about his hitchhiking experiences in NZ!!! Later on Per gives me a bowl of homemade pad thai (he learnt how to make it in thailand) for dinner (I must look hungry), which is tasty but so spicy my mouth goes numb!
I also meet some an Israeli couple of who are fascinating to talk to - the conversation moves from the normal where are you from-where are you going stuff, to insights into the Israeli side of the Israel-Palestine issue, and foreign media sensationalisation of it, to their life on a kibbutz, and the hardships on themselves and their relationship by Israel's compulsory military service. The girl recounts a Swiss guy who complained at length to her about his (of course, neutral!!!) country's compulsory service: "You cannot complain to an Israeli about such things!" she says, slightly disbelieving.
Later on still two American hippies turn up. They're came over for the Rainbow Gathering, which was held last month. They're a bit strange, but interesting to watch in the way they immeadiately take over the place and start using the toys and the space. The girl is very chilled out and cool - and she cooks up a bit communal pot of chai on the stove, which is great! The guy also shows me and Marco some juggling tricks to practice (once we manage the basics, obviously...). Then Israeli guy starts playing the digeridoo that is lying around, and teaching another German guy how to play it, the fairy lights are turned on and the stereo bought out, and it's a very cool atmosphere, with people juggling, dancing, hula hooping and just sitting on the deck chatting. It winds down about 11 (though the american guy has to be told to wind it down by the hostel owner!).
written by  LizIsHere on February 15, 2010 from Picton, New Zealand

Nelson... city of sun (just not today)
Nelson, New Zealand
The bus ride to Nelson today was great - short, but passing by the Pelorus Sound and Havelock, with a stop-off at a lagoon-type area at Pelorus Bridge which would have been great to swim in if we'd had time.
Nelson (the sunniest place in NZ apparently, but failing at that today) is colourful, a wee bit alternative, and has a bit more soul than Christchurch - a bit more life and culture, i think. Anthony, the English owner of the VW Bug-themed Bug Backpackers, where I'm staying tonight, picks me up from the bus station, which is a relief since the hostel is 20minute walk (in today's muggy weather) from town. The hostel is nice, quite large and clean, spread over two buildings. There is fresh bread in the morning and, if Anthony's girlfriend feels like it, fresh-baked scones or muffins in the evening - it was nice Surprise the first night when Anthony came round to the slide-glass door of my 6-share dorm at 8pm with a plate of blueberry muffins! The hostel when I arrive seems to be full of German travellers - my entire dorm, and everyone I pass by, seems to speaking German. At times, it feels like I'm actually in Germany, before I leave the building and speak to Kiwi shopkeepers!
One of my roommates, Lisa, also from Germany, hears about my planned two-day hike on the Abel Tasman Coastal Track, with an overnight stop on the Aquapackers backpacker boat in Anchorage Bay, and decides to do the same, on the same two days, so looks like we'll be walking together.
written by  LizIsHere on February 16, 2010 from Nelson, New Zealand

The Centre of NZ
Nelson, New Zealand
Today I have a sort-of lie-in, then head out to walk up to the centre of New Zealand (apparently someone decided it was on a hill on the outskirts of Nelson... so, it's there). The route takes you through the town centre, past a few hippie buses, and a really good violinist busker, and up a steep hill, where you reach a floor-plaque and statue on the summit. It's nothing amazingly impressive, but the views over Nelson and towards the Abel Tasman are great. And, well, I can say I've been there at least!
I take a different route back, turning what I expected to be a one-hour walk in to a three-hour one, over the sheep-grazing hills high above Nelson, then weaving down through bush, then cool forest, then finally emerging at the Japanese Gardens.
written by  LizIsHere on February 17, 2010 from Nelson, New Zealand

Abel Tasman ... expect the overuse of 'stunning', 'beautiful' and 'paradise'!
Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand
Anthony, who is the most laid-back guy I have ever met - especially one running a busy hostel! - drops me and Lisa at the bus station at 7.30am, forever giving him a special place in my heart for not making us walk there in the rain and the dawn-light!
The bus drops me at Kaiteriteri, where I catch my boat to Bark Bay, but Lisa goes to Marahau for a water taxi, so we decide to just meet at Anchorage Bay instead of trying to find each other on the track.
The Abel Tasman Coast track is one of the most popular Great Walks in the smallest and most popular National Park in NZ, so I'm expecting crowds. Our boat is full, and it takes us round the coastline of the park, with a stop at Split Apple Rock, an amazing boulder on a rock near the shoreline which is apple shaped and has split almost perfectly down the middle. Then we motor on, wind and rain-spray in our faces (the idiots who chose the open top deck of the boat) to various bays along the way before the boat stops at the nearest safe-stopping point to Bark Bay.
Even in the spitting rain, the park is a beautiful place, aquamarine seas, golden beaches, tree palms and green bush alive with birds and cicadas. It is (slightly damp) paradise.
I walk alone the first 40mins or so, then, after struggling down to Sandfly Bay in the hope of reaching a beach which, I discover on reaching the bottom of the very steep track, is covered in the sea (it's high tide, oops), I meet two guys coming down and warn them off making the journey ( I did get to stand on a boulder by the sea-edge and wave to some kayakers, but it probably wasn't worth it for the steep climb back up). We get talking and end up walking together the rest of the track. One guy is from Henley, the other from Brazil - the Brazilian guy has no raincoat, so when the rain really gets going he gets soaked. We pass some pretty miserable looking hikers on the trail, but luckily everyone in our group has a sense of humour about it. It is great actually - despite the water in my shoes - it's not a hard hike, even in the slippery conditions, and the bush has become a rainforest, water dripping off the leaves, the small waterfalls and streams we pass rushing and full, and the glimpses of bays and beaches through the trees are still gorgeous, with the turquiose sea and gold sand.
A highlight apart from the beaches and views is the swing-bridge which we reach after a soggy lunch at Torrent Bay. It stretches over wide river canyon, with awesome views up and down. Everyone ignores or doesn't read the 5 persons max. sign, so the wild swinging of the bridge adds to excitement of the crossing!
Just before we reach Anchorage we take a detour down to the mysteriously named Cleopatra's pool, a 5-minute track which takes us to the edge of small, boulder-filled river, with the pool on the other side. After debating a little about the possibility of broken ankles, we take off our shoes and cross, narrowly missing getting even wetter. When we reach the pool, after a scramble up a muddy bank, hanging on to roots, it's so worth it - a little piece of rainforest paradise, deserted apart from us, with a deep cold clear pool, filled by a waterfall - stunning.
The sense of achievement when we see the sign to Anchorage (20mins), and then finally run onto the beach whooping, as the sun comes out to dry our wet clothes, is pretty immense.
written by  LizIsHere on February 18, 2010 from Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand

waking up to the sea lapping just below the window.. ahhh
Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand
Once the guys had gone to catch their water taxi, I found Lisa on the beach, and we waved madly at the Aquapackers, a converted catamaran moored a little way out in the bay, to summon the skipper over to pick us and our small backpacks up in a little dingy.
The Aquapackers is small, with only 16 beds, which, apart from the one double cabin, are the original tiny crew bunks: six of them are crammed into one of the lower-cabin areas where me and Lisa slept. It's a cosy arrangement, meaning you have to stay on fairly good terms with your roommates! - i can't imagine sleeping there night after night and living in such a tiny space, as the original catamaran crew must have done! There's a kitchen area, sofas, a table, and a dining area on the upper deck with an honesty bar. The other guests are mostly german and italians, with one honeymooning Engish/Kiwi couple.
It was so hot that I grabbed my swimming stuff (relegated to the bottom of my backpack one the rain started in the morning) and jumped off the boat into the cold clear sea. Then it seemed about time for a glass of wine and some sunbathing on the deck before the two-man crew served dinner, spicy veggie pie, salad and bbq. It was probably the most 'pampering' I'll get on my whole trip, so I figured I'd enjoy it! The day ends with some of us sitting at the back of the boat, watching the sun drop behind the mountains, lulled by the lapping of the sea against the hull. Ahh....
The next day's walk was easier, with bright blue skies and hot sun. Lisa and I walked the last bit of the track together, stopping at a bay for lunch, before finishing with a absurdly easy (someone was actually pushing a pushchair along it!) track into Marahau.
written by  LizIsHere on February 19, 2010 from Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand

Golden Bay... sun, hippies and springs
Takaka, New Zealand
Super-early start to Takaka in Golden Bay today. I didn't really have much of an idea why I was going to Golden Bay, only that I'd been told there were nice beaches, hippie/alternative culture, and a laid-back vibe. That seemed worth the 6.40am local bus!
The bus journey from Nelson to Takaka winds through the fruit plantations outside Nelson, then up over the hills and down into the Takaka valley, with spectacular views of Kahurangi National Park (lots of massive mountains!). I've learnt not to fall asleep on bus journeys here - there's too many views to miss out on (thuogh sometimes it's best to shut your eyes when the bus is weaving down the hill roads with steep drops to valleys, seemingly miles below!
The Takaka valley is flat as a pancake, and as such you can see the weather coming in from miles away over the mountain tops. Apparently it's much wetter than the Nelson region because of this, but I saw no evidence of that! I'm staying at Annie's Nirvana Lodge, which while it doesn't perhaps bring a nirvana-like state, has a wonderful sun-trap garden, cosily-worn style inside, and some very cool and friendly staff and long-termers staying (plus the slightly mad owner, Alan, who seems to laugh all the time). And cheap bikes! The first thing I do is grab a bike and cycle the 6km to the Pupu Springs, a large area of springs set in regenerating bush: one of the clearest springs in the world. You can see the water bubbling up in the clear pools, and watch the 'Dancing Sands' as the bubbling of water sets the sand moving below the surface. It's a peaceful, tranquil area, despite the relatively large number of tourists there. It's all I can do not to dive into the pools (the springs are closed to prevent evil algae infiltrating their purity) after a hot, sweaty ride from Takaka, culminating in a hill at the end. To my embarrassment, i meet two old Dutch ladies who have also cycled from town; they didn't seem the types to push their bikes up the hill like I did! On the way back I stop at the Takaka river, where a few campers are parked up (including one decked out to look like a wooden house on wheels), and paddle in the clear water and chill out in the sun for a while.
Takaka is a one-street sort of town, with a kooky, hippie vibe - one of the first people i see is a girl in long skirts, wearing beads, leaning against a painted-up van holding a bunch of flowers. These aren't weekend hippies, these are the real deal, selling their wares in the little green areas that pepper the main street, spinning staff, and setting up slack-lines in the park.
That night I go out with the a Japanese guy, Shingo, and an Austrian girl, Tumasha, who work at the hostel, and an old guy Kiwi guy called Dave, who lives in a bus out the back. It's a dub/reggae night at the local Roots bar, they have four-berry cider, and it's a lot of fun - the music is good and the dancing is ace! I have to call it a night at 1am though since I'm shattered from the early start (and that gruelling bike ride of course, ahem).
written by  LizIsHere on February 20, 2010 from Takaka, New Zealand

Collingwood... literally, a one-street town
Collingwood, New Zealand
Today I took the 20min bus journey (which cost me a $ a minute - go figure that one out!) to Collingwood, the last bit of civilisation in the Golden Bay before you fall off the Farewell Spit. It's a tiny place, with an estuary on one side and the sea, with a massive beach, on the other, backed by hills/mountains.
I'm staying at Somerset House, a lovely backpackers in an old wooden House, owned by an English ex-dentist from Somerset and his Korean wife. It's another great hostel - with a sunny Terrace with giant chess, chairs and sofas looking over the estuary and the oldest building in Collingwood, a church. There owner Chris and his wife Hiromi are concerned that we take advatange of everything on offer around, offering us use of the kayaks and bikes, maps and info. The hostel itself has comfy rooms, free breakfast, free kayaks, free bikes, and a general lack of formality which makes it feel more like a home. There's also a good mix of guests, like in Annie's, from older trampers to young travellers.
Within minutes of arriving I've agreed to rent the hostel's car with a Finnish girl (Satu - though I don't even know her name at this point!), to drive to a legendarily gorgeous beach, Wharakiki (sp?) beach, and the Farewell Spit, the next day. Then about twenty minutes later we meet two American guys, Jonathan and Travis, who have just come up from working 5 months in Antarctica, shifting cargo at the American base there, who we invite to join us. I, fortunately or unfortunately, get volunteered to drive, since I'm the only one who's used to the left side of the road! They may not know what they've signed up for...!!!
In the evening, after a day of exploring the beach, paddling in the warm waters and, most important, discovering Rosie's Chocolate Shop, Chris the hostel owner offers to take all of us at the hostel on a little walk to see some glowworms. No paying cave entry fees for us! We walk up the road behind the hostel and there they are, glowworms just hanging on the trees and in the bushes! It's very cool and I suppose a little eerie - there are the stars in the sky (the milky way clear as anything) and then the glowworms like greenish stars in the bushes. When a car comes Chris urges us all to turn to the hedge and shut our eyes to protect our night vision - we must have looked pretty entertaning to the driver, twenty people huddled by the side of road, eyes tight shut, faces in the hedge!
written by  LizIsHere on February 22, 2010 from Collingwood, New Zealand

beaches, beaches, beaches!
Collingwood, New Zealand
Today was a really fun day - a bunch of random things coming together.
We got the hire car off hostel-owner Chris - it turned out to be a giant-seeming 4X4 - it took a little bit of nervy reversing and some interesting manouvres in the petrol station before I got comfortable with it, and don't even get me started on those one-lane bridges they seem to love in NZ!
We drove first to the Farewell Spit, going up to viewpoint (you can't go on the actual spit without a tour), then drove to Wharakiki Beach (sp?) which is a gorgeous, paradise-style beach (with some distinctly un-paradise like rip-tides), with golden sands, massive rocky outcrops in the ocean, a seal colony, and caves to explore on the beach. We spent a perfect few others there, just chilling out on the sand, then drove to the legendary Mussel Inn, normally a lively den of live music (and poetry readings?), but at 5pm, just a nice pub with local beers (homemade lemonade for the designated driver of course),good food, situated in a woody area with a large, colourful garden.
Back at the hostel the Antarctica guys, a dutch girl and I head to check out the town's nightlife - a bar which is closing at 10pm as we enter! So we head down to the beach instead, to watch shooting stars and talk. There's also the mini-adventure of trying to bash our way through the dune undergrowth to find our way back to the road after clouds obscure the bright moon!
written by  LizIsHere on February 23, 2010 from Collingwood, New Zealand

Punakaiki - no ATM, no food shops, 'just' stunning scenery
Punakaiki, New Zealand
After an uneventful stopover night back in Nelson, I get the bus to Punakaiki, home of the famous Pancake Rock rock formations. I'm the only person to get off the bus there, but as soon as I see the Punakaiki Beach hostel - brightly painted, with a large garden, right on the beach, I know I've made the right choice. Even better when the guy who checks me in immeadiatly offers me a lift into 'town' (te minutes away over the hill) Sure, there's little to Punakaiki but the Rocks themselves, some hostels & hotels, a DOC office, an overpriced cafe and a gift shop, but the scenery - the raging, pounding West coast sea, backed by towering, weather-beaten craggy cliffs, is wild and spectacular. The place even has it's own microclimate, giving it an almost tropical feel, with real rainforest rather than the usual bush.
The Pancake Rocks themselves are weird, alien-looking ancient rock formations on the coast - much, much bigger and widespread that I'd expected! When the tide is high and rough (i think it's always rough...), some of the rocks act as blowholes, shooting spray high into the air, drawing 'oohs' from the assembled tourists (including moi). There is also a raging surge pool which you can gaze down into, carved out by the sea, and the water rages and boils inside it, eroding bit by bit with every tide.
written by  LizIsHere on February 25, 2010 from Punakaiki, New Zealand

river gorges and horse trekking
Punakaiki, New Zealand
I escape my rather, um, pungent dorm room (5 boys, complete with damp post-hike clothing hanging about to dry) and walk the river track behind the hostel. It's a fantastic hike, following a track through a massive river gorge, towering walls of rock rising on either side of the rainforest, following rather-tiny-in-comparison river for most of the route. I've got it mostly to myself so early in the morning, which is great, giving me plenty of leeway to stop and gaz in a stupidly awestruck way at the scenery every two minutes.
I've treated myself to a horse trek today, and another English lady from my hostel is joining me. At the stables I, being the only experienced rider in the group, get put on the 'grumpy' horse , Jazz, who is irritable with other horses but thankfully ok with people! The ride goes through the Punakaiki river valley, and I get to break off from the main group with a french guide, Marie, so we can have some trots and canters along the riverside! We meet the others at a tramping hut for tea and biscuits, then head off on our own again, criss-crossing the river, before meeting the others at the beach. Here me and Marie get a canter down the beach, which is brilliant - though Jazz starts 'pacing' at first, a weird Icelandic horse gait, which is really uncomfortable before she settles into a proper canter!
The evening is pretty low-key, but me and June, an English lady living in France, who was also on the ride and at my hostel, crack open a bottle of wine or two, and then get talking to a couple of Dutch guys who are camping in the hostel garden, and two German girls. We also get to catch a pretty sweet West coast sunset over the sea from the hostel balcony... a pretty great day all-in-all :).
written by  LizIsHere on February 26, 2010 from Punakaiki, New Zealand

to Greymouth... it's grey. um.... that's it.
Greymouth, New Zealand
I'm not too happy to be leaving Punakaiki, especially on a sunny day, and more particularly because I'm heading to Greymouth, which is a town that fully embodies it's name! Still, I meet a cool Dutch girl on my bus, and we swap music tips for the entire gruelling one hour journey down the West Coast. A dull, dull, dull night at the nevertheless quite cool Noah's Ark hostel (animal themed rooms - and a real life fluffy golden retriever, Buzz, lift the mood somewhat!), and we're off again on the bus to Franz Josef... home of the Glacier!
written by  LizIsHere on February 27, 2010 from Greymouth, New Zealand

Glaciers, (lots of) rain and some amateur caving!
Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand
After a fairly long bus journey south to Franz Josef township, home of the Franz Josef glacier, we dump our bags at the slightly grubby Chateaux Franz hostel. Since the glacier itself is about an hour walk out from the small township, our Magic bus driver takes a group of us in the coach to the carpark there, giving us about two and a half hours to check out the glacier and some of the shorter walking tracks.
We had caught a glimpse of the glacier as we rounded one of the bends in the road, after crossing (those one-lane briges again!) an icy-blue river flowing from the glacier, and that glimpse alone, out the large front window of the bus, took our breath away. But when we do the actual glacier walk across the valley to it's foot (or as close to the foot as those not on hiking tours are allowed to go), it's astounding. It's so huge it's impossible to take in - sublime, a huge river of ice snaking down the mountains, it's snowy top lit by the sunlight. The glacier valley itself (carved out by the glacier, which is now receding and growing in almost equal amounts, thousands of years ago) is a flat moonscape of grey-white rocks, the bush-covered sides of the hills cut at irregular intervals by small waterfalls falling from hundreds of feet up.
Up close the glacier seems less huge - the snowy top obscured by the bend in the valley walls. Where the river flows out there is a dark cavern in the ice - after a few minutes standing there we see a large chunk of ice detach itself from the cave roof and land with a splash in the river. It kind of reinforces the slightly comically dramatic, bright yellow signs on the other side of the fence, warning of all types of dangers from crushing with ice to drowing, if we cross the ropes. A few people have been killed in the past trying to get photos right up on the ice, or trying to touch it, when pieces the size of campervans came crashing loose at just the wrong moment.
That night we make the healthiest meal I've had this trip, an epic salad... I wish I'd taken a picture as evidence that I am actually eating vegetables, but unfortunately we ate it too fast :).
The next day we had planned to do a five hour hike around the glacier valley, while others from our bus went off to do glacier ice-hikes. But it's raining in the morning, and when we check with the DOC at the I-Site office, the woman behind the desk gives us an horrified look and exclaims that the route is far too dangerous, and has been since flooding a month or two ago which washed away a lot of the stream-sides leaving deep gullies to cross, with slippery ascents and descent.. "And anyway," she adds, frowning, "It was always a really, really nasty route!". Good job we checked then I guess!
Instead we do a short hike away from the township, to a tunnel through the mountain. We take headtorches like the map says, but when we get the tunnel it's over ankle-deep in water. Still, the promise of some amateur caving definitely outweighs having soaking wet shoes and freezing feet for the walk back. And it's pretty cool: entering the pitch-dark tunnel, our torchbeams hardly seeming to fight against the gloom, we splash into the water, flinching again the cold, following rough tunnel walls with our hands as we gingerly step forward, wary of deeper pools ahead. On the way back out we cover our torchlights and catch sight of glowworms on the cave-roof.
We squelch back to the hostel just as the rain starts. It starts at 1pm - moonsoon-style, battering the hostel roof - and doesn't stop until late that night. The rest of the day is lost to books, films and one risky sprint to the fish'n'chip shop down the road.
written by  LizIsHere on March 1, 2010 from Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand

Wanaka!
Wanaka, New Zealand
Five hours on the bus brings me to Wanaka - one of the places I've been most looking forward to visiting on my trip to NZ! On the way we stop as Lake Matheson, for stunning views of the Tasman and Cook mountains reflected in it's waters, wreathed in early morning (well, it's about half eight) mist.
My first view of Wanaka is of a town nestled round the edges of a deep Blue Lake, with brown -grassed mountains to one side and blue, snow-covered ones to the far end of the lake (Mount Aspriing, in Mount Aspiring National Park). Even the drive in is fantastic, round the main body of Lake Wanaka, with craggy mountains stretching round it's edge... magic.
I'm at the YHA, which has amazing views across the lake to the mountains, but which just isn't my thing as a hostel - no soul!!! (It does, however, have an awesome cat - another of the many hostel pets I've met along the way who have a don't-care attitude combined with a high level of discernment over which backpackers they'll let pet them! This cat has taken begging from diners to a whole new level - actually clawing an entire steak off a girl's plate when her gaze is turned!) So I decide to just have two nights at the YHA, and book into the Wanaka Bakpaka, a little further round the lake, 5 mins out of town, for the other three. And I book my rockclimbing trip for tomorrow!!!
written by  LizIsHere on March 2, 2010 from Wanaka, New Zealand

Rock!
Wanaka, New Zealand
Rock-climbing today, and the weather's perfect. Sunny, very little wind, clear skies (well, the views are important too). I get some unexpected private tuition for the first hour or so; the others in my group are stranded with car trouble in Queenstown, so the instructor Dave drives me out to a valley at the entrance to Mount Aspiring National Park, just down the road from one of the main Wanaka ski-fields. The paddock area, with the valley rising on either side, has hundreds of routes - the other instructor later tells me that they can even climb in the rain and snow in Wanaka, because there are some (tough) overhanging routes which are always protected from the weather. Apparently some days in winter/early spring they'll come down from a half-day skiing and stop off at the paddock to get some climbs in before dark! Awesome.
Dave takes me through a refresher of tie-in, belaying, general rock safety, and lead belaying, then sets up a toprope on the sports route (there's very little trad. climbing here, since the rock, schist, isn't suited to it - where there's a crack that looks good for gear placement, it's probably the kind of crack that will shatter if you take a fall on that gear... so, it's better and safer for sport climbing). It's great to be climbing again - I get the feel of it pretty quick on the first few goes up the short route, then the rest of the group turn up, a couple from London, and we move on with another instructor, Bronwyn, to try some higher stuff. When the routes get higher i'm not quite so confident, but it's just great to climbing outside after so long after from even indoor stuff (the 'climbing gym' as they call it here)! We all have a go at placing quickdraws, and cleaning the gear on the way down, and a go at leading, and I actually climb better that way, with more things to think about, than when I'm simply top-roping, which is pretty cool. After lunch there's a longer walk-in (well, it's more of scramble-in) up a slope, bush-bashing our way along a path below the crag, with the cliff dropping away to our right, to reach the crags we're aiming for. The views even from the bottom of the climb are fantastic, and when you pause at the top of the crag after finihing a climb, the silence is all-encompassing.
It was a great day; a real challenge. Part of me is really keen to get back to the UK and get some serious climbing in (though maybe in...six months time or so :) )!
written by  LizIsHere on March 3, 2010 from Wanaka, New Zealand

not much!
Wanaka, New Zealand
I spent today and yesterday chilling by the lake, on a little beach on the side of the lake nearest the Wanaka Bakpaka, wandering around the lake, climbing Mount Iron - the highest point in Wanaka town, and apparently one of the area's short and easy walks - it's incredibly steep and felt neither short nor easy!!! - for great views over Lake Wanaka and beyond. And hanging about at the backpackers, which has a great garden with lake views, and some pretty cool people. I also checked out the Paradiso Cinema, which is a tiny but famous place, with a cafe attached. The cinema has sofas, armchairs, laz-e-boys and even a car with the roof chopped off to serve as seats, and you can order food and drinks to be brought to you in the cinema, or to have during the twenty-minute interval. There are even local adverts before the film (which are unintentionally hilarious). Oh, and the film, The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, was pretty good too!
written by  LizIsHere on March 5, 2010 from Wanaka, New Zealand

Canyoning
I went canyoning today and it was awesome!
That could be a succinct and apt blog entry, but anyway...
For $225 I got the pleasure of a thirty-minute drive in a rickety van along an unsealed road (complete with flocks of suicidal sheep), with three other travellers (two Aussie guys and a French-Canadian girl) and our guide, an English guy orignally from Cornwall; a wet-suit; and the chance to jump down waterfalls, abseil down canyon walls, and slide, jump and dive off cliffs, down stream channels and into deep waterfall-gouged pools.
We had a twenty-minute uphill walk-in to about 2/3 of the way up the Niger stream (it's a small river really), with fantastic views of Mount Aspiring, topped with snow, to our right, and the sound of river rushing by on our left. At the top we donned wet-suits (bouncy and very strange to move in for a while!), gloves, hoods (it's a good look, really), hats, and harnesses, and after a run-through of abseiling techniques and safety stuff, clipped ourselves onto a rope and edged out along the canyon-edge. The first task was to abseil down the rock-face and then star-jump backwards into a deep pool. It was kind of nervy, but great when you got to the almost bottom and jumped out, coming off the end of the abseil rope and landing in the freezing cold water!
Next was a slide/jump/fall down an 11 metre waterfall. From the bend in the stream
you couldn't see the bottom of the falls or the pool, so we had no idea how far down it was. One by one we shuffled into the stream channel, the water rushing away and falling away below us; lay back, arms in, knees together, waiting for the count, and then pushed forward, sliding along the rock on the layer of water... When suddenly the rock-bed dropped away and you were falling, falling, falling (...and possibly screaming, ahem), landing with a splash and a shock, water up you nose and in your ears, in the pool below. It was brilliant! Everyone emerged from the water punching the air and screaming, whooping, demanding to go again. Our guide of course had to do one better by somersaulting from a high rock-shelf into the pool!
The rest of the two and a half hour trip included slipping down natural 'slides' formed by the river - sometimes feet first, and a few times (the best times!), head first!; jumping off cliffs into the water, and swimming in cold waterfall pools, one with a rainbow dancing across the water as it flowed over the rocks. There was also some scrambling, up steep banks, gripping onto roots and branches, to take a second shot at the headfirst slip (a second, and a third). The Canadian girl and I decided to bow out with dignity on the last challenge, a leap off a massive-seeming cliff, which you had to time properly or risk landing on the shelf of rock sticking out below!
...Or at least we thought that was the last challenge! But, no, we had to get back across the canyon somehow - and what better way to make the journey than on slightly shoddy-looking zipline, metres above the water?
We were buzzing by the end of trip - a high which didn't wear off until I arrived back at the backpackers, when it was suddenly all I could do to make a cup of tea and crawl onto the sofa for the evening. An awesome day!

Jump off things! Jump out of things! Now now now!!!
Queenstown, New Zealand
It was boiling when I left Wanaka for Queenstown today, I spent the time waiting for the bus devouring ice-cream and getting slightly sunstroked by the lake (the bus was late). My hostel in Queenstown is the Last Resort, a tiny hostel with only 18 beds, just off Shotover Road -the main road full of shops, adventure-sport booking offices and home of the legendary Fergburger takeaway. You can do everything here from the terrifyingly awesome Canyon Swim, to river surfing, to, of course, bungy jumping. (To spoil the suspense, the only 'adventure' activity I did in Queenstown was the gondola ride up Bob's Peak. It was steep and high, so it counts (maybe)! And the view was brilliant, even if the 23$ price tag did sting a bit (I later found up you could hike the mountain road for free in under an hour, so there's a tip for anyone else going there).)
The hostel is a fun place, although the girl who manages it is so miserable and petty I only feel I can relax when she's left; she takes a 3-and-a-half-hour lunchbreak, and shuts reception at 7.30pm - and woe-betide you if you turn up at 7.31pm, no matter if she's still behind the counter - "reception is closed!". Still the people staying at the hostel are very cool, we spend a lot of time together watching movies and playing cards.
I'm not that taken with Queenstown straight away, the lakeside is really developed and it's really busy (and dirty) compared to Wanaka, but it's a buzzing place, a place it's probably hard to get bored in, and the stunning backpdrop of the craggy Remarkables mountains across the lake is a pretty a great view for a lakeside picnic, which I did almost every day.
I also visited Arrowtown, a slightly twee, preserved gold-rush town about thirty minutes outside Queenstown. It's cute and nice for a stroll around in the sun, but the old Chinese reonstructed settlement on the outskirts is much more interesting - the Chinese goldrush migrants had a tough time out in NZ, often made unwelcome and forced to scrape by the on meagre returns from gold-mining. The houses are tiny; it's fascinating to be able to go inside and imagine people living there in the tiny space, often with two or three people sharing.
written by  LizIsHere on March 8, 2010 from Queenstown, New Zealand

Te Anau / Milford Sound
Milford Sound, New Zealand
After a stopover in Te Anau, where I'm so exhausted I mainly sleep on the very comfy bed at Rosies Homestay (although I did visit the bird wildlife centre, which the DOC manage - there are keas and parakeets and other birds, in a clearing on the site of the lovely lake, which was interesting. The keas were my favourite, they're large, colorful and curious birds), I get the bus onward to Milford Sound.
Now, this is an 'attraction' (well, it's natural, so maybe 'attraction' isn't quite the right word - it's not Disneyland! - but it's still a major, massive tourist draw, for both tramping on the Milford Track, and for the natural beauty of the area), which is so hyped up that I was half-expecting to be disappointed - South Island so far has been so beautiful and magnificent that I wasn't expecting to be as bowled-over as I was. Even the drive there was stunning - passing by roaring river, waterfalls, suspended glaciers high on the mountain tops; crystal-clear mountain-filtered streams; the road winding between towering walls of black-grey rock; even the massive pile of last-year's avalanche snow near the tunnel that took you through one of the moutains, not yet melted.
And the Sounds themselves are gorgeous, stunning, and completely humbling - the size of the moutains (the towering Mitre Peak taking the prize), the blueness of the water against the deep green on the plants, the peacefulness of being out in the water (even on our quite large boat - we were dwarfed by the surroundings). It's just stunning - indescribably so. Postcards and pictures can convey something of it, but, like so much in NZ, it simply doesn't 'fit' into a photograph.
I'm well aware that this sounds quite irritatingly smug, but: it's just one of those things you have to see for yourself.
Oh - and we saw seals there! I'm still excited by seeing them, despite them being all over the place here; probably because NZ is severly lacking in mammals (well, ones that Kiwis actually like anyway - possums, stoats, weasels and rats being loathed, for good reason).
p.s. I'm having real trouble uploading photos on here and flickr - it's taking me ages and i have loads, and the comps are slow (think the photos are too big but resizing them is difficult etc. etc!!!). I've got them all backed-up and may post a cd home at some point... until then there won't be many up here :-p sorry!
written by  LizIsHere on March 9, 2010 from Milford Sound, New Zealand

The most Scottish town outside Scotland... and penguins!
Dunedin, New Zealand
The journey to Dunedin is pretty spectacular - river gorges, valleys, and land stretching to the horizon of mountains, almost uninhabited except for white buildings dotted here and there.
Dunedin is billed as the most Scottish city outside of Scotland - Dunedin is actually Gaelic for Edinburgh. The city filters East onto the beginnings of the Otago Peninsula (a British mispronounciation of the Maori name for their settlement on the peninsula, Otakou). The city is a bit of mishmash of old, historic buildings build of grey and black stone, and uglier modern structures, but it's more appealing than other cities on South Island. The population is about 25-30% students, so it's got a great cultural scene, cafes, bookshops, kooky shops and nightlife. I like it; it's cold as, but definitely the kind of place i could imagine living, unlike, say Nelson or Queenstown.
My hostel is Hogwartz, a large old house up on the hill about the harbour, reached through a creaking gate and up a winding flight of stone steps, the building itself obscured by the bushes and ivy until you reach the frontdoor. It's a brilliant hostel - no bunkbeds (i have a permanent bruise on my head from hitting myself on the top bunk, so this is a definite plus!), large dorms, and, in my four-bed dorm, fantastic views across the city (picture coming soon). They also have two extremely cute jack russels, the old and antisocial Bella, and friendly Asterix, both of whom have perfected their starving-puppy begging eyes as they loiter around travellers cooking, or eating their dinner.
On my second day there, I'm booked onto the Elm Wildlife tour, which takes you out in a minibus to the far reaches of the wild and rugged Otago Peninsula to first the Albatross Centre, where we see the giant birds (with windspans of 3 metres!) soaring on the high winds. They're endangered birds, and the colony at the centre unusual in that it's a land-based colony - mostly the birds nest out at sea, on rocky islands, and spend most of their life at the sea. The albatross mate for life, but only produce one egg every two years. On their 'year off', the couple seperate, one maybe going to Chile while the other might remain around the East coast of NZ. (the guide rolls out the slightly predictable joke about the biannual gap-years being the only reason the albatross can mate for life.)
We then drive out to the Elm reserve, a protected area closed to the public, further out on the peninsula. On the way we pass trees which have been blown almost horizontal by th 'roaring 40s', the strong winds which batter the coastline at between 40-50 degrees latitude. In the reserve there are seals, seal lions and yellow-eyed penguins living wild. We visit the fur seal breeding colony first, where female fur seals and their pups live on a large rocky outcrop, protected from the raging seas. The baby seals - twenty or thirty of them - frolic in the rockpools, squeaking, fighting and playing. We even get to watch a female seal swimming up and clambering over the rocks to the colony - she battles against the strong waves for five or ten minutes before finally managing to reach the rocks, where she clambers on and collapses. It's pretty amazing - she looked like a twig being battered about the waves as she fought to come ashore.
Next we clamber up the hill and down again to another beach where five sealions are napping on the beach. Our guide warns us that they sometimes, but rarely, chase people - before revealing that he himself was chased with a group on the tour four weeks ago. Apparently they can run at up to 25km/hour! (I ask which way we should run if they come at us, meaning towards the grass sand-dunes or the cliff path. "Just AWAY!" Warren the guide responds. ... Fair point)
Everyone approaches the sealions a little more warily after this revelation, but we get within metres of them anyway - it's fantastic to be able to get so close to such clearly wild animals (who clearly couldn't be less afraid of us). They're huge blubbery lumps on-land, leaping up and roaring at each other for a minute or two, fighting, and then collapsing back into the sand, which they flick onto themselves to keep them cool.
The penguins come in to sleep on the grassy cliffs further up the beach, and we pile into a makeshift 'hide' to watch them. Some are already on the beach close by, their white chests, black capes and the New Romantic-style yellow band of colour around their yellow-irised eyes clearly visible. Then we spot others coming in from the water, one by one (they're quite anti-social animals). It's brilliant - they approach the shore looking like just another seabird, then suddenly they get to their feet and become penguins! They waddle across the sand to the rocks looking like little old men in baggy pyjamas, very, very cute! It's a little strange to see them in a sandy, warm climate though, when penguins are always so linked to snow and ice.
written by  LizIsHere on March 14, 2010 from Dunedin, New Zealand

chocolate chocolate chocolate (too much chocolate)
Dunedin, New Zealand
My last two days in Dunedin are spent just checking out the city - I explore the Settlers Museum, the Otago Museum - which has a great exhibition dedicated to Maori culture, with a reconstructed Marae (meeting House),and lots of carvings, weaponry carved from pounamau (greenstone/jade) and intricately woven clothes on display.
I also go on the Cadbury Factor Tour, mainly because it's raining and it involves chocolate (not fairtrade, but to be honest that didn't even occur to me till after I'd handed over my money to the evil corporate machine etc. etc.). It's interesting enough, and there a lots of free samples (free, if you discount paying for the actual tour, though I choose to ignore this and focus on the FREE - when you're backpacking free is key).
I like Dunedin, but it's COLD. I'm looking forward to heading further north where maybe I won't have to wear all my clothes at once to keep warm... :)
written by  LizIsHere on March 17, 2010 from Dunedin, New Zealand

Penguins! Little blue ones this time...
Oamaru, New Zealand
We stop at the Moeraki boulders on the way to Oamaru - weird, alien-like round boulders which have been eroded from the cliffs and rolled/fallen out onto the beach. Without knowing how they came to be (guess who didn't read the info board before going down to the beach to look), it was a weird experience to suddenly be confronted with the boulders, at least thirty of them, of varying sizes, scattered over the sand.
I had considered skipping over Oamaru and heading straight on to Lake Tekapo, but I'm so glad I didn't! All I'd heard of it before the bus drove into town was about the little blue penguins which you could watch coming in to nest at night in a special protected area around the harbour, which sounded cool enough to warrant a night at least. But when we arrived into town it was so pretty - lots of old, Victorian buildings built of white Oamaru stone, with a particularly interesting street made up entirely of older buildings, a bakery, warehouses and old stables now converted to shops, a theatre and sculpture and art galleries. It's unlike any other town I've seen in NZ - the buildings are so much older and easier on the eye that the sprawling more modern style of other towns and cities. I spent the afternooon (wrapped up in all my clothes again!) wandering round down the long, wide mainstreet and into the historic/art quarter, before my appointment with the penguins in the evening.
The penguins begin to return to their nesting area around dusk, so I walked up to the Blue Penguin centre and took my seat in the stand of wooden benches built facing the rock 'ramp' which the penguins clamber up to reach their protected area of nest-boxes. There are special lights which the penguins can't see, so we could watch them as the light faded. There's an absolute ban on photography and filming, and we had to keep very still and quiet, so they won't be scared off from returning to the reserve.
The blue penguins are very cute, even more so than the yellow-eyeds because they're so small. They waddle up the ramp in groups (they form into 'rafts' as dusk falls to give themselves protection-in-numbers when swimming in towards the coast) and pause, worriedly, scouting out for threats, before crossing the open two-metre or so patch of land, wiggling under the fence and then splitting up and running across the grass to their respective nest-boxes. After a few minutes a loud, eerie noise starts up - at first I assume it's possums, but then the guide tells us it's actually the penguins - like the yellow eyeds they can be extremely loud when they feel like it!
written by  LizIsHere on March 18, 2010 from Oamaru, New Zealand

Lake Tekapo to Christchurch
Christchurch, New Zealand
When we leave Oamaru it's hot and sunny again, and I've made myself a friend, a seven-year-old Taiwanese girl travelling on the bus with her mum. As soon as she finds out I'm vegetarian, that's it: she spends practically the entire one-hour journey to the viewpoint of Mount Cook running through questions about what I eat:
"So you don't eat beef?" "No, I don't eat animals.
"So you don't eat lamb?" "Nope, I don't."
"So you don't eat chicken/mussels/shrimp/pork...insert meat-form here?" Ad infinitum. All accompanied by disbeliving wide-eyes and incomprehension. I guess they don't have many veggies in Taiwan, or at least not that she's met!
We also pass a town which has shrunk so much that businesses there have started to amalgamate - the post office in the gas station, for example. The best blend has to be the local butcher having a side-line as the local undertaker though! Apparently in a newspaper interview he stressed that he 'strove to keep his two businesses seperate' ! It's a bit worrying that he had to emphasise that point, really!
When we stop off at a viewpoint across a gigantic deep-blue lake to Mount Cook it's a breath-taking sight. The sun glints off the snow on the peak, glittering in the water as it beams down out of an almost cloudless sky. The Maori called Mount Cook 'Aoraki' meaning 'Cloud Piercer'.
At Lake Tekapo our driver stops off at the Church of the Good Shepherd and the sheepdog statue, towards the edge of what is optimistically called the 'town'. It's a cute little stone church, looking out over the gorgeous blue waters of Lake Tekapo, and when we arrive there's a wedding taking place. Later on, after dumping my stuff at the lakeside YHA where I'm staying, I take a picnic out to the rocks on the lakeside, sitting in the sun with the church at my back and the blue waters, surrouded by uninabited hills, to the front.
Back at the hostel I watched the sunset from garden table looking out at the lake, accompanied by the podgy, anti-social hostel cat, with tea and the last of my Cadbury factory samples.
The next morning I woke up so early that I managed to get outside in time to watch the sunset, from the first light behind the hills to the East, as it progressed, from orange to pink, the bright pink cloud scudded across the sky over the lake, and finally to the light gray of normal early-morning light.
Then it was time to pack up again and head off to Christchurch. My original hostel managed to turn my booking for a bed in a 3-bed dorm into 3 people in a double room (hmm?), so I have to move across the Foley Towers, which turns out to be a pretty decent hostel. Returning to Christchurch means I know my way around and have seen most of the touristy bits, so I just check out the market at the Arts Centre for the rest of the afternoon.
written by  LizIsHere on March 20, 2010 from Christchurch, New Zealand

a train! not a bus! wow
A 5am start for my 6am shuttle bus to my 7am Tranzcoastal train to Picton this morning. Still, the train makes a wonderful change from the bus - being able to get up and walk around, and even having a spare seat next to me to stretch out on is bliss. Plus, I'm heading back to the Juggler's Rest!
Unfortunately when I arrive it's raining and Nikki the owner has gone away to Wellington for a few days, so it looks like I'll never get to see her fire poi show. But still, coming back to JR feels like coming home in a way. I know where everything is, how it all works - I even have the same bed in the same room. The Swedish WWOOFer Per has left, but two Scottish-English cousins have replaced him, and they're a lot of fun. When I arrive people are juggling inside, out of the rain.
I have two nights at the Juggler's before catching the ferry Wellington, which can best be summed up with: juggling, ice cream, conversation, and music. Perfect before heading to cosmopolitan busyness of Wellington.
written by  LizIsHere on March 23, 2010 from Picton, New Zealand

The Windy City
Wellington, New Zealand
It's chucking it down when I leave Picton on the Interislander ferry (a very nice German lady from the hostel, who I've never spoken to but who notices me staring forlornly out at the downpour from the JR porch, laden with bags, gives me a lift to the ferry terminal).
The crossing is nothing amazing - mostly because we can see about a metre ahead, and most of that's grey! And in Wellington it's blowing a gale - unsuprising for those who know the city, but a bit of a shock when I almost get taken out and slammed into a building as a strong gust pummels into my rucksack! Still, I manage to navigate the city buses without any further incidents and finally reach the YHA, a massive 300-bed hostel situated almost on the waterfront, just off Courtenay Place and a stone's throw from Cuba Street. The area is generally viewed (well, by guidebooks, I'm sure there's another area far away from the tourist hordes which is far more hidden and cooler) as the 'alternative' quarter of Wellington, crammed with cafes, vintage clothes shops, surf shops and normally busy on a sunny day with buskers and people hanging about on the benches or at the pavement cafe tables.
I chill out in the reading room that night - the hostel is packed with people sheltering from the sudden onset of monsoon rain in addition to the pummelling winds - taking a moment to mourn the loss of my towel, which I've just realised is still hanging on the back of my dorm door in Picton...
written by  LizIsHere on March 24, 2010 from Wellington, New Zealand

meaderings in Wellington
Wellington, New Zealand
I'm not that keen on cities, but Wellington being so big (on a NZ-scale of big, obviously) means there's lots do over the four days I have there. The Te Papa museum, just down the road from the hostel, is a massive, very interactive museum, with exhibits on everything from the geological history of NZ, to Maori culture and arts (with an entire exhibition on pounamu greenstone), futuristic architecture, the lives of the Pacific peoples, the gold rush, Pompeii and the histories and experiences of the early European settlers in the country. They even have a giant squid - the only one of it's kind in a museum - on display. It's a bit too much to take in all at once, and a bit hard to navigate around the different exhibits, but it's a pretty good way to spend half a day - they even have an outdoor bush area complete with a small waterfall, mini swingbridge and caves with faux glowworms.
There's also the Botanic Gardens, which are huge, peaceful and pretty - possibly my favourite thing about Wellington. After a morning of cramming information (most of which i will, realistically, forget soon enough) into my brain at Te Papa, it's great to take a picnic up on the cable car to the highest point of the Gardens, and meader downwards, and finally back into the thronging city centre, in the hot sunshine. The route back to the city winds through a memorial garden (cemetary), which is actually really fascinating - many of the families are buried together, and there's even a slightly creepy 'mass grave' where many of the early settlers' remains were shifted to when a freeway was built through the middle of the memorial gardens. There's a sort of terrace of stone steps above the grave-site, and when I passby, after lunchtime, there are clearly the remains of picnics scattered about. A bit of a morbid place for the office workers or whoever to eat their lunch, but each to their own!
Another good free thing to do (minus the cost of the obligatory ice cream), is to walk along Oriental Parade, which stretches from in front of Te Papa to the curve of land and beyond, right next to the water. In the late afternoon it's busy with joggers, power-walkers, tourists strolling and skateboarders.
written by  LizIsHere on March 25, 2010 from Wellington, New Zealand

Art Deco in the rain
Napier, New Zealand
When we arrive in Napier - after a fairly hairy drive in the driving rain and mist along a winding mountain road - it's raining and most people hunker down in the hostel, Archie's Bunker, to play board games and take advantage of the massive tv screen and huge amount of dvds (somehow the girls who choose our movies that night still manage to choose 3 absolutely cringe-worthy romcoms to watch, out of all that variety!).
Deciding to brave the weather (i'm from the land of rain, dammit), I head out to check out the Art Deco architecture which the town (city? town?) is famous for. It feels a little like wandering about on a film-set - not least because it's a damp Sunday afternoon and thus the steets are practically deserted. The buildings are quite nice to look at, but it all feels kind of fake and kitsch, although they were designed and built at the heigh of art deco/30s fashion.
written by  LizIsHere on March 26, 2010 from Napier, New Zealand

mmm.. rotten eggs
Rotorua, New Zealand
You smell Rotorua before you see it. That's what they say and... well I smelt it and saw it pretty much simultaneously, so either the bus is very well insulated or my sense of smell is failing...
On the way to Roto (as no one calls it?) we stop off at Taupo's Huka Falls, an amazing, roaring waterfull where 200,000 litres of water pass over it every minute. It's a gorgeous sunny day, but even without that I still would have stood there, in awe, for at least five minutes, watching the water pour over the low falls and pound, frothing into the river below.
Before entering Rotorua proper the bus stops a Wai-o-Tapu Thermal Wonderland - a name which belies the awful smell of the place. Sulphur... mmmm.... The smell is less strong in the actual town, but wandering around the 'Wonderland', with the bubbling, boiling dark mud pools, steaming vents and brightly-stained pools (from the dissolved chemicals in the steam), often it's hard to breathe without gagging! It's pretty spectacular though, particularly the champagne pool, which is a large, frothing lime-green pool, stained with a thick band of fluorescent orange around the edges.
written by  LizIsHere on March 27, 2010 from Rotorua, New Zealand

Hangi, poi and the haka!
Rotorua, New Zealand
You can't really go to Rotorua without going to a Maori cultural show. They may be very put-on for the tourists, but it's probably the most accessible, best way of getting a taste of Maori culture (and food) in a short space of time.
I opt for the Mitai show, held on tribe-owned land a ten minute or so drive outside of the centre of Rotorua. It's less serious than some of the others; there is a display of songs, Battle stances & weaponry, dancing, and, of course, poi, but there are also plenty of jokes, particularly about the 'ancient' village (built 7 years ago when the cultural show started up) and our night's elected 'Chief Dave', from the UK (well, it's forced onto him, after no-one out of our sixty-strong group, from 17 countries, volunteers.... he's a typically reticent british guy, and doesn't look to pleased with the decision initially!) .
We see our hangi dinner being uncovered from it's steam-cooking pit, and then, after watching some of the young guys who are part of the show paddle along the forest-stream on a Maori canoe, lit by flaming-torches, we move on to the theatre and stage area. There the Maori chief makes a challenge and speech to Dave, and Dave has to make one in return. Then there are the dancing, weaponry, songs and poi displays - with one girl using FOUR long pois at once! - and a quite terrifying, goose-bump inducing haka (particularly since I'm sitting in the middle of the front row next to Chief Dave). Those taking part are generally young men and women, in their twenties, who giggle when they drop things or make mistakes, helping the whole seem more relaxed, less weird & false. The cultural shows, as the chief explains, are both sources of tourist revenue, but also a way of keeping their traditions alive in the younger generation. We also learn about the symbolism of the tattoos the men and women wear (all the facial ones tonight drawn on, semi-permanently), and get an explanation the meaning of some of the chants and songs.
The hangi is good too - though I can't comment on the meat part - the kumara and white potatoes are sweet and smoky... and the chocolate roll for dessert is obviously absolutely authentic! After dinner we split into groups for a torch-lit glow-worm hunt in the forest, finishing at the tribe's sacred spring. Although it couldn't have been more touristy, the show managed to balance this by being genuinely fascinating and educational - much more informative in the performance of the Maori traditions than a museum exhibition could ever be.
written by  LizIsHere on March 30, 2010 from Rotorua, New Zealand

Whakatane
Whakatane, New Zealand
The loud, friendly, heavily-tattoed driver of the Magic East Cape connection bus drops me off the small town of Whakatane at the Windsor Backpackers ( I later find out it's a converted funeral parlour... creepy), where I'll be staying for 3 nights so I can do the White Island tour (an active volcanic island out in the ocean). Since Leigh doesn't drive through again till Saturday, I'm 'stuck' here till then (though perhaps I shouldn't have used the word 'stuck' when asking the local lady at the I-Site what I could do to fill my time in the town!).
Whakatane is a nice Surprise though - set on river estuary, backed and bisected by a huge cliff, and with a fantastic beach, Ohope, just a short bus ride or 2 1/2 hour hike away. I choose to get the bus that afternoon, and spend the rest of the day there. Then in the evening I head back to the hostel to wait in suspense with the other 5 at the hostel who are hoping to be on the tour tomorrow for PeeJays tours to call us to confirm that the weather conditions are right for the 80min sail out to the island. Luckily, at around 8pm, all our Mobile ring in sucession - we're going to walk on the Volcano!!!
Our 9am sail sets off, and it's great, the hostel group sit on the back of the boat with the wind our hair, the sun shining down. And then the sea-sickness starts to hit - first the kids, then quite a few others. I wasn't expecting it since I never get motion sick, but within 30 mins I'm as pale as most of the other passengers, huddled up on aseat and wondering when the rough, bouncy trip will be over! Then someone spots a dolphin - leaping out of the water in the cliche fashion, and suddenly i feel fine again. Dolphins! It's brilliant - they swim along the prow of the boat, five or six of them, leaping and diving, and everyone crowds round the front to see them, suddenly cured of sea-sickness.
When we arrive at White Island the sea is rough - there are even concerns we won't be able to land at all. There's no way of mooring the boat directly, so we have to pile off in groups into a little dinghy, and cross that way. It gets a whole lot more exciting when a very large american man gets into our boat and upsets it's balance, a lot. The crew seem pretty concerned about the crossing - when we finally manage to moor onto the makeshift jetty, the guy driving the boat urges us to scramble out of the boat as fast as possible. One girl gets her leg trapped between the boat and the wooden jetty, but luckily it's only badly bruised, nothing broken. The whole incident brings home that this isn't a disneyland trip - not only are we about to wander about on an active volcano, there's also the distinct possibility we won't be able to get back off if they seas become to rough!
When we've gathered on the 'beach' of the island, created after an eruption which blew out one side of the volcano's funnel, we get a safety run down and a warning that our trip may be cut short if the skipper thinks the seas are getting to high and rough to make crossing back to the main vessel safe. Then the tour begins - we put on our hard hats, sling our gasmasks around our necks and accept a handful of sweets to suck in case the sulphurous gases become too strong. We follow our pink-hatted guide over the white and yellow chemical deposits left on the rock, crunching over the basalt and pumice rock left from a previous eruption. Ahead of us is the crater lake, and a vent which is pumping out steam at an alarming speed and pressure - there's no doubt that this volcano is very much alive!! The smell of sulphur is all around, and as we move closer to the vent, skirting boiling, bubbling mudpools, the heat increases.
For the whole trip there's a palpable sense of excitement and disbelief - that we're actually walking on a live volcano, one which could, potentially erupt at any moment (the threat is a 1 on the 1-to-5 scale, the scientists can never rule it out). We peer over the edge of the crater lake, gazing down into a steaming, frothing bright green alek with a PH rating of -2 - that's incredibly acidic. As our guide quips, you'd only take one swim in there!
At the end of the trip we look around the ruins of a sulphur mining factory which operated on the island in the 1930s. The guys living there had tough lives; absolutely reliant on ship deliveries for food and fresh water, their teeth blackened by sulphur fumes, and their clothes all but eaten away by the chemicals in the air. The factory was closed down in the 1930s due to lack of profit from the low-grade sulphur.
After a slightly sketchy and wet trip from the slippery jetty to the boat, the journey back is a lot less green-tinged that the outward one. The group of backpackers from the Windsor sit at the front of the boat, spotting flying fish, two seals, and then more dolphins! Volcano tour, boat-ride, nature-eco-tour... sweet as!
The final surprise of the trip is when we can't get back into Whakatane harbour due to the low-tide. Another dinghy trip calls! Since there's only two dinghy's, we have to wait an hour to get back ashore. Still, on the way back we get a personal meet'n'greet from Moko, the young, wild bottle-nosed dolphin who has taken up residence in Whakatane harbour for a month (he likes to steals people's surfboards and fetch a ball).
written by  LizIsHere on April 3, 2010 from Whakatane, New Zealand

The East Cape E-scape
Tatapouri, New Zealand
[!--KNOWN--> I spend the next two nights on the East Cape, back in the Magic minibus with ex-truck driver Leigh, two other Magic backpackers, and Leigh's twelve-year-old son, J'kar. It feels a little like an odd family roadstrip at times, especially when we have to pull in to Gisborne on our way to Tatapouri to get the brake-pads changed and us 'kids' are left in the car to rock out to Bon Jovi on the local radiostation!
On the way to Tatapouri, where we spend the night, we stop at some secret roadside waterfalls, which are so shielded that we would never have found them without Leigh, and for fush 'n' chups at a tiny, not-even-one-horse town. It's a relaxed journey, bumping along in the minibus with two seats each to stretch out on, although tha he screeching of the worn brake-pads causes some concern as drive along the winding, rural roads. The East Cape is very sparsely populated, with the majority of the inhabitants being Maori; we pass many marae's on the journey.
That night we stay at the Tatapouri Dive Centre, a beachfront five centre with accomodation for backpackers across the road. The dive centre itself, an open-fronted building with a large Terrace, firepit, bbq and sofas, is so close to the sea that at high tide the sea slaps against the Terrace wall - you will get splashed if you stand too close! Our accomodation has a boys' and a girls' dorm, so I get a room all to myself - luxury!
We spend the afternoon exploring the rocky beach in the hot sunshine, and meeting the family who run the centre; there are lots more people there than usual that day because of it is Easter weekend. That night we eat hangi, freshly-caught-that-day by the centre owners snapper and crayfish (I do not like crayfish and fresh vegetables! Expensive or not, it tastes horrible!), then gather round the firepit to drink possibly a little too much wine, and listen to sea slapping against the seawall and the owner of the centre sing classic rock songs and maori songs accompanied by his acoustic guitar. We see the moon rise, golden-orange above the sea, and the thousands of stars scattered across the pitch-black sky.
The next day, us three get up at 5.30am to watch the first sunrise in the world from the beach. Then, after cooking ourselves a pretty impressive Easter breakfast, we each take a hammock next to the sea and stay there for most of the morning, before setting off, under sudden black clouds, for Tikitiki. I'm feeling pretty exhausted by now, after only four hours sleep, so the rural, rain-lashed charms of the farmstay-hostel at Tikitiki don't have much impact. The evening improves when Leigh cooks J'kar, the guys and two WWOOFers at the hostel an amazing roast dinner - complete with good wine, wild pig (caught by the WWOOFers) and yummy roast kumara, pumpkins and carrots. I'm so full and sleepy that even the massive crevasse in the middle of the my squeaky bunkbed's mattress feels cosy when I crawl into bed.
The next morning we're pursued out of the Eastender Backpackers driveway by their over-enthusiastic dog, and get on our way. We drive for most of the day, including a slightly hair-rising km or two along the unsealed East Cape road, which is slippery and stony in the intermittent rain. The road hugs the sea-pounded coast, with a fair drop-off to the left, particularly on the stretch closest to the East Cape lighthouse, which we walk to by climbing 760 steps. It used to be situated on the island offshore from the Cape, where the lighthouse keeper and his family lived year-round. What a way to live - so close and yet so far from the mainland, on a small, wind-lashed island; unable to leave in rough or stormy weather, hours from medical care and emergency supplies. No wonder many of the keeper's children died there.
The weather and skies clear in the afternoon, perfect for our drive back along the gorgeous coastline, with views out of the blue sea to White Island in the very far distance.
written by  LizIsHere on April 4, 2010 from Tatapouri, New Zealand

to the Coromandel
Whitianga, New Zealand
The next few days I spend mostly beachside, in Tauranga, and Mount Maunganui, which is connected by a large peninsular to Tauranga. Mount Maunganui in particular has a nice beach, and the Mount hulking over town is pretty impressive.
From Tauranga I move on to Thames, the gateway to the Coromandel Peninsula. The town itself is nothing amazing, but the area where I'm staying has some quaint old buildings (well, 100 years old-ish...!), and a mudflats area that is crammed with birds at low-tide. The hostel is great too (they have a very cute dog), and there's a vivid sunset, which I and a few others from the hostel watch from the edge of the mudflats.
The next day I and a French journalist, Ophelie, catch the Magic connection to Whitianga via Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove. At Hot Water Beach you can dig yourself a hole in the sand and sit your own private hot pool, due to hot springs in the area - but only if you arrive at low tide! We don't, so instead Ophelie and I sit in the sunshine on the sand and compare the styles of journalism in Britain and France. It turns out that it's a matter of course for public figures in France to read copy before publication, and to demand edits! I find this quite a surprise - it seems like pretty shoddy journalism to let politicians edit their own interview scripts! Still, journalism in the UK isn't exactly the beacon of truth it (never?) was....
From Hot Water Beach we move on to Cathedral Cove, which is a short, undulating thirty-minute walk from the carpark high on the coast. The temperature has risen, the sky is blue, and Cathedral Cove, when we reach it, is picture-postcard-perfect (well, apart from all the people! Damn tourists...ha.). The cathedral-like roof of the cove-passageway is spectacular, the beach is gorgeous and the cliffs around the cove drip with green foliage and small waterfalls. It's a shame we don't have a whole day to spend here, but we have an hour to have lunch here and soak it all in, and then we have to hike back up the track to the bus.
I jump off the bus at Whitianga, where I'm spending two nights, straight into the middle of the annual Whitianga Festival of Speed. The town is buzzing, and the air throbs with the engine noise of cars, motorbikes, planes, helicopters, and, out on the sea just across the road from the hostel, motorboats. Since there's not much else to do here except laze on the beach, or do bone-carving (a popular tourist-offering around NZ), it's a welcome distraction!
That night there's a parade is town, which is preceded by a skateboard race along the main-street, and a drag race. Now, since it's a Festival of Speed, I have to admit I was expecting something slightly more petrol-powered than a bunch of men racing past in make-up and dresses! It's a pretty funny spectacle nonethless!
The parade is pretty good too, a succession of boats on trailers, cars (GTO's, Mustangs...and, erm...some other nice-looking, noisy ones...), motorbikes, and even a motorised toilet! I meet two guys from the area watching the parade (one sporting the interesting fashion choice of leather jacket, very tight shorts, and jandals), and immeadiatly upon voicing a vague interest in cars I get treated to a litany of car-related terms and makes, most of which goes straight over my head.
It's a different evening (particularly the drag-race) !
The next day I catch the Thundercat boat races in front of the hostel, so it's another beach-day, as is the next day, where I have hours to kill till my bus to Coromandel. When Ross the Coromandel connection driver does arrive, it's only about an hour journey over the hills to 'historic Coromandel Town', where I'm spending the night before catching the ferry for a stopover in Auckland tomorrow night. Coromandel Town is historic by NZ standards, and I end up (out of slight boredom/desperation), taking the historic buildings walk, which follows the main street up and out of town, past the interesting town graveyard, and ending at the gold stamper battery.
The ferry over to Auckland seemed like a great idea when I booked it - not only did it cut out having to spend another 'useless' night in Thames, but it was also Not A Bus. After a good two months of buses, anything that is Not A Bus is a definite plus. However, after stepping aboard the ferry ( and meeting a couple of my dorm-mates from Whitianga), and experiencing the quite alarming roughness of the sea, I swiftly change my mind. The ferry is small, foot passengers-only, and the seas are rolling. The vessel feels like it's being tossed about like a cork - it leaps up and bangs downward, and most of the passengers become slightly panicky and/or green within about twenty minutes. The only people who seem unconcerned are a couple who appear to have had a few too many beers from the on-board bar (maybe the rolling of the boat compensated for their corresponding weaving?).
Still, the captain assures us that 'These are only some speed-bumps guys', and eventually it calms down enough so that we're not totally convinced that we're going to capsize and drown imminently. In retrospect, it was exciting, and definitely more interesting than a bus, but... I wouldn't jump at the chance to do it again, let's say. I get onto dry-land at Auckland in one piece, eventually find the bus to my hostel in Ponsonby, and after navigating around the darkened hostel and finding my dorm (in the basement... I'm slightly apprehensive as i descend the stairs and walk along the concrete corridor, but luckily the dorm itself turns out to be brightly painted, light, and to have two very friendly people in it), I collapse into bed.
written by  LizIsHere on April 11, 2010 from Whitianga, New Zealand

Raglan - surf central!
Raglan, New Zealand
My journey to one of NZ's centres of surfing (and the world's - Raglan apparently has 'one of the best left-handed breaks in the world' - I had very little clue what this was before I got to Raglan, but many people I'd passed along my travels around S. and N. Island had told me I'd have a great time there, so that seemed like reason enough to check it out) saw me back on the bus - three buses in fact: one comfy but crowded Naked bus, and two bone-juddering local buses which wound through the hills to the West Coast.
Raglan is a nice little town, with just enough going on to entertain people when they can't surf. The town hostel, Raglan Lakefront Backpackers, which backs onto the river estuary, is pretty legendary with backpackers in NZ too; it's popular and fully-booked in summer; they rent surfboards, wet-suits and boogie-boarding gear, and there's a sauna and hot-tub, as well as a surf car which you can catch a lift in (for the horrendous price of $2) down to the main learners surf beach, Ngarunui. There are two other surf beaches in Ralgan, including the one with that fabled 'left-hand break', but these have rocks and strong currents, so they're too dangerous for foolish learners like myself who are more likely to knock themselves out with their own surfboard than catch a great break.
My surf lesson with Solscape Surf school turns out to be one-on-one - I'm lucky that no one else has booked in today. In retrospect this may be because a storm surge was coming through the area which made the surf much more pounding, rough and 'messy' than usual, but still, it meant I got to make the most of two hours in water. (First, though, I have to get the hang of carrying the board...)
We start with some practice of standing up technique on the beach, then move into the water, where my instructor Andrew cites out the best waves for me to catch. It turns out that what seemed fairly simple on land is actually a lot tougher when I'm trying to stand up on moving water; who'd have thought it? I faceplant the water numerous times, also managing, at one memorable point, to get thrown around underwater whilst sampling a mid-morning snack of sand. Andrew is nice enough not to laugh when I emerge from the water covered head to toe in the stuff.
It is great fun though, definitely something I want to try again - the moments when I manage to stand-up are brilliant, even though they only last seconds at most! By the time the two-hour session is over I'm shattered but buzzing.
The day before I leave Raglan myself and another girl take the surf car down to the beach again. We spend a comedy hour or so in the water, desperately attempting to catch waves as the rougher-than-ever sea churns around us. The moments which clinch the idea that I should quit for the day include the time I wipe out and emerge, coughing and spluttering, down the beach a long distance away from where I fell, due to the strong side-current, and the memorable episode when I manage to fall and hit myself in the face with the board while paddling out to catch a wave. Although our enthusiasm isn't dampened, it's clear the gnarly state of the surf and our inexperience are not a good combination.
Before I leave Raglan I arrange farm-stay with a lady out in Parua Bay, near Whangerei in Northland, which is where I'm headed after another one-night stopover in Auckland. The last night in Raglan is low-key but fun, with juggling tricks, an entertaining collision of schoolteachers from different hemispheres, and some very strange anecdotes from a Canadian airline steward.
written by  LizIsHere on April 17, 2010 from Raglan, New Zealand

an interesting experience...
Whangarei, New Zealand
I arrive in Whangarei to meet the lady who I'll farmstay-ing with at 10am. At 4pm I'm still there, at the Town Basin area, having drunk all the coffee I can stomach and afford, and slightly losing enthusiasm for the whole thing.
When Joy, an American ex-pat and ex-hippie, arrives to pick me up, I'm relieved but also slightly nervous. She puts me at ease immeadiatly though, mainly by being slightly spaced-out, and also by the hilarious amount of rubbish in her car - it literally spills out when I open the front passenger door! When I get in the car and Joy promptly gets out and disappears for half an hour, I'm starting to look for the hidden cameras. But eventually she returns and we drive off to her property, out in Parua Bay.
As it's getting dark when we arrive, and Joy, who has businesses in Morroco and family still in the US, often works through the night and therefore doesn't get up till the afternoon, I get some basic instructions that she wants the front paddock raked and cleared. We have dinner... fish-head soup... interesting, definitely not something I've sampled before but actually quite tasty (perhaps it would have been tastier if she hadn't told me about the fish-head component...), and I retire to my 'apartment' , a bedroom, bathroom and living room-cum-kitchen at the opposite end of the building. My own room - and two beds to choose from! I sleep very well that night.
The next day I get up and start work around 9am, raking. Raking raking raking. Let's just say that after five hours of that, Professional Raker is not on my list of ideal careers! But the property has a fantastic view, over the rolling hills, towards mountains and the sea, with bellbirds, tuis and fantails singing in the trees, and a family of pukekoes pecking away in a field in the adjacent property. The ten sheep on the property were extremely nervous of me, which is a bit difficult because they seemed to spend most of their day eating or laying about in the vicinity of my path back to the apartment.
Joy appears around 1pm, disappears again to 'meditate', and returns again at 3pm, when we do some planting in the veggie garden until it starts to get dark. That night we make a great stir-fry for dinner, and Joy tells me about her youth in the US, when she was a hippie, hanging out with Dennis Hopper (who is her daughter's godfather), and living in Paris and Marrakech.
The next day I spend most of the morning clearing leaves for the front paddock and the flower and veggie gardens. Then I relax with some music on the chair-shaped-cut treestump at the highest point of the property, before doing some more planting with Joy in the late afternoon. The final day I trim the large spiky plants which dot the property (don't ask me what they're called...) which is actually pretty fun and relaxing, in the sun with a cooling breeze and my ipod on. Even the sheep seem slighty less scared of me... just slightly. Before Joy drives me back down to Whangarei to spend a night at the Bunkdown Lodge before catching my bus on to Paihia the next morning, I clear plants from the large porch, sweep, re-pot plants, and attempt to tame some of the bushes around the veggie garden. I get the feeling she's got a mile-long list of tasks and would like me to stay on, but it's time to move on. It was a nice, different interlude to months travelling around and living in hostels, and would definitely have been more fun with another person, but spending so much time (4 days felt like a long time!) on my own isn't really for me!
written by  LizIsHere on April 19, 2010 from Whangarei, New Zealand

sandboarding, 64-not-90-Mile-Beach and Cape Reinga
Cape Reinga, New Zealand
I arrive in Paihia and return to hostelland after my brief stint away. It's not too bad - The Pickled Parrot has small dorms, cute pets (2 ageing jack russels and a snooty black cat... the parrot himself was sold last year), free breakfast, and is pretty quiet since it's the beginning of the low season. Paihia is a beach-town and a big holiday destination due to it's location in the Bay of Islands, and relative proximity to Cape Reinga and 90 Mile Beach. In summer, it's touristy but gets away with it by having a pretty but small beach, a bay dotted with islands, and being only a brief ferry-ride across the bay from 'Romantic Russell', a small town with much history, that defines the word 'quaint'.
My main aim in Paihia is to go on the day-trip to Cape Reinga and 90 Mile Beach. I take the trip run by AwesomeNZ, and our driver turns out to be a very cool Maori guy called Barry. The trip takes you through some of the more northern Northland towns, on a visit to the Kauri forest, where we creep around almost in silence, over-awed by the gigantic, ancient kauri trees which tower over us. Then we drive on to 90 Mile Beach, a massive stretch of beach which is defined as a 'recreational highway', which means that taxed and WOF-ed (like an MOT) vehicles can drive on it. There's a speed limit of 80km/hr. The beach is not 90 Miles long, incidentally, and the tour guides seem to get some relish out of disabusing us of the fact. It's actually around 64 Miles long, and the reasons for the mistake - ranging from the fact that '90 Miles sounds better', to the disparity of the seamen using nautical rather than land Miles, to their making an estimate of the distance they could travel over 3 days, 90 Miles, and christening the beach without checking their calculations, are myriad. But it seems pretty irrelevant when you're driving along the beach, watching the surf flash past on one side, and the dunes on the other.
Another - very New Zealand - attraction of the area around 90 Mile Beach is sandboarding. It involves taking a boogie-board, climbing up a giant sandune, lying face-forward on the boogie-board, pushing off down the slope and, possibly, praying or yelling out expletives as the momentum gathers and you either slide safely all the way to the bottom, with an added aquaplane across a muddy sand-dune stream, or bail out on-purpose or by accident, eating copious amounts of sand as you roll, boardless to stop. It's fun! More fun obviously when you don't eat the sand - or stop yourself with your actual head, as I saw one girl do (she made that her first and last attempt)
Even Barry has a go, though,as he points out: "As you can see I only went down once. Do I LOOK like an [idiot] to you?!"
From the Giant Dunes we drive on to a quiet beach. It's quiet because everyone else packed off when it started to rain. We wait, oh, maybe five minutes, and the sun is shining again, almost uncomfortably hot! Tut, silly other tourists who haven't worked out NZ's ninja weather yet. We have lunch on the beach, and then have to be practically dragged back onto the (it's a really beautiful beach!) bus to head off to Cape Reinga.
Cape Reinga is a very sacred Maori site - it is known is Maori as Te Rerenga Wairua, 'the leaping-off place of spirits', and it is where spirits are beleived to come to enter the underworld, by climbing down the roots of a 800-year-old tree on one of the rocky outcrops of the Cape. Barry explains to us that it customary for Maori families to visit Cape Reinga to bid farewell to their dead loved ones, explaining that a visit to Cape Reinga some years ago had helped him in some ways face the grief of losing his young son in a car-accident.
The Cape is also where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific, resulting in an incongruous line of surf, or tidal race, in the middle of the calm sea off the North-West side of the Cape. The Maori people see the two seas as the sea of Rehua (male) and the sea of Whitirea (female).
It's a beautiful spot, though it's hard to feel any significance in the area without a greater understanding of Maori beliefs. Still it strikes me as pretty beautiful and appropiate place to 'farewell' dead relatives, whatever your beliefs.
Our return from Cape Reinga is a long drive, punctuated by as visit to a Kauri showroom where there are myriad products carved from ancient swamp kauri, dug up, preserved, from Northland swamps, and to the 'famous' Mongonui fush'n'chup shop.
written by  LizIsHere on April 24, 2010 from Cape Reinga, New Zealand

Paihia, ANZAC day, the beach, and the fickleness of cats...
Paihia, New Zealand
I spend my other days in Paihia visiting Russell - which I hit on ANZAC day, so I watch the RSA parade (and watch the ladies of the historic house have a meltdown when they realise they've hung the NZ flag upside down from the flagpole... oh dear), visit the old Missionary House, which has been everything from bookbinders to printworks to tannery, and hang out on the beach. I also get my own private Nakedbus to KeriKeri, with Terry the busdriver, who basically gives me my own charter service, dropping me off at end of town (the top of the hill), and picking me up later at the other end of town, near the Stone Store (the bottom of the hill), so I don't have to trek all the way back up. All that for a $1 fare! KeriKeri is packed with craft shops and fruit'n'veggie stands, since it's a big produce, er, producer. I finish the day with some chocolates, crafty things and massive bag of amazing tasty fruit called feijoas - they're sort of like kiwi fruit but not hairy and sweeter. There's also an historic church, and the Stone Store, which still sells everything from iron nails to preserves to coarse sacks, as it did a hundred years ago, though now it's more of a tourist attraction than anything else.
On my last night in Paihia I hit the strip of bars (calling it a strip makes it sound so much more than, erm, four bars) with three guys (English, Dutch & American) and an American girl from the hostel, picking up along the way an incredibly loud Irish girl and some germans (there's always some germans), as well as a slightly strange Isreali guy who keeps trying to pass of Borat jokes as his own, along the way. The bars are all located on the main hostel-strip of the town (Pickled Parrot is tucked away in quieter area a street away). We start at the dead-as pub quiz at one end of the strip, and end up dancing to Kings of Leon and Doors covers at the other. The night ends with Sam, the English guy, sparked off by the offhand behaviour of the hostel cat, treating us to a surprisingly passionate rant about the fickleness of cats.
written by  LizIsHere on April 26, 2010 from Paihia, New Zealand

goodbye NZ :-(
Auckland, New Zealand
I'm really behind now, so here's just a quick summary of my last few weeks in NZ.
After leaving Paihia, the Magic connection took us down the West Coast of the Northland, stopping off to visit and marvel and the gigantic kauri tree, Tane Mahuta. It's the kind of the sight to marvel at in silence... a majestic tree towering over all others in the forest.
Then I was back in Auckland for a few days, back at Verandahs, doing boring pre-travel chores and shopping before catching the train to meet my aunt and go back to her property in Manukau. There I got to help out more than I did on my previous stay, planting native trees (wielding a pick-axe, learning out to plant trees in properly on sloping ground and battling with an unco-operative hosepipe), feeding the sheep silage (it's very pungent and the smell is almost impossible to remove from your hands/clothes once you touch it), and even getting to drive the quad-bike, which was ace, once I got the hang of the gear changes. Reversing it with a trailer, however, was not so easy. More practice needed there, i think. I also went to stay with my other aunt in the Auckland suburbs, and caught a Frank Turner gig at the Kings Arms Tavern in the city. It was a great, small gig (half the crowd or more were English), with lots of singalongs and general raucousness. Generally it was just great to be back with family again, although a little sad because I didn't know when I'd see them, particularly my cousins, again.
Then, far too soon and yet eagerly anticipated, since I'd finally get to see N. again, I was leaving New Zealand. It's been an amazing trip, with moments of feeling almost drunk on the beauty of the country - every time I thought I was getting 'over' the beautiful landscapes, I'd turn a corner or catch sight of a new mountain or lake or forest and be bowled over again. And the blur of the faces of people I met, the odd, fun experiences (the East Cape 'family' roadtrip), my sudden worrying inability to finish sentences (Cool as... Sweet as... Hot as....). It's hard to pick out the best bits... So I won't, and maybe I'll get to come back one day... there's a still a whole load more to explore in the two islands.
And now... on to Fiji...
written by  LizIsHere on May 7, 2010 from Auckland, New Zealand

Fiji
Waya Lailai, Fiji
Fiji started on a comedy note, with my getting pulled over in the (tiny) Nadi airport customs area due to the suspicious looking 'round things' in my rucksack. The custom officer's expression when I pulled out my 3 juggling balls is difficult to describe... still, he waved me through without any other problems (which is more than the evil Aussie customs guy did... but more that much later!).
N. met me at the airport, looking slightly more beardy and hairier than before, and it was brillinat, brilliant, brilliant, to see him after so long (3 1/2 months!), although also a little strange, because I hadn't seen someone from back home in the UK for that long. It all felt kind of unreal! We stayed the Blue Water Lodge in Newtown, which is seperated from Nadi city proper by a swathe of farmland, and caught the shuttle bus out to the Port Denarau Mariner to ride the Yasawas Flyer catamaran to our island destination, Waya Lailai, early the next day.
The weather was very warm and muggy, though 'not as hot as Darwin', as N. kept telling me, which makes sense since Darwin is, apparently, face-meltingly hot. On the 2 1/2 journey we passed other of the closer Yasawas Islands, including Southsea and Beachcomber, which are traditional, cliche picture-postcard 'desert islands', small islands (you could walk round their circumferene in 10 or 15 minutes) of yellow sand, with a little rainforest in the middle, and bures on the beach. We also saw small flying fish diving and soaring out of the wake of the boat, which I found endlessly exciting - fish that fly, amazing!
Waya Lailai is a different type of island to the 'desert islands', with a small, rocky mountain at it's centre, a lovely sandy beach, and, in the resort area, green lawns. It's the only resort in Yasawas which is completely owned by the village (made up, actually, of 5 villages on the island and the mainland, who form a 'family'). All the money from the resort, minus wages for staff (who are villagers), and maintenance costs, goes back to the village, to build community buildings, schools, etc. The women of the village located nearest the resort also sell jewellery at small, rickety stalls on the beach, and give weaving lessons for 5-7$ per item. Their income from this will go direct to their own families, for high school fees and luxuries ('sugar, sugar, sugar!' as one older lady tells me, with an impish grin). Most goods and food have to be brought in to the island from the mainland, and since the cyclone a month ago which destroyed many of the islands plantations, even the fruit and veges the island could previously grow itself have to brought in by boat. There are still root crops (cassava, which is similar to Maori kumara, sweet potato) growing on the higher points of the island, which we see on a sunset hike.
There is great unemployment and poverty in Fiji (much more evident on the mainland), despite what the glossy tourist brochures would have visitors believe, so the resort is viewed extremely positively by the villagers. There is no real sense of divide, either, between resort guests and villagers (though of course guests can't wander into the village in a bikini or shirtless) - the village kids come on to the resort-area of beach (which has hammocks, volleyball net, tables, the activities and dive sheds), to play, and there are frequent village vs. guest volleyball games. We don't feel sealed off from the locals, which is really good.
written by  LizIsHere on May 8, 2010 from Waya Lailai, Fiji

Waya lai lai
Waya Lailai, Fiji
Waya Lailai puts on quite a few organised activites, organised by Big Jerry from his ramshackle Activities Bure on the beach. We decide to go for the reef snorkelling. The reef is 20 minute small-boat ride away from the island, and we never work out how the guy steering ever finds it; we only notice the reef through the crystal clear water when we're rigth on top of it gazing down, yet they position the boat perfectly on both the trips we take.
The snorkelling itself is great - the water is warm and absolutely clear, brightly coloured fish - electric blue, yellow, and stripey ones - dart about, and sinister-looking reef sharks glide below us with buddy parasite-eating smaller fish clinging to their backs. When I spot one for the first time I gasp in surprise, inhaling water through the snorkel tube, and all around you can hear exclamations, muffled by the water and the tubes, as two, then three, then four sharks appear. The guides from the village expertly spear small fish, ripping off the scales and placing them under small rocks on the seabed for the sharks to unearth and eat.
The most breathtaking thing we see though, is on the second trip, when a massive (no exaggeration) shoal of thousands and thousands of small silverly fish appears. I hang face-down in the water, my whole vision consumed by their tiny shimmering forms as they move, independently yet as one. My eyes and mind can hardly comprehend it, so I just gaze as them for minutes.
One night we also decide to tackle the guided hike up to one of the highest points of the island, led by Beri. It's a muggy, sweaty evening and the climb is steep, but luckily Beri is used to guests being much less fit than him (he does the hike morning and evening most days, barefoot!), and there are plenty of stops for water and to take in the views over to the island opposite, Kuata, and out to the ocean. We pass the island's plantations of root crops, and scramble the last 15 minutes of the hike up a rocky slope, clinging onto treetrunks and vines. The views at the top are pretty fantastic, down to the village and resort, across to the islands. We also spot swooping bats. Our touristy exclamations of surprise and delight are countered by Beri's wicked cackle as he gathers rocks and begins attempting to knock them out of the sky! At first we think they might eat crops or cause some other nuisance, but Beri informs us that actually they're just really tasty. He doesn't manage to hit one though, their sonar and speed being more than a match for rocks.
There's also entertainment in the evening; weaponry and clothing displays, traditional songs and dancing, all performed in a relaxed way with the rest of the villagers not performing gathering to watch, and mock loudly when mistakes are made. The guys doing the dancing openly crack up when they make mistakes - a lot like the guys doing the Maori show in Rotorua - and their lack of practice fire-staffing is slightly concerning only in that they seem to more often than not lose their grip on the staff when facing the us in the audience who are only a metre or two away! Luckily everyone gets away without getting singed. We also get a tongue-in-cheek all-resort lesson in Fiji dancing, with commands such as ''Rock the baby, rock the baby, wash your hair, drop the baby" to guide us along. The fact that everyone's had a couple of the massive, colourful cocktails produced by the resort barman, Moses, by that stage in the evening doesn't help our performance.
written by  LizIsHere on May 11, 2010 from Waya Lailai, Fiji

to Oz!
Cairns, Australia
After spending one last night at the Bluewater Lodge - where I got somehow managed to get a double room for the price of a dorm, since they'd overbooked - I caught my morning flight to Cairns, via Sydney. Nik would be arriving in Cairns before me, having left the day previously and, I found out, ended up having to stay in the 32-bed (!!!) dorm in a hostel in Sydney when he was kicked out of the airport, where he was waiting for his 7am connection, at 10pm.
The Nadi airport is tiny, and the flight to Sydney was about three and something hours. My first sight of Australia was of a wet, chilly Sydney, and my first encounter with Australians on their home soil was with with a customs officer who saw fit to take away all 5 of my juggling balls because they 'contain millet seeds'. That was 50 quids worth of juggling balls going to the furnace (or, perhaps, to the customs officer's children's toybox, who knows?)! Needless to say, I wasn't left with a great first impression of the Australians as The Stealers of All Fun.
Then there was another four hour something flight to Cairns, which was, being a lot more k/ms further towards the equator than Sydney, really, really hot and sunny. May is late Autumn verging on Winter here, which is something that I can't quite get used to - 28C isn't winter! It's just NOT.
I met Nik at the hostel, Dreamtime Travellers Rest ('dreamtime' is something to do with the Aborigines, I haven't quite worked out exactly what yet), a great, chilled out, tropical hostel with an enthusiastic Irish owner. Nik had mostly heard that Cairns wasn't a place to linger, but the view I' d got of it from the shuttle bus window was ok enough - a slightly sprawling small city with wide streets, backing onto the (closed) man-made lagoon and the sea, which was preceeded by mudflats teeming with thousands of slightly sinister-looking crabs. We would be in town for a few days at least while we sorted out a working hostel to go to.
Almost immeadiatly as soon as I arrived I was drawn into the Hmm, Now What Do We Do?! panic that Nik had been embroiled in for day he'd already been in town. All the working hostels he'd called were either full or had no work, and work was a definite priority, so we could have a bed to sleep in and food etc. We ended up in Cairns for four days in the end, most of them spent on the internet or phone, contacting hostels, and WWOOFing hosts as a back-up, with occasional forays out to the waterfront and the cute but slightly tacky Night Market. We also went to the BBQ and fireshow that the Dreamtime held every Wedneday. I passed on the BBQ but Nik got to try kangaroo and crocodile. Apparently kanagaroo was nicer. So, the first kangaroo I got to see in Australia was on a plate, cut into small pieces and barbequed...
The fireshow itself was fantastic. It was put on by 3 performers from the area, with their individual routines co-ordinated to music.
Finally, after 3 days of slightly panicked looking, we found a working hostel in Tully, centre of banana-growing in Australia, which had two dorm beds free, with the owner also giving us the positive news that we'd be numbers two and three on the hostel work list (jobs are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis).
With that sorted we figured we could hit the beach or at least chill out in the waterfront park for our final full day in Cairns....
But there remained the rather disgusting issue of Nik's Knee. What had started out as Fiji-origin mosquito bite had over the past week morphed in something altogether more gross and infected. So our last day in Cairns turned into a merry exploration of all the different medical offerings in the Cairns Central Mall - the chemist, the doctor's, the chemist again, and, finally, when Nik was hit with the doctor's bill and penicillin prescription charges, the Medicare offices to sort out getting a rebate. Still, it was definitely worth it to ensure that his leg didn't fall off, which would have really mucked up the next day's trip to Tully to jobhunt...
written by  LizIsHere on May 20, 2010 from Cairns, Australia

Tully.. It's got a boot. Erm... that's it.
Tully, Australia
We caught the Greyhound Bus to Tully on Saturday afternoon, leaving behind what we would fondly look back on as the buzzing metropolis of Cairns. Despite concerns about the hostel, which had no internet-based review or info, we were pretty positive about getting to a new place, finding jobs and settling in to a month or two of work.
Tully is small, rural town, population about 4000, situated between Innisfail and Cardwell. On the journey there you pass fields and fields, and fields and fields, and fields, of banana plantations and sugarcane. It's also one of the wettest places in Australia, and, aside from the huge and ugly sugarcane factory on the outskirts of town, it's main 'site' is giant gumboot with attached treefrog, build to represent the highest rainfall the town ever got in one year (it's something like 7 metres... i could walk the five minutes down the 'highstreet' to check, i suppose). So, Tully 'quite a wet place', and also one of the best places to whitewater raft in Australia.
Not however, a great place to find banana-related work in May, though. We arrive at the Savoy Backpackers, which is a bit dingy, but fit for purpose (sleeping, eating, not catching bedbugs or TB), and are informed by the wild-haired owner Jude, that while we are 3&4 on the workilist, apparently farmers have greatly reduced the recruitment calls they make to hostels in favour for having all would-be employees gather, Depression-era-America-like, at the Post Office in town at 5.30am. Once there, you basically have to run (yes, run) at the farmers land rovers and buses as they pull in to pick up legitimate workers, to ask plaintatively if they have any jobs that day.
The first morning we start of quite positive, but as each successive bus-driver and farmer shakes their head, we move on to depressed. Even seeing a pretty decent sunrise as the four of us unemployed from the Savoy wander forlornly the three minutes back to the hostel 7am, doesn't make up for the fact that it seems hopeless, and that we'll have to get up, put on our workboots, make our lunches and do it all again tomorrow, only to more than likely have to come back and clamber back into bed, again without work.
We stick it out for four mornings, in which time no one in the crowd of twenty or so hopefuls gets picked up. It doesnt' help that Tully is just incredibly boring. There's the library, the supermarket, the outdoor swimming pool, the park, and the 4 hour hike up the moutain. We spend a lot of time in the park, and read a lot of books. At the weekend the hostel-people with jobs invite us out, so we go for a fun BBQ at Alligator's Nest in a nearby national park ( no actual alligators were about, obviously), and to a bonfire and low-key beach party at Mission Beach. Those times are fun, but by the time the second Tuesday rolls around we've given our notice to Jude and sorted out a WWOOF place two hours south to escape to on the Friday - YES! LEAVING TULLY!
Then Jude wanders up with a jobslip to Nik: "Got you a job, finally!". Our reaction is perhaps not what she expected. We wanted to LEAVE Tully, argghhhh. Nik decides gives the job one day to sound it out, and although it's pretty awful - working on a water-filled production-line in an open sided shed, bending over for most of the 8 hour working day, splitting bunches of bananas by hand, all the while getting splashed in the face with water while frogs and cockroaches leap out of the bananas and onto your face and hair intermittently, it's pretty good hourly pay. Finally we decide that, since Nik can't really turn down the chance of money, I'll go off to the WWOOF place on the Friday and we'll meet up elsewhere in 2 weeks. Not the greatest arrangement but probably the most sensible.
So I'm off to look after bees for one week and then onto... somewhere else... for another week.
And I finally saw a (live) kangaroo!
written by  LizIsHere on May 24, 2010 from Tully, Australia

WWOOFing
Ingham, Australia
It was a bit hard to settle into my first 'real' WWOOF place at first - it wasn't quite what I'd been expecting, and the couple I was staying with also had a 6yr old who wasn't mentioned, for whatever reason, in their book entry. Argh! Child(ren)!!! Add that to the fact that I was staying in a strangers' home, it was all a bit odd for the first day or two. But Alisha and Jay were really down-to-earth (and young, mid-20s) Aussies, and made me feel welcome - they'd had over 100 WWOOFers over the past two years, so they were used to randomers coming through their house to help out. Though the WWOOF entry emphasised their bee-keeping business, this had been partially destroyed during last year's wet season, when flooding wrecked about 450 of their 520 hives, so most of the work would be around their House and garden, which help fruit trees, beehives, some chooks and a goose, and their veggie patch. This meant that Alisha and Jay had had to re-open their lock-smithing business in a shop in town, with honey-products as a side-line, though they still had their impressive extracting room below the House.
I spent the 5ish days I spent at their place doing a variety of chores: weeding the veggie patch, collecting eggs, mulching the fruit trees, gurneying (jet-washing to us poms) their walkways, making honeystraws, painting shelves, blue-tacking on labels (that was the best job, honestly...), leafleting cars to advertise their joint lock-smithing and honey businesses, and running errands to the bank etc. It wasn't tough work, by any means, and their House being right in town meant I could check out Ingham, a nice-enough small Australian town with a large Italian population, during my afternoons off.
I was also lucky enough to arrive on a weekend when the family were going camping overnight at Mount Fox, a mountain about an hour's drive from Ingham. We loaded up the car, and trailer-tent, and drove through fields of sugarcane, over sealed and unsealed roads, finally winding up the narrow road up the mountain (which apparently collapses sometimes in the wet season) to the cooler airs of Mount Fox. A small community lives up on the mountain - mostly cattle farmers - and everyone has to keep stores of fuel and food in case they become stranded during road washouts. There is a tiny community school up there too, though older children are either home-schooled or packed off to boarding schools in Ingham or Townsville.
The campsite was run by the local LIONS and was lot less primitive than i was expected; there were toilets, showers with water warmed using a donkey-boiler (the suggestion that we 'spark a fire up under the donkey' as soon as we arrived left me confused on the drive until i worked out what a 'donkey' was), a cooking/bbq area and even an ancient rusty fridge. We cooked BBQ, drank Milo when the temperature dropped, and ventured out onto the small 'village green' area next to the campsite to gaze at the millions of stars. Earlier in the evening six kangaroos had visited the green to graze. I ended up sleeping on the backseat of the car, which actually turned out to be a much better deal than freezing in the the fold-out trailer tent like the others, though it was so cold we all had to sleep in jeans, jumpers, coats and socks!
written by  LizIsHere on June 6, 2010 from Ingham, Australia

Ingham WWOOF # 2
Ingham, Australia
After leaving Alisha and Jay's, due to lack of work at their place, I went off to stay with one of Alisha's friends, Narelle, who lives with her husband and three at-home kids (3 boys, aged 3-16... horror!) on a 5 acre property about half an hour drive through the canefields outside Ingham. They had chooks, some extremely noisy geese, an over-excitable chihuhuahua, an impressive veggie garden and fruit trees. She also had a job-list a mile-long, due to them not having had many WWOOFers recently, since Narelle's email address was printed wrongly in the WWOOF book.
The house took some settling into. There was almost-permanent noise: the bleep and electronic music soundtracks of computer games, on which all 3 boys are fixated, pounding bass-heavy music from the eldest son's impressive stereo, and, of course, yelling. Yelling for communication over all the other sounds, the kids yelling at each other, Narelle yelling at the kids. The youngest child didn't speak yet, and communicated with a grunts and half-words, which added to the cacophony. Still, once I got used to this, I found them friendly and welcoming - Narelle was relaxed about work, and she often joined me on jobs, when she wasn't working hard on her school PTA commitments. They family have had WWOOFers stay for up to 3 months at their house - though I think the ever present feeling that things were teetering on the edge of chaos would drive me away long before then!
The property was in a beautiful setting, too. Along a few km of gravel roads, over a concrete creek crossing, up a dirt track, and then suddenly the area opened up into a curving driveway with fruittrees along one side, the chook and geese pens, and the house. The backdrop was grey-blue mountains, which ran with myriad waterfalls during the wet season (during the wet season, and particularly after a cyclone, the creek would often rise up so high as to strand the family on their property - the longest they stayed trapped was 3 weeks!) The place was peaceful (aside from the family-based noise - and the geese!) and green, and at night the thousands of stars balanced the blinding blue skies of daytime.
During my time at the house I did everything from house-based chores - cleaning the bath, washing windows and screens, and shredding stacks and stacks of paper to line the goosepens, to making and bottling cumquat jam, mucking out the goose pens, helping prune the fruit trees, weeding flower-beds and feeding the chooks and geese each morning. This was slightly nerve-wracking as not only did the geese attempt to mug me whenever I came into their pen to let them out, but there was the ever-present worry of snakes in the hanging branches above the chook pen. Oh, and the poisonous and giant golden orb-weaver spider which lived in the food shed! The farm was my first encounter with two scary/amazing/horrible types of Aussie wildlife - giant spiders and green ants.
I saw 3 massive spiders during my time on the farm - with a legspan that could cover your face and freakishly big, black or orange-patterned bodies - the one in the shed, a golden orb-weaver high up in a tree (picture coming soon - camera zoom is a wonderful thing), sitting in it's golden-stranded web, and another creeping across the grass towards my host's bare feet as we pruned fruit trees. Luckily we all spotted it in time and her son picked it up on a rake and chucked it away, but it was unsettling all the same - they're impressive, fascinating animals when you're staring at them in a web, not so when they're inches from your feet! I lived in fear (and still do, in fact) of walking face-first through one of their webs when I'm working in an orchard or garden!
Green ants, while neither poisonous nor giant, are still unpleasant, particularly when they gang up on you (as they always do). They're tree ants, much larger than our British black ants, with a green body and orangey legs and pincers, and build huge, amazing nests in trees by gluing leaves together to make a sort of giant ball. They even 'farm' aphids around the nest to give themselves something to snack on. So, very interesting and clever little creatures from afar - not so nice when you get up close to them, after miniature-chainsawing (my host, not me, i think she could sense my inherent clumsiness) down a branch holding one of their large nests, or dragging a branch covered in them a few hundred metres to the burn-pile. This is when they'll grip onto you with their rear-pincers, pinch your skin open and spray a stinging, acidic (but, oddly, lemon-flavoured) substance onto you. Any close contact with green ants swiftly leads to the 'green ant dance', a series of flapping, jumping, twisting movements (sometimes with accompanying shrieking-in-pain sound effect), as the performer attempts to rid themselves of the five or ten or fifty ants which have attached themselves to their feet, ankles, arms, or wherever. Even wearing gloves and shoes I often got bitten, but Narelle would have bare legs, hands and feet, even when working closely to their massive nests! Mad. Unfortunately you can't avoid green ants if you're working around trees - if there's trees, they'll be there. Great!
Still, according to the locals, fire ants are a lot, lot more painful and unpleasant. And I found out after the fruit tree pruning that the ants' lemon-flavoured venom can be used to flavour tea, and even chocolate.... yummy?
My second Ingham WWOOFing experience definitely got better as time went on, and added to all the encounters with new and interesting wildlife, Narelle's husband was actually an English guy who'd come over on the 3 week boat from England (the "10 Pound Poms" - when the British government was promoting emigration to Aussie and a ticket for the voyage only cost 10pounds) at the age of six. He was still very interested in England and particularly English cooking, so Narelle made lots of yummy English food like yorkshire pudding and bread and butter pudding, which definitely made a nice change from pasta and stirfries.
From Narelle's I caught the bus to Mission Beach, to discover if Nik had survived his 3 weeks hard labour on the banana plantations...
written by  LizIsHere on June 13, 2010 from Ingham, Australia

Mission Beach, briefly
Mission Beach, Australia
Mission Beach was the first beach I've seen (in daylight - we also went there for a night-time BBQ with the Tully hostel people) in Australia. It only took me a month!
I'd got three days to kill before Nik arrived from working in Tully (just 30 mins down the road), and I spent most of them hanging around on the gorgeous beach at Wongaling, which is the middle settlement of Mission Beach (there's 14 km of beach, with South Mission Beach at one end and, um, North Mission Beach at the other). There's not much to tell about that really, insert your own visions of me wandering barefoot up and down the golden sand under blue skies, gazing off to the palmtrees fringing the beach and the green-rainforest of Dunk Island across the water.
(To add the paradise-like feel, the hostel gave you a towel. A fluffy, big towel! It might not seem like much, but after using a tiny travel towel for 5 months a big fluffy towel is amazing. But the beach was the highlight, obviously :).)
Apparently there are crocs near one of the creeks flow into the sea at the beach but luckily/unluckily, we didn't come across any during our wanderings!
Then Nik turned up, and we celebrated his birthday and freedom from the banana fields in ker-a-zee style with pizza from the Italian restaurant down the road, a bottle of wine and of course, cake! Some of the other hostel people even spontateously started singing Happy Birthday when I emerged from the kitchen carrying it, which was nice. He also got a ukulele, because he definitely needed something else to lug around the country as his backpack (literally) splits at the seams...
From Mission Beach we were heading... Back To Tully. Except we weren't really (thank goodness); it just happened to be the nearest Greyhound stop to our WWOOF host's place in Murray Falls. Her WWOOF book entry had been fairly basic, so we didn't really know what to expect (you never do with hosts, really, as much as they have no idea what to expect from us). Still, whatever it was, it would get us away from hostel-world, which we've got pretty sick of over the last few months...
written by  LizIsHere on June 18, 2010 from Mission Beach, Australia

WWOOFing Murray Falls - it's a long one!
Tully, Australia
juicing oranges
outdoor shower
Mouser! Gorgeous cat :)
Our time at Suzanne's farm could be summed up in the word 'Wonderful', but I'm sure you want some more details so, read on...
The property was named Yabullum, which means - approximately - in the local Aboriginal language (each tribe has their own seperate language), 'the place that is never dry'. The actual house was next to an oxbow lagoon, that mentioned place, and a creek also ran through the property. Half of the 80 acres was given over to wildlife refuge bush, while the rest held the house, sheds, three fields of lychee, mangosteen and rambutan trees, and the horse paddock. The setting, particularly outside the house next to the lagoon, was gorgeous, peaceful, green, alive with birdsong, the burps of frogs in the water and the hum of cicadas in the bush on the other side. And the barking of hyperactive Layla, an extremely playful Kelpie dog, who never tired of playing with sticks and balls, and would try out her full range of barks to try to persuade you to play too.
The house itself was old and wooden, decorated with buddhist and eastern imagery, paintings left by past WWOOFers, and always scattered with at least two of her five cats. Mouser, a gigantic grey fluffball of a cat (with a fondness for sleeping on the kitchen island) who had turned up on the property after being dumped as a kitten, easily won the most gorgeous cat award, but the others were very cute too. The main kitchen/dining area even had a hinged wall, meaning that the wall could literally be propped open almost all the way to reveal a massive strangler fig tree, thick foliage and the lagoon itself. It felt like you were almost eating dinner in the bush at times! There was an outdoor shower too, under the shed roof but with a cut-away so you could look out onto the lagoon as you washed your hair.
We stayed in a caravan, under the open-sided shed connected to the house, but spent most of our time in the main house, for meals, reading, drinking tea, or watching Dr Who and the Aussie music-comedy gameshows Spicks and Spicks.
It obviously helped that our host, an ex-teacher, was wonderful - she was friendly and relaxed, she knew stacks about the bush and Aboriginal heritage, and she also had a great cd collection of 60s and 70s greats which we played our way through during our stay. Oh, and she blended her own tea, and believed in brewing up at the very least three pots a day - one at smoko (smoking/snack break, which happened around 10am each day),with lunch, and normally after dinner as well - which was heaven. Teabags taste like brewed sawdust after that!
There were three Jersey 'house cows' (not cows who live in the house, incidentally, as we had tentatively assumed from the WWOOF book entry...), and three horses on the property. Two huge Clydesdale geldings, and one extremely nervous Quarter horse mare who had been rescued after being abandoned on a cattle station. We groomed the older, placid Clydesdale, Lauchlan, each morning, while Suzanne trained Fergus, a stunning but headstrong 5 year old. It was great to be around horses again, even if they were much, much bigger than what I'm used to!
We did a wide variety of tasks on the farm, none of them seeming particularly strenuous due to the frequent breaks - we would start at 7.30amish but going to feed and groom the horses, then work on one project till smoko time, which consisted of piling back to the house for tea and crumpets, cake or toast, then either go back to that project or work on a new one till lunchtime at 12.30/1ish, then continue on in the afternoon to, at the latest 3/4pm, before another visit to the horses in the early evening. We covered boggy patches in the cows' field with sand, weeded the orchid nurseries (and fertilised them with a delightful cow-poo based fertliser, there was a yummy froth on the top when we took the bucket lid off...), fertlised an entire orchard of rambutans (with help of a Suzuki mini pickup, which I got to drive), stacked wood into burnpiles (and then cooked potatoes in them, eating them later on with butter and salt and cold XXXX's, which was up there with culinary highlights of this trip!), collected and juiced oranges, and painted irrigation piping. We also spent much of a day clearing a whole shed of various bits of mysterious - and often very heavy - farming gear, discovering a large family of toads and a large, hairy, tarantula-like wolf spider in the process, and wrestled with miles and miles of vine to reclaim the garden after the wet season speed-growth of invasive plants.
Suzanna even took us on a daytrip one day to visit Murray Falls, which was about twenty minutes drive away. We took an interpretative bushwalk up to a viewpoint at the top of the falls - the climb was rewarded with breathtaking views of the waterfall and the tablelands with misty rainclouds rolling down the mountaintops towards us. The walk itself was made even more interesting by Suzanne's own knowlege of how it was possible to live off the bounty of the wet-tropics bush, learned through her friendships with Murray Aboriginals. We discovered how boomerangs were cut from the buttresses of trees, providing the ideal shape and yet leaving the tree itself in tact, and how bush turkeys built huge mounds of plant scraps into nests, using the heat of the material to incubate the eggs.The Murray Falls site is actually the Dreaming place of the brown pigeon, and appropiately enough we spotted a flock of them flying from a tree as we walked along the ridge above the waterfall. On the return journey back down the track we were lucky enough to encouter two inquisitive kookaburras, who's distinctive laughing calls reverberated around the farm but which we'd never managed to see up close.
Leaving Suzanne's farm was quite difficult, we'd had a great time with her, working, talking, getting hints on old 70s cult authors to check out, and hanging out with the awesome cats. But we had to move on Cairns - and luckily, we'd never have to come back to Tully again, since my mysterious disappearing bankcard had finally turned up at the branch there on the day I left (post in Aussie is slow... even slower when the bank forgets to post things for a month...)
So, back to north to Cairns, and then finally we could begin our proper journey south...
written by  LizIsHere on June 23, 2010 from Tully, Australia

Back to Cairns, and The Daintree
Cape Tribulation, Australia
Our time in Cairns was a little reminiscent of our last time there, mostly because Nik had again got some unpleasant infection due to a bug bite, this time on his arm. So we spent a fair few hours at the 24 hour medical centre dealing with that. I'll spare you the details.
But the main reason we had returned to Cairns was to visit the Daintree rainforest and Cape Tribulation, north of Cairns. The Daintree is 120 million years old, and has the most species in any single place on earth. So it's a fairly special place to visit, and about a million little buses go there everyday from Cairns holding eager visitors. Our daytrip - the only way we could see Daintree and Cape Trib without hiring a car - took us first to the Rainforest Habitat Centre at Port Douglas, about 40 minutes north of Cairns. Although we did get to meet kangaroos (and pademelons - not a type of melon, as I'd though, but actually small kangaroos) upclose in their large grasslands enclosure, it wasn't a very nice place for the other animals. There was a giant crocodile living in two tiny interconnecting pools, and the koalas barely had a couple of branches to, well, sleep on. I'm not sure how much 'roaming' space a koala needs, but the crocodile obviously needed more space. So that was a fairly depressing experience overall, and left me wishing we hadn't given our money to them, conservation projects or not. If they can't provide proper 'habitats' for their 'exhibit' animals then how can they do anthing effective for wild ones? Keeping wild animals in cages has never seemed right to me; safari parks just about get by because they have so much more space, but this place was closer to 'zoo' than 'habitat'.
But moving on. We continued up the coast to the Daintree, crossing the river on the cable ferry and into the national park itself. The rainforest is ancient, lush and green, and although people do live in there, and there are concealed hostels and some tiny settlements (powered by renewable power), it still remains a fantastic place. We walked along Cape tribulation beach, in the actually quite atmospheric cloud and slightly drizzle, past mangroves and the apparently shark, jellyfish and crocodile infested sea (not a place for a nice swim, then..). 'Cape Tribulation' was named by the great explorer Captain Cook on one of his bad days, when his ship had run aground on the reef nearby.
We also went on a wildlife cruise, which really might as well have been renamed 'crocodile cruise' on the Daintree River, where rainforest cascades down to the bank edges on either side. Despite the tide and the weather (meaning it was warmer for the crocs in the water than on the banks) being against us, we managed to see one tiny baby croc, a couple of medium size females, and a quite large female; the last in full view on the bank. They looked stunning up close, powerful and undeniably terrifying if you ever found yourself in the water with one. Not that you'd get very long to be terrified before it made you it's once-monthly meal! We also saw a tiny nectar bat curled up inside some leaves on an overhanging bush, and tiny, purple&green pencil-thing treesnakes.
It was an eyeopener into the beauty of tropical northern queensland, and seeing crocodiles in the wild was fantastic.
written by  LizIsHere on July 3, 2010 from Cape Tribulation, Australia

Back to Cairns, and The Daintree
Cape Tribulation, Australia
Our time in Cairns was a little reminiscent of our last time there, mostly because Nik had again got some unpleasant infection due to a bug bite, this time on his arm. So we spent a fair few hours at the 24 hour medical centre dealing with that. I'll spare you the details.
But the main reason we had returned to Cairns was to visit the Daintree rainforest and Cape Tribulation, north of Cairns. The Daintree is 120 million years old, and has the most species in any single place on earth. So it's a fairly special place to visit, and about a million little buses go there everyday from Cairns holding eager visitors. Our daytrip - the only way we could see Daintree and Cape Trib without hiring a car - took us first to the Rainforest Habitat Centre at Port Douglas, about 40 minutes north of Cairns. Although we did get to meet kangaroos (and pademelons - not a type of melon, as I'd though, but actually small kangaroos) upclose in their large grasslands enclosure, it wasn't a very nice place for the other animals. There was a giant crocodile living in two tiny interconnecting pools, and the koalas barely had a couple of branches to, well, sleep on. I'm not sure how much 'roaming' space a koala needs, but the crocodile obviously needed more space. So that was a fairly depressing experience overall, and left me wishing we hadn't given our money to them, conservation projects or not. If they can't provide proper 'habitats' for their 'exhibit' animals then how can they do anthing effective for wild ones? Keeping wild animals in cages has never seemed right to me; safari parks just about get by because they have so much more space, but this place was closer to 'zoo' than 'habitat'.
But moving on. We continued up the coast to the Daintree, crossing the river on the cable ferry and into the national park itself. The rainforest is ancient, lush and green, and although people do live in there, there are only some concealed hostels, some tiny settlements (powered by renewable power), and, oddly, a small tea plantation.
We walked along Cape tribulation beach, in the actually quite atmospheric cloud and slightly drizzle, past mangroves and the apparently shark, jellyfish and crocodile infested sea (not a place for a nice swim, then..). 'Cape Tribulation' was named by the great explorer Captain Cook on one of his bad days, when his ship had run aground on the reef nearby.
We also went on a wildlife cruise, which really might as well have been renamed 'crocodile cruise' on the Daintree River, where rainforest cascades down to the bank edges on either side. Despite the tide and the weather (meaning it was warmer for the crocs in the water than on the banks) being against us, we managed to see one tiny baby croc, a couple of medium size females, and a quite large female; the last in full view on the bank. They looked stunning up close, powerful and undeniably terrifying if you ever found yourself in the water with one. Not that you'd get very long to be terrified before it made you it's once-monthly meal! We also saw a tiny nectar bat curled up inside some leaves on an overhanging bush, and tiny, purple&green pencil-thing treesnakes.
It was an eyeopener into the beauty of tropical northern queensland, and seeing crocodiles in the wild was fantastic.
written by  LizIsHere on July 3, 2010 from Cape Tribulation, Australia

Diving the Great Barrier Reef!
Mission Beach, Australia
In another déjà-vu move, we returned to Mission Beach after our time in Cairns. The main motivation behind the trip was a trip to Dunk island for both of us – which unfortunately got rained off, and a diving trip to the Great Barrier Reef for me. It actually worked out quite well, meaning that Nik, who had had a really tough month with work, the arm injury and general stress, could have a ‘day off’, sleep in, read and wander the picturesque beach at Wongaling and North Mission Beach. We also went for a short walk in the rainforest (in the intermittent rain, which added to atmosphere and enhanced the greenery) to try and spot a Cassowary, but though we saw A LOT of their, erm, poo, we didn’t actually get to see any of the giant, prehistoric wild birds themselves.
I’d been keen to dive the GBR (or anywhere, really), since I’d begun planning to visit Aussie, and had decided not to take a trip in Cairns when both Suzanne and one of her friend’s had recommended that I go from Mission Beach instead, since the trip out to the reef would be shorter and the amount of people on the boat likely smaller. However it was a bit of a shock when I went to book my trip through Absolute Backpackers in Mission Beach and found out that the snorkeling plus two introductory dives would cost about three hundred bucks! But I had to go for it – it was the GBR, after all, and if I didn’t do it I knew I would regret it; maybe not until I go home, but definitely then. So I booked it, and in two days time I was ready at 8.15am for the pick-up from the Calypso Dive Company. We drove to the jetty/boat launch area and the twenty or so guests already waiting on the jetty were ferried along with us.
There were a small group of certified and would-be divers among the forty or so people on the boat. The rest had come on the trip purely to snorkel; many were families with young children. The boat ride out to the Eddy’s Reef, an hour and fifteen minutes from the mainland, was pretty rough, and the vessel was soon scattered with groaning, sleeping and quite green-looking people.
Luckily we soon arrived, and after a briefing, and some form-filling (basic safety stuff, and if-you-die-you-can’t-sue-us stuff), we got fitted with wetsuits, and the certified divers went off for their dive. Us four introductory divers wouldn’t have our turn underwater until late morning, so we went off for a snorkel with everyone else, getting our first glimpse of the gorgeous reef, teeming with life.
Finally our time for a dive came around. It turned out that I’d get a one-on-one dive with an instructor, since the ratio was supposed to be three-to-one and there were four of us. Lucky me! Mike helped me get into the heavy flotation vest and air-tank combo, gave me a final run-through on using the regulator, and then I stepped out into the water, flippers first. The first step in the water was to do some ‘skills’ while holding onto the anchor line which we would follow underwater. The first, taking the regulator out of your mouth and blowing out air, was easy as. But the second, where you have to let some water into the face mask and then blow it out by exhaling through the nose, caused a lot more problems. Thankfully, after choking on a fair amount of seawater and rushing, panicky, to the surface a few times, I got it together and we could start descending deeper than a snorkeller could. Everyone scuba-diving had been told that it was essential to keep breathing at all times underwater when diving; specifically, to not hold your breath. Maybe that seems painfully obvious, but often panic or amazement could cause people to hold their breath, and if this happened for too long the different pressures involved in being deep underwater could literally cause your lungs to explode. So that was something to think about while I was inching down the line, a little mantra going in my head as I tried to keep calm and trust the air supply…. Keep breathing. Keep breathing.
Scuba diving is incredibly odd to experience at first, at least for me. You’re underwater, yet you’re breathing easily, with almost as little thought as you would breathe on dry land. It took some getting used to, and I had been underwater a good five minutes before I accepted the fact that the air supply in my tank was highly unlikely to shut off anytime soon. Even on my second dive, the sight of another nearby group of divers floating eerily through the water jolted me away from gazing at the coral and again made me appreciate the astounding feat of even being able to breathe six or seven metres underwater, let alone also being able to glide about at whim and see the mysterious creatures that live there. The coral itself was impressive enough, all different colours, some moving into currents, some utterly still. Anenomes dotted some pieces of coral, darting back inside holes when a hand wafted through the water above them. Giant clams with mottled purple and blue lips sat majestically, clamping shut as they felt the movement of us passing by, or sensed a tasty morsel landing on them.
And there were fish, of course! Huge, bulbous lipped grey fish swimming ponderously; tiny shimmering fish like those in the huge shoal we had seen in Fiji; brightly coloured fish in blue, orange and yellow; clown fish; ‘nemo fish’ hiding into the fronds of anenomes; stripy zebra fish; and probably the prize, a lion fish, or butterfly cod.
It was a brilliant day, something so totally new and alien and fantastic to experience, like (cliched but appropriate) going for a short time through a window into another world.
written by  LizIsHere on July 4, 2010 from Mission Beach, Australia

radio silence
Magnetic Island, Australia
Hey! Sorry about the lack of blog updates! It's been a slightly stressful week or so trying to find new wwoof hosts and making our escape from a less-than-satisfactory one. We've just spent a relaxing few days on magnetic island, and are soon to begin an epic 14 hour bus journey south to Childers (via agnes waters for a day or two) to wwoof at a vineyard. Should be good!!
Longer update coming soon!
p.s. I also got to see koalas in the wild yesterday! They're very cute, but when asleep mostly resemble 'grey motionless bundles', as the guidebook put it. But we were lucky enough to see some awake too!
written by  LizIsHere on July 23, 2010 from Magnetic Island, Australia

A not-so-great wwoof experience
Townsville, Australia
From Mission Beach we moved on, excited to meet our next wwoof host in Townsville. The book entry for the host (who is going to remain nameless because... well, read on) described a country acreage set up for horses, goats, with work including weeding and whatever needed doing. It sounded pretty good, particularly the horse part!
Unfortunately from the day we arrived we realised we'd probably made a mistake! But due to various factors - lack of money for a hostel stay in an area we weren't particularly interested, no other wwoof hosts organised - we ended up sticking it out for two generally tense two weeks.
It was our host who was the problem, being generally an arrogant, money-obsessed person who seemed to see his wwoof-ers as free labour rather than volunteers on an exchange. This was demonstrated in the fact that 85% of our time was spent weeding, and that we worked 8 days without a day off, before awarding ourselves with a relaxing day when he went away for the weekend. Our host even boasted to a friend, within earshot of us, "Guess how much my workers cost? Nothing!" Charming he was not.
But enough of the negatives, despite the fact that it was, erm, mostly negatives!
There were positives, obviously. We got our own rooms, the house was nice, the wwoofers had their own bathroom and computer with internet. We had free rein with some things in the kitchen and could cook as long as we cleaned up (using our host's patented teatowel method), and were even allowed to compile our own shopping lists for food when our host went off working at the weekends. And once we all warmed up to each other, the other wwoofers there were ace - a French girl who was stuck at the house for two month as part of her international business degree language internship, and an Israeli guy.
And aside from the dullness of the almost-constant weeding, the lack of days off and the, erm, difficult to live with host, the property was pretty ace in itself. With 32 horses paddock’d and stabled there, often with two in the paddock that doubled as the front garden of the house, I was in my element. Often the horses – many of them gorgeous thoroughbreds - would wander over as we weeded, hungrily and curiously sniffing at us, the clippings, the secatuers, sledgehammer and our 3 litre water bottle. And there were chooks, eleven of them, with four young, friendly ones who would follow you about and even run after you if you ran. They would also try all manner of tricks to escape from their run, and occasionally leap flapping onto your back as you fed them or topped up their water. And there was a goat. Or should I say, The goat. He became my nemesis, from the moment I discovered him, his chain wrapped around the fence, his water empty. From then on I took it as my responsibility to top us his water and make sure he wasn’t tangled; he in turn liked to reward me by rearing at me in an attempted headbutt, or by pawing the ground and charging head-first at his just-filled bucket of water. A charming animal, but I could see where the rage was coming from – being chained up all day alone couldn’t have been good for him,
And there were kookaburras aplenty, cackling away in the trees, hawks circling low overhead on the thermals, blue skies and tall, white eucalyptus trees; mountains with low cloud in the distance, kangaroos and wallabies to be seen grazing and drinking from the pool formed by the dam at dusk. We took a walk along the creek that bordered the property on our ‘day off’. We clambered through the grasses and bushes, stamping and clapping (well, I was the only one clapping actually…) to scare away snakes, led by the intrepid Israeli guy with his bouncing afro. It felt free, and adventurous, though we were hardly a K/m from the property, because of the way we had to bash our own pathway, and the ever-constant threat of snakes hidden in the undergrowth.
So there were good times, but mostly only when our host was away. The fantastic and enlightening conversations with the other wwoofers, communally made dinners, watching films together, drinking cold beers in the front paddock under the mid-afternoon sunshine, our creek-walk…. If there hadn’t been other wwoofers, though, the place would have been kind of a nightmare! Suffice to say 'sticking it out' won't be a mistake we make again, but here's hoping one bad host is enough for one trip!
And then we left, in a cab... and headed off to the blissful peace and weeding-free Magnetic Island...
written by  LizIsHere on July 15, 2010 from Townsville, Australia

Magnetic Island - freedom, sunshine, sand and koalas!!!
Magnetic Island, Australia
So after our escape from Townsville, we caught a ferry twenty minutes across the water to Magnetic Island, a 'tropical paradise', with - and here's the key bit - wild koalas!!
Our original plan had been to chill out for a few days and then to go to a wwoof host on the island, but that all fell apart a bit (it's becoming a sort of theme of our wwoofing organising!) when this host had to cancel for family reasons. Fine, so we would chill out for five days, and then go to our next host near Mackay. Nope - these had to cancel too. Cue a day of frantic panicking and emailing, until we suddenly recieved a response from a vineyard near Childers asking if we could come on the dates we had been meant to go to our Mackay host. Ace, and it sounded like a lovely place, more to the point! And so what if it was...gulp... a sixteen hour bus ride away.
Putting such thoughts aside we settled down to enjoy our time on the island properly. This mostly involved either relaxing on the beach at Picnic Bay, the quiet (a whole lot quieter since the ferry terminal moved to Nelly Bay) township at the end of the island's paved road, wandering the jetty there, or catching the bus to explore other beaches on the island. The first day we were there we were lucky enough to see a turtle, just swimming in the sea next to the jetty - I didn't even get to see one of them when I was diving! We visited Arcadia to relax on the beach and pose by the sign (there's an Arcadia at Glastonbury festival, the sign of which we also have photos posing by... anyway).
But on our second-last day our mission was Koala Spotting! This required doing the Forts walk on the other side of the island, in the cool afternoon when the koalas, who sleep about 20 hours out of 24 due to their energy-low eucalyptus leaf diet, are most active (active may be a strong word). So before hand we took another walk which branched off the Forts track, walking in the midday heat and then relaxing with a picnic lunch at Florence Bay, an almost unbearably picturesque bay fringed by rocky cliffs. Then we took a short, slightly muddy walk through a stand of mangroves to Arthur Bay, an even more pretty bay, with a rocky outcrop on which perched, as if placed there by the tourist office, a little rock wallaby.
When the day finally began to cool down, we walked back up the hill to the start of the Forts trail, which weaves up a ridge through eucalyptus forest, passing through the site of an old WWII military encampment. The track finishes at the top of a rise, where the observation post and controls post, along with gun emplacements, still remain. It was fascinating to think of the troops stationed there balanced the mental pressures of being constantly battle-ready (though they neve fired a shot in anger, only in, as the info board put it, 'mild surprise', at an American ship paying an unexpected visit!), yet living in such a lush tropical environment.
And, yes, we were also fascinated by the koalas! Starting out the walk I expected to see one at best, they're famously hard to see when asleep - the guidebook described them as 'motionless grey bundles', a surprisingly hard thing to see in a forest of trees. The first two were saw were pointed out to us by other walkers - one, living up to the guidebooks description perfectly, was nestled in the crook of a tree, sound asleep - though this didn't damped our excitement at seeing it one bit. The next one actually stirred, probably roused by our (ok, just my) hissed 'Look, look, a koala', gave us a sleepy, slightly baleful look out of it's round, grey, furry face, and promptly settled back to sleep. The best koala sighting though was definitely when we were tipped off by a family coming up the track as we came down that a mother and baby had been seen, wide awake, in a tree on one of the side paths. It was adorable - the mother lazily reaching out for pawfuls of eucalyptus leaves as the baby, clinging on tightly to it's mum, gazed down at us curiously. We stared enraptured for about ten minutes before deciding to leave them in peace. And, finally, on the last stage of the track before the carpark and bustop, we saw a koala in action, moving more than a few languid millimetres and actually clambering up a tree. We were buzzing for hours - in fact I still am a bit - to see them actually in the wild, and going about their business careless of the dumb people staring at them.
written by  LizIsHere on July 23, 2010 from Magnetic Island, Australia

A long time on a bus...and a lovely stop at the end of it.
Seventeen Seventy, Australia
The night of the 24th of July 2010 will be forever be lost to us, spent as it was on a greyhound bus making it's slow, slow way down the coast between Townsville and Agnes Waters. I really don't recommend making 14 hours on a bus part of any Australian trip you may, but if it has to be done (and the place is so huge, it probably will have to be), ask for Colin the driver. An old guy in long socks and shorts (most older men here dress this way.. it's unsettling at first, probably because men in the UK are, perhaps correctly, allergic to wearing shorts), his commentary was the most surreal I've encountered. He would describe all the things we could buy at a rest-stop, with little sound effects for 'eating', 'drinking' and 'having a smoke' (coughing), and rambled off on little, slightly abstract descriptions of places we passed through ('Airlie Beach: home of sun, sand and sin... I like a bit of sin, myself'), delivering it all in a wonderful, soothing, late-night DJ style tone. Thus he was the perfect accompaniment on a long, disorientating and mostly uncomfortably bus journey. Alas he left us as Rockhampton, but we were mostly asleep by this point, so it was ok. Apart from Col, the journey was mostly a blur of rest-stops, trying to find a comfortable sleeping position across chairs, and suppressed Are-We-Nearly-There-Yets. Still, one guy was stuck on the bus for 28 hours from Cairns-Brisbane, so we could consider ourselves let off lightly!
We'd decided to spend two nights in Agnes Waters, both to break up the bus journey just a little, and also to make ourselves feel less bad for skipping a quite hefty section of the Queensland coast. We weren't really bothered about missing the tourist spots, but Agnes Waters, a tiny beach community revolving about sun, sand and surfing, was probably the perfect place to recover from the bus journey and get ourselves sorted for our next wwoofing place. Our hostel, Cool Bananas was a leafy oasis - when we stumbled in sleepy eyed from the bus we were greeted with a peaceful hostel, hammocks, free tea (and milk! this is very important. very, very important!), and even two dreadlocked guys plinking away on an acoustic guitar and ukulele, respectively.
It was another beachy-stop... we spent most of our time on the long sandy main beach, walking down it, spinning poi on it, reading on it. We caught a nice sunset at the historic town of 1770 (the first place in QLD that Captain Cook struck upon in...1770!) too.
...And that was it, really... very nice to do but fairly boring to read about, probably!
From Agnes Waters were moving on three hours further south, to our WWOOF hosts in Childers, and perhaps justifiably nervous about it, after our last experience!
written by  LizIsHere on July 25, 2010 from Seventeen Seventy, Australia

Vintner's Secret Vineyard - WWOOF heaven?
Childers, Australia
We were a little worried on our journey from Agnes Waters to Childers, to meet our new WWOOF hosts from Vintner's Secret Vineyard. Could anywhere be worse than our Townsville host’s? (Well, yes, of course...). Our nerves weren’t helped by a thirty-minute ‘meal break’ stop at Apple Tree Creek roadhouse (a petrol station with attached cafe, basically), a mere three minutes drive down the road from Childers itself. How pointless, we thought, when there was a perfectly good roadhouse right opposite the place where the bus eventually dropped us off. We found out later that, naturally, the Apple Tree Creek roadhouse pays the Greyhound to stop there, unlike the Childers one, which refuses.
Anyway, we arrived in Childers at long last, and Marianne from Vintner’s Secret Vineyard drove to the bus-stop to pick us up. Almost immeadiately upon meeting her our worries were dispelled – a chatty, warm, retired school-teacher, she put us at once at ease. And when we arrived at the property, a large house with pretty gardens, 5 acres of vines, three large cattle pastures, and a shimmering dam (a small man-made lake, in Pom-language), and were greeted by her son Matthew, and three other WWOOFers in the warm, bustling kitchen, we realised we’d found a place, and hosts, who would be the perfect cure for all our Townsville-ingrained negativity. After a tour we sat down to steaming bowls of home-made pumpkin soup, and everyone had a little meeting to discuss current projects happening at the fledgling business (bought the couple two years ago and revamped with new cellardoor, cafe and shop). We also got to meet Theo, their cheerfully scruffy white 'bitsie' ('bit of this and bit of that') dog, who likes to sleep wombat-style with all four paws in the air.
In addition to Marianne, Ed, and one of their grown-up sons Matthew in the house, there was also a Venuezelan WWOOFer, Anna, and a French couple, Elodie and Sebastian, who were staying in their van outside until Anna left and there was bedroom free. So the house was always busy and alive; either Anna or Marianne, or both, always seemed to be cooking something, whether for the cafe downstairs, for dinner that night, or for morning tea (Marianne’s much more civilised name for ‘smoko’), and our meals were taken round the large table in the diningroom/library/living room area, with much tasting (read: drinking) of the new seasons wines. Our room was at the front of the house in a converted verandah, meaning that half the walls were windows, giving the room massive amounts of sunlight and fantastic views over the gently rolling grazing fields of Vintner's and the opposite property, far away on the next hill. It also gave us a close-up view of the birds which sometimes flew unsuspectingly into the glass - and we could hear, perfectly-high-pitched, the crows of the three cockerels kept in the chook pens out back, at varied hours between 2am and 7am. (The chooks vary from the normal russety-brown types, to insanely fluffy things with 80s hairdos, to polka-dotted varieties that would provide the perfect accesory for the glamourous greenie with an eye on co-ordination their egg-layers with their outfit. There are even minute baby quails - the quietest and most retiring of all the fowl on site).
Thankfully we were spared the noises of the two boisterous and highly anti-social geese who lived on the other side of house, beneath Anna and Marianne&Ed's bedroom windows.
There is always something to be done on the property - from simply raking leaves, weeding and general upkeep to maintain the large grounds of orchard, cafe area, lawns and flowerbeds for visitors to wander and picnic in, to bigger projects such as the establishment of a raised veggie garden. But the biggest project in the coming days after we first arrived, and the reason so many WWOOFers were present at one time however, was pruning - preparing Vintner's 5 acres of vines for their spring 'bud-burst' by removing all the old, dead or surplus wood. We had to wait for a 'master pruner' to arrive to tutor us in the art of pruning, so in the meantime we raked the lawns, weeded (easy, hand-weeding this time!), planted cover-plants in various empty beds, collected the chook eggs, and, in a massive all-farm team effort - inside the shed during an epic rainstorm - unloaded hundreds of bottles of wine which Ed had recently brought back from their winemaker, located a few hours away in Kingaroy. It was a little disappointing that we wouldn't get to see any wine-making facilities on-site, but since it's completely the wrong time of year for that anyway, it didn't really matter either way. Nik and I also spent one morning hand-labelling bottles of white wine, spurred on by...let me say...interesting music on the local radio station (one stand-out lyric: "Are you a rockstar, or do you party in a gaybar?"). The music was mostly popular old classics and songs which had topped the UK charts four or five years ago, but the DJ was even so daring as to play a single by the Hoff himself. Strange.
The sun came out properly on the 30th July - perfect since the master pruner was coming that day to tutor us. We all went down to the vines, to the verdhello grapes, and had a lesson on pruning, before trying it out ourselves (Ed seemed remarkably relaxed about us practicing with actual sectauers on his actual vines!). It all seemed very complex to start off with, but the basic rule is to leave the best and newest wood on each spur coming off the vine. This meant the wood had to have very little bark, ideally, and be very green inside. Also, the pruner explained, though it would be possibly to make a slightly-less-good decision over which bit of spur to cut, there was only one real BAD DESICION to be made in terms on pruning on each spur, and as long as we could avoid leaving the very worst, oldest bits of wood in place, the vines would sort themselves out in time for bud-burst in spring. Still, it was slightly nerve-wracking knowing we were dealing with at least a part of Marianne & Ed's livelihood! Afterwards the pruning team repaired to the cafe off the cellardoor, for capuccinnos and some of Marianne's tasty homemade cake.
written by  LizIsHere on July 27, 2010 from Childers, Australia

Vintner's cont'd
Childers, Australia
We pruned for four days plus the training day, up and ready at eight to head down to the vines with our gloves, hats, secateurs, water bottles and suntan lotion (the vines are only a three-minute max. walk from the house but it saved running back and taking our shoes on and off all day). The first morning everything was shrouded in fog, which was magical - droplets hanging off the giant spiderwebs that we strung between the lines of vines, and mist weaving through them. We prune and prune and prune, tillaround 10.30-11 am when either Marianne or Matthew bring morning tea (normally fruit, cakes/biscuits, and drinks - no-one leaves Vintner's thin, trust me!) down to where we are, which we eat sitting in the shade of Ed's truck or sitting on the truck-bed.
Then we prune some more until lunch, which we eat either in the pagoda-shelter in the front-gardens area, or in the house, always with a pot of tea on the go. Then back to the pruning! It's easy but boring work, with the added excitement of creepy-crawlies - flueorescent yellow spiders, other crawly things, the delight of flying ants. The worst luckily occurs for me on the final day, in the final hours of pruning, when I look down to find a giant (to me) hairy tarantula-type spider crawling up my leg. My, er, enthusiastic reaction drew the attention of Ed and his friend Warren, who delighted in informing me about huntsman spiders, which grow, by all accounts, massive, but luckily are barely poisonous at all, and don't spin webs for you to walk face-first into (another delight of working in the vineyard!).
In between pruning we take time to be shocked that it's August already. It's August. It's winter here. And yet it's hotter than summer back home. I'm not complaning!
In between our third and final days of pruning, we got to go on a day-trip to Brisbane with Ed. He was going there for a dental appointment, and also dropping Anna off at the meditation retreat where she was WWOOFing next. It's a 3-hour journey so we get up early for the drive, carried along by 60s classic pop and Ed's fascinating collection of country music - ranging Creedence to Cash, and from the weird and creepy to the downright crass. It's brilliant, and I laugh quietly to myself in the back seat at some of the lyrics.
Ed dropped us at the CityCat ferry stop furthest our of the city centre so we could enjoy the (windy! a skirt was not a good choice...) river journey into the city. Although Brisbane could be any-city, any-where, it's pretty enough, being on the river, and after so long in small country towns and on rural properties it was nice to be somewhere cosmopolitan again - although the sheer volume of people baffled us for a little while, as did negotiating road-crossings!
We wanderered along the cultural SouthBank area, past the museums and galleries, the faux-lagoon and beach area on the riverside, and then cross over the bridge to check out Queen's Street. This is where we ran into two of Nik's friends from Busselton. We were all bowled over by the coincidence; similar to when he ran into another of his friend's in Tully - although this was greater since we weren't even staying in Brisbane, just passing through for a few hours!
In the afternoon Ed picked us up again and took us up to Mount Coo-tha to check out a panoramic view of the city. You could see as the conical main-peak of the Glasshouse Mountains, and to New South Wales to the South. It's always interesting to see a city from above, so to speak, to get a real idea of the scale and layout. We'll be back in Brisbane in a month or so, to explore it properly, but the day-trip gave us a taster, and a welcome dose of city-life to make us appreciate arriving back, late in the evening, at the rural peace of Vintner's.
written by  LizIsHere on August 4, 2010 from Childers, Australia

vintner;s
Childers, Australia
We finally finished pruning on the 4th August at around 2pm (although we had to leave a tantasling two vines long for a newspaper photographer to record the next day). Then we had the afternoon off, relaxing in the hammock, the orchards and one the upstairs verandah with books and journals. Then, when the long-lunch guests left the cafe, Nik and I made the brave decision to test the apparently chilly waters of the adjacent swimming pool. I, being unspeakably brave and generally wonderful, jumped in first, and then Nik... well, Nik didn't. Perhaps my frozen-lunged gasps and flailing in the water in a desperate attempt to catch my breath and get warm had put him off a little. It was utterly freezing!
That evening we celebrated the end of pruning: Elodie and Sebastian made a rich mushroom risotto, which we ate with four bottles of Vintner's sweet and dry wines (between six of us, so not so bad!), and then rounded off the evening with a French film, Paris 36, about a theatre-owner in the Paris in... 1936. It was extremely, almost cliched-ly French, but great for being so.
The next morning Marianne took us on a trip - a mystery trip. She wouldn't breathe a word of where we were going, just got all us WWOOFers into her car (with cameras, she told us cameras were important) and drove us through Childers and out of town. I ventured to suggest that she might be taking us all away to ditch us at the bus-stop, but luckily the reality was somewhat different: she was treating us four to a trip to Snakes DownUnder, a reptile park near Childers, run by snake-expert Ian Jenkins, who kept a taipan as a pet (taipans are the most deadly snake in Australia - well, the Eastern Brown is deadlier per unit of venom, but the taipan injects much more venom and strikes prey multiple times. Anyway, a bite from either would kill you pretty fast. Luckily anti-venoms are widespread and taipans are rarely, if ever, seen.) It had a much better feel - and much, much better crocodile pens - than the Port Douglas place, and many of the snakes on display were caught by Ian when they were found on domestic properties.
Because we arrived early, we got a private guided tour by one of the handlers, round the reptile pens, holding blue-tongued goannas, turtles, frogs, and lizards of the desert, tropics and garden. Understandably, it being a cloudy day, the desert lizards were sulking under rocks in the below-par heat. There were also two snake shows, one packed with irrepresibly noisy pre-school children who were absolutely focused on what was in the biggest box in the small arena (the handler made them wait and wait. It turned out to be a baby crocodile), and one, hosted by Ian, with the Six Deadliest Snakes In Australia, including, of course, the taipan, and Eastern and Western Browns, as well as tiger snakes, which are incredibly well-camouflaged and also, not unexpectedly, pretty damn poisonous. Even those domestic-bred and oft-handled snakes frequently shot out of their carrying bags at a terrifying speed - Ian explained that if they had been wild-bred, they would "have bounced off each wall [off the arena] in under three seconds".
Given the turn of speed that snakes have, then, the advice of how to avoid a bite when confronted with one is quite against all instrincts: stay still. Snakes see by movement, so if you stay as still as possible, an agigated, confronted snake will [hopefully...] slowly relax and move awat, Easy to say...probably quite hard to do, unless fear is freezing you in place. Luckily, the only time we've seen an Eastern Brown (on our mountain hike... in the future, coming soon), it was slithering away from us at quite a speed, saving us having to do anything at all.
After the shows we got to hold the resident boa constrictor python, Kit, and the rather grumpy baby croc (I'd be grumpy too if I knew I'd be going back to the crocodile farm when I got too big - I didn't ask what the crocs were being farmed for, but I'm fairly certain it's not for a life of frolicking in swamps). The croc had an amazingly hard back, and a very soft underside, which is probably the way round they'd want it, in the wild, when they have to defend themselves from bigger crocs (often their parents!) looking for a snack.
Lastly we saw the crocodile feeding, which was dramatic - even Ian, in the pen with a giant adult male croc lunging at him, seemed a little disconcerted by 'Macca's' energy on that particular day. He couldn't have been hungry, since crocs need very little food, especially when they don't have to exert energy hunting for it. Maybe he was just playing....? Well, luckily no one lost any limbs that day. It's a risky job, that's for sure, but I suppose if you're confident enough to keep a taipan as a pet, then you have to pretty sure of your animal-handling skills. Despite all appearances to the contrary, I think he's mental, personally!
written by  LizIsHere on August 5, 2010 from Childers, Australia

a little holiday within a holiday...
Bundaberg, Australia
After two weeks at Vintner's we were clearly sick of it- who wouldn't be in a lovely place with friendly people, interesting work, cute animals, and beautiful views? So we decided to go on a little three-night WWOOF holiday to another host, an hour north in Bundaberg. Well, I say 'decide', but this was yet another one of those things that had occurred after the numerous wwoof-cancellations, re-organisations and general hair-pulling-inducing stress that had occurred during our pre-Vintner's time. So, anyway, we were going, and we also got to give Ed and Marianne a break from house-guests, since Elodie and Sebastian had left a few days before. This was of course denied on our return by Marianne, who said that the house had been 'too quiet' in our abscence. She must have been missing my frequent tripping over of rugs and dropping of cultlery.
Marianne was nice enough to give us a lift to 'Bundy', where we had a good part of the day to explore the town. I think in reality all you'd need was about an hour and a half in the slightly red-neck-y large town, but we filled the time with cafe wanderings, a visit to the BRAG art gallery, which had a digital media exhibition on, and by - of course, it's what we do best - sitting in parks.
Catherine, our new-short-term host, picked us up from the bus station in the afternoon and we drove the 30 km or so out of town to her olive and mango-growing property, Blue Gum Grove. Our host was English; she had moved out to Australia with her husband in 1973, though she still retained her London accent and devotion to Arsenal. The front of her property looked down a gentle slope to her 20 acres of olives groves and mango trees, and the dam, while out the back (well, the front really, but almost no farm people seem to use their front doors, so the back-door essentially becomes the front-door), was a domestic orchard, which grew an array of exotic fruits, including figs, 5-star fruit, mulberries, breadfruit (me neither), chocolate pudding fruit and the glorious custard apple (sadly not in fruit), and some others that I'd never heard of and unfortunately now can't remember. We also met her large, exciteable collie-type dog, Jess.
It was a little strange to land in a strange place to WWOOF for just two and a half days, but Catherine was friendly and understood the importance of regular cups of tea, so we all got on well. On our first day we rose at the fantastically leisurely hour of 8ish to begin work at 9am. Since the torrential rain which had begun on our first evening hadn't abated by the morning, we set about sweeping, scrubbing and tidying up the two large front and back verandahs for the morning. Then in the afternoon we spent an hour or so filling up water containers from an excess-water storage tank, and stacked these up. It was hardly back-breaking work.
The following day we spent a full day working alongisde Catherine mulching her domestic orchard with cane mulch (the bits left over after the cane has been cut. Did I mention that almost everywhere we've been the rural landscape has been crammed with cane fields? Endless, endless cash-crop sugar cane). That day left us all pretty tired, and we could only summon the energy to watch the legendary (well, probably only to us) Aussie music-comedy show Spicks and Specks before going to bed.
And that was the end of our Bundy WWOOFing. Catherine gave us a lift back to the bus station the next morning and we caught the Greyhound back to Childers, walking the thirty-minutes along the wide grassy road verges, past fields and farm properties back to Vintner's, our adopted Childers home.
written by  LizIsHere on August 13, 2010 from Bundaberg, Australia

The final phase at Vintner's
sunset at the vineyard
On our first day back we had an early start to visit the nearby Apple Tree Creek market, a very country affair, with plants, homemade crafts, some frankly disgusting fudge, chooks, farm implements and one or two hippy-esque stalls.
During the next week we did a variety of tasks: from planting strawberries in the the new veggie garden raised beds, to removing old christmas lights around the swimming pool on an extremely wobbly ladder; painting windowsills in the cafe toilets, assembling ikea-style shelving units for the shop, leaf-blowing, herding the frequently escaping geese, and general garden stuff. In between we managed, of course, to spent much time lying in the hammock or on the lawns, eat cake, consume ice-creams in the vineyard as the sun set, and cook a bit (me, mainly - I made scones, muffins and a pretty decent spaghetti bake; who knows, maybe I'll actually be able to cook a bit by the time I come home!).
Marianne and I also made a trip into the old country charming town of Childers to get our haircut. I expected, from the general vibe of the town (bar the two or three hippy stores that seem to present in unexpected places all over QLD), that the salon would be a blue-rinse and rollers sort of place, but it turned out to be as funky as anywhere you'd find in Brisbane and Sydney, although much, much cheaper. Perfect! Nik and I explored the town a little more afterwards, including visiting the art gallery which housed the photographic and mural memorial to the 15 travellers killed in the 2000 Palace Backpackers blaze.
We also went on a hike! Ed's cattle farmer and ex-schoolteacher friend Warren had floated the idea of a hike up Mount Woowoonga, a small mountain about 30 km away from Childers, with us before we went to Blue Gum Grove, and we had agreed. Little did we know what awaited. Maybe our first warning should have been that Warren was an extremely fit and experienced hiker - only last year he completed the by all accounts 'fairly tough' 93 km, 8 day Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea. (Part of his training programme, incidentally, had been to climb Woowoonga four times per day with a 13 kg rucksack.)
Our second warning should have come the day before the planned hike, when Warren turned up with a selection of walking poles for us to select from. "More for going down than going up", he explained. Clearly this was going to be a steep one.
On the day we set of with water, hats and our walking poles, and arrived in the small, deserted carpark at the foot of Woowoonga, the peak of which had loomed at us slightly ominously for most of the latter part of the drive. The first 800 m or so of the path was a fairly steady but gently climb, with our sticks feeling more like impediments than anything else. On the way we passed over markings on the ground which Warren identified on the return journey as the scrapings of the large goanna lizards (relations of the Komodo dragon) which live in the region.
At the 800m point was a nice bench - a clear encouragement to have a wee sit down before the path began to climb steeply - and a nice contrast to the sign next to it: "Stop! Are You Prepared? This track is for experienced bushwalkers only."
It also warned of a 'continous steep climb' for the rest of the 1km of the track. It definitely wasn't wrong there! I made a valiant effort to enjoy the intermitten views through the breaks in the trees as I panted, sweated, stumbled and lurched my way up the steep, rough and at times narrow path, but my face was distinctly tomato-like and at points I was quite convinced I was going to throw up. I suppose that's what six months of a backpacker diet and exercise regieme does for you!
But, finally, after ascending a part so steep that my concern was less about how I'd get up it (being only metres from the summit), but how we'd get down without falling flat on our faces/sliding into oblivion - the Summit!
Warren atop mount Woowoonga
A quick scramble over some rocks to the 'edge' of the mountain and then we were greeted with an overwhelming view. Above, blue sky, and below and into the distance, trees, endless, endless layers and shades of trees, repeating onwards so far as to form a green haze at the horizon. It was definitely worth the climb, that's for sure! And it only took a cereal bar and some water for us to agree to follow Warren along an out-of-bounds (but helpfully marked by 'no hiking' signs) track along the ridge to the next peak, where a communications station was situated. This hike was cooler; a scramble down the steep other side of Woowoogna, and then we plunged into damp, greener forest; diving round trees, scrambling over vines, catching skin and clothing on twigs, walking face-first through cobwebs (Nik managed to almost walk face-first in a Golden Orb weaver's web, but luckily the giant spider was elsewhere at the time). We even got 'a little lost' at one point, as Warren happily admitted.
It was much, much easier than the mountain-climb track; just the right side of tiring as we climbed the opposite slope and emerged in the communications-station clearing, filled with pylons and aerials, sticking it to the man as usual as we passed, unheeding, the 'no entry' signs on the way in.
On the way back along the no-hiking hiking track, we were lucky enough to spot a goanna itself, sunning itself on the track in front of us. It stayed stockstill, in an I-don't-move-you-can't-see-me manner - long enough for me to snap a photo or two - but scarpered when we moved too close. And as we made our gingerly way, sliding and once or twice falling on our bums, down the steep Woowoonga Mountain track, we spotted an Eastern Brown snake (the most deadly snake, based on the number of fatal bites, in Aussie) slithering away into the undergrowth. (It's comforting that everytime we've seen a deadly snake they've been slithering away from us). Still, in typical Aussie fashion we stood around in the same spot with Warren discussing anti-venoms and snake-catching for a good five minutes, while the snake, as far as we knew, lingered in the undergrowth just metres away (or made a swift exit as far from us a possible, more than likely - but who knows?).
Back at the carpark, ever-so-slightly tired (that the 1.8km track took us 3 hours, return, gives you some idea of the steepness of it), Warren (who, it may be becoming obvious, is a pretty ace and generous guy, as well as a great teacher) showed us some bushcraft skills - from making a chair out of a flour sack and some logs, to weaving rope out of raffia, and making a bush-compass. On the way back he even abruptly pulled over the ute to pull leaves from trees on the edge of the road to show us - the soap tree leaf, which when crushed and rubbed between the hands in water provided the Aborigines (and early settlers) with a frothing soap, and the aptly named sandpaper tree leaf, used to sand and perfect wooden tools and weaponry.
We left Vintner's on the day of the Aussie election, to catch the Greyhound to Hervey Bay, gateway to Fraser Island. It was hard to go - Marianne and Ed had been such fantastic hosts, and we'd even taken to referring to 'going home' when we were heading back to the farm from Childers or Bundy, such was the welcome they gave us. But it was a happy goodbye, with many thankyous and genuine promises to stay in touch. I think our time there will be one of our most prized Aussie memories.
Marianne in the cellardoor
written by  LizIsHere on August 21, 2010 from Childers, Australia

Fraser Island
Fraser Island, Australia
fraser island
I got up at the ungodly hour of 6.15 am to get ready for my pick-up for my Fraser Island Explorer tour. A fair few people had told me that it was better to do an overnight trip to the largest sand island in the world, but my bank balance told me otherwise and I was happy enough to get to see the place at all.
Info time: Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world, and is home to the only rainforest growing on sand in the world, too. It was logged extensively up to 1991 when it was made a world heritage sight, and is home to what are thought to be purest dingos (wild dogs) in australia. I was hopeful on seeing one, but on a daytour it seemed unlikely.
All the foot passengers, mostly from different tour groups, piled on the pedestrian and 4x4 ferry for the 30min ride across the water to Fraser Island (which lies off the QLD cost, accessed from Hervey Bay and Rainbow Beach ferry terminals) at about 8am. The first ace wildlife spot of the day was a large sea turtle in the water next to the boat. At the island we got onto our allocated 4x4 buses (all the tracks on the island are sand only so it's a 4X4 only zone). First we drove along one of the island's many bumpy sandtracks to Central Station, the site of a former logging camp, passing dry scrub merging into lush rainforest on the way.
At Central Station we took a rainforest walk along the banks of Wanggoolba Creek, which was astoundingly clear - so much so that you barely see the water moving. Apparently Fraser teams with snakes, but we saw none on the walk. From Central Station we drove on a little way south to 75 mile beach, a designated highway with an 80kmp/h speed limit. 4X4's driven by tour guides and backpackers speed along it regular intervals. It's a bit weird to see so much traffic on a beach, and perhaps it's a bit odd to do so, but any thoughts on the morals etc. of this were fortunately/unfortunately dispelled, as the minute we drove onto the beach we spotted a dingo! The naturally skinny, slightly alsatian-looking dogs (see photo) have been encourage to rely aggressively on tourists for food who insisted on feeding them tidbits, and they have attacked people in the past; an 8 yr old girl was even killed by one some years ago. Thus there is a complete ban on any feeding or even interaction with dingoes on fraser island - with a fine, prison sentence, and deportation facing any overseas visitor who does so. So, we were kept on the bus until our driver had driven far enough away from the dingo to let us out in safety.
The dingo would have been enough of a highlight for me to end the tour then, but a breakdown on the beach (allowing some impromtu sunbathing), a visit to other the coloured pinnnacles of sand, and to the Maheno shipwreck were still on the agenda. Then we drove to Eli Creek, which, while being a beautiful, tropical-plant-fringed creek flowing out of rainforest onto the beach and into the sea, was a bit of a circus with 4x4 buses, 4x4's, and even motorcross bikes parked around it or driving through the beach-mouth of it. This was a theme of Fraser Island, at least the bits you see on a daytour - it's almost like it's a 4x4 adventure playground, rather than a heritage site, which is sad, and a fact that is bitterly lamented by many local QLD'rs.
On the way back down the beach to visit the picturesque turquoise-blue expanse of the inland, rainforest-fringed Lake Mckenzie, our wildlife extravaganza was completed when we saw three humpback whales elaping and cavorting off-shore. Amazing; we were so lucky to be driving past at the right time to see them. It had felt like an incredibly touristy day, and the sight of Eli Creek, in particular, being so crowded with alien-looking motor-vehicles encroaching on the lushness of nature was jarring, but it was the unplanned sites, the dingo and the whales, which were most spectacular, made more so when observedagainst the natural beauty of Fraser.
a dingo on fraser island
written by  LizIsHere on August 22, 2010 from Fraser Island, Australia

Permaculture, sweet potato, spiders and greens
Cooroy, Australia
my 3kg sweet potato find
After an exciting lift to the Fraser Island busstop with the hostel worker Genevieve (she forgot to close the boot and Nik's bagtook a brief flying lesson in the driveway), we caught the bus to Cooroy, to be picked up by our new wwoof hosts, from a permaculture property in KinKin. We spent the five hours between the bus arrival and being picked-up in... guess where! A park!
When our host Zaia arrived, driving a kombi-van complete with scrap-yard salvaged bits inside, and curtains, our first surprise was that she was combining the trip to Cooroy to fetch us with picking up her son. It turned out that she had two kids, aged 10 and 15, which was a surprise and a little disconcerting as we were trying to avoid wwoof hosts with children, for various reasons.
After driving (the style best described as kamikaze... we nearly veered off the road at one point!) the half an hour or so from Cooroy, we arrived at the property located down an unselaed road, just outside the village of Kin Kin, in a secluded and beautiful valley. Our accomodation was a caravan close to the house, containing bed, table, chest of drawers and HUGE hairy tarantula-type spider, described by our host as a 'visitor'. Thankfully Nik encouoraged it out of the door using his uke or I think I'd have attempted to sleepin the kombivan instead!
We met Zaia's partner Tom, a permaculture teacher, when we went into the house for dinner (soup-with-meat-in-it for Nik and the others, and, in a comedy vegetarian-cliche moment, a pile of salad leaves from the garden for me), and found out some more about how wwoofing at the property worked. Due to both the couple's desire to live as self-sufficiently as possible, and for income-reasons, Wwoofers were expected to feed themselves entirely from the garden for their dinner and lunch, as far as was possible, with use of spices, butter etc from the kitchen. This was a) another surprise, as nothing had been mentioned in the wwoof book or our email communications and b) a concern, as neither one of us are great cooks! We ended up eating a lot of root veggies (sweet potato, yakon, taro), chokos and an absolute ton of various 'greens' from the garden. While it was pretty ace to be able to go out to the garden and gather the means to make a meal, food/meals became a bit of an issue, particularly in our first week, as the lack of carbs and iron/protein took their toll slightly.
The garden was great: the word 'abundance' comes up a lot in discussion of permaculture(which is 'permanent agriculture'; everything interlinked and multipurpose - from the chooks scratchign at weeds, providing manure and supplying eggs, to cuttings and weeds being placed round plants as mulch in a method called 'chop and drop' - with nothing wasted or leaving the property. Plants are grown in intermixed beds, with lettuce alongside strawberries alongside herbs. The garden grew everything from lettuces to basil to choko vines, dandelion plants (the leaves of which they ate), medicinal herbs, taro, sweet potatos, strawberries, turnips, radishes, brocolli and mint, with fruit trees interspersed between - mandarines, bananas, mangos, and Tom was trying out new plants all the time. There were three chook pens, with two sets of chooks running free in the paddocks everyday; three goats, two cows (one of their cows would be killed for meat each year) and one market-bought calf (and a 'surprise' calf that was born unexpectedly during our stay), and three dogs. The toilet was an outdoor composting one, situated in a little moveable shed, to be re-located when the pit below it came too full. However we were encouraged to do #1's anywhere in the garden that we felt comfortable! The shower too was outdoors, inside a rather raggedy tent, and solar-heated, with controls that had to be operated by another person outside, as Tom was trying to construct a stone-built bathroom/laundry building but kept being distracted by his seemingly endless amount of tasks and projects. One day they hope to get bees, and to milk their cows and goats to make cheese.
the compost loo!
Our day began at 6.45-7am with a 'Coo-ee' call from the house to breakfast; a cooked meal with eggs and normally some kind of greens or potato-dish. It was pretty hard to stomach such a heavy meal some mornings, but we sort of got used it towards the end of our time there. Then one of us would wash up, and work would begin. In our first week we built a corrugated-tin fence around on of the four chook-pens, whick took a ridiculously long time. As well as this we weeded up many clumps of invasive nut-grass. We also spent a period of time most mornings harvesting from the garden; filling up the salad bowl with the variety of leaves and herbs; collecting strawberries and tomatos, and, in my case, hunting out and digging up red and purple sweet potatoes (including a giant 3kg monster!) which grew voraciously over the swales (water-retaining ditches constructed on contours to collect and distribute rainwater). Then lunch, which we either cooked or helped out with preparing, was at around 1pm, with washing-up afterwards. Work was done and the day was free after lunch.
to be cont'd :-)
written by  LizIsHere on August 28, 2010 from Cooroy, Australia

Kin Kin cont'd
Cooroy, Australia
As time went on we got a little more settled at the property, learning to cook some fairly tasty food with what was available, playing with the dogs and exploring the surrounding area (although we were sleeping an incredibly amount, about 10-11 hours at night and usually a nap of some sort during the afternoon!) but we never really 'clicked' with the hosts. It all felt a little like they'd have preferred us not to be there, but needed us to help out with gardens too much to not. Plus a lot of their views (their devotion to naturopathy, a site called Doctors are Dangerous.com, and their religious beliefs which saw them watching dvds preaching hellfire on non-believers (and rockbands :-D) on the Saturday day-of-rest among other things) were so out-of-kilter with ours (and new WWOOFer Matt's) that we couldn't have a conversation with them without wanting to contradict what they were saying. It really felt like they would believe in anything as long as it wasn't 'mainstream', no matter how wacky. And, obviously, being guests, we couldn't argue or contradict them without causing serious tension, so we kept fairly seperate, apart from work and mealtimes.
It worked pretty well. The setting was beautiful; we would walk along the unsealed road out of the valley, up to KinKin to get our fix of chocolate milkshakes and yoghurt from the tiny general store, and a couple of times we followed sections of the Noosa Trail. On the longest of those walks we spotted a long, fat, red-bellied blacksnake slithering across the path. The forests surrounding us were so like English ones that the sudden sight of a large, poisonous snakes left us pretty unnerved as we walked gingerly along the trail through the long grass!
Nik and I would also go up to the beautiful dam area at the top of the property during some of our afternoons off, where there were mango-trees, birdsong and the forest stretching up to sky. In the paddocks you could also relax with a book in the sunshine, while the cattle and calves dozed on the other side of the fence, chickens clucked and pecked about, and the goats bleeted from where they were tethered.
One day us three WWOOFers went with Tom to an open house-garden organised by a member of the Noosa permaculture group. The man had built his house to be as energy efficient as possible; it was only one-room deep to minimise heat loss, and was angled perfectly to have the sun shine through the windows in winter, when the heat would be needed, and pass over the top in the harsh summer. He also had full solar-power, grey-water recycling, a permaculture garden (naturally), ducks, and goats for milk and making cheese. It seemed a fantastically sustainable way to live - and to us he seemed to be having more fun doing it (it wasn't just the fact that his compost toilet was indoors that swayed us, honest) than our hosts. Then again it helped that he seemed to be fairly well-off, still working as a house-designer and solar-panel sales contractor, and therefore was able to build his dream eco-home and design everything down to his converted-from-a-chestfreezer-fridge (freezers have better insulation). I was really impressed with it all. During our time WWOOFing we've been living and interacting with people to whom solar panels, growing your own food, compost-toilets and 'reduce, reuse, recycle' are a reality - not just concepts or nice slogans, and that man's ingenuity, and enthusiasm, was really inspiring.
written by  LizIsHere on September 5, 2010 from Cooroy, Australia

to the city!
Brisbane, Australia
We left Kin Kin on the 6th September. We weren't particularly sad to leave - we felt we'd got all could out of our stay there, and while we'd learnt a lot and would miss the beauty of the surroundings, we'd spent enough time there being stressed out, tired or itching to shriek 'That's INSANE!' to be happy to leave!
Our destination, one that couldn't be more different to Kin Kin, was Brisbane, capital of Queensland, for a city fix before we travelled onwards to the area around Byron Bay to WWOOF again.
written by  LizIsHere on September 7, 2010 from Brisbane, Australia

to the city!
Brisbane, Australia
After the peace, greenery and rustic feel of KinKin Souls, Brisbane was a jolt, though not necessarily a completely negative one! We arrived on greyhound (ahh, faithful greyhound, I won't miss it at all when I'm home!), caught a quick-train ride across the city and arrived in the alternative-and-slightly-seedy area of Forititude Valley. Although organisational commitments got in the way (as they often do) of our first day of metropolitan (well, Brisbane's hardly London... or even Liverpool, but still) freedom, but on our second day we explored more, stumbling across an international farmers market on the riverside, and checking out the Queensland art gallery on SouthBank, which had some great modern art and an exhibition by Aboriginal Artist Jim Rootsey. In the afternoon we had a picnic on the riverside, near Brisbane's artificial beach area. It sounds pretty naff, but actually was really pretty, with the real palms, sunshine, and lots of grass around the water and sand on the riverside. We also explored the West End, a studenty place crammed with cafes, bars, ethnic grocers and thrift shops. There we found the Three Monkeys cafe, something of a legend in Brisbane, a softly-lit maze of a place, the kind of place to spend hours in, where we got milkshakes, chai and cake (clearly we had a sugar-deficit after KinKin!) and sat in the garden for a while.
That night we went out for a meal at Tibetan/Nepalese restaurant, The Tibetan Kitchen on Brunswick St in Forititude Valley, a packed, noisy, BYO place with beautiful decorations and even better food!
We didn't do anything too crazy in Brisbane; plans to go out were slightly stumped by Nik not having any 'proper' shoes (they're big on 'proper' shoes here), and it being mid-week. Still it was good to be back in a city for a while, in the buzz and the noise and with so many options of things to do. Our few days there went past very fast, and then we found ourselves back on the greyhound on our way to the hippie-mecca of Byron Bay.
written by  LizIsHere on September 10, 2010 from Brisbane, Australia

on the community, (#1)
Byron Bay, Australia
A long and roundabout journey brought us to our new wwoof hosts in a new state, on Kijiri community near Mullumbimby in New South Wales. A 3hr bus ride to Byron Bay, a four hour wait in Byron (soaking in the local colour: deadheaded dudes in tie-dye, acid-casualties and dog-on-a-string types, amongst all the other 'Normal' people who live there too), then another bus, ironically away from Mullum, to Lismore, where our host Jude, accompanied by her super-cute 2 1/2 year old son Sam, picked us up.
internet ran out... to be cont'd, as always...
written by  LizIsHere on September 12, 2010 from Byron Bay, Australia

The first community....
Mullumbimby, Australia
We crammed our stuff into Jude's already over-flowing car, and drove the thirty minutes or so out of Lismore, past Mullumbimby to Kijiri Community, a small place of 120 acres with just six properties, nestled deep in a secluded valley at the bottom of a winding unsealed road. When the rain came in - as it did with a vengeance during our second week - the whole sky was shrouded in mist and it felt like the outside world had disappeared.
Jude was friendly, and although a little 'airy-fairy' about some stuff, was very straightforward about telling us about what she wanted us to do, when she wanted to be left alone, and how we should make ourselves at home because she already had one child (almost 3-year-old Sam), and didn't need two more! The result of this was that we became pretty comfortable in her large, old Queenslander home (moved from Lismore on the back of truck... they do that in this country! Like the house but no the location? Solution: move the house); sorting ourselves cups of tea etc. whenever we felt like it.
Our own residence was in a comfy caravan across the grass clearing from the main house; under cover, with it's own covered decking area, it was perfect for sitting outisde in the morning or evening, with cups of tea, listening to the birdsong (including the ever-present whip-birds, with their distinctive male-female call and response) and spotting the adorable plump wallabies which grazed near by, and the stalking bushturkeys with their bright yellow-and-red ruffs. The windows of the caravan were surrounded by trees, so we woke up faced with greenery and green-tinged light every morning.
Jude shared her piece of land with Russel, who live in a studio across the clearing, and Steve and Petra, who live in an old bus in a clearing reached through the trees. She also had chooks, who peck about free-range during the day, and two horses who belonged to her neighbours grazing in the paddock next to her house. Across the large clearing from the house was a fire-area, where we sat a few times to eat dinner or drink chai in the evenings. When the sky was clear you could see thousand of stars scattered across the segment of sky trapped between the walls of the valley; it was really a beautiful and peaceful place.
Our work, howver, was not quite so peaceful! Since Jude and her husband both worked part-time as a counsellor and a pyschologist, respectively, one of her main aims when getting WWOOOFers and helpxchange-rs was to have help looking after Sam (not that we were told this on application, which grated a little bit to start off with!). So we took alternate days, one of us looking after Sam, playing with and entertaining him, and the other doing whatever chores or work Jude had lined up for us. We started late, which was nice, around 9am at the earliest, but it was a full-on day after that, particularly for whoever was looking after Sam, who was fairly 'easy' to look after but, like an 2 year old, noisy and full of energy. The key seemed to be to get a firm grasp of all the Cars movie characters, Thomas the Tank Engine trains, and Dora the Explorer Songs (not hard once we'd watched the same show segment about twnety times... we're still singing them now!). Neither of us are exactly used to children, but we did ok, I think - the fact that Sam would latch onto us (Nik more than me!), eager to play, the minute we came in for breakfast was some indication!
Our work was mostly house-related chores - cleaning the kitchen and bathroom, clearing cobwebs, putting cardboard on the veggie garden, helping Jude sort out her bedroom for when her friend came to stay, clearing out under the house. Though it was a bit stressful at times, mainly because of the normal chaos of the house and the energy required to look after Sam, it was fun, and Jude was so nice and happy to have us there that it was a good experience overall. One night she and her husband even went out for a meal at a restaurant five minutes away, leaving us to mind Sam for an hour. We were pretty terrified, but the level of trust they demonstrated in us was amazing. (though Jude left the phone number of her neighbour in case we couldn't deal with nappy-changing... luckily it didn't come up).
We went off to Byron for a few days holiday early on in our WWOOFing with Jude, but when we came back it was full-on again. Towards the end of our week her friend came to stay - brining with her not one, but two children - a 3 yeard old and an 8 year old. Needless to say, the house didn't get any calmer or less chaotic - the sound of two children crying in tandem while the older one tried to tell us endless stories over the din was quite something. At that point we were very happy to be leaving in just two days!
written by  LizIsHere on September 14, 2010 from Mullumbimby, Australia

hello!
Sydney, Australia
We're in Sydney now! Hence the proliferation of opera House pics :). So I'm a little behind in blogs... all shall be updated this week while I'm back in the land of easy internet access!
written by  LizIsHere on October 26, 2010 from Sydney, Australia

Community # 2
Nimbin, Australia
After leaving Jude, who dropped us back in Lismore when she went to work, we caught the local ‘school bus’ (strangely almost devoid of children) through rolling green countryside to Nimbin. Nimbin is ‘the centre of alternative lifestyle in Australia‘, or ‘full of pot-smoking hippies’ - depending on who you ask. It’s certainly far more in the cliched hippie mold than Byron Bay, but this is tempered by the fact that it’s a tourist-orientated place, with most shops on the brightly-painted and mural’d Nimbin Village mainstreet exploiting in some way the area’s fame as site for the 1976 Aquarius Festival, and the fact that weed is almost, almost, de facto legal in the area (though locals complain long and loudly in the local rags of heavy-handed over-policing in the village). The smoke from the often-openly smoked grass hangs in the air, particularly outside some of the cafes. Every shop on the mainstreet is brightly painted, mostly in a rainbow-theme, but shops such as The Apothercary, BringABong, Jaz’s Joynt Café, the Rainbow Café and The Hemp Embassy, which is both a retail outlet for hemp products and campaign headquarters for the marijuana legalisation campaign which organises the ’Mardi Grass’ festival every May. It’s bright, busy and noisy, with the cacophony of buskers outside Nimbin Hall and the muttered sales-pitches of the few slightly scummy-looking dealers who loiter on the street, accosting anyone who looks like a tourist - and there are a fair few.
We only spent about ten minutes in Nimbin before our next host, Satya, a massage therapist who lives on Tuntable Falls Community , arrived to pick us up in her, surprise,surprise, kombi van. Since there were only two ‘legal’ seats, Nik lay across the mattress in the back for the drive out of town to Tuntable. Our route to her house in Tuntable took us past the hub of 2000 acres community (most of the land purchased by hippies left in the area by the Aquarius Festival in the late 70s), where there was a large community hall, shop, and pre-and-primary schools. Tuntable is set in a forested valley, with most of the properties reached on the slopes via dirt tracks - with the track to Satya’s being one of the most potholes and bumpiest! Before the final leg up the steep slope to her property, hidden in trees in ‘Pixies Valley‘, we had to swap from her 2WD van to a 4WD Subaru - with the final drive up the steep slope requiring much acceleration, wheel-wrenching and gear manipulation, but we made it.
Satya’s house, built 36years ago by her and her ex-husband with little or no building knowledge, and no way of transporting materials up the slopes and through the vegetation except by foot - is on three levels of separate small buildings. The main and most-recently built one was reached by going past the stand-alone purple-painted compost toilet and up a wooden staircase to the verandah, looking out over the opposite thickly-forested slop. This housed the large kitchen-cum-dining room-cum-office. Through the back door of this building and up a little rocky slope was our cave room - her son’s old room - a small, dark little room, with most of one wall incorporating part of a gigantic boulder which also formed part of it’s support on the hillside. Hard to describe, but I have a picture somewhere! Anyway, it was perfect to sleep in due to lack of sunlight, and the view through the window was simply trees. The final building, the oldest one, was reached up a steep wooden staircase, now Satya’s bedroom but once the tiny house where she, her husband and daughter once lived before the other buildings where constructed.
the blue-cave-room
It was an amazing house - the verandah being the best part. The view was all trees and sky, the only noises birdsong, the rustle of bush turkeys and the hums of bees and flies; at night its crickets, the unbelievably loud and continuous croak of frogs and the odd owl. In the morning’s a local kookaburra, trained by Satya’s son, would often come and perch on the edge of the verandah to be fed tidbits of cheese. A basically harmless snake was residing on the roof while we there, while others of perhaps more or less venom darted away in front of us as we walked about the gardens. Pademelons (wallaby-type creatures, who were so numerous that I was quite disappointed the one day that I didn‘t see at least one) hop and bush turkeys strut through the extensive, rambling gardens, including a veggie garden reach by passing through a gap in a towering clump of bamboo. The solar-heated shower and bath was situated through here too, in another 36-year-old hand-constructed building - while it was slightly like showering in a garden shed, the views through the windows were unbeatable. The intimacy with nature was incredible, the silence, which wasn’t silence at all, but a more soothing noise than the city hubbub, the utter peace of being able to sit on the verandah and stare across in greenery, was fantastic. We could see why Satya was such a peaceful, low-key person (we had been worried, because of the Nimbin thing and our experience in Kin Kin that she’d be a little too wacky for us) - she was by far the least intense host we’ve had; silences didn’t feel awkward, and we felt very free and unrushed. To be honest we didn’t seem to get round to much work, either!
tamed kookaburra
Our first night Satya was going to an art opening for the Spring Exhibition at the hall back in Nimbin where a few of her daughter’s pieces were being exhibited, and we were invited along. One thing I didn’t expect to be doing - in Nimbin of all places - was to be wandering around a small art exhibition with everything from screenprints and etchings to carving and weaving, clutching a glass of wine on a Friday night.
Then again I didn’t expect to spent my Saturday first at a country show and then at a weaving festival! Satya again seemed less-than-concerned about our WWOOFing hours, and instead too us back to Nimbin in the faithful van - me in the back this time - to the Nimbin Show, a quaintly small country show with a frankly unsettling folk group, best cake/scone/jam and largest/most obscenely shaped vegetable competitions, dressage events, an exhibition of alpacas and - of course - a dog and duck show. It diverted our attention for about an hour, but after that we explored the erm, one main street of Nimbin a little more, stepping into the eccentric Nimbin Museum (where a kombivan still resides where it crashed - in the front wall), with random history tidbits and lots of pro-marijuana literature. Then we went along to school grounds to meet Satya at the miniscule - three tipis, one chai tent, about twenty women and their assorted barefoot children - Weave’n’Mend festival. It was slightly surreal, but also very cool - it was a tiny little festival, a glorified weaving circle, offering workshops for $5, but it definitely counts as Festival Number 1 of 2010 for me. We didn’t venture to weave anything, but sitting in the cushions in the chai tent watching the women work was interesting enough. This is Nimbin, the cool, independent, alternative side, rather than the ratty dealers on the mainstreet and the backpackers who flock to the area to get high in relative legal safety. And there’s no way we’d ever have seen it if we hadn’t been Woofing (or, more precisely, if we hadn’t been WWOOFing with Satya).
Sunday was a designated day off for WWOOFers, according to Satya, but since we weren’t exactly overworked we helped unload some building supplies from her friend’s van - supplies to repalce the room on her bedroom, the main project for which we there, but which wouldn’t end up getting underway until Wednesday. Then we went on an exploratory walk (where we ran into several stocky black lizards known as ‘land mullets‘, which had just come out of hibernation), checking out the Tuntable hub and reading notices on the communal board which revealed some of the problems and debates happening in the community, one being that residents don’t own their own homes, only the materials they’re made of. Residents pay rates, which they can halve by foing work in the community, from sorting mail to train clearing; only ratepayers in the black can vote, at the monthly ‘tribal meetings’, and there is a voluntary board each year which holds it’s own meetings and oversees the running of the place, approve new residents etc. There are no political or religious requirements for being a member of Tuntable, but an alternative/greenie bent definitely helps.
Our first real work came four days after we arrived, with the painting of the concrete roofing sheets for Satya’s new roof. This took us the best part of a day and a half, with 5 sheets all needing two coats on both sides. Paint Paint Paint. Then the rain started - a downpour with clouds and thunder rolling into the valley and lighting flashing intermittently. Not great for roof-replacing and sure enough the builder cancelled, but the next day we still managed the not exactly easy task of wrestling the concrete sheets and roof struts up the steep, slippery slope from the shed to Satya’s bedroom. Then as a reward we all packed up a picnic and went down to the creek to sit on the rocks in the sunshine with out feet in the water. This is the life!
The day of the roof replacement was a long, hectic one, but we were hardly complaining since we'd barely worked the rest of the week! The builder came and we were at his disposal, dragging the concrete sheets about, passing them up to him (a tricky job) on the roof, banging in nails, and carrying/dragging wooden struts up the slippery slope. Nik and Satya both got up on the roof to help bang in sheets, but to be honest it looked kind of crowded and... well, I think it's obvious that I would have somehow managed to fall off, isn't it? It was all finished in one day, impressively - just in time for the rain to recommence with a vengeance the following day.
During our time with Satya we also hiked up into the forest on the slopes of Tuntable valley to the annual forest camp, where volunteers from the community help clear trails etc., in return for the rates-work levy. There were a few people actually camped up there, and after a leechy walk (for nik anyway, who collected one of the way up and a grand total of 3 on the way down!), we arrived in their camp to sit under their tarp-sheltered cooking area, drink tea, and check out the mobile sawmill and millers at work down one of the tracks. We had expected to help in some way, either by wielding machetes or helping drag logs about, but for some reason we didn't, and no one seemed to care too much! Satya also took us to the Murwillumbah Unity Festival, a more modern, music-orientated event than Nimbin's, but still small with only one outdoor stage and a makeshift dance tent inside a cattle shelter! It rained (as it should, at festivals, as every Brit knows) most of the day, but this didn't stop a lot of barefoot dancing in the mud (not us, I'm afraid, we left that to the ageing and not-so ageing hippier types) and wandering from chai tent to foodstall. It was unexpectedly fun - and we also got to experience the long-tressed western-tribal songstress Deya Dova in full performance mode. She headlined, and drew a mixed crowd of teeange guys (for obvious reasons), ageing hippies, and the unlabelled - all equally enthralled by her. It wasn't really my cup of tea, but an experience none the less!
the forestry camp
We left Satya's after ten days, dropping in on the Community Tribal Meeting she was attending on our way into Nimbin. That too was an experience - we could see how things could get done pretty slowly on the community! Then a quick cup of chai with Satya at the Nimbin Cafe, and we were back on the bus heading to Byron and beyond...
Nimbin. Tut
written by  LizIsHere on September 30, 2010 from Nimbin, Australia

Fairweather... or not.
Grafton, Australia
We left Nimbin, spent a few rather time-killing-esque days back in Byron (rain, rain, fish and chips on the beach, some beach-chilling when the sun finally deigned to appear), then caught the bus to the 'dump' of Grafton to meet our second-to-last host. She was not what we expected - a Scottish girl in her mid-twenties, her accent baffled us for a long while until i finally ventured to ask what her connected was with the hosts listed in the book. Turns out that this was Eleanor - 'the WWOOFer who never left'! She had come on to WWOOF (her first ever host) at Fairweather Farm with owner Hayden after spending a month or so travelling between Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney on a 3month backpacking trip to Oz. She got to Fairweather, met Hayden, they got together, she applied for her first year working visa, then her second... Then they got engaged, so she applied for the partnership visa, and since that first planned 3 month trip she's never really left (except for a 6 week trip back to Scotland to pick up clothes... and, presumably, explain herself to her parents - that had to be an interesting phonecall home!). As she herself put it: "It's funny how things work out."
the fairweather farm crew
Definitely. I bet she never saw herself living in a wood cabin with her future husband on his 450hectare property when she left home with her backpack a few years back! Fairweather Farm (not so fair-weather, judging by the near-constant rain we had during our ten-day visit!) was a pretty amazing place to visit, let alone live. Mostly forested, with creeks and wild bush, kangaroos and numerous birdlife, snakes (I know for a rather-to-close-for-comfort fact that there were snakes, read on...), and many oddly shaped and hued mushrooms, the farm's business, run almost single-handedly by Hayden and Eleanor, is growing veggies and herbs for sale to restaurants, box schemes, pubs etc. Bought by Hayden - previously a town-boy - about 7 years ago, he transformed the large paddock (very large!) where the three dams, large vege/herb gardens, bunkhouse, 'main cabin' and our private eco-cabin are now situated from nothing, and built up his business by simply learning by doing and probably learning from making mistakes, too. It was all wonderfully laid-back (apart from pickin' and packin' days before a big order had to be delivered, normally a Tuesday), none of the hard-nosed commercial drive I'd expected from a commercial property. Plus, the area was beautiful, and remote.
Fairweather is reached from the mainroad outside Nymboida via 7km of bumpy logging tracks through the state forest - four-wheel driving conditions handled admirably by Eleanor in her decidely 2WD car. It's a long way from, well, anywhere. You have to really, really want that bar of chocolate to simply 'nip to shops' when you live there.
our cabin
We were staying in a private cedar-wood eco cabin, quite secluded away from the other buildings, in between the three dams - we had to walk aross one of the dam walls to reach it, and at night the walk would be a deafening one as hundreds of frogs set up an astoundingly loud cacophony of different croaks from the waters edge. The one-room cabin with adjoining compost toilet had it's own kitchenette, so we could fix our own breakfasts to eat out on the verandah. It was absolutely the best place we've stayed on the trip - the views, the peace (well, apart from frogs and occasional visits from the farm dogs, red kelpies Brandy and Jasper).
There were 2 other WWOOFers there when we arrived, Austrians Patrick and Max, who were staying in the bunkhouse. The property also had 6 fairly new young pigs, some goats who kept themsleves to themselves, the dogs, and the odd couple - the goose and the Muscovy duck, Daphne, who had a wonky leg from being attacked by a goanna.
the beloved muscovy, daff
written by  LizIsHere on October 7, 2010 from Grafton, Australia

Snakes, too close for comfort!
Grafton, Australia
Our work varied over the day, starting generally around 9am. It involved a fair amount of weeding and mulching, but generally in different gardens or areas around the farm, which kept it fairly interesting. We also planted out herbs and tumeric, filling and planting seedtrays, feeding the pigs, and, joy of joys, heading out into the forest to collect cow poo for fertliser! We'd pile into the ute and bumpy along the steep and often muddy and rocky tracks up to an area Hayden had decided would be rich pickings. Then, a wheelbarrow to each pair and a shovel apiece, we'd shovel and shovel until both the back of the ute and trailer attached were full. Then, usually, someone would have joy of riding back to the farm in the back of the ute, balancing on the pile of poo (and often with a dog lying luxuriously in the softness next to them)! One day, after days of rains, we had an exciting poo-quest when the ute starting rolling backwards down the hill, out of control! Luckily Hayden managed to prevent us ending up embedded in a tree, but that particular route to the poo was ruled out after that.
In addition to poo missions and planting, there were also SNAKES. Many of them. Our first day of work was pretty hot and sunny, and Hayden discovered two giant red-bellied black snakes under a pile of tin at the end of one of the gardens. These he, erm, encouraged away, with the help of the whippersnipper... they writhed off across the grass, towards the dam wall we had to cross every day to our cabin! I ventured to ask whether snakes were active at night, but luckily got an answer in the negative. Hayden also had to kill a snake which wouldn't leave the garden, because it would pose too much of a risk to everyone working in there.
But our best/most exciting/terrifying (take your pick) snake encounter happened after work. Nik and I had just taken our generator-powered showers at the bunkhouse, and he'd left before me to head back to cabin. As I came down the slope towards the dam he was standing there on the dam wall, waving slightly at me. Not understanding I approached close, only to spot what he was transfixed by - two blacksnakes (the ones from earlier) coiled round each other in a hynoptic mating dance (we only found this out later after descrbing it to Hayden - we half-thought they were fighting). It was amazing but creepy... and I crept around them, giving them a very wide berth, to join Nik at a safe distance on the dam wall. We watched them for a while - then suddenly they uncoiled and shot with that surprising speed snakes have in a direction that looked worryingly like 'towards us'. I, being the level-headed and calm person that I am, promptly broke away to run across the dam wall to our cabin - only to be pulled up short by the sight of ANOTHER blacksnake, right in front of me - less than a metre away! Luckily for me it jerked in fear as I pulled up in horror, and shot off away from me, into the dam. I'd nearly stepped on a red-bellied blacksnake, and the other snakes hadn't even come towards us in the end! ...The adrenaline kept pumping for a while after that, I'll say.
And then Hayden, after being told excitedly by us that at least two of the snakes had gone for a swim (yes, they swim) in the dam, promptly stripped to his swimmers and dived in for his planned afternoon swim. "The ripples I cause'll scare them off" ... Aussies.
written by  LizIsHere on October 10, 2010 from Grafton, Australia

creek safaris, pancakes and dingos
Grafton, Australia
We had a great time at Fairweather - since Hayden and Eleanor were the closest in age to us of any of the WWOOF hosts, we had a fair few things in common, and they were fun to be around. And, aside from the interesting (even with the cow poo it was good to be out in the forest!) work and having loads of our own space, the food was amazing too, particularly the make-your-own-pizza and bonfire night we had up at their cabin - secluded away up a forested hill from the rest of the farm - one night (Hayden managing to start the fire despite the persistent rain!), and Hayden's pancakes, or as Nik called them after consuming approximately twelve at one sitting, Death By Pancakes.
There was also a lot of land to explore - 450 ha of it - though we only saw a teeny fraction of it. One day after work, with the sun finally peeking through the clouds, Nik and I took the took the dogs on a creek safari - less of walk, more of a clamber, crawl, bash and climb through, round, and over bushes, trees, and rocks alongside the creek in the forest below the main cabin. We also went on a more organised bush-bashing expedition to clear a walking track along the main, wider creek, armed with secatuers, small axes, and a tempermental chainsaw. The day was warm, the creek was full (and COLD when I scrambled across it from rock-to-rock - the only casualty to the crossing was my absolute backpackers waterbottle which I'd had since mission beach, carried away by the creek), the scenery was pretty, and we also got a chance to hack at any undergrowth blocking the path, which mostly followed cattle trails. We were even lucky enough to find a carpet python, curled up circularly in rest on a sunny, grassy patch beside the water. As our last piece of official WWOOF 'work' at Fairweather, it was pretty hard to beat!
Dingo puppy with farm dog, Brandy
But one of the best and most unexpected happenings at the farm occurred on our second to last night, when I, walking up to the main cabin in the darkness guided by torchlight, spotted a strange-looking dog playing with Brandy. It turned out to be a dingo puppy! A dingo! The same animal that they wouldn't even let us get out of the tourbus near on Fraser Island! One of Hayden's friends had rescued two of them from a hollow log when he and his kids had found their mum dead on a bushwalk, they'd been raised domesticated; though they retained all the dingo mannerisms (including no bark - the muscovy duck of the dog world!), they were as happy curled up on John's lap as out hunting bandicoots in the forest. It was amazing to see - particularly to watch Brandy play with the two puppies, while Jasper stood by, eyeing them suspiciously. These are the kind of things we'd never have got to see without going WWOOFing.
written by  LizIsHere on October 14, 2010 from Grafton, Australia

Hosts the last
Taree, Australia
From Grafton we moved on to Taree, another nowhere town on the backpacker map of the east cost, but the location from where our next host - based out in the countryside near the town of Wingham, got best pick us up. Our hosts, Mary and Roger, lived out in Mooral Creek valley on 100 acres, in their self-built home with some goats, extremely vocal geese, six beautiful white rare-breed chooks and some cattle. There was also sometimes a visiting platypus in their dam, but not on our visit, alas. They described their land as 'mostly for looking at', but they most definitely doers, not observers! They were keen to clear rampant weeds from their property, and regenerate the native forest which had once grown there, using only a few (self-) fenced paddocks for grazing their cattle. From South Africa originally, they had moved to Aus about twelve years ago and were now citizens, Mary working as a primary teacher, and Roger working as a machinery designer from home.
The setting of their house was stunning, about halfway up the slopes of the valley, their solar-biased house faced a breathtaking view of mountains and forest. They had a small veggie garden, which we would help extend, and orchard. They were fun people, very energetic and driven, quick with jokes and laughs, and with an extreme fondness for card games at morning tea and.... well, at any oppotunity! It was by no means a bad place to WWOOF, and as most of their WWOOFers are first timers, coming up from Sydney, they must think they've come to heaven with the beautiful scenery, tasty food, good company, comfortable, private accomodation and the free use of phone and internet! But it wasn't one of the most interesting places we've stayed - and some of the work was up there with the most exhaustingly physical we've done on this trip! During our time there the mattock and shovel became our close companions - for digging pipe-trenches, weeding the new no-dig (ha?!) garden, and digging a frankly gigantic (our fault, we took Mary's estimate of 75cm/75cm/75cm literally!) tree for a fruit tree, going through soil to shale to clay to rock in our quest for a good home for our fruit tree. I say 'our' - their orchard had a fruit tree planted by every one or each pair of their WWOOFers, and each was marked by a WWOOFer painted stone recording their names and the date of planting. "Our WWOOFer graveyard" Mary called it. We planted a quince, and Mary's promised us updates on it's progress.
Yes, we dug a big big hole
We also pulled out bagfuls and bagfuls of the dreaded fireweed, a rampant yellow-flowered weed, bashed thistles with (thankfully blunt) machetes, collected and shelled runner beans, and baked and baked and baked - South African 'crunchies', flapjacks, biscuits. It was a welcome relief to go inside to shell beans or bake when the sun, which seemed to have finally realised it's true role in life after a month's sabbatical, became too much.
shelling beans, oh yeah
Mary and Roger also took us out to the cinema one night, to watch Skin, a film about a black girl born to white parents in apartheid Africa. It was interesting to discuss it with people who lived there through that period, and the through the lifting of it, but I was full of more questions which could have possibly caused some tension, and since my journalistic hat wasn't on and I had to live with them for another week, I kept most of them to myself!
We had a nice time, but we were excited to leave, despite the peace of countryside, to get to Sydney... and to leave the mattock behind us!
written by  LizIsHere on October 24, 2010 from Taree, Australia

Syd-neeeeee
Sydney, Australia
We left Taree on the 7.30pm bus and arrived, bleary eyed and slightly disbelieving, in Sydney at past midnight. Luckily our first-night hostel was only a stumble across the street from the bus-station, and we manage to grab six hours sleep before packing up again and catching the tram across town to Glebe, the funky, studenty quarter where we'd spend the next four night (five for me!) at Glebe Village Backpackers.
Glebe does feel like a little village, full of little cafes, independent shops, bookshops, restaurants and pretty wrought-iron-balcony'd old houses. It's a breath of peace and greenery when we come back from the buzzing city centre.
guess where #2
guess where?
The past few days have been hot, and we've walked a lot! The first day's excursion - taking into the Opera House, harbour bridge, the historical Rocks area, Botanic Gardens and the grungy area of Kings Cross - was enough to wreck my feet in flipflops and cause me to pull a [something] in my foot, so I've spent the last three days limping about! Seeing the Opera House caused an actual 'ooh' intake of breath, and it's become more impressive through all the different ways we've seen it - up close, glimpsed through the bridge, from the Manly ferry. The bridge itself is imposing - i plan to walk across it tomorrow (foot permitting).
the harbour bridge
Blue Mountains
On our second day here we headed out on the 2 1/2 train ride to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains - so called because the haze of eucalyptus oil from the forests causes a unique blue haze in the air. It's... and this has been an overused word in this blog... but... stunning. Oh, and breathtaking. And... huge.. HUGE. From Echo Point the forests and cliffs spread out in a never-ending panorama, on and on to the horizon, with the rugged rock formation, The Three Sisters framing the view to the left. I could have gazed at it all day.
Instead, though, we opted to clamber down the 1000 stairs of the Giant Staircase and walk along Federation Pass, an approx. 2 hour forestwalk, which passed under the three sisters and ended up at the nauseatingly-named 'Scenic World', where we could catch the world's steepest railway (I was not keen on this, not at all) back up to the top of the cliffs.
The walk was cool, the air was fresh... the world's steepest railway was TERRIFYING. Steep means steep, and the fact that we were the only passengers heading back up didn't fill me with confidence. The words 'I am NEVER doing that again!' may have escaped my lips as we got off, slightly shakily, at the top.
world's steepest railway - action shot!
From the 'Scenic World' (urgh) complex, we caught the Explorer Bus onwards and walked to the Luera Cascades, a walk which passed viewpoints above the Bridal Falls - with white cockatoos soaring over the blue - and climbed up through the trees beside cliffs to the cascades themselves. The heavens opened just as we reached Leura town itself, so we headed back to Katoomba for epic hot chocolates and to catch the train back to Sydney.
On Thursday we checked out the supreme tackiness of Paddy's Markets, then Nik went to Bondi while I chilled out at the hostel nursing my foot, yay. In the evening we went down to Darling Harbour, a massively regenerated area of the city with expensive hotels and restaurants around the harbour, to watch the fireworks displays which have been put on every week this month (I'm not sure why, the info board didn't explain, but they were nice anyway - more the 'Ahhhh I'm watching fireworks over the harbour in Sydney' than for any other reason!)
Yesterday we caught the 'famous' ferry to Manly, a seaside town/suburb with a slightly English feel, pretty beaches and 'good surf', to give Nik his last dose of Aussie beach-time before flying back home today. The ferry ride was a definite highlight, with great views back to the city and Opera House/The Rocks.
It's famous.
It's a cool city, though I like Glebe and it's grungier neighbour, Newtown, far more than the city centre - it's a proper little neighbourhood, somewhere people actually live, and I'm so glad we stayed here rather than Kings Cross or nearer the centre. If I'd come to Sydney first and live/worked here I'd probably never have left to see all the other stuff!
Nik catches his flight back to Blighty today, so I'm back to travelling on my own for next month - starting with what I'm convinced will be a fun fun fun 12-hour bus ride to Melbourne tomorrow night!
Nik's last night in Sydney
written by  LizIsHere on October 30, 2010 from Sydney, Australia

A long bus ride, and a chilly city at the end of it...
Melbourne, Australia
Well, the bus ride was decidely NOT fun. In fact it was horrifyingly apt for a Halloween-night trip. Full to capacity, meaning elbows in your face as you attempted to sleep, a stinky toilet, an almost complete lack of sleep and, oh yeah, being trapped on a bus for 12 hours, did not a good trip make. Though seeing the dawn over the countryside outside Melbourne was quite nice - as was catching a glimpse of the skyline of the city on the misty, far horizon.
Arriving, I couldn't check into the hostel for 2 hours (woe-is-me!) which only added to my zombified state, but after dumping my bags and grabbing a shower, I struck out in to the city. Wearing a hoodie. That was the first change from Sydney - down the thermometer, from 24C + to about 17C. Brrrr. (Yes, and I'm sure everyone back in actually freezing cold Britain is sympathising with me here).
My optimistic aims didn't get me too far that first day - a ride on the free, old-style City Circle tram;a wander round Federation Square, a city focal point that's stuffed with museums, where I sat and watched an energetic Londoner doing comedy-performance art...and then it all went a bit downhill when I got lost somewhere around the Greek/Chinese Quarters, collapsed for a little while in the sudden warm sunshine on the Treasury Gardens' lawns and then gave up and headed back to the hostel to lie around on various sofas until a sensible time (8pm, ahem) rolled around for me to be able to go to bed.
written by  LizIsHere on November 1, 2010 from Melbourne, Australia

Melbourne and beyond!
Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne was fun but I'm now off to WWOOF, near Lilydale outside Melbourne for ten days. So no completed Melbourne blog yet because I've run out of time! Trams, art galleries, the riverside, film, performance art, and lots of people in Day-At-The-Races wear sort of sums it up!
Off to the farm... :)
written by  LizIsHere on November 4, 2010 from Melbourne, Australia

The final WWOOF
Lilydale, Australia
I spent 10 days WWOOFing for the Groateurs, on their 2 acre property in the Yarra Valley, about an hour on the train from Melbourne. And a packed 10 days it was! From the off I realised that despite being 'retired', Patty and Victor were not exactly made for doing nothing. As they are working towards self-sufficiency, with a large, thriving veggie garden, fruit trees, and 5 chihuahuas (farm chihuahuas, prone to getting covered in oil and dirt, who gave me an extremely loud, unfriendly welcome when I first arrived!), two Dexter cattle, two sheep, 12 ducks, 14 chooks and one grumpy miniature stallion (with serious 'short-man' syndrome) nestled away in the paddocks and on the dam behind their house, they couldn't help but be busy!
Every morning we would go out to feed the animals, release the ducks onto the dam and the chooks into the yard (standing well back as we opened the hut door to avoid being trampled by claws and webbed feet), and muck out the cattle and pony stable. There was also the task of carrying Dot, the blind (ex-battery) duck, from the hut to the dam, and back in again in the evening, as she couldn't quite make it there herself. Her mate Twinkletoes was also an ex-battery hen, which Victor and Patty had nursed back to help through water-therapy (holding her in the dam everyday to let her swim and strengthen her legs, weaked by being made overweight and kept in a tiny battery cage) - she still walked with a slight bow-leg.
Along with the usual planting, harvesting and spreading stable muck on the veggie beds (yum!), the other tasks I did couldn't really be classed as work - from gathering and helping to bottle kilograms and kilograms of rhubarb from the gardens; going with them to collect unsold bread from a Lilydale Bakers Delight to feed to their animals (the shops throw out as waste almost 100% of their stock everyday otherwise!); accompanying Victor to the nearby dairy to collect litres of fresh milk for cheesemaking, and taking part in cheese-making and art classes. Patty was an accomplished artist, and ran classes from home and in community centres in everything from cheese-making to painting to indian cookery, bottling and preserving. I got to take part in the camembert and ricotta-making class, though I didn't get to try the camembert as it takes about 5 months to mature! As Mormons (no, not the scary you-will-be-converted ones, thankfully! And they kept caffeinated tea and coffee in the house for visitors too, phew) they had Sundays off, but even then Patty was keen to get me to do a painting project, which while not my thing at all turned out to be fun. It was all quite full-on, and although once or twice I would have appreciated a little time to myself, they were really open and generous people; I learnt so much and know that I can always email them with any questions about self-sufficiency, about which they were intense and enthusiastic mines of information.
After those ten days, armed with recipes from Patty and having donated some of my trashed clothes to them for rags and mulching material, I returned to Melbourne for one night before flying to Alice Springs for my red centre tour.
written by  LizIsHere on November 14, 2010 from Lilydale, Australia

The Red Centre - it's hot
Uluru (Ayers Rock), Australia
I flew to Alice Springs on the 16th, to spend one night in the town before heading off on my three-day camping tour of the Red Centre on the 17th. Expecting hot weather, I donned shorts and t-shirt for flight. As we landed I peered outside, eager to see baking earth and blazing sun. Instead I saw... rain. And that was what I saw for that entire day and the night, pounding, monsoon-style rain, hammering on the roof of the hostel, splashing into the swimming pool, filling the near-constantly dry Todd River-bed, forcing the desert to spring out rare green foliage. Luckily when I awoke at the bright and painfully early time of 5am the next day, it had miraculously stopped, and my fears that Uluru would be obscured by cloud faded away.
We set off at the 6am in our Mulgas Tour minibus, with our guide G-J, a young, fun guy with on his last tour with Mulgas. On the way to the Rock - our first stop of the tour - we picked up seven of his mates from Uluru airport, who'd come for Brisbane for his last tour. The guys were all just finished with uni - rowdy, loud and fun, and injected a huge amount of entertainment into the long bus journeys we undertook over the next few days - although we probably could have done without their gratutious farting on the bus...
Our first day, helped by G-J's extensive Ipod selection, we drove for hours... and hours.... and hours... Through a desert of red dirt covered with pale-green scrub, stretching to the endless horizon and punctuated with burnt-orange and ochre rocky outcrops. The sky seemed endless too - genuine Big Sky. And by the time we reached a rest stop at 1 million-acres-plus Curtain Springs Cattle Station and Roadhouse at around 9am, the temperature had risen to decidedly warm. A hot wind blew across the expanse of red-dirt forecourt as a solitary emu stalked around the four petrol pumps.
After picking up our swags - a sort of hardcore sleeping bag with a mattress inside, which the old bushmen in Australia carried and slept in on their tramps in the outback, and which we would sleep in out under the stars for the next two nights - we drove onwards, past Mount Connor, or 'Fooluru' as it's also known for it's slight resemblance to the Rock when spotted in the distance by eager tourist, to Uluru-Kate Tjuta National Park.
Many Australians had told me that no matter how many pictures you see of Uluru, it won't prepare you for seeing the real thing, rearing up in a solitary mass of rock in the distance, and it was true. It looked both absolutely like the pictures and nothing like them - it seemed, like the Opera House, almost like a movie-scene background, until we got closer and could make out it's true shape - far craggier and with more variation in it's rock formations, shades and texture than the postcards show. It's The Rock. And it took our breath away, the sheer natural mass of it, even without our being able to truly grasp it's significance to the Aboriginal people of the area, to whom it is where their spirit ancestors reside and an extremely sacred place. Which is why they keep telling everyone not to climb on it, naturally enough.
The climb was shut the day we arrived, anyway (it's only open about 50 days of the year, on average), and our small group set off on the base walk, a 10 km walk around the base of rock, taking in some of the spectacular formations in it - wave caves, arched caves, soaring walls of red-orange rock, and even water holes nestled in giant crevices, where it felt as if we could almost walk inside the rock itself. It was a hot day, and the walk had no shade, so we took it slow, meandering along, gazing upward and around, refilling waterbottles whenever possible and sheltering under hats (mine a rather nifty cowboy number borrowed from the hostel)... apparently it's pretty horrible to do in the middle of summer, in 40C heat.. who'd have though it?
From the base walk we drove to Ayers Rock resort, and our campsite - a large fenced-off square of red dirt on which to unroll our swags, with just enough for a dip in the pool before we headed back to a viewpoint to eat dinner and watch the sunset on Uluru. It was just slightly surreal to eat spaghetti while watching the rock change colours from bright orange to dark red to a greyish purple as the sun settled under the horizon...
written by  LizIsHere on November 20, 2010 from Uluru (Ayers Rock), Australia

weird sculpture

Mother and baby koalas in a eucalyptus tree on Magnetic Island

cow

Mouser! Gorgeous cat :)

juicing oranges

the river

outdoor shower

chair-cat

Fergus

yes!

hard at work...

a kookaburra

Murray Falls

the lagoon

home!

birthday cake

Mission Beach

Cape Tribulation Beach

mini-croc

Cassowary Warning Sign, Daintree

big croc!

feeding pademelons

'roo

feeding the 'roo

hangi!

Dunedin - view from my hostelroom window!!!

Elm Wildlife Tour

Elm Wildlife Tour cuuuute awwwwwww etc.

Oamaru

Aoraki Mount Cook

Church of the Good Shepherd

Wellington

Art Deco building in Napier

does what it says on the tin

Huka Falls

Huka falls / river

Wai-o-Tapu Thermal Wonderland

Champagne Pool, Wai-o-Tapu Thermal Wonderland

Travis demonstrating his gourmet dinner

the myriad dangers of getting up close 'n personal with a glacier

speaks for itself

Wanaka

WAnaka

The Remarkables, Queenstown

on top of Mount Iron (you need iron legs to climb it...)

Queenstown from the top of the gondola

Queenstown

Queenstown beach

Chinese Settlement, Arrowtown

kea warning

on the road to Milford Sound

Milford Sound