Today’s touristy escapade was a visit to the Castlemaine XXXX brewery. Visit it I did. Only to get there five minutes after the tour had set off, and a 3-hour wait till the next one. I wasn’t really up for sitting there and finishing two novels, so I walked back into town. On the way [...]

continue reading.....

Quite a busy little day wandering around the city centre, getting a feel for the place. I was meeting Fiona (you may remember her from such things as being in Vietnam at the same time as me) after lunch, so I spent the morning just plodding around, looking in shops and trying to locate a [...]

continue reading.....

 Today I had a lie in. Despite waking up at 5am, I stayed in bed and forced myself to doze until 7:00. Fair enough as I didn’t crash until gone 1 in the morning. Elaine had been up for three hours and already had a trip to the gym under her belt. We had breakfast [...]

continue reading.....

 Another early morning. Elaine gets out of bed at 4am each day, usually to get to the gym and stuff before work. For those who don’t know, she’s a bodybuilder. She’s a senior champion and has three competitions coming up so she’s hard at work building muscle and eating next to nothing. Very serious woman! [...]

continue reading.....

 Having said that, I was up at 7am the next morning as I couldn’t sleep. Great. B & A surfaced at a much more respectable 10 o’clock and we had breakfast before they very kindly drove me to see Avril – a cousin I’ve not seen in almost 13 years when she moved out here. [...]

continue reading.....

Well, I’ve been about a bit the last couple of days. Elaine got me settled in at her place before driving me to see “number one son”, Dale. Dale was actually born in Yorkshire, but moved out to Brisbane with Elaine and her hubby-at-the-time when he was a handful of months old. He’s the first [...]

continue reading.....

The last few days have had their ups and down (mainly downs) but you’re not visiting here to read about my personal life, you’re wanting stuff about other countries and stuff. A quick “thank you”, though, to everyone for your comments and mails. I’m a big boy – I’ll get over things, and Lou and [...]

continue reading.....

Thanks to Gareth for posting some of my Kakapo visit details to his site Another Chance To See. I’d like to recommend the blog as a place to find out more ongoing information on many endangered species as well as out feathered friends. Gareth does a great job of compiling videos, news articles, blog posts [...]

continue reading.....

Sorry for the lack of posts recently and there won’t be many for a while yet. I’m still in Auckland and the bad news is that Lou and I have parted ways. As a result, I’m completely heartbroken and I’m really not up to blogging. Or much else, to be honest. I hope the two [...]

continue reading.....

Finally, I’ve had the chance to upload a few videos that I’ve mentioned in my posts. Dodgy leached wireless connections are rarely reliable enough to do this, so thanks to Rob and Indy for the use of their broadband connections to get these things up here. In addition, I’ve put up a selection of photos [...]

continue reading.....