Aussie Rules

We currently find ourselves in Australia - NZ's wealthy cousin just across the ditch.

We arrived via two flights, the first a domestic Chinese flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong and then our last long haul flight (for some time, probably) to Sydney.

In each of these airports, the proportion of Kiwis seemed to increase, from a few in Shanghai, to quite a few in Hong Kong (mostly transiting from somewhere to home, or vice versa) and finally heaps in Sydney - for obvious reasons.

The flight from Hong Kong to Sydney was all but empty, so we snagged a whole row to ourselves and in theory should have had a comfortable flight as there were two seats for Milly to lie flat on, and the flight was through the night time.

Unfortunately for us, we hadn't been particularly good with adjusting to the time zone change in Shanghai (+7 hours) and had mostly just stuck to European time - staying up until the small hours and sleeping in till past midday.

This had seemed like a good idea at the time, as we'd been able to go out in the evening with Milly and not have to worry about her bedtime, but halfway to Sydney and at about midnight China time - with a fully awake toddler, we started to wonder if we shouldn't have been a bit stricter on trying to adjust?

Milly did finally fall asleep, in my arms approximately 15 minutes before we touched down at 6am local time - oh dear.

We were collected from the airport by Claire's brother, and then made our way to his house, where we were staying for the next few days. It was only about 7:30am and Claire, Milly and I were all suffering due to having no sleep for over 24 hours.

We decided that rather than sleep (which we desperately wanted to), we would all stay up as long as possible in an attempt to beat the jet lag and acclimatise to local time as soon as possible.

For Claire and I it wasn't really a problem, but poor little Milly didn't understand why Mummy and Daddy wouldn't let her have a proper sleep? We let her have a couple of naps - but kept waking her after a few hours to ensure she'd have a proper sleep in the evening.

I'm not sure what poor Steve and Elaine (Claire's brother and sister-in-law) thought of us that first day, a couple of zombies and their weepy daughter - but the trick seemed to work and after a good 14 hour sleep all three of us felt refreshed and ready for to get out and make the most of our time in Sydney.

Steve and Elaine have a daughter called Zara, who is about three months younger than Milly - which meant a couple of things; the house was filled with toys - Milly couldn't believe her luck; and our desocialised daughter was forced to spend time with someone her own age - shock horror!

As it turned out, Milly and Zara got on famously - having sized each other for a couple of hours they started to play with each other, shared snacks and read stories together - all very cute and reassuring to see that Milly could actually spend time with other children - phew.

Whilst in Sydney, we took the girls to Taronga zoo - which you reach by ferry from Circular Quay. The zoo itself is situated on a hill, so you catch a cable car to the top of the hill, and then walk down it checking out the animals whilst you descend.

The girls had a great time, running around and squealing in delight at the animals - highlights of the visit included elephants kicking about a ball, and being splashed at the seal show - all in all an excellent zoo which I would highly recommend if you're ever in Sydney.

That night I went out to meet an old friend from London at a pub in Newtown to watch the AFL (Aussie rules football) final between the Swans, a local team and Hawthorne - a team from Melbourne.

I'd never watched any AFL before, but had a quick run through of the rules and then we were away. It's quite a frentic game, where it seems fortunes can change quite quickly, for example your team can be attacking and then 5 second later concede a goal. I found it all quite confusing, which only got worse as the beer intake increased.

Also on the screens at the pub was the All Blacks V Japan in the rugby union world cup - we hadn't seen much evidence of the world cup being on whilst in Sydney, but as was explained to me - union is probably the 4th sport in Australia, after AFL, league and cricket.

Unfortunately the Swans lost the final, it wasn't really a final anyway - it was a quarter final, but the Australians have bucked tradition and call the games between the last 8 the final, the last 4, the super final, and the last two the extreme ultimate final - or something like that. The more time we spend in Australia the more I see evidence of the locals doing or calling things differently to the rest of the world - not for any particular reason, just to be different it seems.

After a couple of days, it was time to say goodbye to friends and family in Sydney (apologies to all those we didn't get a chance to catch up with, it was a flying visit - next time!) it was back on a plane for a three hour flight to Cairns, where my Dad and Step-mum live.

Cairns is an interesting city, it's technically in the tropics, so doesn't have the traditional 4 seasons and instead has two, the wet and dry seasons. We've arrived at the end of the dry (cooler) season, and the temperature here has been a lovely balmy 30 degrees - would hate to be here if it was any hoter!

Milly has had a great time hanging out with her Grandad, who is just a big kid at heart and has no problems throwing himself on the ground, or making silly faces, or singing silly songs to get her attention - a match made in heaven it seems, it's been nice to see them get to know each other a bit more.

Whilst in Cairns we've been all action, we've been here before but as it is quite a touristy city - we hadn't even scratched the surface of what the city and surrounding area have to offer.

On our first day, we headed up into the tablelands and a safari park, where we had breakfast with the lions - an area where you can have a full english in a cage surrounded by dozing lions - who they then feed in an attempt to make them do something other than sleep - a tactic that worked.

Milly loved being up close to the Lions, pointing and squealing with delight - much better than reading about them i books, mummy and daddy!

The next day we took a drive down to Innisfail and Tully - the areas hardest hit by tropical cyclone Yasi earlier in the year. Despite the cyclone being eight months ago, there were still numerous buildings without roofs, or with obvious damage from the cyclone. There was also lots of businesses for sale - with people having had enough. All very sobering, especially considering we're now about to enter the next cyclone season, and as the locals say - it's not if, it's when…

The following weekend, we took a trip up to Cooktown, a town situated where Captain James Cook beached the Endeavour in 1770 and stayed for two months as they repaired the hull, which had been damaged whilst coming in over the reef.

The road to Cooktown was an adventure itself, it wasn't sealed and we had to ford three rivers - proper crocodile dundee stuff.

Cooktown itself was a fascinating place, very quiet with a couple of hotels and pubs and a single supermarket.

There was also a small museum, where you could learn about Captain Cook's visit, as well as learn a bit about the history of the town - which had been a gold town in the 1800's and had once had a population of 18,000 - before the gold dried up and the people moved away.

Another interesting fact was that a good portion of the 18,000 inhabitants were Chinese, with boats arriving from Hong Kong each week - whilst immigrants from that part of the world seem the norm to both NZ and Australia these days, I'd never really considered that it had been going on in great volumes as early as this - as I say, very interesting.

Having returned back to Cairns, we studied the weather, and then having selected a suitable day - we booked ourselves onto a boat trip out to the great barrier reef. We're told that the main weather factor that will effect your trip is wind, and that a lot of wind will limit visibility underwater.

It seemed we were in luck, and the day that we ended up going out there was very low wind. Having left Milly to be looked after by Grandad (our first day apart from her in four months!), we jumped on our boat and made the two-hour trip out to the outer reef.

On arrival at the reef, we disembarked onto the floating pontoon that the company that we travelled with have permanently parked just off one of the reefs.

Claire and I were pretty quick off the mark, quickly getting our snorkels, masks and fins - and were first into the water.

Snorkelling took a little bit of getting used to, it felt really unnatural to breath whilst having your head in the water, but after about 5 minutes - I got used to it.

We spent about 45 minutes snorkelling around the reef the first time, which was absolutely amazing - the pontoon was moored at approximately 10 meters depth, with lots of larger fish swimming around underneath - possibly taking cover from the sun?

About 20 meters swim from the pontoon, you arrived at the reef proper, with all sorts of hard and soft coral and literally thousands of tropical fish swimming around. The colours were amazing, luminous greens, bright yellows, and deep blues. The depth of the coral changed as you swam over it - from 50cm at parts, then descending down to 5 or 10 meters depth only a few meters away - forming large underwater caverns and trenches to explore.

In all we spent 3 hours on the reef, went for 2 snorkels and one semi-submersible boat ride, had lunch and a couple of cold australian beers on the sun deck, before jumping back on the boat and heading back to Cairns to meet up with Grandad and Milly - who had also had a lovely day, no tears or grumbles to report - which was good news.

The trip to the reef wasn't cheap, but it we felt it was definitely money well spent - as we were snorkelling around we looked enviously at the people scuba diving below us - and we both agreed that next time we'd have to have a go at that as well.

So, that about brings you up to date on our travels, tomorrow we jump on a plane destined from Auckland and the end of our long summer holiday. Back to the real world of trying to find work and buying a house.

On that note, I have a couple of interviews lined up for next week, but I suspect my high salary expectation might become something of a stumbling block to getting into work - you've got to try and not undersell yourself though, right?

Trip in numbers:

Days since I last did a days work: 116

Money left over in our summer holiday travel fund: £80 - great budgeting there then!