Of course we were distraught to give up the fabulous comfort of our mini campervan but Auckland was calling us for the first leg of our North Island adventure. As in Sydney we had the massive benefit of knowing some locals namely my good friend from school Andrew, his lovely wife Gina and a young lady we were to meet for the first time - Sadie, aged 2. Once Gina had fought her way through rush hour traffic to pick us up and Andrew returned from work we started to...

If you remember from last time, we were driving around the South Island like madmen in a tiny camper whilst seeing how beardy Antony could get before flying to Auckland. Our daily routine went something like this: get up at 8am, put the bed away and eat some breakfast, drive until lunchtime, look at something pretty as we are eating a sandwich, drive another four hours to where we were going to park for the night, cram in a walk or some activity, make dinner a...

So our last night in Oz, we dropped in on Steve and Cath to abuse their hospitality for a final time and try to make them drink beer on a school night.The next morning our hosts dropped us off and we were on our way to Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island to meet our new traveling companion, a 20 foot campervan that was going to be our transport, bed, kitchen, shower and toilet for the next ten days. First impressions were not good as it looked tiny with ju...

I have stopped wearing make-up, mostly due to the fact that my foundation is now several shades lighter than my now tanned face.I have also stopped blow-drying my hair since the 100 degree weather and 100% humidity means that no matter what I try to do with it, my hair looks like an 80's perm.This, in addition to the fact that I now wear my bathing suit more often than underwear, is starting to make me think that I am letting myself go. But this is nothing in ...

The incredible journey was almost complete, we had completed 4,500km up Australia's east coast and a tiny 700km lay between us and Cairns our final destination. Unfortunately we had been swayed by all the fellow travelers who swore that the outback was fantastic so the direct route wasn't for us and we decided to swing inland by a couple of hundred km to see what it was all about. Of course inland had been mostly flooded for the last couple of weeks and could onl...