Australia - Melbourne - Robinvale

Hello,

We have now reached Australia. We stayed a few days in Melbourne during the Common Wealth Games. It was very busy. Its a bit like the olympic games for the countries of the Commom Wealth (England, Ireland, Canada, India, New Zealand,... 134nations in total)
You can see Melbourne by night with its skyscrapes on the first picture.
We also saw two percussions concerts. It was a great atmosphere.

Right now we are in Robinvalle. It s a village 400 km at the north West of Melbourne where there is nothing. Its the beginning of the Outback. (the desertic center of Australia) The agriculture works just thanks to the irrigation of the Murray river.

We sleep in a caravan (You can see it from inside with the Brazilian shirt and when we play cards). We are working with japaneses, Koreans, Germans, French, Canadenses and Scottish people.

We see many venenous spiders.
You can see one of them, a Redback, on a bunch of green grapes. You can die if they bite you. So if it would happen we should go directly to the Hospital. In the region where we are they also have the killingTaipan snakes. It is a one meter braun snake with a poison which is 50 times starker than a Cobra.
So, its quite wild here :)
On the other hand, we sometimes see Kanguroos jumping in the grapes fieds and that is wonderful. (Untill now, they were too fast to take a picture)

We are working picking and packing grapes. The picture inside a hall is the packing house where we put the grapes into boxes. We usually do one day picking and the other packing. You can see Tina and Barbara picking big red grapes. Barbara is 60 years old!

Finally, the couple on the last picture, are Kim and Allan. They come from New Zealand. They sell their house and quit their job to buy a caravan and travel around Australia. He had an insurance business and she had a lingerie shop. It s never too late to start travelling!

New Zealand - Fox Glacier - Bungee - Seals - Penguins

Hi everybody,

Here are the last pictures from New Zealand and probably the best ones... We have really been impressed by the South Island!

In the South Island, we hired a car and often slept inside like a mini campervan. It allowed us to stop and sleep in some wonderful places like you can see on the four first pictures.

Then, we went to Fox Glacier. This Glacier can move 5 meters a day (it's like 10 times faster than the Swiss Glaciers for e.g.). And to walk on it we had to use crampons.

There we found a tunnel made with ice (photo number 7) and of course Nic climb up with the guide and slid down until the bottom, getting wet all his but!

Don't miss the yellow eye penguin. There are only 3000 left in the world.

In Moeraki (close to Dunedin) we found some "egg stones" called bounders. Tina is sitting on one of them.

As you know New Zealand is the capital of Bungy jumping. That's why I couldn't leave the country without doing at least one of them. So, I choosed to do the highest one:The Nevis, 134 meters.
And yes, I was afraid! In the bus to get there, nobody was speaking. Once we arrived one girl starts to cry.
Everything was made to make us more afraid. We had to go on a very small platform where you could see the ground. Then, we get to a bigger cabin where you had windows at the bottom.
A lot of fear until the jump but after what a feeling! It gives you such a kick. When the elastic stops you falling down you start to scream to put all the fear out of you.

The strange mountain is Milford Sound, a world protected area in the South West. It'is raining the whole time in this Fjord.

At the end, we can see Nick with some seals (= ocas, phoques) swimming in the background.