On The Road Again

Photos:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=244463&id=510568119&l=36cea28231

Next stop on our grand adventure was a trip to visit friends Chris and Charlie (and their adorable groodle puppy Georgie) in Melbourne. After an excellent but hectic couple of weeks at home, it was lucky we had the nice long 26 hour journey to Australia to use to catch up on lost sleep. It was less lucky that I have a hard time sleeping on planes and so arrived in Australia 26 hours after we set off, met Chris at the airport, managed to stay awake long enough to drink a cup of tea before passing out for the next several hours. Somewhere amongst the confusion of times and dates we were struggling to get our bodyclocks used to it was Rich's birthday when we woke up, so Chris and Charlie took us out to the Northcote Social Club to celebrate. I took the opportunity to sample the Parma - Melbourne's version of the ubiquitous Parmo. Needless to say the Parmo reigns supreme...

For the next few days we were treated to a trip down the Great Ocean Road courtesy of our hosts extraordinnaire. We saw the sights of Melbourne (including a trip up the extremely tall Eureka Tower), dragged ourselves out of bed in the middle of the night to watch the first England game of the World Cup (and to make sure our body clocks were completely bamboozled), visited the building site of Chris and Charlie's palatial new home, ate and drank like royalty and generally had an excellent time. After a few days of being looked after we were awake enough to be let out alone, so we bade farewell to Melbourne with a promise to return on our way home to help christen the new house.

Our destination was New Zealand, which was to be our home for the next 5 months. If all went to plan we hoped to buy a car, do some sightseeing, wwoof at a few of the more interesting farms we had found and earn some much needed cash working in Wellington. After just a couple of days we'd achieved the first item on the list, becoming the proud owners of a beautiful 1997 Mitsubishi Legnum with unnerving ease at one of the Auckland car markets where you can buy a car in much the same way as you'd buy a bag of carrots at a regular market. We named him Old Red (as he is a little old and very red), and after allaying our initial concerns about the functionality of the petrol gauge he was soon a trusty steed and part of the family.