Hey Everyone! Its been ages since I have updated the blog! Have just been having a great time down here in Queenstown! The weather is very chilly as we’re just getting into the winter season!

A Quick rundown of what I’ve been up to the past 3 or 4 weeks:

• Became housemates with Seb and Sophie
• Joined a covers band of which I am the bass player! Seb is the drummer
• Shopped around for a great deal on a snowboard, boots and bindings
• Became a member of local pub Surreal, member get cheap pints
• Had many a late night in said pub above
• Attempted to buy a car with Trish on several occasions
• Made my first pasta bake – chorizo and veg
• Found a new love in hot whiskey
• Saw Star Trek and Terminator Salvation in the Cinema
• Went to a fancy dress house party…. I dressed up as a nerd, Trish was a robber and Seb and Sophie were two halves of a sandwich!
• Not even attempted to look for a job
• Snowboarded!

We’re living in a house of 7, well 8 if you include Dorge our cat We live about a 10 minute walk away from the centre of town which is cool! Queenstown is a lovely town surrounded by the most amazing landscape. All I have to do is look out my window and I can see the lake and surrounding mountains!

Here’s some photos!

We had a look at a few car markets just to get in idea on what we could get. We were originally thinking of getting a van and exploring New Zealand but its actually coming into their winter season. It would have been way too cold, so we’ll wait till spring for that. Then we were thinking of just getting a little car so we could drive down New Zealand towards Queenstown, the place we are going to live for 4 or 5 months. But we only had a few hours to decide on what car to get.

Finally we decided to just get a flight to Christchurch then a bus to Queenstown and get settled into the house with my friends Seb and Sophie. They have a spare room there for us thats available to rent. We didn’t want to make a rushed decision into what car to get so we are simply going to just get one down there as Seb says there are a lot of cars going.

Right now we are in Christchurch on the southern island of NZ. When we were approaching on the airplane we were coming across the mountains that had a nice little coating of snow on them… Got us pretty excited! It’s a really nice place and from just walking around its oozes with far more character and friendliness than Auckland. The little city is nucleated around the Cathedral Square. Real nice place.

Tomorrow we are getting the bus to Queenstown, so it should be nice and scenic. By now, we are both looking forward to not going from hostel to hostel and it should be a lot cheaper to stay in the same place. But most importantly I can’t wait to go snowboarding for a whole season! In a few weeks I’ll be buying all the gear and I already have my season pass! And hopefully by the time Ali and Wig arrive in August I’ll be better than Ali. Haha!

Also, Seb has the internet in the house apparently so I will do a big photo upload session from all the places I haven’t shown y’all yet!

Our Australian journey has brought us right along the east coast, from Cairns then up north to Cape Tribulation then down all the way to Sydney stopping off at some places like Magnetic Island, Noosa, Airlie Beach, the Whitsunday Islands, Fraser Island, Brisbane and Coffs Harbour. We’ve been through rainforest, great barrier reef, surf and concrete jungle. Seen spiders the size of your hand, meter wide wild turtles, sharks, an old wrech completely covered in coral and a species of fish that looks like Mick Jagger.

There really is a lot to do in this country and I will definitely be returning again to see the places I haven’t had the chance to see and most importantly to visit the Great Barrier Reef again. The GBR really has been an eye opener to my appreciation of nature and the mysteries that lie in the other 70% of this planet we live on. I never thought I’d be into diving as much as I am now and I now know what my friends Grum and Fiona feel like about diving. From now on whenever I look into going on a holiday it will definitely be based around diving.

Tomorrow we head off for Auckland, New Zealand. It feels like then end but its just another beginning. The beginning of another adventure.

We left Noosa and arrived in Brisbane and got to our accommodation. It was a simple backpackers place that was fairly central in the city. We only stayed one night in Brisbane as we were going to come back! I saw an entertainment magazine back in Noosa which had information on an open stage night in a back packers bar. It sounded pretty cool so we decided to go and check it out! It was basically a stage with loads of instruments on it; drums, guitars, bass, piano and a sax. There was a bunch of people playing and I asked the MC if ii could have a go on the drums and they called me up later on in the night. I got to play with some random Australians and a Korean on lead guitar We jammed out some covers and had some fun!

The next day we checked out the hostel and walked a few blocks down to ‘Wicked’ campervan rentals! The van looked good and was fairly new and has Flippy from the Happy Tree Friends graffitied onto the side of it! Its a simple enough van with  loads of compartments in it, you can basically put everything under the bed and when you are not sleeping you can turn it into a table and some seats around it. When you open the boot there is space for an ice box, gas and rings for the bbq, a pump action sink and a counter top along with some shelving. Plus there are curtains the close all over!

The first night we drove down to the Gold Coast, just south of Sydney. Its basically the name for a pretty large stretch of money making tourist activity with facilities to suit any type of holiday maker. Plus it was easter weekend when we were there so it was pretty packed! The first night we stayed parked up outside a hostel in Surfers Paradise, the next day we parked down nearer the beach for a walk around. We left the van at 10:30am and came back at 1pm and when we looked closer at the lock it was obvious that someone had jammed a screwdriver in in order to pop the lock and rob all our stuff but they didnt get in and we got out of there and header south a bit!

The second night we stayed in a place called Broadbeach and cooked up a nice dinner at the free bbq areas by the beach! BBQ sausages, fried onion, bread and ketchup! niiiice! Perfect campervan food! We got up the next day and was greated with some great sunshine! It had actually been overcast for about 4 days at this stage with on off showers! We got up, and got down to the beach to get bashed out of it by the waves!

Later that day we headed south to a little hippy town called Nimbin and got pelted even more out of it by the rain. We stayed in a little campsite there and pretty much remained in the van and under the boot door while cooking because of the weather.

The next day we headed to a place called Byron Bay and stayed in an overflow campsite as there was a 5 day Blues festival going on which was named… eh… Bluesfest! We didnt have a ticket to it and the day tickets we’re pretty overpriced, but we had fun staying in the campsite anyway! We managed getting away with staying there the second night too as there was so many people around and we we’re given an armband that got us in and out of the campsite through the security… But there was still RAIN!

We met up with some English mates we made and day 3 in byron. We had a a bit of a catch up with them. Two of the lads were at the festival and they were pretty shattered! That night we drove up near the Byron Bay lighthouse and parked up in a little beach cove next to some other campervaners and stayed there for the night.

The following morning ( which was actually this morning for me ) we went to Dreamworld and White Water World, two theme parks back up north on the Gold Coast. We bought a 2 day ticket so we are going back tomorrow when their gates open in order to get straight on the best rides in there! Beat the q’s!

We are meeting up with Clem and Amel on Friday, they arrived in Brisbane a few days ago. Should be some fun! We are invited to Amel’s greek easter sunday this sunday… aparently thats when the greeks have their easter… i dunno, im sceptical, but it does sound like a good piss up!

Hopefully I can use their shower

Had a nice time up here, spent time walking about, doing some surfing and stuff… Trish brought me out for dinner last night so I of course went for the peppered steak and a beer or two.

Heading off now to Brisbane, we will have a more in depth post on what we have been up to soon. I might write it up on the bus ride down. We have yet to write about the 3 day boat cruise we were on a few weeks back, so will ifll you in if i can remember!

We’re just back from exploring Fraser Isaland! What a trip it was. We went with mates Dave, Suzi, Tim and Sam from the diving course we went on in Cairns. We all rented our own 4×4 Toyota Landcruiser and did a self guided tour around the island. It was alot of fun driving on the beaches and bumpy inland tracks in it!

We got the jeep at about 8am and headed off to the the beach to get the barge over to the island. We went from Rainbow Beach to Fraser so it only was about a 10 minute barge ride, nice and quick. Once on Fraser we headed straight inland and checked out some of the lakes and had some swims. The lakes were amazing, crystal clear fresh water and really white sand, the visibility was amazing. After that we headed to where we were going to camp that night and set up shop. We went off for a drive to look for a bbq area but when we found one our battery in the car died and instead of cooking we had to organise how were were gonig to get back to the camp site as we were stranded! it was pitch dark and dingos roam freely all over the island so we wanted to get back! We ended up walking back and managed to get some jumpleads and a jump so we were all good. We got a replacement car the next day too which was grand! Once we got back we just fried the sausages on the gas stove and ate and drank some boxed wine

The next day we headed up north and did some more exploring and swimming. We camped on the beach and had a great boozey time! We cooked a simple pasta dinner and had the craic. One of the lads had a guitar so we had a bit of a sing song. I also had my harmonica too so we got to have a bit of a jam!

Today we packed up really early in the RAIN! It was pelting down! Where did this come from!!! we headed as north as we could and climbed a cliff. The views were stunning and thankfully the weather cleared a bit! Then raced back along the beach in order to make the tide! The waves were pretty rough and it was pretty tight at some cases! We got the barge back to the mainland and brought the car back.

Fraser Island was great fun and I wish I was heading there again tomorrow!

We arrived in a town called Ayr yesterday and met up with friends we made on our Open Water Diver course, Dave and Suzi. Ayr is the closest bus stop to the diving centre and its about 20 minute drive. We all got picked up by one of the divers who works with the dive company, an English man called Lee. He is working and studying down there for his Dive Masters, a more advanced certification. We cooked a bit of food and met up with the rest of the divers who were staying in the dive centre accommodation, two Americans and an Argentinean. We had a relatively early night as we had a 6.45am wake up call!

Once we got up there was a simple light breakfast ready for us, you’ll soon realise the reasons behind this small bit of morning grub! After that we got signed on and got all the paperwork out of the way and had our dive briefing. Once all that was done, all that was left was a quick 5 minute Jeep drive down the beach to our launch point. The dive boat was a simple yet big enough inflatable with twin 200 hp engines. It was a fairly choppy morning and there was a good bit of wind, which resulted in 2 meter swells. Lucky I took my seasickness tablet! It was pretty rough and for a moment the skipper was half thinking of cancelling because of the conditions. But its good thing he persisted as it was amazing down there.

The wreck rests on a sandy expanse 28 meters down, with the shallowest part at 14 meters. There is no natural reef surrounding this wreck so it’s the only place around for fish to live, so its thriving with the little guys. Or should I say, little and HUGE guys! There was some freakishly large fish down there. We managed to do two dives (which brings our dive count up to 10 in total), and on both dives we saw so many different types of sea life; a huge turtle, Marble Rays, a Tawny Shark, Maori Wrasse, sea snakes and a bunch of small fish who usually spend their time cleaning the larger fish. Plus loads more that I don’t know the names of yet!

Since the boat has been sunk for almost 100 years its actually quite difficult to concentrate on the wreck itself when you descend to it. At first glance it just looks like any usual reef as its completely been taken over by coral. You can’t make out any wood of metal, just coral! Its only when you get to swim around sections of it when you realise that this place is actually a boat. Our dive guide was able to show us some features that we could just about make out; winches, railings, the anchor and even we could see a toilet through a hole on the side of the boat. Structurally, the wreck is remarkably in well preserved condition considering its age.

After our second dive it was time for us to sort our gear out and head back to shore but the instant people boarded after their dive the vomit started spewing because of the way the boat was rocking. One guy even started getting sick when he surfaced! Within the group of 10 divers, 4 were getting sick for pretty much the whole bumpy ride back to shore! Trish looked a bit dodge at one stage but she was ok in the end and I was grand because I’ve spent a good bit of time on boats when I was younger.

That’s 10 dives now that we’ve done each, and we’ll get our Advanced Open Water Diver license when we complete one more required specialist dive; underwater navigator. That dive will consist of following a course underwater with multiple bearings and also we much complete a bunch of questions (knowledge review).

Just a quick note to say we have uploaded photos from Cape Tribulation. Expect to see lots of spiders and nights full of chilling out playing pool and drinking wine!

Click the link below for the photos:
http://holidays.danbhala.com/photos/australia/?album=1&gallery=9