Bay of Islands, December 15-20

We had been looking forward to this part of our trip since the very beginning. Many people had told us how great it was, so we had some high expectations. We stayed in one of the many hostels, or as they say here, to assault my basic grammar, “a backpackers”, in the middle of the town of Paihia. The Pepper Tree backpackers had a massive, well equipped and always-busy kitchen and two lounges, one of which was next to our room. This gave Emma and Lara somewhere to play, and it was also a nice place for to work on the blog and have adult talks instead of just going to bed at 9pm. The hostel’s other big attraction was free use of their bikes and sea kayaks. Sea kayaking was another of our unrealistic dreams of New Zealand- paddling happily between icebergs and groups of whales, each with a child on our lap perhaps? Of course, in reality Dorka and I ended up kayaking separately, while the other one babysat, but it was still nice to get out and about, and paddling between the many islands was lots of fun.

Since before this trip, we had been looking forward to Emma swimming with Dolphins, but it turned out to be prohibited for little ones, so instead we took a tour boat to just look at them. This was great. We got right up next to a pod of dolphins three times, and were able to look right down at them from a few metres away. These were bottlenose dolphins, about 2m long and very beautiful. They were also completely wild. The captain was quite an expert, and explained that they were never fed by people, the boats could only approach if the dolphins were not feeding, and that no more than 3 boats at a time could “park” next to them. It was all very regulated. Of course they could swim away at any time, so all the time they were with us, they were probably as curious about us, as we were about them. The trip also included the famous “hole in the rock”, an island with a massive hole right though the middle of it. But the journey there was so bumpy that everyone had trouble concentrating on this marvelous sight.

On a wet and windy Thursday we walked over to the Waitangi treaty grounds. These were pretty well presented, but still not too much fun. There was quite a good Maori singing show though. We forgot to tell Emma what to expect so she was a bit alarmed by all the men shouting the Haka challenge. In case you’ve never seen it, this is warrior challenge where the Maori scream scary words and make strange faces to scare off their enemies. Emma could do quite a good impression of this, complete with wide, rolling eyes and a poked-out tounge. You can see a lot of tounges and wild faces in the carvings too, which were all over the Maori Wakas (war canoes) and the maraes (meeting houses).

On our final morning in Paihia, we decided to have a go at Parasailing, where brave souls dangle from a parachute, attached by a strong cable to a motor boat, which pulls you along. We kept Lara down in the boat of course, but Emma and Dorka went up with the parachute to a height of 900ft or nearly 300 metres. That is extremely high. Emma had a wonderful time, though Dorka was so worried about Emma that she could hardly enjoy it. I also went up, and let me tell you, the view is great! It does feel awfully exposed at first, with absolutely nothing beneath your feet, but you soon get the hang of it!

Now we turned and began our long route south. This would eventually take us onto the South Island and down across it until almost the southern tip of the country. On our first day though we went a little too far perhaps. We took a little detour to view some Kauri trees, which are hard to find south of this region. These are famous for their size and age. Though not as large as a giant redwood, they are still massive trees. The ones we saw were only 300 years old, but they were easily 3 metres in diameter and I would guess 50 metres tall, though actually we couldn’t see the tops clearly in the dense jungle. They towered straight up for about 30 metres before the first branches, which is what made them so popular for ships beams and masts when the first Europeans came. Unfortunately, this led to a huge logging industry that almost drove these magnificent trees to extinction.

Back on the road, we pushed on all the way to the Goat Ísland Marine Reserve. This is an island just a few metres off shore famous for the sea life around it. (Interestingly, the name come from the fact that goats were released onto the island to breed and multiply, to make a source of food for sailors who might be shipwrecked there. How’s that for forward thinking?) The snorkelling itself was unfortunately not very good. There was so much plankton in the water, that it was like swimming in swirling soup. Sometimes there were clear bits and I found myself surrounded by multicoloured fish, but most of the time it was just (fish) soup. Dorka and the girls stayed dry and warm on a glass-bottom boat, which is (as the name suggests) a small boat with a glass bottom for those, who want to see the beautiful marine life without getting wet, but saw even less than I did! But Lara still had a great time climbing and crawling around the boat.

Even though the snorkeling wasn’t very good, we had a very special experience at the Goat Island: Emma was so fascinated by the traditional tattoos of a Maori man, who was just diving there, that she asked Dorka to get talking to him. They had a lovely chat, and at the end they said goodbye in the traditional Maori way: by touching their noses together. This ritual is called sharing the breath of life.

Auckland, New Zealand Dec 11th-14th

Well, we were sad to say goodbye to Australia, but excited to say hello to New Zealand!
We knew that we’d be returning to Auckland again to fly home, so we only spent a few days here now, and most of that was devoted to admin work, such as rearranging flights and also trying to buy a car for the large amounts of driving we expected to do in NZ. We had a bit of a scare when a car we had agreed to buy, turned out to be not what it seemed. We checked with the registration, and found that it didn’t belong to the guy selling it, which means he was probably a dodgy car dealer/stealer. Anyway we decided to avoid it (even though it looked lovely, and was cheap) and go for a long term car-rental instead.

The other highlight of Auckland was my birthday (Andrew’s), and the 40th too! We had loosely planned to celebrate this with a bungee jump, and here we had the perfect opportunity. There is a massive tower in this city which boasts the ultimate jumping experience. I did it and they’re right, it is amazing.


This top heavy tower stands way above the rest of the city’s skyscrapers, and has a jumping platform some 192 m above the hard concrete. (For purists, it’s not technically a bungee jump at all, because you are attached to a vertical wire, to stop you blowing back into the tower or off into somebody’s office, and this wire also slows you down as you approach the ground.) But for me the difference is somehow not-so-important if you still need to step off a perfectly good building at a height where cars and boats look like toys. Perhaps the best moment of the trip so far was arriving on terra firma in a slightly wobbly state, to be hugged by my proud daughter.

Soon we were back on the road again, this time heading North to the Bay of islands, before our big southern adventure. Just an hour North of Auckland, we passed an unexpected treat – the Hundertwasser toilets in a tiny little town called Kewarawa. We love the freakish architecture of Friedrich Hundertwasser in Austria, and it turns out that he lived out his final years in this quiet corner of New Zealand, and found time to create some amazing roof gardens, and probably the most eclectic WC in the world. Apparently he was such a fan of this country, he even designed a new flag for New Zealand, which would represent the Maori culture more then the old commonwealth imagery of the present flag. It was never accepted, but here it is in all it’s glory.

Side note: If you ever want to capture a photograph of a constantly- moving flag, be prepared that it will involve at least 100 attempts, 10 minutes, 8 megapixels, and several impatient family members.

Melbourne December 4-11

Melbourne was a bit weird for us. Well to be more polite, our visit to Melbourne was a little strange. All travel is very subjective, but what we most remember of this city is just hanging out, relaxing and searching for new places to eat out, of which there are countless great examples. I think we were just tired out from all the fast-paced sightseeing and driving in Tasmania and all the places before.

We did manage to visit a few places during our time here, but they were all rather unsatisfying. The Immigration Museum included a guided tour, but the guide focused mostly on the architecture of the building itself, which she obviously found fascinating. There was one nice story to illustrate the power held by the immigration officers. Until about the 1930’s, they could use tricks such as the grammar test, in any European language to mark people as unsuitable for immigration. The story goes that a political activist was very much unwanted, so the immigration officers tested him in 6 different European languages, all of which he spoke, until they finally tried Gaelic, which he did not, so they were able to refuse his application on the grounds of insufficient language skills.

In poor weather, we took a free tour bus, but it was very popular, and completely packed, so that we had to sit separately. We walked to the end of St Kilda on a blustery day to see the kite surfers, but though it was beautiful, we couldn’t stay long because it was too chilly.

There was also quite a lot of what you might call family time. Andrew took Emma to see an excellent evening outdoor ballet performance of the Nutcracker Suite. We viewed the botanical gardens, and during a feeding session there, Andrew dropped some baby food in such a spectacularly clumsy way that it covered everybody in a 5m blast radius. We explored the fantastic war memorial, where Emma became lost for a few minutes, and had a minor scare. We crawled all over an art museum, where we nearly bought some aboriginal artwork. Emma later started to spontaneously produce aborigine-style dotted pictures, which were very good. All of these were important to us, but probably don’t deserve more than a short mention here.

Melbourne Museum was a nice surprise. It had an indigenous people section, including some moving stories about the disastrous government programs in the mid-20th century to “civilize” the aborigines, basically by removing their children and raising them in white foster homes. This sounds insane to us now, and it scarred many families, but it’s interesting to note that they took responsibility for it. This is what the Australian prime minister was talking about, when he made his public apology a few years ago, for previous government treatment of the aborigines. Like most other uninformed foreigners, I had always assumed that it was about forcing them off their traditional land. The museum had an excellent kiddies section, so Emma enjoyed playing at excavating dinosaur bones and measuring her height in terms of giraffes (0.25 giraffes) and wombats (4 - stacked up, of course)

We did come across some evidence of the massive Hungarian population, located here and in Sydney, when we visited a second generation Hungarian café. It was nice to relax with some familiar food, while Emma entertained the other customers.

So that was the end of our Australian trip. We had enjoyed it greatly, but now it was time to move on to the other half of our adventure, New Zealand.

Tasmania part II. 2nd – 4thDec

After our third visit to the campervan company we finally got away to the east coast and headed for Swansea and on to scenic Coles Bay. Although the distance was not great, it took hours to reach because, like everywhere in Tasmania, the roads are full of twists and turns, and also full of wallabies (see part I) so you cannot hurry.

This was a very remote village and so the laws of supply and demand were in full force here and everything was three times the price of anywhere before or since. Also, the bakery closed at 4pm, the petrol station/general store/chip shop closed at 6pm, and the local restaurant at 8pm so this was not going to be the place for late-night partying. We got a good night’s sleep to prepare for a day of hiking the next day.

Now the bakery was open I went slightly mad and bought my own bodyweight in great English-style goodies, like Cornish pasties and fruitcake. I justified this as hiking fuel but I’m not sure Dorka quite understood at the time that I had spent a tenth of our daily budget on impulse food. Actually we did eat the whole lot on foot, as we walked a very long way that day. We hiked up to the lookout over the pass to look down into scenic Wineglass Bay, then we actually walked all the way down into the bay. There are different stories as to why it’s a called Wineglass Bay: because of the shape or that the water is clear as glass, or (and this is our favourite) because the water once ran red like wine, with the blood of whales, which were slaughtered for oil and bones at the whaling station there. It doesn’t stink of rotting whale any more, and it is absolutely beautiful. The only downside was the cheeky wallabies. Nobody was taking any notice of the “Don’t feed the wild animals” signs everywhere, so of course these little buggers were hopping around us begging for food the whole time. We had to work hard for this memory though. The whole walk end to end was around 5 hours. Again Lara was in the backpack carrier for most of that period and stayed very happy the whole way.

After so much hiking, we only travelled s short distance, to the town of Bichenot, where I had arranged a penguin tour for us that evening. Only Emma and Andy went, and we took no camera on the tour, as the flash photography can blind little penguins. It was great though and we got really close to the penguins as they sneaked out of the water, across the beach and up through our group and off to their underground nests. The guide was also very knowledgeable, so we learnt quite a lot.

In the morning Dorka had some work to take care of so I took the kids to see the blow hole, a place in the rocky coastline where, occasionally a wave shoots up a narrow channel and spouts up high into the air like a geyser.

To make the best of a lost day, we visited a small zoo. It was actually a sanctuary for Tasmanian Devils which was originally set up by a family of Brits on holiday here, much like ourselves. This place was a lovely surprise. Not only were the displays great (everything from “match the poo in this drawer with the correct Australian animal” to the “Tasmanian Devil trivia quiz” the rangers were also great; we followed them as they fed all the animals and introduced us to kangaroos, wombats and Devils. It was a very educational and extremely personal experience. Later after closing time (we were the last ones to leave) we had a very stirring talk with the head ranger in the carpark. Andrew showed us a baby wombat (also called a joey, by the way – the name applies to all marsupial babies, we learned) wrapped in a jumper that he was hand-rearing. This baby’s mother had died in a road accident, but the joey remained alive in her pouch, and the driver brought it to the sanctuary. Apparently it happens quite a lot, and Andrew told us sadly how on his way to the job for the first time, he stopped at every single accident, checking pouches and collecting. The good news is that animals are recycled in the best possible way – people deliver them to the sanctuary, and they are given to the Tasmanian Devils, who are great scavengers, so they would naturally feed on dead wallabies anyways.

Funnily enough, as Andrew drove off, another ranger walked past, and he too had an animal in his pullover - a lizard called a blue-tounge. Snappy but quite pretty.

We thought it would be easy to drive back a little toward Hobart and stay in the town of Swansea, which has a reputation for great food. Unfortunately we hadn’t reserved a camping space at the campground. When we crawled there about an hour after dark, and of course tired out after an hour on wallaby watch, it was pretty sad to hear that there was no room for us. The owner simply couldn’t believe we could be so foolish. Feeling very irresponsible, we crawled off sheepishly looking for a place to stay. It was so late that we simply decided to camp wild. A huge carpark 10 metres from Swansea bay seemed acceptable for the night. Until about 4am, when I woke up stiff with cold, because of the freezing wing blowing in from the ocean, but at least I could see a beautiful sunrise.

On our final morning we had a picnic breakfast by the beach, repacked our things (found a clean pair of socks, and my toothbrush, yeay!) and then zoomed back to Hobart to catch our flight to Melbourne.

Tasmania Part I. Nov 29th – Dec 1st

We had decided to fly to Tasmania, to avoid a long drive and a ferry ride. It was a budget flight and we had been ultra-cheap and booked the no-luggage option for Dorka to save money. It’s actually pretty amazing that we were able to do it, but we could limit „my” two check in bags to just 19kg, by putting a few heavy books in the pram-bag and packing more stuff into special (quite heavy) cabin bags.

We were all pretty excited as we walked over to pick up the campervan, trying to guess which would be our van, the one we would live in for the next 5 days. Unfortunately it became a horrible moment when we arrived at the office to find it locked and deserted. We were pretty angry, because they had offered to stay open until 9pm, and we were early. It turned out that the company had sent us an email asking my driving license details, 1 day before arrival. When we didn’t reply they just assumed we were not coming (even though we had paid in advance, and they knew we were going to arrive with two small kids!) It was dark and cold and we had nowhere to go, but the night staff at the airport were very helpful. In the end, the policeman on duty, Stewart, was super and drove us all the way to a local motel in his patrol car. This was our first hint that Tasmania is just like the north of Scotland - everything closes incredibly early, so if it’s after 6pm, you can simply forget about buying food, petrol and especially collecting campervans.

The next morning we returned to the office, Britz, to angrily pick up our van. Actually although the service was terrible, the Van was great. It was a Toyota Hiace, which is a high-top van with space for 5 people. (They would have to be 5 very close friends, but it was great for the four of us.) It had a pull-out upper bed, and a nice kitchen. There was no Bathroom or toilet, but these were available at all the campsites we stopped at. Even here, Lara slept in her portable cot, so it seemed logical to have Dorka sleeping next to her on the lower bed, and Emma and I on the upper bed. This was fun (except for the last night – see part 2) as this had the best view. Both children have become incredibly deep sleepers on this trip. Here in the most cramped conditions so far, Dorka and I were able to move around with the lights on, open and close the van doors etc.

So we drove off to the north, but due to some wrong turns, and our flexible itinerary, we ended up at a National Park in the far south of the state. (Hands up who weren’t sure if Tasmania was a country or a state? Oh, just me was it?) We headed off on foot towards Hartz Peak. While we didn’t actually go to the peak, we reached a couple of beautiful lakes, and enjoyed wonderful, if rather windy scenery. The land was all low bushes, so on the ridges, it was like walking into a hurricane. All in all, Dorka carried Lara on her back for 3 hours with no problems, so we were very pleased that we had the backpack-carrier with us. Lara slept a little and just seemed to enjoy the ride. Emma also hiked the whole way, though she was nearly blown off the path in a few places!

That evening we tried to get back North to Hobart, but just before sunset, I felt a problem with the van. It began to shudder and shake and smoke appeared behind us. I pulled off the road the find that the left rear tyre was not just flat, but was completely destroyed! The whole side of the tyre had blown out and I was actually driving on the metal rim for a few metres (hence all the smoke). Two older guys, Roger and John, had noticed us from their nearby and soon came over to help. It was our good luck they did, because the jack was too small for the van, so I really needed to borrow another. Emma and Dorka went off to talk to the guys’ wives, while we men fixed the wagon, before coming to join them for tea. They were all lovely to us and we had a very pleasant evening. They had small dogs too, so Emma was in puppy heaven. This all took place in their campervan, which was a deluxe version of ours, with a raised bedroom, a separate bathroom and toilet, spice rack over the cooker, everything.

It was fully dark when we got moving, so we couldn’t really go much further. We slept our first night “wild” near to Hobart so that we could go straight to the Britz office for another tyre the next day.

We saw animals by the roadside everywhere. Unfortunately they were mostly dead roadkills. Lots of potaroos, kangaroo rats and also quite a few wallabies too. The guys who helped us fix the van explained that this was a combination of two things - a new ban on guns which had reduced hunting, and a the very dry weather which forced the animals to come and eat the remaining green grass right by the roadside. This had a bad effect on us, as it was so sad to see body after body by the roadside. We also had two swerving scares, when we noticed a live wallaby right next to the roadside. Both times it was just luck really, that neither one decided to panic and jump in front of us. They are hard to see, and they move really fast! Unfortunately this meant that all travel after sunset was really slow, with Dorka pressing her nose to the glass, scanning for endangered wildlife and me keeping the speed to a steady 60 kph crawl. With both children asleep in their seats, we were silent on wallaby watch for long periods before Dorka would say “Oh”” and then after I stood on the brake, she would continue with something like “We really must call my sister tonight…”

More about Tasmania in part II...

Sydney

Sydney, 24th-29th November
We gave ourselves and the kids a little time to relax after all that driving, and enjoyed the delights of the Sydney Central YHA hostel we were in. This is one of the Youth Hostel Association’s rare 5 star hostels, and it really was great - huge kitchen, internet café, cinema room, laundry, bar and even a rooftop swimming pool!
Unfortunately they were fully booked for the last few days of our Sydney stay, so we moved next door to a scruffier hostel with no pool, no cinema and more importantly no lift! (Well actually they had one, but it was broken for a few day). We were on the 7th floor, so at least we didn’t need a fitness room!

On our first real day here we set off to see the ultimate Australian icon, the Sydney Opera House. It’s not a huge building, and I had heard that it was too small for real opera performances, but let me tell you, they are definitely using both buildings for something- it’s busy all the time! Our guide told us that it had hosted 8 performances already that day (this was about 5pm on a Tuesday....) and we saw for ourselves that the place seemed permanently full of smartly-dressed people going to or coming from shows in those great sea-shell domes.

The tour of the operahouse was in fact very interesting. They managed to explain the development of the building as a human story, by concentrating on the architect who came up with the amazing design, which was pulled out of a rubbish bin. This Danish chap moved to Australia to work on the plan for years, including inventing a unique new way to build huge self supporting concrete shells, but he was replaced when the project became too expensive. He left for Denmark and never returned, even when the building was completed and became mega-famous.

Sydney harbour bridge is another great symbol of the city - this is the one from all those fireworks pictures. You can actually climb right to the top of it with organised groups, though Andy was not too keen on it (it was the 170 AUS$ price that decided it, not the height, really! Just wait until New Zealand – there we’ll see some extreme spoprts action.) Emma was interested though she’s too young. That girl is ready for anything – it’s a great side effect of this trip!

Instead, we explored the area at the foot of the bridge towers, called the Rocks. It’s rather touristy, but we found great healthfood there. Australians eat so well! Full and happy we wandered off carrying Lara and left the pram parked outisde the restaurant. Thank goodness it was till there when I ran back about ten minutes later!

The following morning we took yet another ferry (the Sydney public transport system ticket is good for these as well as all buses, trams and metro lines) to Darling harbour. While Andy visited the maritime museum, Dorka took both kids to the playground , where Emma immediately made friends with local kids – which is great, as it made it easy for Dorka to get talking to local Mums. Emma really is developing a nice style on this trip. She’s very open and friendly and her English is really great now!

We loved the Australia Museum, - this was our first introduction to the idea of a highlights tour – somthing we would see in many other museums. Basically, one of the library curators takes a small group round and explains the main few exhibits in each room. There was a good aboriginal section (now they prefer the term indiginous Australians, so the Torres Strait Islanders, a completely seperate group, don’t feel ignored) and Emma and Andy loved the interactive display on Australia’s most dangerous animals. There was a sort of hologram of a crocodile which would periodically „attack” Emma, causing screams of excitement! Great parenting, eh? We loved the fact that the Ozzies even include their great sense of humour in the museum signs. You would never see jokes in exhibit descriptions. In the skeleton exhibition, they had arranged a skeletal rider on a skeletal horse (the bone ranger) and a great „home sweet home” exhibit with skeletal man, dog, cat, rat, bird and so on. It really made it easy and fun to compare and contrast the different stuctures, which was the point really.

On our last night Dorka went off to see the city alive on a Friday night, but she got stuck on on a bus heading out into the countryside and came back very late. Of course I didn’t sleep then either so we were all a bit tired for our last day in Sydney. This was a late start, especially with the added hassle of packing and checking out, so we only had half an hour to watch the beach volleyball on nearby Manly Beach before it was time to leave for the airport. Actually Emma had just become really involved in playing with other kids on a playground, so we decided to that the girls would take the later ferry instead. I ran ahead to pick up all our luggage and staggered the half-kilometer to the railway station, while Dorka dragged the children and the pram along. Good teamwork, but bad for my nerves. My very punctual father would not have been pleased about leaving so little extra time before check in, but we were lucky.

Sunshine Coast / Gold Coast

Leaving Brisbane, we headed back up to the north again the next day to the Sunshine coast. We had heard that the end of year students’ parties of “schoolies” week were wild on the gold coast so we wanted to try the more mellow “Sunshine Coast”. After passing loads of lovely beaches, we stopped at a town with the great name of Mooloolaba and enjoyed body boarding, and splashing in the surf. Dorka and I had a great time trying to body board the massive (to us at least) waves here. This beach has what is known as a “dump” which means that when you ride the wave, there is a strong force wanting to pull you forward and especially downward, so if you surf too far over the edge of the wave you suddenly end up on the sand upside down on your head, which was quite a surprise the first time, I can tell you! Emma is rather little for all this but she had fun sliding around on the board in shallow water. It was a little crowded, as this was the last Friday of the school year, so all the “schoolies” in town ran down to the beach and right into the sea in their school uniforms! With all this activity, we were foolish enough to stay too long and got very sunburnt, and then the next day we managed to re-fry our sunburnt skin quite effectively (Did you know Australian sunshine can burn you even on a cloudy day? We soon found this out!)
The next days we spent hiding from the sun - body surfing whenever it was really cloudy and exploring places like Noosa Heads and Surfer’s Paradise.

Searching for a hostel the next day, we found that the Schoolies had filled up every inn, tavern, hotel, motel and especially all the hostels in beautiful Byron Bay and Lennox Head. Luckily, a local YHA hostel-owner was kind enough to let us use his own spare bedroom, this actually turned out to be the nicest, softest bed so far. Actually he’s a pretty good example of New South Wales’ reputation for being very new age. He’s a reflexologist, Reiki practitioner and is learning a sort of alternative clinical massage called Bowen, he did a few moves on Dorka, who said it felt powerful and quite wierd. We talked to the other guests (all of them, I think) who were very friendly in this lovely but tiny hostel. The next day we had a picnic by the lake (where all the girls in the family were not at all worried about attacks by freshwater crocodiles) and then a leisurely walk on the windy beach before slowly moving on from Lennox head.

We drifted down the pacific highway to Coff’s Harbour (never did actually find the harbour) and then at sunset we arrived in scenic Port Macquarie, the 3rd settlement in the original colonisation, and at that time a prison for the worst of the convicts from the other two places! Now it’s stunning, and we enjoyed a lovely walk nature walk around Karoombung Creek searching for Bats (saw hundreds - see picture) and Koalas (saw none)

As a little side note - This tiny, open-to-the-public nature reserve rather summed up Australia for us: that animals and other natural features are such a big part of the attraction here. It’s weird if you think how different the tourist attractions are in Europe or America. But they present this unique feature so well here. We keep finding new parks, reserves, zoos and most are excellent. This one went through marshland, but because it was lined with boards the whole way, we could even take the pram!

Finally we puffed up and down the cliff walk (complete with Pram) which turned out to be totally worth it for the amazing views!

Leaving Port Macqauarie late allowed us to see more of that town in the daylight, but this and a rest stop in Newcastle meant that we hit Sydney at night.

To see the album, click here: