I've only been back from my month-long trip to Australia and New Zealand for ten days and I'm already missing both countries. I blogged on the road about the places I visited — Australia here and New Zealand here — and have posted some of my favourite photos on Flickr — Australia here and New Zealand here — but I also wanted to report back on my overall itinerary: where I stayed, how I got there and how I spent my time. I had 28 full days so this is a very long article and you may wish to make a cup of coffee before you dive in.

From sunny Melbourne, I flew to tropical North Queensland to enjoy some R and R. In this part of the world, that means ‘reef and rainforest’, although I also got a large amount of a third R: rain. Travelling to various Antipodean locations in one trip makes it hard to find the perfect time of year weather-wise for them all. The wet season in Queensland (as opposed to the slightly-less-wet season) isn’t supposed to start until the end of November, so I thought I might be OK.