The Northerners arrive in NZ (via Melbourne)

Hello 🙂

So I know this post is very late considering we have been in New Zealand for 3 months (ish) now but I came here with the intention of starting a travel blog, and after following a good friend from uni blogging around South America (thanks Amiee) it has given me a kick to get this blog started.

On the 2nd of July we set off to the airport after some emotional goodbyes (lets not go there) with a very long journey ahead of us. We flew with Ethiad via Abu Dhabi, Perth and the Melbourne!! We were staying in Melbourne for 4 nights with our lovely friends who we hadn’t seen for nearly 4 years – Kaley and Rik. It was the best feeling to arrive in Melbourne finally after what felt like a never-ending journey to be greeted by your best friends!

We had an amazing time in Melbourne, Kaley and Rik went all out to show us Melbourne and all the tourist attractions nearby and it was great to chill and catch up after being apart for so long. We sat up until late on the night we arrived drinking port and curdled Baileys like old times- nothing changes.

So our first day consisted of a lazy morning recovering from jet lag eating an Aussie fry up including kangaroo sausages (yum) and getting to know Jeff the lizard. Ryan and Jess (Kaleys brother and his girlfriend) were staying for the weekend so when we decided to venture out we obviously took a boys car and a girls car to look for wild kangaroos on a nearby golf course. I’m sorry to say that predictably the girls got lost and took a long time to get there but we did see wild kangaroos. One took a dislike to Raz and squared up to him, so we made a quick exit went to McDonalds and then visited the set of Neighbours! The night soon escalated into lots of drinks and a game of ‘fire ball swingball’ which I wont elaborate upon.

 

On our second day we went into Melbourne City Centre and it was amazing!! Its such a cool city it didn’t feel too big and had a really modern artistic feel – I loved the different artwork and sculptures. We started off by visiting the casino and we had a lovely lunch outside under some patio heaters I had a risotto and a glass of Sav (obviously). We then went to the Eureka sky deck which gives you a 360 of the whole city, and finally we went to Hosier Lane and the famous Flinders station, Hosier Lane is a street full of graffiti its really great as it apparently changes everyday with different art. We had a brill day and finished it off with a chilled night at the house!

Day Three – Kaley took us to a place where you could feed wild cockatoos, you paid for a bag of seeds and they flew down and jumped all over you whilst they ate the seeds, being the chicken I am I managed to pose for one photo and then passed them back to Chris. The next stop was a viewing point in the Dandenong Ranges where you could see a great view of Melbourne CBD it was interesting to see how flat the land around it was and then just  a cluster of tall buildings where Melbourne appeared! We then went to pick Rik up and went to Philip Island to see the Penguins, it was an amazing experience seeing all the little Penguins coming out of the sea to get to their nests- sadly I couldn’t take any pictures as the flash scared them. On our final night together it would be rude not to get very drunk, light a fire and talk late into the night – so we did 😀

On our last day we visited the Botanical Gardens where Kaley works it was really cool to see where she had been working in Australia and it was a really interesting place to visit. The final mission before we went to the airport was to go to the Moonlit Sanctuary and get the classic Australia tourist picture of us feeding kangaroo and cuddling a Koala.

 

After a quick takeaway pizza it was time for the airport to continue our journey to New Zealand. It was strange leaving Kaley and Rik, I think that’s when it hit us that we were moving to New Zealand as all our energy and excitement had been focused on seeing them when we were left on our own we got a little nervous.

The flight went by in no time and we arrived in Auckland at about 5am, but it wasn’t over – we still had to get to Napier. We arrived at our motel in Napier at about 5pm and after 4 flights, 3 buses and a taxi to get there we just had a curry, drank some wine and slept. We were finally in New Zealand- our home for a year!

Lucy 🙂