Welcome to Oz

After climbing the glaciers it was time to head east again and get ready for our trip to Australia. We hauled ass for 2 days driving on some very curvy and narrow roads, which made night driving pretty exciting. One night in the middle of the drive through the Southern Alps we had to find our rough camping site in complete darkness. We pulled over at one place by the railroad tracks but both Susanne and I got freaked out when we saw a lone campervan hidden in the bushes. Much to Michael's dismay we insisted on moving, luckily only another mile up the road. Here we saw a few more campers and it didn't feel so much like a scene out of a Friday the 13th movie.

We spent our last night in Christchurch at the airport holiday park so we would be close by for our 6:15 am departure to Brisbane. Susanne was a real trooper - not only did she get up at 4 am to drive us to the airport, she also had to clean out the camper all by herself - even the yucky bits.

Getting to Australia turned out to be a bit of a chore - see Michael's blog for details of our visa fiasco. I think that after almost five months of traveling we might be losing our touch a bit - getting a bit lazy, a little slack, whatever. In the end it was a miracle that we were able to board our flight.

That same day we flew up the east coast of Australia to Airlie Beach. The gig in Airlie Beach is to take a 2-3 day cruise around the Whitsunday Islands that are part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. There are numerous boats to choose from - the classic booze cruise, racing boats, catamarans, sail boats, really expensive boats, etc. I pretty much based my boat choice on the name - the Waltzing Matilda. It evoked just the image I was looking for. Traditional and classic and not so fast moving. Anyway, we left the following morning on the Waltzing Matilda for a 3 day, 2 night cruise. As you are not allowed to bring any glass on board I purchased my first box of wine and prepared for the journey.