Another week, another time zone!

Sunrise from our balcony in Brisbane

So today we flew from Brisbane to Auckland in the North Island of New Zealand. We are now 13 hours ahead of UK time.

We were quite sad to say bye to Australia, perhaps not the spicky spiders, but the people and the places were fab, and it was a beautiful sunrise at 5am, promising to be a beautiful blue-sky day.

Last Oz meal- surf and turf... Yum!!

Our apartment yesterday was in Redcliffe, 20km North of Brisbane airport, and was literally across the road from the Pacific Ocean. It was a little tired but the location superb, we could have stayed for a week! We choose an earlier start this morning, to stay here, rather than a travelodge set up at the airport, so we could enjoy one more Aussie evening, and really enjoyed it.


We had a walk along the beach, a play in another great playground on the prom, and dinner at a place called Outback Jacks (a chain steakhouse type place I think) .....it was really good Steak! We had been through Rockhampton earlier in the week, which is Australia's beef capital, and fully intended to get steak there to BBQ, but after a late finish to our 500km journey, we ended up with Pizza Hut takeout (at $5 each large pizza, about £3, would've be silly not too!) Anyway, Outback Jacks made up for it with Steak and service! The waiters were so kind, they would go and get the kids from the play area for us when dinner came out (which with 5 play stations set up, among other things, was quite an achievement) and again went to the playroom to get their dessert order to save us getting up!!

Anyway, today, we picked up our new addition at the airport, Betsy....she will be our home,and wheels, for the next week while we do our travelling around the North Island. We had a 45 minute lesson in motorhome etiquette, and then we were on our own, at rush hour, with a check in deadline to meet 2 hours away!!

J did the most amazing job driving it with no fear, while Freya and I sat up front too with nail marks in our palms!! The flat-frontedness and massive windscreen do make you feel very close to the car in front, and the brakes don't feel like they will ever stop something this big on these windy green hills.

Betsy, our motorhome for the next week :-)

We made check in just at the last minute, and our camp site is lovely, the kids went straight off to play giant chess :-) We chose Waihi Beach after a recommendation from my friend Jen's parents, after they spent 6 weeks travelling the 2 islands, it apparently has the best shells to be found first thing in the morning... Watch this space! It also happens to be a good distance between the airport and Hobbiton...top of Adams trip wish list! :-)