Australia

so im trying to figure out this travel map thing, bear with me as I do. We got all out errands done today for Thailand, just one day left its crazy

Hello everyone. I am so terribly sorry to be so long in updates I can see from all of my homes I have been irritatingly slow on this for the last little while. It embarrases me to say that I actually have New Zealand pictures that I still need to put up on here and that is pretty bad (luckily for you they will be up on this one but all in good time, no peaking ) Tom and I have made it to Perth and are basking in the last days (that we'll have) of the beautiful Australian summer. It'll be back to the Northern Hemisphere and winter (well, for 3 weeks, and as much as Thailand can have a winter). As you may have seen there's been some bombings in Bangkok over New Years and although we have to fly through the capital we won't be in the city for very long and the rest of the country is pretty safe we think.
Ok, so what have I been doing this last month while I've been irrisponsibly out of contact and selfishly slow on updating? To tell the truth, until recently, not a whole lot which is largly the reason for the slow updates. We were in Sydney over the holidays for quite some time in a little cabin and I felt like i was turning from a traveller (that we so clearly were in the cars up the east coast) into a more perminent resident of the area. It was something that was fun for a little bit but started to drag on you as I felt like I was living here instead of travelling here. In short not a whole lot was happening that differed from each day so there wasn't a whole lot to update on the blog, mostly we sat around all day and read or played games and then partied a little in the cabin. But since I've been so bad about it I need to stop there for a second and take you back a month or so to my last days in New Zealand instead, which I think you'll agree produced much more interesting pictures that the christmas cabin did
After we drove up from milford Sound (which would be the last pictures that you've seen) we headed to Queenstown and spen the day driving three Deer Park which is a huge area of land above Queenstown. They have all these crazy animals up there like Tibetan Yaks and Bison that you could almost walk up too and touch. The Bison were behind a fence but the yaks lay all over the roads and nothing but there size and massive horns were keeping you away from them.


There were cool friendly goats all over the place, they were my favorite.
Up further you get to a bit of a crest where they did several scenes in the LOTR movies, mostly in Rohan.

I don't know if you remember but there is a bit in the movie when they fight the wargs on these rocks and these are these rocks.

It dawned on me around this time that Peter Jackson didn't choose his sets and scenery randomly and it started to become no surprise really that the spots he chose to film at are the most strickingly beautiful spots in New Zealand. This is the same spot but looking back out over the city and the lake it rests on.


I told you about the American guy we picked up hitchiking who ended up staying with us for the last week or so. Here, finally, is a picture of him

Before we left the Queenstown area we went Jet Boating on the Shot Over river which was scary, they get really close to the walls and do 360 turns through the tight canyons. its pretty nuts

After that though we had to start getting to Christchurch pretty quickly cause I had to fly back to Auckland for my passport, on the way though we stopped at 2 really cool places (both LOTR spots)

This is the bit of river that they row boats through with those massive statues of kings along the canyons, I don't remember what there called, dave knew and told me but I don't remember now.
The second best spot in New Zealand (competing closely cause of the weather as well) was the secluded valley that they placed Edoras the Rohan main city thing. The valley was way out of thy way but so beautiful, you drove to it along a river and the walls of the valley got steeper and steeper untill you were wrapped in this massive bowl of green and brown and white (from the snow). In the center of the vally is the rocky hill that the set was on and its amazing.



It was hard to capture the scale of things for these pictures (not for the first time, but untill you go you'll just have to believe that the pictures don't do anything compared to the actual places, but then you all know about this sort of thing.
Now jump with me to Sydney, actually Wolongong (60 km to the south) for christmas

sausage and mash for christmas dinner and a tree decorated mostly with Tompons that the girls tried to pass off as icicles.

cozy huh? Unfortunatly the firework pictures turned out pretty aweful, the view you had on the TV is undoubtly much much better but here are my 2 best shots


it was enough to be there I think.
Sadly enough it wasn't much later than this that Tom sold his van and we split from the girls to head to Melbourne on the plane after staying in the Airport (I think I've told you this stuff already) but

here is the last taken picture of us and the van... so sad
Molbourne was a bit dissapointing, they say that if you love Sydney you hate Melbourne and vice a versa but I think mostly the uncomfortable stay was due to the ridiculously hot weather. You could't sleep it was so hot you had to wake up every hour or so and have a shower only to crawl back in your wet with swet bed, not fun. The drive out of Melbourne south on the Great Ocean Road was, however, really really cool.

The apostles are a famouse rock formation off the coast as well as the caves and just generally dramatic coastline.


On the other side of the Great Ocean road it was equally as pretty at Belinda's and her parents spots in Adelaide. She came through big time letting Tom and I shack up in her Unit just south of Adelaide but even better taking us for a couple nights out to her parents farm house in Ashbourne (about 30 minutes from the city)

The view from the house was unbelievable

and teh surounding land was so different and cool. The water is scarce there and the gum trees grow in a haphazard random way making the area look spookily beautiful


They really treated us like part of the family, I think that their hospitality and tours of the area is the reason that Adelaide is my favorite spot so far. Unfortunatly we wern't able to find the game on but I got live updates from dad on the phone, sounds like it was quite a beating. My favorite bit of the Denver family was this lil thing

I miss my puppy

Before we left to do the winery tours Belinda's dad took us to the cattle markets that he used to frequent when he owned his much bigger farm. I had mixed feelings about it all, its rare these days that you get a close look at the beggingings of the food production industry and I couldn't help but feel a bit bad for the cows, its a crazy thing out modern world where were so dissociated from the means of our food production.

The farm they used to own was on an Island down close to the river that runs South of Adelaide. Thier old friends on the island have taken up wine making and before we went to d'Arenberg they took us to this small little spot to check out a much smaller production process.

She calls herself the crazy wine lady and she certainly was, making Angus Wines a small but funkily cool spot and I thought the wines were pretty nice.

really a much smaller enterprise when compared to d'Arenberg where we went next.

Clair, our guide, was awesome and so excited and enthusiastic about the wine and winemaking at d'Arenberg that she seemed almost giddy and giggley. We got to learn all the great stories behind the funky names of the d'Arenberg wines.

These are 60+ year old Sharaz vines that they use to make their Dead Arm Sharaz which I though was awesome. They call it Dead Arm cause these vines have been stricken with a virus that infects one of the "arms" of the vines making it branch in only one direction. Its a good thing cause it means that all the nutrients are still being produced but directed to only half of the crop hence the increadably heavey and intence flavor that these grapes give to the wine they become.

These are just big short term storage tanks for some of the White wines but I thought they were cool and the view from the top was great.
Another cool story is the LAzy Lizard one. Apparently the strung up vines are a favorite sun basking spot for the Australian Bearded dragon and often rimes in the harvesting process they end up in the extractors and stuff, this one

this one is gentle enough that the lizards can scamper out and don't add any of their flavor to the famouse wines
After a great week in Adelaide we headed west accross the continent. Its pretty cool having drivin accross a continent and I can tell you there really is nothing in the middle of this one. For miles and miles there's nothing taller than a 5 ft tree or bush and you might pass a car every hour or so. This is one of those spots that traslated to poorly on the camera, the scale is just to hard to translate.

but it was a fun experience, we're in Perth now and hanging with one of Tom's mates from back home and getting ready to pregress onto a new country Thaliand. We're bakc in hostles, which I'm not crazy about. After so long in your own space and stuff a hostle is no good plus they really are not that cheap when you think of the scale of this trip. Anyway, I'm updated and absolutly nakered, I'm dreading this internet bill but hey you know what? you guys are worth it and I promise I won't let it go this long again. Hope everything is going good! Talk to you soon

Well Tom and I have made it to Adalaide via the great Ocean road from Melbourne. I've got some good pictures from the trip but you;ll have to wait just a touch longer as I've yet to find a compatable computer. We're staying with Belinda, and Australian that I met in Scotland and traveled with in Wales and it great. She's got a great little apartment just outside the city that she's trusted us with a key to. Its crazy the travelling thing, I feel like I know her quite well but if you think about it I've really only spent about 15 days in total with her ever. I love the travelling community so far. Friendships are made so fast and stick even across oceans and continents. We're all gonna watch the big game tomorrow, its at noon here on our 9th. Perhaps we'll see a surgence of college football followers after I get the whole pub into the game . Go gators

alright, so sorry that the posts have been so piss poor and sparatic over the holidays. Not only was the lack of internet access a big issue, it was sort of the same stuff over and over again and nothing really new happened to update. Christmas was spent at a camp site cabin in wologong, south of sydney and we pretty much stayed there the entire time just hanging out with eachother at the cabin and the camp site facilities the whole time, didn't really take any pictures even (although I'm starting to regret that more now that the whole group is split up.) For New years we moved a bit close to Sydney but still south of it in Rockdale which was close enough to train into the city for days and evenings. That was much more fun although the late night bus rides and public transportation (especially around New Years) got a bit interesting. You have no idea how smelly an underground train can get with thousands of drunks on it for 5 or so hours (perhaps some of you do). I actaully had a prety early New Years (compared to the rest of the city) although I woke up around 7 to claim us a spot for the fireworks show so... We ended up running into the girls agian before we left Syndey yesterday, turns out there's no work in Hunter Valley so they stuck around still looking and got to see "Muff" one last time before Tom sold it for $ 2800 which is awesome. He bought it for 2000 so its pretty nice I think. The day before I left Sydney I spent the day with one of my old camp counsilors from Arrowhead and he took me to the Sydney Olympic Whitewater Stadium out in Perinth (about an hour west of the city). I got to use one of his boats to paddle the short class three man made rapids and managed to get my roll down before heading in. Even so I wasn't quite up to par with the olympic course and spent most of the morning swimming the course trying not to drown as I dragged the boat to shore. IT amazing what they can get the water to do without the rocks and stuff. They pump it up from this massive lake that flows down around in a U shape so that you end up about where you started (just bellow it obvisouly) then you paddle onto this converbelt ramp thing that brings you up to the top again. If your not me you can run it about 4 tims in an hour without ever getting out of you boat, I managed to to complete it once and got out of my boat about 5 times. In the afternoon Jex got us an inflatable 2 man raft which turned out to be just as easy to flip but easier to get back into which is half the fun. He is quite a regular there (a damn good paddler) and knows the staff well so all the saftry precaustions and stuff that you would normally have to follow we didn't and we would chase the boat upstream into class 3 wholes (which, suprisingly enough, can still hold you down pretty good manmade or not.) Anway it is usually about 60 bucks and hour not including renting boats and stuff and Jex got me in for 25 for the day so it was soo cool. ON the way back to Rockdale he took me to the rest of the Sydney Olympic park which was really cool too. The aquatic facility was amazing.
Tom and I are in Melbourne now, flew here this morning on the 6 am flight after spending the night in the international terminal in Sydney. That makes the 4th Airport I've slept in on this trip and it was definatly the worst. (good ones are John Lennon international in Liverpool and Auckland International, you know, just in case you need the info at some point) The Greyhound busses which we looked into at first were about 80-90 bucks and wern't gonna leave Sydney till Sunday and the train was about 120 and the same for the dates. We got the flight online for 79 bucks and got a free night of accomodation with it, its good to know you got the best deal. We rented a car for the drive form here to Adalaid where we're staying with another mate from Scotland and seeing some vinyards and wineries. From adelaid we are relocating a camper van to Perth over a course of 5 days which puts us there on the 18th. Fly out to Bangkok on the 21st (hopefully) so we get to spend a couple days there. As I'm sure you heard there were some bombings in bangkok on New Years Eve that killed several tourists so I can tell you at least one person that is at least a bit timid about that next destination, but we're checking with the Embassies and stuff to make sure that its still ok to ga and plan on getting out of the capital pretty quickly. Sorry no pictures yet but soon we'll be drving the great Ovean road which is supposed to be some of the most beautiful coastlines in australia, hopefully New Zealand won't have ruined it for me, or for you. We may ahve gotten a bit picture spoiled

It was a sad day today, except for Tom and I the group has broken up. Nick is off to New Zealand with a friend from Airlie beach and this was out actual goodbye as I won't see him till we're both back in the states. Brittany and Kelly headed North to Hunter Valley to try their hands again at some more fruit picking, this time grapes. Hunter Valley is pretty famous for its wine but not as famous as is South Australia and the Adelaid region which is where we are heading after Melbourne. We aren't sure how we're gonna get to Melbourne yet but exploring the options, we want to leave tonight if possible. As soon as I get to Melbourne I'll have a much better update.