We celebrated our first wedding anniversary in style at Coober Pedy; living inside an old opal mine shaft. No, we haven’t resorted to squatting just yet, this is how the residents here survived the intense heat by living underground where it remains relatively cool. This place is famous for producing 70% of the world’s opals and is a free for all, so anyone can come and have a go at mining. The result is a very multicultural society with over 30 nationalities, but the downside is that as far as the eye can see there are mounds of dirt where everyone has tried their luck. We visited a great Serbian underground church, but nothing was a patch on our lovely little pad that we splashed out on for our anniversary treat. We had a great time fossicking in the day, braving the biblical plagues of flies that have covered most of the outback we’d seen so far. At night we cooked our steaks on a roaring log fire under an amazing blanket of stars and toasted surviving our first year in tact!
The drive to Uluru was a killer and we felt quite insignificant arriving at the camp site being the only little car in a mass of 4×4 trucks. We were anticipating great things from the “resort” we’d seen advertised but it was basic beyond belief, we couldn’t even boil water for our emergency pot noodles. Uluru at sunset was beautiful despite some clouds and the following day, along with our entourage of flies we explored its different faces. Unlike some ignorant prats we did not climb the rock in respect of Aboriginal culture. Leaving Uluru we made a brief stop at the Olgas, but after Mark had to spit out several flies we headed back to the car for the drive to Kings Canyon. He was thankful he didn’t swallow the fly as swallowing a massive Aussie spider to go after it wasn’t a very inviting prospect.
We got up at the crack of dawn, when the flies and temperature we more bearable, to take a walk through King’s Canyon. The scenery was spectacular with deep gorges, pancake rocks, sheer cliff edges and amazing views of the surrounding desert. Knackered and very sweaty we arrived back at the car and continued on through to outback heading for Alice Springs.
Arriving back in Melbourne felt a bit like coming home after our brief spell living here earlier in the year. Tan and Ben kindly put us up for the night and helped us start some pre-anniversary celebrations with a bottle of bubbly and a small shrine to our marriage. They also kindly bought the quintessential Aussie gift of his and hers stubby holders. The perfect welcome back to Australia!
Bleary eyed and still dark outside, we made our way to Southern Cross station to board ‘The Overland’ train to Adelaide. Taking just over 10 hours it was a good opportunity to catch up on the sleep we missed out on from the previous night. The scenery was typical of south Australia with gumtrees, vineyards and the occasional kangaroo. However, we were somewhat surprised to see a herd of giraffes on the horizon until the conductor explained we were passing by a huge safari park. Getting off in Adelaide we discovered that due to the Easter holidays everything would be closed for Good Friday, so we spent a pretty quiet day exploring the city and making plans for our trip up north.
With a giant shopping list and a swanky new hire car we set off on the first leg of ‘The Explorer Highway’; an epic trans-Australian drive from Adelaide to Darwin. We’d planned to camp as much as possible en-route to save some cash and got some great bargains on our gear. The first stop at Port Augusta was a mere stones throw from Adelaide but it gave us a good chance to perfect our erection technique before we got into the big bad outback. Even at this point the vegetation was starting to thin and the temperatures rise. Thank God for air-con!
The drive from Milford Sound in the far south west to Kaikoura in the north east winds entirely across the island is a 14 hour epic. To break things up a bit we spent a night in the small town Twizel (fo shizzle bizzle!), the residents pronounce it Twy-zel but we didn’t let that limit our Snoop Dogg impressions. As well as having a great name, Twizel is also only a stones through from Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain. Unlike the high peaks we’ve seen in the Himalayas and the Alps, Mount Cook is surrounded by a lot of flat land and lakes so you can get some great views without much effort (something we were both pleased to hear). We drove to the basecamp and walked to a glacial lake just at the bottom before burning on towards Kaikoura, for our much anticipated seal swim.
Decked out in super-thick, hooded wet suits we could barely breath due to the heat, let alone hike 20 mins to the seal colony. Getting in the icy cold water felt amazing for about half a second and then we were wishing our suits were twice as thick. With snorkeling gear and fins we swam out to were the seals were basking on the rocks and suddenly they were swimming around us, upside down, doing twists and loops. Occasionally they would swim really close to our faces and stare at us with their massive black eyes. After the initial amazement we started chasing them around until they led us too far out to sea to continue. Our guide found some Paua and cooked it up for us to try later that day. The locals call it black gold because it’s so expensive per kilo. We thought it tasted a bit too much like fishy mushroom to get overly excited by it.
After over 5100kms on the road, almost as far as London to New York, we finally arrived in Christchurch, our last destination in New Zealand. Noted as being more like England than England itself it was good to get a taste of home. With punting on the Avon river, lots of old buildings and parks we spent a day mouching around getting ready for our trip back to Oz for the outback adventure. When heavy rain on the window woke us up we’d decided that Christchurch was a little too much like home and felt a bit better about leaving such a great country.
Queenstown is well renowned in New Zealand for its plethora of adventures for adrenaline junkies. On our way there we made a toilet pit-stop at the site of the first commercial bungy jump operator, A.J.Hackett. Seeing how terrified their punters look we probably could have picked a better place to stop for the loo. We took a walk onto the brigde and peered over but a lack of cash and guts prevented us from taking the plunge ourselves. After what seemed a mammoth drive we finally arrived in Queenstown only to immediately leave. In contrast to the quiet, empty spaces we’d seen everywhere else in New Zealand, Queenstown was totally congested and too much for Helen to bear (must be her age!). So off we went to nearby village of Arrowtown; originally a gold mining settlement. This brought us straight back to the New Zealand we’d become accustomed too. Autumn colours had just arrived so we made the most of the scenary, tramping it up big time. Check out the super-bumpkin campervan we spotted! Perhaps we’ll get one of those for our second honeymoon.
Just a bit to the west of Arrowtown, but another big drive due to some ill-placed mountains are glacier carved fjords of Milford Sound. We took the obligatory cruise and it certainly didn’t disappoint as you can see from the snaps. There is so much beautiful scenery here we’re not sure how Mount Judd will compare when we’re back home.
We reluctantly tore ourselves away from Nelson lakes to travel onto the west coast, home of the pancake rocks! The rocks are eroded by the elements leaving them looking kind of like a stack of pancakes, or so the locals say. Though impressive we got more excited seeing our first live possum (we’ve countless dead on the road). They’re considered vermin here so we got some odd looks from an Aussie family when we knelt down to take a photo.
If you look closely at the first photograph below you might just make out some seals hiding at the bottom. There was quite a large colony near to ‘possum’ rocks and it was cool to watch them in the wild, no ball balancing tricks here.
With a long drive ahead of us to Queenstown we paid a visit to Franz Josef and Fox glaciers on the way. We didn’t see any polar bears at Fox glacier so presume they don’t make the mints here. We did see two enormous glaciers however that are still advancing in size, pretty rare these days. To appreciate their vastness fully companies offered helicopter rides along the glaciers. Our budget however only stretched to the free walking tour, ending around 100 metres from the face. Not that we’d want to venture too nearer, two Aussies were killed by falling ice last month trying to take close-up pictures!
After almost a fortnight of sitting in the car we decided it was time to get some exercise and have a stab at part of the Abel Tasman tramp. Please put all thoughts of Bumfights aside, a tramp in New Zealand is long hike, usually over a few days. By taking a one-way speedboat out along the track we gave ourselves no choice but to walk all the way back to lodge. Not that we needed any encouragement to keep going, the scenery was awesome. With virtually no other trampers in sight it felt like we had the place to ourselves as we explored deserted beaches. With aching feet we finished the 18km stretch and continued south to the Nelson lakes for some serious R&R. While a small ski resort in the winter for the rest of the year this place is about as peaceful as it gets. The scenery was so beautiful we even put back on our walking shoes for a quick stroll despite the previous day’s efforts. Neither of us wanted to leave, but after only just beginning our south island trip the draw back to the road was stronger.
We arrived in New Zealand’s capital city to find it had a far more bohemian feel than Auckland. With little planned to do we wandered around the streets getting to know the place when we bumped into Jermaine from the amazing Flight of the Conchords. After seeing Kenny at a shop in Melbourne we have decided it must be our fate to meet all local celebrities on our trip, although as before we were too cool/scared to introduce ourselves so no pictures I’m afraid.
Wellington is a LOTR nerd’s paradise; even my hairdresser was giving me tips on where to go to see locations used in the films. Instead of following in the footsteps of young Frodo we contended ourselves with a visit to the Weta Workshop where all of the film’s special effects were created. At least here we posed with a few local celebrities and got to see some great props from Peter Jackson’s archive of films, all the way back to the legendary Bad Taste. A visit to the great Te Papa (New Zealand’s natural history museum) finished off our stay and our time in the North island. The Interislander ferry smoothly sailed us across the Tasman sea and over to Picton in the south. The scenery between the two islands was amazing as were the pods of dolphins that swam along with us from time to time.
