Nov 21, 2004   Not everything is ready yet but I have posted up videos from the trip.

My buddy Tom and I went to Melbourne, (victoria) to meet up with his niece Julie who was attending Monash University as a semester abroad from Loyola University in Maryland.  We spent a week in Melbourne then took two days to drive up to Sydney (spending the night in Canberra - the national capital) and then on to Sydney.  In Sydney we hooked up with Julie again and also with my friend Pat Hammond and his wife Deidre and son Max

Julie left to go finish final exams, Tom went back to the States and I spent a week wandering New Zealand - starting in Auckland and then progressing via the train to a quick overnight stay in Wellington (no photos except for the ferry because the train was very late).  A quick jaunt to the south island village of Picton and then the train again to Christchurch - the most English town outside of England.

Christchurch was founded by the Anglican Church and is modelled after Christchurch college in Oxford - the river Avon runs through town, complete with punting

• Australia - Melbourne up towards Sydney.  Melbourne is very much like San Francisco in my opinion - in Australia it is known as Mahvelous Melbourne.  The Yarra river runs through center of the city, complete with about a dozen boat sheds of various rowing clubs.  They have managed to keep the river front open with cafes, restaurants and parks.  We also spent a day down at St. Kilda which is the beach area - we took the tram down there.  According to Julie when it was hot and sunny, then it was extremely crowded.

  We rented a car a couple of days and drove down to the Twelve Apostles in the south - which are parts of the cliff faces that were left out to sea as the cliffs eroded back.  Tom and were a bit late leaving and were a bit too slow - we arrived well after sundown and about 15 minutes before full dark fell.  Still we had a good time and a local cafe gave us instructions how to get back about 1 hour faster! 
  We did manage to see the ass end of a Koala bear waddle off into the forest too - but got no pictures

  The drive up through Victoria, ACT and New South Wales was very interesting - the whole place is a giant pasture full of mobile, four legged lawn mowers busily working away. 

   

• More Australia - mostly Sydney.  Sydney is very interesting and much larger than Melbourne - about 4MM people.  Some of the more interesting areas were The Rocks which is some of the oldest areas of Sydney and are now pubs, shops etc...  We spent a couple dinners at the Lord Nelson which is the oldest hotel in the city - they have their own brewery onsite.  Our hotel was near Darling Harbor which is a refurbished industrial harbor area - the Aquarium and Power House museum are there.  Both are fascinating places - the Power House is the converted power station for the city as an industrial museum - they still run live steam there
• New Zealand - New Zealand was a very interesting looking place but I spent too much time traveling.  I definitely will be going back with my climbing gear - or on an off-road biking trip (the roads are narrow and rough)

  Various shots from my digital camera

• This is a shot of the steam engine in the Power House museum which is from the Whitbread brewery - the engine was installed installed in the early 1800's by James Watt and had numerous innovations which mark it as one of the first large and practical steam engines (and certainly the oldest surviving example).  It provided power to the whole Brewery for about 75 years and then was sold to the Power House as one of their first exhibits.
• The Aquarium shark tank has two acrylic tube walkways - pretty neat!
• Someone abseiling from the Sydney bridge