The world according to Kiwis and Aussies (written by a Pom!)

Gallery: Sunrise and sunset

vik — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:24:00 GMT

pictures from Australia and England

Back In England

vik — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:19:00 GMT

I arrived home last wednesday to esater eggs, roast dinners, relatives, new born lambs and beautiful weather! I've been so ridiculously busy down on the farm I've had little time to get jetlag, let alone try and get over it! I'm currently working on sorting out my bedroom, over a years worth of paperwork and trying to organise all my New Zealand and Australia bits and pieces!! I've managed to get some pictures sorted out and on the internet so enjoy!!!

Gallery: Beautiful Fairlie

vik — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:42:00 GMT

Pictures of Fairlie adn surrounding area

Gallery: Milking

vik — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:17:00 GMT

Cows and Milking sheds in New Zealand

Gallery: The Big Snow

vik — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:07:00 GMT

Winter 2006

Crikey Crocs!

vik — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 22:58:00 GMT

Australia Zoo.. no words to describe it, absolute bonzer ripper mate!! You can just tell everyone is committed to keeping the memory of the top man alive, his picture is plastered everywhere and no one's afraid of mentioning him, they're all really proud of everything he did, it's the most amazing place ever! (I spent rather an extreme amount of money at the 4 gift shops all with different stock, clever marketing ploy but baaad idea as far as was concerned so expect lots of crocky goodies!!!) Best bits, croc show, Sue feeding elephants, me feeding roo's, Agro the saltie and Mr Freshy, the kakhi shirt memorials, so sad, but it must be a real comfort to his family that he had such an impact on so many people; and little Bob Irwin trying to say Echidna (on a big screen out-take thingy, sooooo cute!!) And the place is awesome, scenery absolutely stunning, we went up to a lookut a little bit further up and round, and could see all the Glass House Mountains, beautiful, green, slightly tropical, it'd get too hot for me in mid summer though!

We went to sea world on gold coast (S of Brisbane), I wasn't too happy with that idea to start with but thought I should go before judging the place, and was pleasantly surprised! dolphin and seal shows as well as a dugong (some manatee relation, so cute but possibly dim witted, the one they have was rescued as a newborn and rehabilitated for life in ocean, but managed to get washed up again, so now has permanent home!) and a 60's waterski show with human pyramids and fancy jumps and different types of ski's and wakeboards, very cool!

Then we had a day in Noosa at the beach, very very nice, although apparently there were some stingy and bitey things in there they avoided me, although other members of the trip weren't so lucky (Ouch!!)! We finished with a day in Brisbane, looking at the river and negotiating city streets in our hire car (mainly successfully) berfore repacking bags at the airport to try and squueze in all the pressies!!

Fairlie

vik — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:14:00 GMT

I've just been looking at the Fairlie website! Big mistake, nowhere near enough time has passed for me to be able to look at it without getting a tear in my eye, especially all the pictures of the lake and the snow! I think I was imagining the dairy cows though! And I discovered I can keep an eye on the rugby on there as well... (just waiting for pics of the rugby team!!!)

I hear from my reliable source Amy (told you I'd get your name in here!) that the first autumn dumping of snow has appeared, I hope its not too hard of a winter again (at least not till I get back to drive tractors and feed cows!) especially since you're all off on your holidays over winter!

If anyone wants to check out the beautiful MacKenzie Country try www.fairlie.co.nz for all the pictures of my adopted home!

Home away from home

vik — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 17:20:00 GMT

Now I'm in real australia, lots of little towns and villages, lots of gum trees and evidence of fire damage, much nicer than being couped up in a big city! I'm just looking for an Aussie cowboy now!!! One thing I have noticed is the roads are much busier than in New Zealand and I'm going to have to re-learn the art of roundabouts, its been at least 6 months since I had to negotiate one (that was in Rangiora back in September in a recently picked up automatic hire car, eek!!)

I've finally arrived with our friends in Anakie, a little village half an hour out of Geelong and have been spending my days sitting on the sofa and watching the ponies in the dust bowl of a paddock! There are two liitle ponies (literally about 2ft tall) Carli and Blue. Carli is definately the boss, if Blue does something to upset her he'll feel the full force of her hind legs!! The dams are empty adn there has been no rain for far too long, so very little livestock to look at either! I went to Lorne the other day to sit on the beach and look at all the clothes I'd love but can't afford and today I've been to the wool museum in Geelong, obviously right up my street! No real live sheep though, mainly wooden ones with a fleece thrown over them!! Still very interesting, and lots of souvenirs I could have bought but refrained from.

Trains

vik — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:16:00 GMT

I knew it would be an interesting experience taking an overnight train and I was right. I wasn't expecting a particularly comfortable or enjoyable night, and as it turned out I didn't have one! It would have been okay if I wasn't sat behind someone who was really quite revolting. Farting continually, snoring ridiculously loudly and I'm assuming it was his feet I could smell! That and the sound of the train literally grating along the side of the track very very loudly outside my window every other minute, especially when I was about to drop off, was most disconcerting and definately not conducive to a good nights sleep. Consequently I had about an hour of sleep all together and amused myself the rest of the time thinking about nothing in particular and listening to my cd player, one minor problem, I packed my cds in my case which I checked into the luggage carriage, so its safe to say I know every single word of all the Brooke Fraser album. Its a good album, but I was craving something slightly different by the time I got to Melbourne, so Kenny Rodgers has been playing ever since!!!

Its all happenin' down at the zoo

vik — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 18:46:00 GMT

I wasn't gonna go to Taronga Zoo, I thought my imminent trip to Australia Zoo would make a trip to Sydney's Zoo a little unnecessary, however I've had an extra day cos my train doesn't leave till tonight, so thought, Bridge Climb or Zoo??? And at the end of the day the Bridge Climb scares me a bit, and is really expensive, whereas a whole day at the zoo, plus transport for $39, is a lot more reasonable, and I'm on a tight budget (Mainly due to all the starbucks I've been indulging in now I'm back in civilisation! As great as Fairlie and Timaru are, they are definately short of a starbucks!!).

A beautiful day to be running to ferry (I literally was the last person on before it left!), and alovely relaxing trip on the water, its definately one of the best parts of sydney, water water everywhere! A quick entry into zoo, no need to queue with my all in ticket! And then where to start, it was huge, and I can't possibly tell you all about all of it, safe to say as ever the big animals won me over, the elephants having a swim, the giraffes being fed, and the awesome bird show, wedge tailed eagles, cockatoos, galahs, owls, a Barn Owl called Howard, and something called a brolga ( agreat big stork thing). It turned out it was the bird keepers last day before she went back to Canada, so very sad, I had to go up to her at the end and tell her I knew how she felt, every so often I'll remember all the friends I've made in NZ and how far away they feel already and I'm only across the ditch...

My favourite had to be the seal show though, Mia the Australian Sealion and Mitchy the Californinan Sealion showed just how intelligent they are (although smelly!) watching the keepers to work out which trick to do when! Not enough of the little NZ fur seal though, he only made a very brief appearance.

Overall I had a blast, the cablecar that goes up and down is phenomenal, and I think It has to be the best placed zoo in the world. I mean which other zoo can boast one of the most beautiful harbours in the world as its backdrop? The giraffes sure have a good vantage point! And the Himalayan Thar had their own rocky outcrop, looking right out towards the bridge and opera house, amazing! ( I mention those because I think they're one of the only species in the zoo that I'd tasted, they make damn fine sausages!! I'm going to try ostrich, croc and roo before I leave though!)

Blue mountains

vik — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:08:00 GMT

Okay so I know I was fairly ambivalent about the blue mountains before, but now I've got to say they were awesome! I just wish I could get my pics off my camera and onto here, you'll just have to be patient I guess...It was a pretty eventful day all round. We started with a lovely day here in sydney, but I still decided to pack a coat (must be something to growing up near Manchester)and good job, as we left the city the clouds started to look more and more menacing and finally we hit the wet, and visibility dropped to pretty much zero. Our great guide, Priscilla, didn't let a little bit of rain stop us though, we went off to see an Aboriginal rock carving of a kangaroo, just down some little residential street, a little surreal to say the least, and I couldn't really make it out, I think I was expecting bright colours and paints but it was literally a flat piece of rock with a kangaroo on it. It was like one of those magic eye drawing things, trying to work out which was just the natural erosion lines and features of the rock and what was 'roo, I sort of got it in the end though!

Then we headed off to scenic world, home of the worlds steepest railway (a gradient of 52%)- again, wasn't really sure what to expect and when I had the ticket in my sweaty little palm started to get a bit freaked out, especially when I saw the thing, think that scary ride at Alton Towers but in a rainforest, and nowhere near as much safety equipment- the sign said please hold onto cameras, bags and infants, they may fall out! Again with the understatements!! Needless to say I was pretty terrified the whole way down, the girls from my hostel and I were in the front row, holding onto the seats and each other for dear life!!! When we finally got down there the view was alittle obscured by cloud but was very atmospheric, and a bit eerie. Then off for a walk around the bush, looking out for spiders and falling eucalypt branches (apparently another hazard, in droughts they're able to reroute the water to the trunk and the branches fall off, without any warning- wouldn't want to be stood under one when they decided to do that!).

We sort of saw the 3 sisters rock formation as we were coming up on the cable car, slightly better than the train but not by much... but it was really misty and they disappeared as soon as they appeared. So our trusty guide took us off around the area to find the best places to look over the dissected plateau (not really mountains at all), we didn't have much luck at the little ones so decided to go to the most touristy lookout of the lot, Echo Point. Priscilla gave us 10 minutes to see if we could get a good shot, but most of the people on the bus decided it was too wet and they weren't going to see anything. A few of us went and stood around for 10 minutes though, and managed to get the shot of the day as the mist cleared!!! All the peoople on the bus didn't believe us so we had to show them, I think it's fair to say they were gutted!!

After lunch we went to see Wentworth Falls, and then to the best lookout of all, called Kings Tablelands, there are no safety barriers so the big tourist companies don't go there and we had it entirely to ourselves, a big rock outcrop, with the most amazing view of the Jamieson valley, there are really no words to describe it! Priscilla told us all about its formation, at the highest point is only 1300m above sea level, so not mountains at all, is a dissected plateau, with rivers forming the valley areas, its 15 times older than the grand canyon!!! But the same basic principle, and just so beautiful. It gets the name blue mountains from the haze of eucalypus oil in the air released by the gum trees...

You night think that that was a pretty full day, but before we could finish off with a trip to see real kangaroo's we had a detour to a very nice... Petrol station. We got a flat tyre, so everyone got unloaded off the bus and we got left there for over half an hour till the bus was roadworthy again!!! Good job it'd stopped raining by that point!And onwards to the roo's...

We went to a little camp ground in the blue mountains national park, up and down across rivers and fords, not unlike the Milford rd in NZ in some places, then stopped in a little grassy clearing, to get out and hunt for the roo's. They weren't exactly hard to find, we could literally get within a few feet, so calm and obviously used to visitors, but completely wild. One hopped past me so close I could have reached out and touched it! I decided it'd be a bad idea though, knowing my luck I'd break my arm...

Then we all got back on the bus to race down to olympic park so we could catch the ferry back to circular quay, good idea in principle, but the 5.10 ferry never turned up, so we didn't get on the 5.35 cos there wasn't enough room, hence a drive back into central sydney at rush hour on a friday night- FUN!!

All in all though it was the most amazing day, so I encourage everyone to go, and go with OZ Trails, they only have little buses (no more than 20 at a time) and are very very good, take you right off the beaten track!

Finally (God this is a long one article...) Thanks to Christy for telling me how to change the category thing, much appreciated!!

A message for the locals

vik — Thu, 8 Mar 2007 20:51:00 GMT

Hey everyone, Can you all believe its a week since my little leaving celebration at the world famous (well it will be by the time I've told everyone I meet going to NZ to pop in for a handle...!) Silverstream Hotel? I just love that place, from the jukebox, to the pool table, the bar and most importantly the carpet up the walls, just to confuse anyone who ends up on the floor after one to many Speights (Or DB's if its Mike, Murray and Callum!!) So thanks for making my last night in Fairlie so memorable (sort of...) Missing you all heaps, but I'll be back before you know it!!

Onwards

vik — Thu, 8 Mar 2007 20:45:00 GMT

I've got my ticket booked to Melbourne, I leave Sun night (8.40pm!!) and don't arrive in Mel till 7.30 the next morning, however I get travel and don't have to pay for accm for that night so a pretty good deal, although I've a feeling it'll be uncomfortable! That means I've almost a whole extra day in Sydney, Really not sure what I've got left to do, I spent this afternoon lying in the sun in the botanic gardens watching the world go by, again. It's pretty difficult just to chill after so long working to a schedule, but I'm slowly getting used to it. I haven't decided whether to do a bridge climb yet, its pretty expensive and I'm not really that entranced with the idea...

Tomorrow I go to the blue mountains, I'm not really sure what to expect, everyone I've spoken to says you must go, but not really sure what's there, I suppose I'll find out tomorrow!

TV

vik — Thu, 8 Mar 2007 20:36:00 GMT

This doesn't really fit the great outdoors category, but I don't know how to make my own, anyway...

I love McLeods Daughters, its a crappy Australian Outback drama about all these girls running a sheep and beef station, and all their adventures, so obviously right up my street, cowboys, cows, sheep, horses... (and it almost always makes me cry right Amy?) I started watching it in NZ and am completely hooked, and have to say although last nights wasn't too fabulous they previewed the next couple of weeks and OH MY GOD!! Alex & Stevie, Kate, Jodi, its gonna be great, only problem is its on some crappy cable channel in the UK, rubbish. So I've made a decision not to go out any Wed night till after its been on, Sad I know but its awesome, I don't know how I'll survive without it in the UK, rely on my antipodean friends to keep me updated I suppose! At one point when I was at work in NZ over winter it was on mon, wed, fri at lunchtimes and on thurs night, so I think my addiction is perfectly justified!!!

Understatement of the decade...

vik — Thu, 8 Mar 2007 20:21:00 GMT

I've come to the conclusion Aussies are so used to dangerous things they don't really react the same way as other nationalities, 2 major pieces of evidence to back this up...

I went to Manly yesterday, walked around the shops, bad idea but luckily I'm very short of cash so just stood staring at all the wonderful clothes I wanted to purchase... then walked to the beach and sat down to read my book, look at the ocean and do some people watching. After I'd been there a little while there was an announcement on the PA system " All ocean goers please be aware strong winds are carrying a shoal of bluebottles towards the shoreline. There is nothing you can do for the immediate pain if you get stung so we advise you to get out of the water". At which point the learner surfers I was watching pretty much ran out of the surf Baywatch style (I can only assume these were tourists) while other surfers just carried on walking towards the waves. Is it just me or is that slightly stupid?????

I went to the Australian Museum as well (by far the best museum I've been to very friendly(not like some I could mention, Museum of sydney anyone?) and informative, I stayed for hours, especially loving the UK Natural History Museums wildlife photographer of the year section- go if you're in sydney at the mo, totally worth $10!), Sorry I got distracted, but the bit I was really interested in was the skeletons, birds and insects, all information I did know at some point in my 3years at uni slowly came back to me. I got to the cassowary's, asfar as I know the only bird that'll slice you in two if you even have the audacity to look at it, and all it said "Bad tempered " Well I mean come on! What they should say is avoid at all costs if you don't want to see your intestines hanging out of you before they peck your eyes out! (Maybe I'm doing the Cassowary a disservice, I'm not brave enough to go and find out though!!) Tomorrow I'm off to the Blue Mountains, don't think they have Cassowary's there but will keep you informed...

Traffic crazy Sydney

vik — Tue, 6 Mar 2007 19:01:00 GMT

Everywhere you look here there are cars, taxis, buses and general traffic, I can't quite get used to having to look before crossing the road, certainly not a pre-requistite in Fairlie! The traffic is just crazy, bus after bus filled with people listening to ipods or reading the paper. Maybe its just my lack of ever being in such a huge place before but there are people everywhere, and I can honestly say its not my favourite thing.

And boy are they sporty over here, I've seen about a million joggers/runners, cyclists, 2 separate outside yoga classes,as well as all those people who seem quite happy to walk (Including me, its only a couple of km's from my hostel to the quayside and quite a nice walk). Only thing I haven't seen are swimmers in the harbour! It looked very tempting today, very hot, but I came to the conclusion its not really like going for a dip in Opuha, I'd probably be dead before I hit the water, sharks, jellyfish whatever else deadly lurking around probably waiting for tourists to jump in! Maybe I'm exagerrating but you never know!

A walk in the park

vik — Tue, 6 Mar 2007 18:48:00 GMT

I've been in the botanic gardens today, I must have walked 50k's, round and round the penninsula. The gardens were lovely, if a bit noisy, hundreds of fruit bats living in the trees, I thought they'd be sleeping seems how it was daylight but obviously not. And my first yellow crested cockatoo things, also very loud, not good if you've had a hard night. I went for a walk in the australian rainforest section, very nice although I was more than a little paranoid about walking into a spider web! There were some giant ones over some of the paths, with very menacing looking big yellow, grey and black arachnids in the middle of them, probably waiting to catch a low flying fruit bat.

I even saw a totara tree, native to NZ which I never spotted in an entire year over there! And plenty of orchids, cacti, eucalypts and begonias for some odd reason! My Grandad would be proud of how many plants I can still name!

I even had a nice lie down in the park listening to my cd player (I'm not in possesion of an mp3 player of any sort, its on my birthday list...), although I was slightly concerned I'd get attacked by pigeons (not as unlikely as it sounds, read on...) or some smaller biting venomous thing. I do think the grass over here is odd, doesnt look like proper turf, I think its the wrong colour or something.

I stopped for a cup of tea in the gardens cafe, no chairs ooutside so I sat inside, only all doors etc open, so there were birds an things wandering around inside, needless to say a pigeon took advantage of me putting down my tea tray and going for a spoon and some sugar and though it'd have a drink of my milk, Eww!

Musings on Australia

vik — Mon, 5 Mar 2007 19:54:00 GMT

I was just thinking, when I got here, it actually felt like I was in a foreign country, I know I AM in a foreign country but still... Like when I got to New Zealand I automatically felt at home, here it feels like somewhere quite different, maybe its just the huge numbers of things that could kill you if you had the cheek to look at it. Although I seem to have survived my first day without seeing anything deadly that wasn't behind glass its still a little unnerving! I did see some weird stork bird thing in the gardens this morning, will have to get a picture and get my little brother on the track of identifying it.

This journal thing is getting quite addictive, I'll be spilling my darkest secrets before too much longer...

The big chill part 1

vik — Mon, 5 Mar 2007 19:15:00 GMT

Sunday 11th June 2006

Did normal farm stuff, we'd just dried off all but 50 of the cows so milking only taking about an hour and a half once a day, the rest of time moving breaks, and feeding out, which basically involved me sitting in the tractor! Not a bad life! The weather was a bit odd, a really warm norwester followed by freaking gales on the runoff that almost knocked me over a good few times! Then it started raining and was still raining when I went to bed...

Monday 12th June 2006

woke up to literally 4ft of snow! You know how you can always tell when its snowed, its deathly quiet and sort of blue reflections especially if its still dark, well it was just like that! I didn't think it was too deep til I saw my boss walking through it up to his waist! There was no power although at that point the phones were still going, so I wentover to the boss's house for a hot breakfast cooked on her log fire before headingn out to see if we could find the cows!

A more immediate problem was finding the fence lines, all completely buried, and getting deeper by the minute! The power was off so we had to try and make sure all the cows were still on the farm, counting and recounting! It was so deep at the runoff we didn't get up there for 2 days!

I've arrived

vik — Mon, 5 Mar 2007 18:49:00 GMT

I landed on 'Stralian soil last night, at around 10pm New Zealand time, and my immediate reaction? Take me back to Christchurch, quick sharp! I walked out of the airport into a taxi occupied by a gentleman of Asian extraction, who appeared to have no clue where I wanted to go! Although once he'd discovered the place he was very good if a bit crazy and talked to me about alpacas of all things- he reckoned you could make a fortune selling alpaca wool! It was sooooooo humid I was mighty uncomfotable, all you peeps know how much I hate hot weather! I got settled in and was feeling odd, sort of tired, it being very late in NZ but still too early to go to bed in Oz! I must've fallen asleep eventually, I woke up this morning at 7 (obviously still on NZ time!) to hear all about the humungous storm at about midnight last night, which I slept straight through (as usual right guys?) It was raining though still hot, so I went off to walk around, found my way to the quayside and got a bus to see the sights whilst staying dry! Decided to get off at the aquarium, possibly a mistake, lots and lots of people! I eventually got in and was surprised they let you take pics, but I decided the poor fish were probably completely blind from all the flashes (recommended to get better shots!) so I declined. It definately made everywhere even more crowded as everyone waited impatiently to get their pics of Nemo, Dory, Bruce and the Saltie. They had Blue penguins, great big turtles and sharks as well as a seal exhibit, although there weren't very many seals, only 1 of each sort and only 4 total! Go to the penninsula above Kaikoura if you want seals! Best thing I saw today was the sign at the croc enclosure, you could go up some stairs and look down on it, no major barrier to stop you going in with the croc, just a sign that said " Please do not go into the enclosure, if the fall doesn't kill you the croc certainly will" Pretty laid back when one of the deadliest creatures on earth is only 20ft below you!

I had a look at the maritime museum lots of interesting stuff about boats and things... (well it was raining and the museum was dry!) There was a pretty cool thing about navigating with the stars though. Then I had lunch a starbucks a bit of a walk round Darling Harbour when it stopped raining and then hopped back on the bus to watch all the sydneysiders running around trying to keep dry. I may have even laughed, which I should maybe have thought twice about cos when I got off the bus and tried to walk down the road all the pavements and storm drains were full, I lost one of my Jandals to the suction between water and tarmac and had to chase it about 50m down the road! I'm sure everyone was laughing at me but its a good job I'm in such a good frame of mind at the moment, I was laughing too at how ludicrous it seemed!

I'm slowly learning to be laid back and relax, take an hour to look at this, no need to rush, but its pretty difficult when going to milk has been my major occupation for the last year, I couldn't help but think what was going on at all my dairy farms over in NZ every time I looked at the time, oh, they'll just have finished morning milking, or time to get the cows in! At least hopefully now I'll be able to start getting a life! I am missing my cows though...