Bye Bye New Zealand, Hello Australia!

The alarm went off just in time for us to catch an amazing red sun rise and we quickly got our things together and set off to Whangaroa Harbour for our days fishing. We found our skipper, Alistair, for the day aboard Sea Fever and after a quick safety briefing we cruised out of the harbour and out to the fishing grounds way off shore. After spotting a little blue penguin and an array of sea dwelling birds we finally reached a fishing spot. We cast our lines and immediately the lines dipped as fish were bitting, but the fish that were bitting were the small mouthed blue mau mau too small to be hooked but sly enough to steal bait after bait! Finally, Charlie latched on to a fish, reeling in an edible sized snapper. The skipper Alistair caught another before Charlie brought in another, there wasn't so much luck for Laura as she hopelessly pulled up her line for the millionth time with no bait and no fish (I was worried she was hating it!). After a quiet time with little action apart from Alistair pulling in some creatures of the deep including a giant squid and some ugly looking fish, Laura finally pulled in her first snapper of the day, and another…and another, and one more in quick succession. The biggest excitement of Charlie's day was whilst getting untangled from Laura's line the line zipped away at a rate of knots and suddenly ping and the line snapped. Alistair informed us that it was probably a kingfish or barracuda and would probably of taken at least twenty minutes to bring in. Charlie was gutted, of course the big fish always gets away! 

We carried on, trying a few different spots to hunt down and find the illusive big snapper. After a slow patch as the tides changed suddenly both Laura and Charlie had something on the line at the same time. Charlie's rod was bending as if a monster was on the line as Laura casually reeled in her line, but it turned out that Charlie's was an averaged sized Grandfather Hapuku with a large mouth that makes you feel like you are reeling in a beast, and Laura had latched on to a nicely sized snapper. The highlight of the day, the biggest fish of the day, by far, even Alistair was excited by it! After catching a few more fish it was time to head back to harbour, being followed by a deep sea fishing boat that had caught a huge blue marlin and was taking it in to be weighed. We waited around to see how heavy it was, in awe of the size of it, and shocked when we saw the reading as 243.5kgs! Alistair kindly filleted our fish and told us of a fish n' chip shop that would cook it for us. So we swiftly headed to the chippy and got it cooked. We got back to the hostel eagerly awaiting to taste the fish that we pulled out of the sea only a few hours ago, and what a treat it was, a nice meaty white fish, way tastier than you're standard cod and chips at home!  

Before

After

We woke up the next day to a standard NZ summers day…rain! We decided we would head across to the west coast, before travelling back east to a second to last destination in NZ, in search of the giant Kauri trees despite the damp weather. We visited the tallest Kauri tree in NZ, called Tane Mahuta or God of the Forest, measuring 14 metres in circumference and 52 metres tall. We trekked on through the rain to Mangawhai Heads and checked in to the Coastal Cow backpackers where we cooked up the rest of our fish in to a thai green curry. The rain continued to fall the next day as we made our way to Auckland for our final few hours in NZ, after driving round in the torrential rain we finally found our hostel and unloaded the mountain of things we had accumulated in the car to pack our bags up. With all our packing done, we watched a film and slept ready to get up early the next day for our flight to Sydney. We woke up early, dropped of the car and checked in for our flight to Australia. We were both very sad to be leaving the amazing, stunning country of NZ after the most incredible five weeks, but we were equally excited to be moving on to the next country and the next stage in our adventure! 

We arrived to blue skies and sunshine in Sydney and were greeted by Cassie in arrivals. Cassie took us for a quick tour of Sydney and straight for a highly appreciated lunch in a great restaurant by the beach. We then went to Cassie's house, met Moose the Great Dane, Frou the Pomeranian and Reggae the Rag Doll and were taken aback by the stunning views! We then spent the afternoon lazing around Manly, chilling on the slightly more crowded than NZ beach. The evening was filled with a meaty BBQ and drinks catching up with Laura's old friend Georgia from Singapore, her brother James and her boyfriend Ed. We woke up on the Saturday and spent the day on the Campbell's barge before preparing for our Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb! 

We went across to the city on the ferry from Manly and found our way to Bridge Climb centre, checked in and got geared up in the bridge climb equipment. Equipped with fetching boiler suits, head torches, harnesses and headphones and briefed on the climb we set off through the tunnel and in to the heart of the bridge, with our guide Phil telling us about the history of the bridge and the construction. After walking along the hanging gantries below the bridge, which sat only 50 metres above the ground seemed miles down considering the Kauri tree we saw in NZ was over 50 metres tall! We then climbed up passing through the traffic and on to the upper arch. We then began our ascent to the summit of the bridge with stunning views over the harbour and the Opera House it was photo opportunity 1 of 5, we weren't allowed to take our camera's up so it was a quick snap from our guide. As the sun set over the harbour the sky went through an array of colours from blues to orange, and through to a deep blood red. Probably the best sunset we have seen through out our trip.