Blog apology

Apologies to anyone who has been hoping to see more blogging going on. Needless to say we have moved on from Sydney and now indeed we have moved on from Australia. We have been so busy in Castlemaine, Victoria, and internet access has been more limited, so that we have not had a chance to update the blog. Our visit to Castlemaine was very enjoyable and a true Ausstralian experience, starting and ending as it did with 40 degrees heat. We were dodging fromone air conditioned location to another for a while, but got more hardened to it in the end. It was lovely to see some of the friends we made on our long visit in 2010 and visit some of the same places and new ones.I hope to post some photos once we are back to wifi access. Right now we are nearing the end of our 3 weeks in New Zealand touring in a camper van. Data access for blogging is quite expensive and often not available at all. We were quite surprised to see that most of the West coast of New Zealand has no mobile coverage, even in towns. It is probably a reflection of the low population of those areas and the very hilly terrain, which combine to make mobile infrastructure unviable. It sounds like we chose a good winter to miss in the UK. We hope that none of you have been too seriously affected. I feel quite guilty avoiding it completely. We have been enjoying almost non-stop sunshine in NZ. I think we timed it very well. We have done a clockwise tour of the South island - Otago peninsula; Mount Cook; Dunedin; Catlins; Milford Sound; the glaciers; Abel Tasman; Nelson; We are now near Picton and not far from the end of our New Zealand leg. We have arranged a trip round Marlborough Sound and whale watching at Kaikoura and then we fly off to Fiji. The camper van has been great and very flexible. We have managed to fit in a lot albeit with a lot of driving too. I think i will be glad of a rest from the winding roads. We will be one week in Fiji then off to Texas. Must stop now - more to do! Charlie