They’re a fair walk out of the town, but it is a nice one, and when you get there it’s amazing being able to slide into pools that are naturally as hot as a Jacuzzi. Right next to the pools is a river that’s running at a nice and toasty 2ºC, it’s pretty refreshing to dive into the river and run out (as fast as you bloody can) and back into the pools. Bare in mind you’ll have pins and needles for a good few minutes afterwards.

After a very relaxed night in Taupo (hot pools make you very sleepy) I headed out to Rotorua, my last stop in NZ before flying out, so I wanted to do something a little special.

White water rafting works on grades, ranging from zero to five, five being the highest. In Rotorua there is a grade five course, but on a day like the one we had it was closed –  apparently three days of rain makes rivers prone to flooding – so I had to settle for a grade four, which I was told that because of the amount of rain we had been having, was pretty much a grade five anyway! Kaitiaki was the company I was rafting with which you can book through STA Travel.

They employ only Kiwi guides because they want to keep it as cultural as possible. They all spoke Maori and so blessed the river before we went on it to make sure we weren’t going to die, which was nice of them.

The ride was amazing. The rapids were crazy and the guide was a good laugh (he actually picked up one of the girls on our boat and threw her in the water! All in good fun of course). By the end of it, if you haven’t fallen in already, you can just flip off the side of the boat. Be warned though, even through the fairly industrial wetsuits they give you, the river is bitingly cold.

It lasted just about the right amount of time, any longer and you would start to get really cold and a little bored. While I did have a great time, I could see that I would start to be experiencing the same thing over and over again.

On the way back to town they can take you to some more hot pools to try and warm up afterwards. Don’t go! They’re cold, they smell REALLY bad and most hostels back in town have artificial hot pools of their own, and they are much more refreshing!

That evening, it was Maori time!

The Maori experience allows you to see what life used to be like for the Maori people. On each bus on the way to the village a chief will be chosen. He will represent the entire group by having to stand in front of the Maori chief and take whatever abuse he is given (which is in the form of a lot of waving sticks and shouting). It was a shame that the weather was so bad because apparently there are a lot of things you can do in the village once you get in, like stick throwing and Maori juggling, but it was all called off as it rained freaking cats and dogs all night.

Despite the weather, you still get a brilliant show and then you are lead into the dinner house. This is worth the money alone! The buffet is incredible. Absolutely incredible. There is so much food, and the pavlova (which I found out is steeped in history as there is a dispute over who invented it, the Ozzies or the Kiwis, random bit of cultural knowledge) is unreal! All the food was cooked in the traditionly Maori way by burying it underground in a pressure cooker style oven which was pretty cool to watch!

Last day in NZ tomorrow, and I’m finding that I really don’t want to leave!

There is only one town in the world you can find Ferg Burger, and there is only one Ferg Burger in that town, but this doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re doing.

The Burgers are enormous. A girl once said to me “how can you possibly expect me to eat the entire thing? It’s bigger than my sodding head!” When I indulged in my first (and unfortunately last) Ferg Burger, I was able to eat one whole one and be sufficiently satisfied for the rest of the day… and the next one for that matter. If you find yourself in Queenstown, the best way to refuel  after a long day skiing, or a morning of skydiving is to get to this small burger joint on the high street and gorge yourself on an amazing amount of meat! Bear in mind that when you do go there you will have to wait around for 20 minutes for your food to be ready. Being the only one in the world means that – more often than not – the world and his wife are trying to do exactly what you are!

Of course, there are other (much less expensive) things to do when you get to this brilliant town. Across the lake there is a park with 18 baskets dotted around it. These are for Frisbee golf. The idea is to throw your Frisbee into the basket in as little amount of throws as possible (much like golf believe it or not). It will take about 2 hours to get through the entire course, but it’s a great way to spend the afternoon after recovering from the night before, skydiving in the morning and Ferg Burging for lunch!

The nightlife, as I have said, is amazing here. You end up being fairly shocked by it after spending so long not really having a social life on the way down to Queenstown. There are too many night clubs and bars to chose from and you will spend longer in Queenstown than you thought you would simply because you wont want to leave without soaking in as much of it as you can. From my experience, I would recommend going to World Bar, just up the road from Base Hostel. The have teapots that they fill with all kinds of liquids and guarantee you a good night!

Of course I had to leave eventually. Much more things to see up the East Coast!

Treble Cone is about a half hour bus ride away from the centre of town, and all together, including the transfer, the ski pass and the gear, it will cost you around NZ$135 for a full day of skiing here. I, needless to say, passed out on the bus ride (we had had a few drinks the night before and I was surviving, once again, on about 3 hours sleep), and was woken up 30 minutes later as the bus jolted to stop. The scenery in front of me was mental.

We had climbed over the clouds and was now looking down on them. The sheet of cloud looked like an extension of the pure white snow that was lying on the mountain side. It was unreal.

After taking a few snaps, we got our ski passes (which you buy at the bottom of the first lift. There are no gondolas here, it’s straight onto the snow off the bus) and clicked our skis on.

Like I said, Queenstown can get a bit crowded, but here, we were able to run up and down the slopes non stop, with not even a hint of a queue at any point. The amount of runs at Treble Cone is more than enough to keep you happy few a few days. People have told me that if you’re staying around for a week or so, then maybe head down to Queenstown, simply because the mountains are bigger and you have more choice, but for the day, Treble Cone is “Sweet As, Bru”.

By the end of the day, if you’ve been skiing a few times, I would recommend going as high a you can in the ski lifts and then taking the hike up to the highest mount on these mountains. The views are out of this world, and the off piste skiing back down to the main slopes is a lot of fun. What you should know about the slopes in NZ is that the grading system is slightly different. The are no Reds, it’s Green, Blue then Black, and the Blue runs can go from nice and easy to steep moguls pretty quickly! What’s really nice about these runs though, is that a lot of them are just guides, and you can make up a lot of it as you go along. Pretty much all of the Blacks are just off piste, and especially at Treble Cone where there aren’t many people are fairly uncarved and deserted. Again, a lot of fun!

Only wiped out a coupled of times (once pretty spectacularly underneath the ski lift) and still only have the one hole in my teeth. A freaking good day!

Having done a fair bit of climbing back at home, I was so excited to get out on the ice. The glacier itself is pretty breathtaking. Standing at the end of the valley that sits in front of it, you look across to the foot of the glacier. It was at this point that our guide told us that what we saw was actually 2 Km away. Brilliant.

The walk there is actually pretty nice – the scenery around a glacier, as you can imagine, is beautiful. And without knowing it, we were actually standing on the glacier within 25 minutes. The bottom of it is covered it debris from the landslides that apparently happen very often, but when they do they are amazing to witness. Wasn’t entirely sure if I would have wanted one to happen when I was halfway up an ice face, amazing or not.

Ice climbing is very different to actual climbing. You can put your feet and hands anywhere you want, as long as you can get them into the ice. But it’s the actual process of doing this, actually getting the picks and the crampons into the ice, that really is the hard part. Especially when the ice you are climbing up hasn’t seen sunlight in a good few hundred years.

The whole experience only cost NZ$250 (£125) and I had an amazing time and saw some incredible things. But there was another cost that I did not set out to spend. On the first climb of the day, my fourth throw of the pick found itself well and truly lodged in the ice. On trying to get it out I found that it wasn’t as easy as all the others. The guide shouted up at me “just give it a good yank!”, so I did, and the thing came out of the ice and straight into my mouth. It didn’t actually hurt that much, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t knocked half a tooth out.

Fantastic.

I still managed to hold on to that stray piece of tooth though. A nice little memento. And who else can say they lost a tooth ice climbing in New Zealand? At least that’s how I’m choosing to look at it.

Matt M

STA UK WTI 2010

After this, we headed to the Johnstone River Crocodile Park, which you can get at discounted prices through the Oz Experience. It’s a brilliant few hours! The park is actually a farm, where they farm crocodiles for meat. We were told it’s very similar to farming cows, except that these cows can kill you if they wanted to. The guides feed them chickens with no regard for their own life, and it gets a little dodgy when they tell you that one of the crocs they are feeding tends to go mental every now and again and kills the females. But it’s still a great experience!

After shooting up the remainder of the coast and spending one night in Cairns (which is not enough to experience both the heat and the things to do there. Again I am told that it is amazing place to stay for a few days. Maybe next time) it was time to get to the adrenaline capital of the world; New Zealand.

On landing, once again, I was moving from hot to cold. But this time I was prepared with hoodies and coats. I didn’t get into the hostel until 12.30 am and I had only had an hours sleep in Cairns (the night life is fantastic!) so it was straight to bed.

Christchurch is one of the biggest cities in New Zealand, and yet it is still smaller than most of the places I have visited over the past few months. It is more of a stop over point as you cruise through the South Island, with not much around it in the way of the backpacker lifestyle.

What has to be noted about NZ is that there is a lot of nothing in between towns, but that makes way for the most breathtaking views I have seen so far. One minute you will be looking over massive green fields surrounded by enormous ferns, and the next you are driving through a canyon steeped in mountains. It is incredible!

The next couple of weeks is to be riddled with skiing, bungee jumping, sky diving, the list goes on. It’s going be a heart pumping few weeks!

Matt M

STA UK WTI 2010

Whitsundays is a collection of islands of Airlie Beach. They have been classed as a ‘National Heritage Site’ which means that no building can be built on them, and the waters are policed heavily. The islands are surrounded by the Great Barrier Reef which only adds to the beauty of this place.

From Airlie Beach, visitors jump on any number of boats for a variety of days and head over to the islands to take in the scenery. We ended up on The Hammer.

Luckily the weather was holding out (which we were told was not the case for the past couple of weeks) and we got clear blue skies the whole way round.

Our first stop was Whitehaven Beach. Which looks as if it has been brought in from a movie set. It does not look as though it should be real, but when you feel the sand under your feet (which is the softest sand I have even stood on) all you can do is look around and laugh. How the hell did I end up here??

It was on this day, that back at home, all my friends in the drama department at Exeter were donning their gowns and mortar boards for graduation. I had a very different picture, using my cowboy hat from Kroombit as my mortar board and an Australian towel as my gown with the traditional blue screen background being replaced by a view over the Whitsundays islands. Perfect.

Right now, we are out of the jelly fish season, so there is no serious danger, but the crew on the boats are still obligated to giving you stinger suits to wear before you go in the water. Standing on the most perfect beach in the world, looking at the clearest water in the world, with not a cloud in the sky, there is NO WAY that was going to be putting on what can only be described as a thin wet suit to go swimming. Besides, the crew weren’t even doing it either. Which is how I got my first ever jelly fish sting. Don’t jump ahead though, it felt as if someone had starched me pretty hard, and the sting that comes with it wouldn’t go away. James, one of the crew members, said that we would know if it was serious in 20 minutes was I might start feeling funny, I hope he was joking.

Like with Fraser Island, there is no light pollution around these islands. In fact it is even less so. Again, we were very lucky. There was not a cloud in the sky, which meant that for the first time in my life I got to see the edge of the Milky Way. Awesome stuff!

Whitsundays is one of the places that I wish I didn’t have to leave. I could sit on Whitehaven beach for my entire life and never get tired of the view both during the day and at night. But of course, we have to move on.

It’s getting even hotter now, and the scenery is getting more and more beautiful. 2 more days of Oz fun times ahead!

Matt M

STA UK WTI 2010

All of the people on the bus are like minded travellers, and the drivers try and make this as enjoyable as they can. Included in the price of the bus ticket (which varies depending on the kind of package that you buy) are several activities you can do as you go like surfing, lawn bowels (!) and the Kroombit Cattle Station.

If anyone has watched any kind of cowboy film, then you will know what I am talking about. Kroombit is in the middle of nowhere (so remote in fact that in 1995 they found a downed WW2 plane that had been ‘missing’ since 1946 - it was apparently not in any way hidden, it was just that no one walked past it in almost 50 years) and the people who work on this farm (made up of both locals and backpackers working for accommodation… as a cowboy!) spend their days moving goats around the enormous expanse of land they own and cracking whips.

When you come here, you get to share in that experience. I can now say that I can ride a horse!

There are so many different things you can do at this place. Quad biking, Horse riding, Goat Mustering, Shooting and there is something called a goat rodeo, that everyone gets involved in at the end of the day, which constitutes of dragging a goat out of its pen, lifting and turning it over and simulating the branding on their arses (of course we were only using a rod painted red at the end). It’s a lot of fun!

Then the winners of the goat rodeo (depending on the time it took you to brand your goat) choose either ‘the circle of love’ or ‘the ring of fire’. For us it was ‘the ring of fire’, which turned out to be all twenty of us standing in a circle holding hands while our guide stuck a cattle prod into someone on the other side of the circle, sending 11,000 volts (apparently) through us all. I find myself wanting to know what ‘the circle of love’ may have included. He then asked for volunteers to have the rod put directly on them. Being who I am, I stepped up and he promptly stuck the rod on my bare stomach. Poor cows.

In the evening, there’s a buffet dinner (there’s a lot of these up the East Coast), whip cracking lessons and a Bucking Bronco. It’s hard to believe that just over a week ago I was in the concrete jungle of Sydney.

It’s starting to get hotter as well, and yet this is still winter over here. I can’t imagine what summer is like.

Matt M

It will cost you AU$50 to stay here, but that includes a buffet style dinner, buffet style breakfast, your four hour surf lesson the next day, and an incredible lunch after you get back to the camp (which is optional and if you do not want to have it you can knock AU$5 off the price of the stay, but believe me, you will WANT to have this lunch!).

The night before you get your lesson, after dinner, there’s a chance for you to get to know your fellow surfers and your instructors over a camp fire, a guitar, and a box of goon. Cue some slightly inebriated camp fire sing alongs. I love my job.

The next morning it’s straight out onto the water. And I am proud to say that I got standing on my first try. It then took me a further 45 minutes to do it again. Beginners luck indeed. Once you have the hang of it though, it gets addictive, and I can see why these guys do it for a living. I can also see why they are so fit, after four hours of this I was exhausted and all my muscles were aching. The most exercise I’ve done in a long while.

Nearer the end of the lesson, myself and Charlie, a guy I met on the bus, were getting up the board most of the times we caught a wave. And as they started to call everyone back into the beach, we went out to catch our last couple of bigger waves.

On the penultimate surf, we both started paddling under a wave about 2 metres high (this might be inaccurate, but to me, this wave was 2 metres high) and after a bit of a wobble both got up and standing. Realising how close we were standing to each other, we high-fived, and promptly fell off. How many times can you say you have done that?

Again, I love my job.

Matt M

On my return, in the height of their winter, I was in for a nice surprise. We pulled into the Woodduck Inn, a hostel just off Kings Cross, and headed up to their top deck which over looks the observation tower and Hyde Park. And there was not a cloud in the sky. Not only that, I was stripping off the four layers I had donned in preparation for the cold. The fist guy we met was actually sitting in the sun in shorts and not much else “catching a tan”… in the middle of winter… go figure.

The Woodduck is a fantastic place. The people working there were brilliant, and it was also full of backpackers working for accommodation, some of whom had been there for a good long while (it seems that the inspiration to actually find a job is quite hard when you are living in this place for free and are surrounded by people wanting to have a good time) so we already had a head start in finding the best places to go.

There are obviously the standard things that one goes to see when in Sydney; the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the Botanical Gardens (pronounced Booww-taaaanicaal by the Welsh Paul who had been working in the Woodduck for just a week but had settled in straight away) and The Rocks (it has to be said that The Rocks is an entire area of shops, houses and bars, all with a very rustic feel, and all very cosy. There is a pub crawl that you can do which takes you to all the bars in the area, and will take about three days, but it is a little more pricey here that other places you might go. Here, is more of a place to go and get some food. And what food it is!), but for the more backpacker cheep deals, we found The Gaff.

It’s a small bar/restaurant/club/general place all backpackers go after a bag of ‘goon’, and some of the deals you can find in here are amazing. It’s no Ivy, and certainly isn’t Fabric (a restaurant and club in London respectively for those who have no idea what I’m referring to) but the food that comes out is some of the best that I have had on this trip. The Woodduck has a long-standing relationship with them (as with the sister hostel, Boomerang) which means that you get even more money off with them than usual. I had an incredible steak and a drink for AU$6, and on nights out, the amount of free drinks vouchers that fly around is brilliant!

If you find yourself in Sydney for a few days, and are looking for a good night on the town, there is something called the Oz Party Bus, and is exactly what it sounds like. The guys who own the company bought an old bus and gutted it, filling it with speakers and disco lights. They pick you up from certain points around the town and then take you to five bars and clubs around Sydney (ending in The Gaff) and it can get pretty hectic. If you think about what it is like on the underground in rush hour when a train comes to an abrupt stop, add 3 bars with a free drink at each and dancing people. You get the idea.

It is in Sydney that you can get the chance to go and see the Blue Mountains, given their name because from a distance they look ever so slightly blue thanks to the millions of Eucalyptus trees growing on them. Now while these mountains are fairly spectacular, and the ‘Three Sisters’ formation is pretty nice, I have to say that it is not the most amazing thing I have seen on the trip so far. The tour itself was perfectly nice, but if you have been all over Australia before this, then you might not be so blown away by these mountains. By all means, go and see them if you want to, but don’t expect anything really special.

Heading up the East Coast now… all the way to Cairns in 13 days… wish us luck!!

Matt M

It was 1pm and we were on our second flight of the day. As we approached our final descent into Melbourne flight attendant cheerily announced that it was a freezing 9 degrees outside. It was the middle of the day and an ungodly 9 degrees! Matt and I starred at each other in shock. We’d just come from a frazzling, flip flop wearing, sun cream lathering, sweaty 49 degrees in Hong Kong, and now we’d arrived to this. Now, I’m no medical expert but I was almost positive that a sudden drop in temperature like that could be fatal. Well, I say sudden; it had been 14 hours since we’d last experienced that kind of temperature but had since then been cocooned in a 20 something degree recycled aeroplane air and blankets. This was going to be a pretty nasty shock. As soon as we collected our bags then, we rushed immediately to the airport toilets to change… into literally EVERYTHING that we had. I was now wearing pretty much ALL my clothes, and I still felt a chill.

It must be stressed, therefore, that when travelling from Northern-Southern hemisphere from our summer, to their winter that two drastically different wardrobes are required. In Vietnam we had moaned ceaselessly about the unrelenting heat and humidity and how much we longed to go to somewhere cooler, and now, barely five minutes after accomplishing such an ambition, we were already regretting it! ‘Where’s that genie… bring him back! I’ve changed my mind!’…

Melbourne, it has to be said, did not strike me as Australian. In fact, I had considerable trouble remembering where I was for the first few days. To me, it seemed more like America or Canada than Oz. At least the Oz I had had in mind. The streets were arranged in blocks and lined with trees, the yellow taxis were reminiscent of the NY style cabs, there were wide expanses of parkland and super tall buildings everywhere and the whole place had a kind of Manhattan in a movie set kind of feel. As we walked the streets it looked like autumn but felt, thanks to a particularly nippy wind, like winter.

Aside from the cold, however, I was loving being in Oz; loving being in an english speaking environment again. Whilst miscommunication in other languages can be entertaining, and learning a new language rewarding it is always nice to able to converse with utter ease in your own language, and to understand and be understood be everyone.

After a few days spent video editing, chatting with locals and banishing our jet lag, we wandered out onto the streets to get a feel for the place. To me, Melbourne seemed like the kind of place where you didn’t need to actually do much to have a good time. Or maybe I should rephrase that. You didn’t need to SPEND much.

We first hopped on the free tram service which forms a handy frame around the centre of the city and hopped off wherever took our fancy. Our first stop was to sample the delights of Victoria Market – a market that’s been around since 1878. (Market open every day apart from Mondays and Wednesdays) It was here you could peruse through aisles and aisles of the most bizarre and interesting arranged stuff. Amongst the delights the market had to offer were the following gems: gigantic furry caterpillars, the kind normally seen in IKEA-esque places, Oz inspired beer coolers,didgeridoos, crocodile Dundee style hats (as modelled in one of the pics!), magnetic wine racks, socks with Che Guevara on them and some truly hideous jumpers. Nothing in the end took our fancy (although I was quite tempted by the novelty of having a South American revolutionary on my socks!) so we moved on to kick leaves in the park and make our way to the Melbourne Museum, which was showing an exhibition of artefacts found from the wreck of the Titanic. The exhibition wasn’t free but the museum itself was for those with valid student cards. (Remember to bring them though. No amount of persuasion works!)

After that we wandered through colourfully graffitied streets to get to Brunswick Street, where we’d be told by the lovely people at STA Australia, was the place to go. At first it didn’t start out as the world’s most promising street but further up it turned into an ecliptic mix of funky boutiques, trendy cafes and bars, vintage shops and restaurants selling international cuisine. Melbourne has the highest Greek population outside Greece and Cyprus so it was unsurprising to find so many Greek style places, what was more startling, however, was the number of Vietnamese restaurants. Here we were having left the country barely a week ago and having travelled thousands of miles away and we were met with dozens of places selling Vietnamese food. We’d been recommended Brunswick Street, especially for a place called Bimbos- a place famous for its AU$4 pizzas. Look out for the giant baby we’d been told. As in turned out, the baby wasn’t as gigantic or as prominent as had been made out. Still, inside the place looked good, and the pizzas we even better.

After hopping back on the tram, we checked out Federation Square – the place to be to watch the world cup apparently. There wasn’t a match on when we went, and as such the place failed to impress, although I can imagine that were we there for a game, it would be pretty awesome.

On from Federation Square we took the tram, past a sculpture of a cow in a tree, to Melbourne Jail – the place where the notorious criminal Ned Kelly finally met his maker. It was closing as we arrived, so we didn’t unfortunately get the chance to go in, but the ghost tour looked interesting and the whole place serves as a good reminder of the country’s unorthodox beginnings.

In the evening we headed up, courtesy of STA Australia, (normal student price AU$18) to the top of the Eureka tower to see some amazing views of the city. All in all, a good day, and a relatively cheap one.

In my opinion, Melbourne gets the thumbs up. Visit it if you can, just remember to bring lots of layers!