Archive for May, 2009
Raratonga: Pedal powered island loop
May 29th, 2009We had planned to spend our ten days in Brisbane selling our car and sightseeing: perhaps six to market, show and sell the car and four to sightsee. Our best laid plans were quite simply blown out of the water when we sold our car within a couple of hours of arriving in the city. […]
Filed in Cook Islands
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Cook Islands: Arrival by ukelele
May 28th, 2009“Dis is my island in di sun”, strummed the straw-hatted, hibiscus-print shirt-wearing welcome wagon singer on his ukelele in the arrivals hall in Rarotonga, the Cook Islands. (Where? Once clicked, keep on zooming-out to find out!) We didn’t quite get the flower-garland treatment that some of our other aeroplane buddies did; we had opted to […]
Filed in Cook Islands, Travel
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Australia: One epic roadtrip. One epic country.
May 27th, 2009We arrived in Western Australia, over five months ago and have travelled (mostly) east though an awful lot of the country: up and across Western Australia, following the Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor; South Australia during the Tour Down Under; sweeping along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria; doffing our caps to the Parliament Building […]
Filed in Australia
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Cook Islands: Gone swimming
May 20th, 2009This entry is our “Out to Lunch” sign: assuming that this post hasn’t been superceded by a newer one, you can safely assume that we are currently stretching-out in hammocks or snorkelling around the beach at our mini-resort in the very remote island of Raratonga in the Cook Islands. In fact, Squiffy recently read that […]
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Brisbane: Home from home
May 19th, 2009Fed up with tents and hostels, we decided that for our 10 day visit to Brisbane we’d look for a nicer place to stay. Happily, a lovely lady named Kate offered us a room in her Queensland cottage just a few kilometres from the city centre. Since selling the car when we first arrived, we’ve […]
Filed in Australia
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Brisbane: Farewell, Don, our trusty steed!
May 18th, 2009Moments after stepping out of the shark tank, my phone rang: “It’s Paula, we’re in Brisbane already. Where are you?” A couple of days ago I had posted a handful of adverts on the internet to begin the sale our glorious and trustworthy car, Don. I had fielded a number of calls from interested parties […]
Filed in Australia
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Mooloolaba: Diving ex-HMAS Brisbane Shipwreck and Sharks!
May 13th, 2009You’ll recall that a few days ago, we were way up in Airlie Beach and heading further north towards the scuba dive site of the SS Yongala shipwreck. Unfortunately, the forecast bad weather forced us to cancel our dive and so we turned on our heels and headed back towards Brisbane. Disappointed that our last […]
Filed in Australia
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SS Yongala: Weather forces no show
May 12th, 2009In this post, I was looking forward to extolling the virtues of scuba diving the SS Yongala shipwreck, billed as “one of the world’s top ten dive sites” (curiously, we’ve already dived fifteen of the world’s top ten…) but I’m sad to report that I can’t: the forecast adverse weather conditions forced the diving company […]
Filed in Australia
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DB + SQ celebrate 4th anniversary
May 11th, 2009Can you believe it? Claire & I recently celebrated our fourth anniversary together. Even more amazing is the fact that we’ve now been travelling together, in each other’s company 24×7, for longer than we actually lived with each other in London — and we’re still on speaking terms! My mother warned me that, with Claire, […]
Filed in Australia
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Knuckle Reef: A day on the Great Barrier Reef
May 8th, 2009After a splendid day spent sailing around the Whitsundays yesterday, Dave and I were looking forward to going beyond the islands to the Great Barrier Reef proper. Our chosen vessel, Seaflight, would take us on a three hour journey across the shipping channel to Knuckle Reef, 95km offshore and part of the main GBR. After […]
Filed in Australia
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