Some of My Travels

Sydney
I guess many of my travels started way back when I was 18 and I made a spur of the moment decision to board a Russian ship in Auckland that was heading for Sydney, which took three days and four nights arriving in Sydney early on a Saturday morning.
I very quickly found a place to live and then lined up a job starting work on the Monday afternoon.
I had soon saved up enough money to buy a nice car and explore the area for a while until it was time to go exploring further and I was on the road.
I spent the next few months just driving where ever felt like a nice direction to go and stopping every few days to do a couple of days work to earn money to continue on the road again.
After a while of just driving around I was now headed for Western Australia where I stopped at a nickle mining town called Kambalda where I got a job working down the 'Otter' (largest of the ten mines in the town). Working down the underground mine was an amazing experience where I got to drive all sorts of earth moving equipment and use explosives and I have many fond memories of the guys I got to work with and the times I had in the two years I was there.
Back on the road again and after cruising over to Sydney to party up and celebrate New Years Eve with some friends, I was back on the road to Adelaide where I stayed for quite a few months until it was time to head back to New Zealand and spend some time with my family again.

Brisbane
After spending a few years back home with my family and friends, I arrived at work one cold winter morning and picked up an air operated screw gun to discover it felt like a block of ice, threw it down on the bench and said to my work mate "bugger this, I think Brisbane will be nice and warm at the moment" and walked into the bosses office and said "I'm off to Brisbane".

America
A mate lined up a trip to the U.S.A. with his company and asked if I was interested in heading over there for a few weeks as well which seemed like a great idea, so I hitched an overnight ride in a truck to Sydney, while my mate did the same from Melbourne.
We flew into San Francisco and had a stranger loan us his car so that we could go for a drive for a couple of weeks.
We had a ball in San Francisco before heading down the highway to Los Angeles where we explored La La land, including Universal Studios and Disneyland and then on the road again to San Deigo where we got to party up some more and pop over the border into Mexico for a look around.
The next morning was my birthday and after everyone at the Youth Hostel where we were staying had sung 'Happy Birthday' to me over a piece of toast filled with burning matches I suggested we go for a drive to Las Vegas, so it was bags into the car and off we went to Vegas. We spent a few days and nights there partying up day and night (the place never sleeps) and then hit the road again back to L.A. for a bit more of a look around until it was time to head back to San Francisco and return the car and see my mate off at the airport. I then hitched a ride with a truck driver making an overnight trip down to L.A. where I was booked on a flight later that day.

Nepal
Spent a couple of months wandering around the Himalayan foothills in Nepal which was an amazing experience.
Went on a fourteen hour bus trip to the end of the road to a place called Jiri where the walking started with most days walking between eight and twelve hours up and down the valleys and ridges of the sometimes steep foothills that lead to the top of the world in the Solu Khumbu region.
The sometimes spirited walking through this area filled with Sherpa Villages, lovely people and magnificent scenery was very refreshing and one of the most amazing experiences that I have had.
Along the way we stayed at various Tea Houses with each offering a different experience and getting to stay with the families along the way allowing us to get to know and learn more about the mostly Sherpa people that inhabit this area.
There were special places like Khari Khola which consisted of only a few houses and the Tea House we chose to stay in were inhabited by a couple of girls, six and nine year olds who made us very welcome and prepared lunch and later dinner for us while their parents were away for three weeks attending a wedding somewhere. Their sixteen year old sister turned up during the night after being away for three days to buy and return with some potatoes.
The next day started very early with about an eleven hour walk to Chablung which we had planned to be our next stop for the night and we were invited into the kitchen to spend the evening with the family and village elders.
The next day we decided to stop quite early at Phakding where we meet a really nice lady with three young children who were most delightful, enjoying their hospitality so much we spent a night there again on the way back down.
Namche Bazaar was an experience, being the largest village in the hills where there is a weekly market on Saturday that people travel huge distances to buy and sell their produce and we got to experience one of those markets.
From here it snowed quite hard for quite a few days and the visability was reduced as well as making it harder to wade through the deeper and deeper snow as we gained more altitude into the thining air.

Next was a trip to Royal Chitan National Park for a few days in the bush near the Indian Border and then onto Pokhara for a visit and more trekking, this time around the Annapurna area which was so much easier as we were so fit now and our bodies had become aclimatised to altitude and this area was not as high as the other places we had been.

India
Leaving Nepal and heading to India where we spent most of our time travelling around the desert state of Rajasthan ('Land of the Kings') by train, sometimes up to seventeen hours at a time, but mostly at night while we slept which allowed us to sleep during the night while we travelled and then have the day to explore another place and then get on another train that evening to travel to somewhere else again. Some nights we would be on a train being pulled by a Diesel Locomotive, sometimes a Steam Locomotive and sometimes an Electric Locomotive. Quite often the train would be split up during the night and we would find ourselves now travelling the opposite direction as we would go through railway junctions and be sent off down another line somewhere and quite often it would be with one of these different types of Locomotive. One night the direction changed three times that I noticed.
Most of the time in India was completely unplanned and we would just see where the trains would take us to each night.
Visited some cool places like Udaipur (where the James Bond 'Octopussy' was filmed), Jodhpur, which is dominated by the massive fort which sits on top of a rocky hill in the middle of the city of blue buildings.
Another special place was Pushkar, which was a wonderful experience with palaces and temples around the lake and I got to handle a Cobra on the side of the road which was so cool and it seemed to attract a fair amount of interest as the crowds started to gather, probably wondering why that strange white fella was playing with a Cobra.
Waking up another morning on the train to look out the window and see the massive fort in Jaisalmer close to the border of Pakistan was just stunning.
We got a room way up in the fort with double wooden doors that opened directly out to the outside of the wall with no railing, but a stunning view of the desert.
Jaisalmer has some incredible sandstone buildings with amazing carved lattice work all over them and we spent many hours wandering around exploring these as well as walking along the top of the really high fort walls looking down into the town.
We came across an interesting guy running an eatery who had a jar of Vegemite on his shelf.
I became very ill while exploring the desert a couple of days camel ride from there and after spending some time at the local Hospital and having blood tests done and not liking their diagnoses, we decided to leave town and head back to Jodpur to a larger Hospital for a second opinion. I was not happy with the second opinion, so went looking for a Laboratory myself to get my own tests done and then headed to a pharmacy to purchase the drugs I needed to assist me back to health again.
It was then decided that a trip to Agra in the state of Utter Pradesh would be a good idea to go and look at the forts there and the Taj Mahal (wow!!). Seeing it on T.V. is one thing, but to go and look at it for real and walk inside is just amazing.
Another experience in Agra was the day we were walking through a park and suddenly a huge monkey had raced up behind me, dug his claws into my leg and spun me around and then tried to rip into my throat. I have no idea what his problem was, but he was extremely hostile and very angry. It was shame that I was the one carrying the camera so no photos got taken of the episode.
With our time coming to and end in India, we bordered another train, this time an electric train and all was going well until the power failed somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Quite a few hours later, still in the dark and with no idea of where we were or when things might happen, we were offered a ride with some South African guys who had someone who had come out looking for them in a 4x4.
It turned out that we were only about two hours from New Deihi, so we were there by about three in the morning and soon after that sleeping in a nice comfortable bed.

Thailand
Relaxed in Thailand for a few weeks, mostly up north around the Golden Triangle area and wandered around the jungle up there which was so cool.
There was a language problem up there around the jungle villages where nobody spoke english, so sign language seemed to work some of the time. Had the honour of spending an evening with the village headman at one remote place which was an amazing experience.

New Zealand
I like to make regular trips back to New Zealand to visit family and friends and go on adventure trips, mostly on the South Island where I love to play in the bush and alpine areas, sometimes with crampons and ice-axes, or skis or just shouldering a back-pack and heading out tramping (trekking) for a few days in the rugged bush.
There are always plenty of adventurous things to do over there including Bungy Jumping, White-Water Rafting, Black-Water Rafting (underground streams), Sledging (Boogy Boarding down the rapids), canyoning and many other things.
New Zealand really is the 'Land of Adventure' and I always enjoy my time over there.

Phillip Island
Rode down to Phillip Island with a couple of mates to be at the 2007 MotoGP and got to enjoy some of the best roads in N.S.W and Victoria as we crisscrossed our way down there and then back again looking for the nice twisty routes.