The Holiday began with a trip to Singapore
Our hotel was by a beach on Sentosa Island, just a short cable car journey from Singapore Island.
From the hotel balcony we could see big ships at anchor and a view of the distant oil refineries (Left) Di didn't like the Cable car ride (right)
Sheltering in a beachside cafe from a tropical downpour (left), sign on the Metro (right). Durians are a very smelly fruit!
After 5 days in Singapore we had an overnight flight to Sydney, Australia (the first visit for all of us). The first day Steve had to visit Homebush, the site of the Sydney 2000 Olympics
The City of Sydney from Homebush, about 10 miles away. The Harbour bridge is on the left and Sydney Tower on the right.
Behind these solar panels can be seen the Telstra Stadium the site of England's dramatic extra time 20-17 win in the 2003 Rugby World Cup Final.
Darling Harbour from the Sydney Tower (left),Sydney Harbour Bridge and a Solar powered boat "Solar Sailor" (right)
We climbed over the Harbour bridge (that's us waving) and at the top they take a picture that makes it look as if you are standing in front of a painting ...
Sydney looks very pretty at night - Sydney Harbour Bridge(above) and
Circular Quay from the Opera House (luckily I took my tripod)
The Opera House from the Manly ferry (left)
Beautiful houses half way down a cliff (right) in a bay above Sydney. The paths were so steep they all had stair lifts.
Steff went climbing and found these rock formations.
Christchurch New Zealand is a x hr flight from Sydney. After driving to the West Coast, staying the night in Greymouth, we went to Fox Glacier.
We flew up to the top of Fox Glacier in a helicopter and had a few minutes at the top
The views were stunning around Mount Cook. Next day we went for a 4 1/2 hour walk on Fox Glacier
The Maori guide had to cut steps in the ice for us to walk on. The line of people in the background were on the 8 hour walk (left). We found an ice hole (right). It rained all the way. This was the week in August (their winter) that the temperatures were 100F in the UK!
At the end of the glacier there was another cave. We couldn't see where we were going even though the flash illuminated the picture
Half way up we could look back down the valley. The "islands" down below were from the terminal moraine in the 1700s
Near Queenstown the scenery was straight out of Middle Earth
Beautiful lakes and Starry nights
Te Anau where they had a launderette/internet cafe
On the way to Milford Sound were very flat valleys cut by glaciers (fjords, not sounds)
Milford Sound. You can see how large the peaks are by
comparison with the boat in the bottom right hand corner!
The captain took us round the sound and put our bows into a few waterfalls.
We had to change planes and spent a night in Brisbane. Steve was born and bred in Ipswich, England and had always wanted to visit the other towns in the world called Ipswich. In 1996 we all went to Ipswich near Boston, Mass, USA. Now was our chance to visit Ipswich, Queensland, just an hour west by train from Brisbane. It also gave us a chance to meet a friend I'd only ever communicated with on line.
A view of the town A main street
Ipswich Post office Somewhere else
Some flying foxes
Approaching Heron Island by Catamaran
Amazing fish
Sunset and Moon rise
One of the beaches on the island which only took 30mins to walk around
Snorkelling
The ascent of woman
sunset over daintree
CASSOWARY
Sleeping birds and a lizard
We had 3 nights in a beachside Hotel in Port Douglas (<), Nearby was a wildlife sanctuary (>)
An unfortunately named drink (<), If anyone can guess what this is (>) please let me know and I'll tell you if you are right !
The beach at Port Douglas had some mangroves
We caught a boat to go snorkelling and this was going past the low isles(^)
We did 3 dives in a day (^)
The stars in Yungaburra were very bright at night (^) and it was lovely to see the Milky way that you can't see so well from Europe
An enormous strangling fig tree near Yungaburra (<) and some pedant has tried to remove an apostrophe from a sign (>)
One of the waterfalls nearby (^)
It's difficult from this picture to tell the scale but this is an enormous volcanic cratered lake (^).
This is a windfarm (^), the signs state that it supplies enough energy to supply 3000 homes per year! Does this mean that next year there'll be an extra 3000 homes? or a different 3000 homes?