Gidday,

Well it's been far too long since I got my ass off the beach and did a new update, so here it is...

We sent the last update from Wilson's Prom, the most southern point in Australia. Ok, that should be mainland Australia since the Tassies like to think of themselves as Australian too, although we've been assured otherwise.

From Wilson's Prom we went back to Melbourne and joined a 3 day mini bus tour of the Great Ocean Road and The Grampians. We ended up in Adelaide, where we stayed for a couple of days and quickly got bored, so we hired the best car we could get (it was Easter and everything was booked) and set off to the Flinders Ranges.

The Flinders was a good trip to test out the virtues of our Toyota Echo. We finally blew a tyre after 420km of gravel road to find that we only had a space saver - luckily we were only 20km away from the main highway and nearest town! Still, we made it back to Adelaide in one piece via the Barossa Valley.

Next stop Sydney where we planned to stay for 3 months and earn some extra beer money. It didn't take too long before we found our pad in Tamarama (the snobs name for South Bondi!) Deirdre found an exciting job at Citibank, and I started at Aurema. Unfortunately neither of us ended up with party-animal colleagues (I was the only one in my team that drank coffee, let alone beer or jack!), but we did have a few friends to help us consume the amber stuff.

Sydney Highlights

• Watching the All Blacks vs Australia at Stadium Australia
• Spending a weekend in the Blue Mountains
• Having my parents come and visit for a long weekend
• Having Fi up from Melbourne for a weekend
• Sunday Sessions at the Hero of Waterloo
• The Big Feed at Nick's Aunties place

Sydney Lowlights

• Watching John Eales slot the winning penalty in the second Bledisloe Cup match from a pub in the Blue Mountains
• Punch & Judy

Three months of work was quite enough, and I just couldn't bare going through a whole winter without carving up the white stuff, so Deirdre and I nipped back to Queenstown for a week's skiing with John & Kiri. Trudy and Lazza were also there with their imaginary friends (we never saw them). We all had a great time with no major casualties, though that was due to the half a metre of fresh snow rather than our expert skill and grace.

We stopped in at Auckland on the way back to catch up with my folks, and the rest of the gang that are stuck back in God's own due to the demise of the Kiwi dollar.

Two nights back in Sydney was long enough to get our stuff sorted and pick up our Toyota Surf. It's supposed to be a 2.4L Diesel Turbo, although somebody lost the .4 when they replaced the motor sometime. Anyway, it's been good enough to get us out of Sydney before the Olympics so can't complain too much.

We've made it as far as Noosa on our journey up the East Coast. No major dramas 'til we hit Nimbin where the brakes failed. On further investigation we found that a bracket had come off the rear suspension and cracked the brake line. There was nowhere in Nimbin that could help us (unless you want some hash), so we travelled 50km to the next town using the hand brake and engine braking.

After getting the Surf fixed we stopped in Surfer's Paradise for a couple of days where we went to Movie World and Wet 'n Wild (water park), had a squiz around Brisbane for a day, then hot-tailed it up here to Noosa for a cold beer.

We're both looking forward to tomorrow when we start our 3 day adventure in the sand on Fraser Island.

Cheers,

Rik & Deirdre