Wine! Great fresh food! Flo on a horse! Fresh air outdoors! More Wine! Broken Car! Fixed Car! Fun in the Hunter Valley…

On friday I drove 340kms west to the Blue Mountains and back for work…then at 10pm (after Flo finished work) we set off to a friends house in Seal Rocks, 300kms north from Sydney. Other than spending far too much time in the car it was an epic weekend…Diving with an incredible variety of fish, turtles, dolphins, sharks, hearing whales singing under water, Andy chundering after surfacing from the first dive (a little scary), chilling on the beach with bubbles, plenty more booze, seeing Whales breaching repeatedly off the coast right in front of us, and some beautiful scenery. Big thanks Andy.

Every time we get out of Sydney I am more and more impressed with this country…hopefully many more road trips to come…

I have wanted to go snowboarding in Australia for a long time, mainly cos its just always seemed like a pretty unlikely place to find snow…

So a mate and I left Sydney VERY early for the 500km 6 hour drive down to the cunningly named Snowy Mountains…

We got there as the end of a storm was rolling through and apparently there had been 45cms over the last week.

The first day at Perisher was pretty blizzardy but cleared up in the afternoon…the second day at Thredbo was bluebird with plenty of little pockets of pow…

The snow doesnt hang around cos it gets warm pretty quick but I have to say that, with loads of lifts and loads of trees, the set up at both Perisher and Thredbo was easily as good if not better than any of the commercial resorts I’ve ridden in NZ…

I’ve started captioning some images at the bottom of each shot.

By far the best (long) weekend of our time in Australia so far…we drove 200kms north to a spot we found randomly on google maps called Port Stephens. The area is an old volcanic valley with a natural harbour about 2 and 1/2 times the size of Sydneys waterways.

Fantastic hotel, great food, long walks, whales tails, dolphins, kangaroos, amazing beaches, some very odd looking cone geography, HUGE national parks with bush stretching to the horizon, the biggest moving sand dunes in the southern hemisphere (apparently), and a bit phototastic…happy days.

House Trucks – One way forward…

They allow you to set up home anywhere your wheels can get you.

I like the freedom. Just make sure its a good spot before the oil runs out…

This is one my friend built in NZ a few years ago from an old short wheel base truck.

This is his new project…you can follow the build here and see more photos of the old build. Its pretty snug inside.

The new one is pretty ambitious but I think it will be epic once its done.

This is another one that a different friend saw in NZ…looks pretty permanent but I guess once you have found your spot why would you need to move…

Loads more slightly ridiculous looking bastardized trucks here…

We drove 5 1/2 hours north to Christchurch (the biggest city on the south island) to buy our wedding outfits. The route went through the heart of the south island, past massive lakes, lush farmland, wide open arid plains with arrow straight roads, and wiggly mountain passes.

The next morning, we went shopping…it was an extreme shock to us both to be back in a large hectic city for the first time in a year but we finally got our outfits, and then escaped for the night to Banks Peninsula, an hour away but a completely different place with huge rolling hills and small fishing ports.