new zealand tomorrow

this is our last post before we leave for new zealand early tomorrow morning.

we thought we'd give you an idea of our plans...


this is a map of the route we will be taking, starting in auckland for one night, then mercury bay for the second night and rotorua for the third. we then move on to waitomo, then stay in taupo for a few nights where we plan to walk to mt doom (out of lord of the rings for those who don't know).

from there we move onto river valley for the night, then down to wellington for a couple of days before crossing over to the south island. we then head anti-clockwise round the south island, starting at nelson and moving down to wanaka and queenstown, before making our way back up towards wellington and back up to auckland.

we'll try and keep in touch as much as we can, though obviously it'll be a little harder as we're not in one place for more than four nights.

we're really excited about the last leg of our adventure and can't wait to see everyone when we're back in five weeks!

hope your all well, x x x

ps. mrs marsland has asked us to tell dave and percy to stop cheating on the comments.

hard rock cafe

tonight we went to the hard rock cafe in surfers paradise, for a "goodbye australia" meal.

we both had nice new clothes to wear... greg bought some new nudie jeans and i have a new dress.


hard rock lived up to it's reputation, as usual the walls were covered with rock memorabilia and there was a cool atmosphere.

greg tackled the 'legendary 10oz hard rock burger'.

whilst amy tried to take on a 'hickory bbq burger'.

both were delicious.

after the main course, we couldn't eat any more, so we decided to wait and have a drink before thinking about dessert.
greg had a pint for the first time in a while and amy had a cosmopolitan cocktail (and didn't realise at the time, but got to keep the glass... they even boxed it up for us... though we're not sure how we'll get it home in one piece).

for dessert, we went for a chocolate fudge brownie sundae, which was gone within seconds, mmm.

we'd also been looking at this hard rock hoody for a while, and as the sleeves were a bit too short for greg, amy bought it instead.


tonight was definitely a great end to what has been an amazing trip round australia!

tomorrow night is our last night, so we're cooking a meal for john and jo to say thanks. then we have a very early start on thursday when we set off for auckland.

we probably wont have as much chance to post blogs while in new zealand, but we'll try our best to get online at least once or twice a week.

see you all in 5 weeks!!! x x x

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMES "PERCY" HIRST

we'd like to wish james a happy birthday. hope you are having a good day and don't go out and get too pissed. we'll have some belated birthday celebrations with you when we get home but in the meantime have a good one!

not much to report down under. we went to the cinema today and saw will smith's new film 'the pursuit of happyness'. it was pretty good, well worth a watch.

in other news there was apparently a mistake in the last blog. my mum reckons i (greg) have seen a polar bear before, at chester zoo, but i am struggling to remember.

that's all for now.

sea world

hi everyone, today we went to sea world. it was a really good day out.

we started by having a look at the indoor aquarium, which was full of all sorts of fish, many that we have already seen on our travels up to cairns and the whitsundays.

after that we had a look at a couple of dugong's. sea world has made a large exhibit for the dugong's and one in particular who they rescued from the wild. it had been found without it's mum at a very young age, sea world looked after it for a while but decided to release it back into the wild. however it was then discovered stranded and was brought back to live at sea world.

for those who don't know, a dugong is from the same family as manatees, and are known commonly as sea cows because of the way they "graze" on the sea's vegetation. this particular dugong is called pig.

after spending lots of time reading up on dugongs we stumbled across some HUGE australian pelican's. we were shocked at the size of them and didn't want to get too close.

there was a few looking a bit worse for wear, one with half a wing missing that probably wouldn't survive in the wild as it can no longer fly.

luckily we caught up with a walrus who was taking some time out on a bench nearby. despite being a man of very few words, he agreed to have a photo taken with greg. meanwhile, amy commandeered a pirate ship.

in the waters near the pirate ship we spotted a few dolphins.

then we went to watch a show called 'quest for the golden seal'. the seals were really good and made us laugh. it's amazing how intelligent they are and it really looked like they were enjoying themselves.

our favourite part of sea world was polar bear shores. they have created a near arctic summer evironment for the bears with a big pool that has underwater viewing. we thought the bear was gorgeous.

we then made our way to shark bay. there was a number of rock pool areas surrounding it where we got to touch some starfish and sea cucumbers. we had felt a sea cucumber before, when we went scuba diving on the great barrier reef and it was good to get another look at such a strange creature.

we got to see the sharks from an underwater viewing area.

there was loads of other fish to see, including this big fella... a queensland groper. grandad (ces) you'd have a job reeling this one in!


not only does sea world have all of these amazing animals, it also has a few rides. so we thought we'd give a few a go.

they have a big wheel called the sea world eye so we gave that a try. we got to see some good views of the park, surfers paradise and the surrounding areas.

we also had a go on the log flume and the bermuda triangle ride which needs a whole blog of it's own to describe... dave it was like one of my dreams it was that crazy. but basically it involved us being sent to investigate a volcano that had appeared in the bermuda triangle. inside the volcano we found aliens and robots and all the missing planes, boats, missiles and people that have gone missing there since time began. how odd.

after our mission we went to get some well earned lunch, then headed to the water park for a swim and to try out some of the slides.

there was also a massive slide where we both sat in a giant rubber ring, but we had no one to take a photo of us on that.

we got to see some more dolphins, in a show at dolphin cove. they were amazing to watch and seemed to love the attention. it was interesting to see how the trainers communicated with them and the dolphins were very sociable when we walked round the cove after the show. they were eager to show off when we got close by.

by this time it was almost time to leave. but we just couldn't resist going to see the polar bear a second time. however this time there were two young male bears. we saw them play fighting, which was incredible to see. greg had never seen a polar bear before today. all he kept saying was "wow".

we felt very lucky to be only inches away from one of them while we were down in the underwater viewing area, he was huge!

if you've read this far then well done. it was so long because we had a really fun day and wanted to show you as much of it as we could.

can't wait to see you all, only 6 weeks now!

no doubt we'll post again over the weekend.

take care x x x

minus 5

hello everyone.

we've finally got our minus 5 photo!

this is the ice bar that we visited in sydney with erin and steve. we had 30 minutes in there, it was -15 degrees and by the time we left our hands we're frozen!

we got a vodka cocktail in a glass made of ice, and even the drink was half frozen.

in other news, we are thinking of going to seaworld in a few days. amy has been to the one in florida which was amazing, so we're going to see what this one is like too.

then a few days after that we head up to brisbane for our flight to new zealand!

we'll be in touch again soon. hope everyone's well. love us x x x

you can't tie me up i'm just having my lunch

we'd just like to say a big thank you to dave and percy and everyone who starred in our dvd.

we went to john's daughters house today and they had a dvd player so we were able to watch it!

it really made us laugh and it was great to see everyone.

our favourite moments include...

• dave and percy dressed up as the von trapps, dancing to sound of music.
• the reconstruction of the robbery
• the venice card game
• keith / dad at lockside
• everyone clapping in turn
• jack's impression of amy
• the cc footage
• percy in gregs bed
• mmm bop... roland

... so everything really, haha.

but, one thing... where was ray ward?

thank you so much everyone, especially dave and percy who deserve a big pat on the back. it was really nice of you and we really appreciate it.

there's not much news down under. john's daughter martha and her husband and kids were all really nice. they live back down towards byron bay in an area called lismore, which was way out in the countryside. their house was really nice and we had a good day. we're off to the beach tomorrow and are pretty much going to be relaxing until we head off to new zealand, as when we're over there we wont be in one place more than a few days. it should be quite exciting and we're both expecting it to go really quickly.

well, we'll update again soon. and finally thank you again. x x x

australia zoo

on friday we got up at 6am to catch our coach to australia zoo. we were both very excited and couldn't wait.

half way into the 3 hour journey to the zoo... the heavens opened and it didn't stop all day!

despite the rain we still had an amazing time and had a laugh at our own expense!

the zoo was really good and you can tell that steve irwin still has a major influence over it. there was a tribute wall for him, full of flowers and his famous khaki shirts and there were loads of pictures detailing his life.

onto the animals, finally we saw some of the australian icons that we have been looking out for since we arrived 10 weeks ago.

although we caught a glimpse of a koala whilst on the great ocean road, we hadn't seen one close up. we got chance to stroke one and get really close.

our favourite experience was getting up close to the kangaroo's. again this was an animal that we have been looking out for and really wanted to see!

they didn't disappoint! we even saw one with a joey in it's pouch. the most exciting part was getting really close and being able to stroke and feed them.

we also went to watch a few shows at the crocoseum, a 5,000 seat arena.

we saw a snake show, this particular snake is one of their biggest and in parts was thicker than amy's waist.

in another show we saw some spectacular birds flying round the audience.

and the final show was the legendary salt water crocodile, which was really good. with steve irwin being known as the crocodile hunter a large proportion of the zoo was focussed on crocodiles.

amy got to feed an elephant.

we also saw some tigers, dingoes, camels, wombats and tasmanian devils.

australia zoo was home to the oldest giant tortoise in the world. she was called harriet and lived to be 175, however she died last summer. we did see some of harriets friends, who were also massive.

we had an amazing day at the zoo, and even with the drenching we got, we're glad we went.

can't wait to see you all in 7 weeks! x x x


ps. more news on the dvd. we're going to john's daughters house tomorrow and she has two little kids, so we've asked john and jo and are hoping that they have a dvd player / playstation2 that we can watch it on! fingers crossed!

surfers paradise

welcome to surfers paradise...


yesterday we went and had a look round surfers paradise and took some photos for you all to see.



we haven't been on the beach properly yet but it looks nice.


there's a hard rock cafe there so we're going to go for a meal there just before we leave. there's a really nice surfers paradise hard rock hoody that we both want but i think greg's going to be the lucky one who gets it... and then i can just "borrow" it off him now and then :p

anyway, here's some pictures from john & jo's house where we are staying.


this is the view from our balcony (yes thats one house across the river!) ...

and this is jo's garden and johns "tinny"...


we still haven't got hold of the ice bar photo, it's meant to be on their website for us but hasn't been put on yet. but hopefully we'll have it soon.

today we went to a big shopping centre called pacific fair and i bought a pair of shorts and greg bought a nice new wallet to replace the old one that's getting pretty knackered and was possibly responsible for the lost card. so now he's got a nice new safe one.

tomorrow we're off to australia zoo (home of the late steve irwin) which were very excited about. we'll tell you about it soon.

hope your all well x x x



ps. gregs had a good idea about the present, he found in the yellow pages a few places that may be able to transfer the dvd onto vhs... so fingers crossed.

the present

hello

well we'd like to thank dave, percy and friends for the present that was sent over to john's house.

we were very excited to open it and find a dvd titled "you can't tie me up i'm just having my lunch"......

HOWEVER, unfortunately john doesn't have a dvd player and the computer doesn't seem to read the disc so at the moment we are unable to watch it.

we've had a few ideas like watching it at an internet cafe. i'm sure we'll work something out.

we are very excited about it and obviously can't wait to watch it. we were gutted when we couldn't get it to work but we are very thankful for the effort you've put in.

thanks everyone. speak to you soon x x x x

photo's from sydney & byron bay

hello everyone, now we're in surfers paradise we can post some pictures. we'll tell you about surfers and john's house later in the post.

unfortunately we can't get hold of the minus 5 ice bar photo, but we've emailed them about it so should have it soon.

however, this was in the bar downstairs which was pretty cool itself, just after we'd been in the ice bar.

we've also got some pictures of our final night in sydney. i'm sure by now you know that we went to see lily allen.

the gig was at a weird little fair ground, called luna park. it was very much in the style of an old and very small blackpool pleasure beach, and was smaller than the carnival fair in brabyns park.

this is the entrance to luna park, it can be seen from sydney harbour and it is situated right by the side of the bridge on the north end.

as we said, the gig was really good. and we were happy to see someone throw a manchester united shirt on stage. however, being from london, lily turned out to be a fulham fan.

we got some good pictures as we were stood right near the front.

this is the fairground and bridge at night.

from thursday til earlier today, we have been chilling out in byron bay. it was a great place to relax on the beach and play in the clear sea.

it seems to us that a lot of hippies travelled through byron a few decades ago and never left. it's definitely got a big hippy / surf culture and chilled out way of life. there are loads of quirky hippy'ish shops and cafes.

this is the lighthouse at byron, we did want to walk up there but it's a long walk and it's been a very hot few days so we just admired it from the cool sea.

this is a picture of the snake capture we told you about.

on our last night we took a walk along the beach and got a few good photo's and some ice cream.

now for sufers paradise...

we arrived today at 12pm after a 2 hour coach ride and john and jo met us at the bus station. it was really nice to see them both and they drove us round a bit before headed back to their house for lunch.

surfers itself was bigger than we thought it would be. there are quite a lot of very tall buildings, including the tallest apartment block in the world, which you can pay to go to the top of.

the beach, what we saw of it from the car, looked nice and there seems to be loads of shops, cafes, restaurants and bars.

john's house is about 1/2 hour walk out of the centre of town and backs onto a river. it's a really nice area and the house is lovely. we have a nice room on the top floor with our own bathroom and balcony... the same room amy's grandparents stayed in a good few years ago.

when we arrived at the house we saw that john was flying an australian and an english flag for us. which we thought was a really nice gesture. we did try and get a picture of us all, but had a few problems so will try again soon.

like we said, john's house is lovely. jo's garden at the back looks onto the river and they have a nice little pool to cool off in.

across the river are a few HUGE houses. i thought one of them was a block of apartments at first. both have tennis courts and bigs pools. they look really nice.

grandad (ces) we've spotted a few pictures of you lying about the house, in your fishing gear, holding up some big fish. it was nice to see your face after so long!

that's all for now. hope everyones well.

x x x