Wednesday and today was the day for our tour through the wilderness of the national park to Milford sound - We expected this to be one of the highlights of our entire trip to New Zealand.

Fiordland vast and is a true wilderness. Very few people have ever lived here and even now, the road to Milford sound, completed in 1954, is the only road through the park. Apart from that, there are a few long distance footpaths (with restricted access) and that’s it. The park is 260km from top to bottom and 80km or so wide.

We took an organised bus tour with Fiordland tours. Our driver and guide was the proprietor, Ray, a retired sheep farmer, who proved to be an excellent guide.

We left the motel at 8am, collected a few more passengers, and set out North along the shore of the lake, heading for the national park.

The road enters the park via the Edington river valley which features mile after...

Tuesday and today we are due to drive to Te Anau, but first we decide to do a spot of extreme sports by taking a ride in a jet boat up the Kewaru and Shotover rivers…

Jet boats are designed to travel at 60kph in very shallow water. Many of the rivers here are wide, shallow and gravelly with an average depth of only 20-30cm.

Initially, Morna wasn’t too keen on the idea…

However, she quickly got used to the spray, bumps and teeth rattling vibration. The driver’s habit of aiming directly at bridges, trees and rocks then turning away at the last second, took a bit longer.

After our 60 minute dose of adrenaline, we topped up with fuel and set out for Te Anau, the gateway to the Fiordland national park.

The drive was another two and half hour marathon. We set out South through the mountains, along the banks of lake Wakatipu…

At the end of the lake, we headed West across rolling...

Monday and we awoke to another morning of heavy rain. We decided to take a trip out to Arrowtown.

Arrowtown is a charming old gold rush town in the hills about 15km from Queenstown.

We parked the car and took refuge from the rain in a very French coffee shop called Bonjour and enjoyed a coffee with apricot tart
Tatain.

As the rain eased off, we took a log walk along the banks of the Arrow river.

We returned in time for lunch, then explored the shops (picking up a rather nice print for the kitchen), before booking a table for dinned at the Postmaster’s house restaurant, which took our eye…

In the event, we both ordered the lamb - which was excellent!

This is the song that is being played everywhere in Aus & NZ right now:

Click here

The drive here, from Christchurch, was the most beautiful route I have every driven, not only that, it was also one of the easiest and most enjoyable too.

This morning, with the murky weather cleared, just look at the view from out apartment…

Queenstown is a former gold rush town on the shore of lake Wakatipu, it is a small place that is known as the extreme sports capital of the World and the place where bungee jumping was invented.

We decided to take the cable car to the top of the hill that overlooks the town.

Queenstown is the most beautiful of places and the views from the cafe at the gondola station are awesome in both scale and beauty. Photos can never do full justice to the real thing but here are a few that may give a taste of what is on offer…

From the gondola station, you can participate in all kinds of extreme activities. We decided to spend some time watching...

Tuesday was a bit damp, so we spent the morning walking around Melbourne’s Victoria market (outdoors but undercover). In the afternoon we explored the south bank of the river dropping into the museum of art on our way down to the botanic gardens. These are stunning; Morna and I both agreed that the were the best we had ever seen - better even than Kew.
Alison and Neill collected us from the hotel just after 6pm and together we went for an Asian fusion meal in Chinatown, before driving out to Alison and Neill’s house in Lilydale.

Taking Harry for a Walk

On Wednesday, morning we set off for a tour of the Mornington peninsular for some wine tasting.

Lunch at the winery on the Redhill Estate.

Then back to Lilydale for a barbecue (without which our few days in Australia would have been incomplete).

The view over the Yara valley from Neill and Alison’s house

I had a business meeting on...

At 9am on Saturday 17th, January we set out in perfect summer weather, from Christchurch heading for Queenstown in the centre of New Zealand’s Fjord land. With 500km to go we would be driving something more than half of the length of the South Island today.

We turned left out of the motel car park, left again and then unbelivably drove in an arrow-straight line for about 120 km across the Canterbury plains before we came to our first turning ar Rangitata.

We now headed North-west towards the peaks of the Southern Alps for 15km, again on an arrow-straight road. Slowly, the flatness of the Cantrebury plains gave way to undulations, then to hills and finally we began our climb up into the mountains proper.

The Kiwis are very fond of driving large, powerful, 4x4s and as we experienced the steepness of the gradients at first hand, we could understand why.

We had made a different choice of...

Our day started with a decent hotel breakfast.

We made contact with Andy Gloyns and arranged to meet him at the entrance to Flinders railway station at 12:30 for lunch.

“Under the clocks at Flinders” where people meet in Melbourne.

It was a fresh and sunny summer morning and we walked down to the river, then to Federation square and into the shopping streets to pick up a few things that we were missing.

One of the charms of Melbourne are the narrow alleyways that link the main thoroughfares, many lined with independently run coffee shops and restaurants. We stopped for coffee at one of them and a little later, having met up with Andy, we had lunch at a long, narrow, sushi bar.

After lunch we made our way to the Immigration museum then back to the hotel for a snooze.

Early evening we had a drink at the Curtin rooftop bar followed by an excellent steak at R on Flinders Lane.

On Monday 10th, January We departed from Heathrow terminal 3 on a QANTAS A380 bound for Melbourne via Dubai.

The flight was about as good as a 22 hour flight could ever be. The seats were comfortable, the choice of food, booze and entertainment pretty good and the service excellent.

We got some sleep at roughly the right times (night-time in Melbourne?

We landed at Mebourne at around 10pm local time, endured the usual waits in line before hoping onto the shuttle bus which dropped us at Southern Cross Station in central Melbourne.

Our hotel was a five minute walk away and so we checked-in to the Holiday Inn on Flinders lane just before midnight on Sunday 11th.

Wide away and full of the joys of spring, we turned in for a suppriningly good night’s sleep.

We are all packed up and ready to go.

Today Morna and I depart from Heathrow bound for New Zealand via Melbourne Australia.

Follow this blog to follow our antipodean adventures…