We did a day bust tour from Queenstown to Milford Sound, which is part of Fiordland National Park and world heritage listed for a reason, as it was incredible.
Milford Sound is pretty close to Queenstown, but because of the mountains, it’s big roundabout 4 hour drive. The drive to Te Anau was okay, lots of mountains and sheep but nothing too out of the ordinary to the rest of NZ.
So we finally were able to go on our 2nd ski holiday now that Rachael got the bug in Japan, this time to New Zealand.
We flew into Queenstown for a night, and then mum and dad met us later in Wanaka the next day. Rachael was impressed from the get go but the first day was a bit of a miserable rainy day and not as good as last time I was there.
We stayed in Wanaka rather then Queenstown while we were skiing so that we could try Cadrona and Treble Cone which I hadn’t been to before. Wanaka was a lovely town, much quieter then Queenstown but still reasonably touristy with lots of restaurants. Our hotel was okay but it didn’t have a drying room, which was weird, and 2/3 of the reception staff were snobby and unfriendly. All the food places we went to were good, and there was even a burger place trying to steal Fergburgers glory.
We went up to the Bunya Mountains again last weekend. Unlike last time, we stayed in a cabin with some friends, as it was a pretty cold weekend. Here’s some photos.
So after a few days in Melbourne we went back to the airport and picked up a hire car to drive the great ocean road. To drive directly to the 12 Apostles actually only takes 2 hours, but the scenic route is more like 6 hours.
Our first stop was to check out Bell’s Beach, which is just past Geelong. As you would expect the waves looked awesome, with massive barrels coming through in clean sets.
As part of our Great Ocean Road drive, we stopped over in Warrnambool the first night, and Ballarat the 2nd.
Warrnambool was really nice, and reminded us of Toowoomba, but on the sea. It had nice trees lining the streets and just seemed like a nice place for the few hours that we were there. We stayed in a cabin at a caravan park on the beach, and I went for a late night stroll at about 7:30pm and still needed my hat!
So Rachael’s sister Lauren had a job interview in Melbourne for the London Ambulance Service (which she got), and Rachael had a free week between uni and starting her new job, so we went for a quick holiday to Victoria.
We stayed in the city at the Space Hotel, which was pretty nice for a backpackers and pretty close to everything. Melbourne has a free tram zone in the city, so all trams were free and were reasonably frequent.
Rachael is doing her final nursing placement in Boonah. So prior to the placement we went for a drive to see what the town and surrounding areas were like last October.
The drive through Cunningham’s Gap is spectacular. The western side is rainforest, and the eastern side provides views of some really steep sections of the great dividing range. There is a nice rainforest walk at the very top, but unfortunately the lookout that you walk to doesn’t have a very good view.
On Sunday we went for a drive to Goomburra State Forest, which is part of the Main Range National Park. There was a tonne of people camping there because of the long weekend.
There is a road right up to the top, although we had to do a creek crossing in Rachael’s Yaris. From Mt Castle lookout you are supposed to be able to see Brisbane, but it was a pretty hazy day so we couldn’t even see Mt Cootha.
Last weekend Rachael had the weekend off work, so we went for a drive down to see the Stanthorpe and Granite Belt Region. We stayed at Sommerville Valley Tourist Park which is on Storm King Dam. They had kayak’s you could take out and we are keen to go back in Summer when the water is less freezing.
On the way we did the fruit run tourist drive and had a look at some of the wineries.
