Posts in Category: Oceania
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Cairns – Gateway to Northern Australia
This is my sixth post from the March 2026 Adventures Abroad tour of Australia led by fellow Nova Scotian Brandi McCarthy. In the last post we visited Australia’s capital city Canberra and were very pleasantly surprised by the views from the Commonwealth Parliament building to the Australian National War Monument and vice versa. The thoughtful planning […]
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Canberra – Australia’s Surprising Capital City
This is my fifth post from the March 2026 tour of Australia with Adventures Abroad, led by fellow Nova Scotian Brandi McCarthy. In the last post we spent the day exploring Victoria’s most popular tourist destination, the Great Ocean Road which was definitely a trip highlight. Prior to that there were two posts from the […]
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Great Ocean Road – Why You Must Drive It
This is my fourth post from my and Alison’s 2026 trip to Australia. The first post was a recap of the entire trip with Adventures Abroad guide and fellow Nova Scotian, Brandi McCarthy. The second and third both featured the city of Melbourne and included portions we visited both on our own and with Adventures […]
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Kapiti Island Nature Reserve
This is my final post from our second trip to New Zealand in February and March, 2026. It features a day trip to Kapiti Island Nature Reserve which is one of the islands off New Zealand that has been cleansed of non-native predators such as cats and rats. It is one of the few places […]
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Melbourne Redux – Outside the Central Business District
This is my second post from the great city of Melbourne and please forgive the title Melbourne Redux, but Google throws a fit if you use the same keyword twice, thus the addition of redux. I’ll try not to overuse it. In that first post I gave a history of Melbourne and then embarked on […]
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Hamilton Gardens – A New Zealand Must Visit Attraction
In the last post from New Zealand Alison and I visited Whangarei almost by accident and found it to be a delightful place with a great riverside location. In this post we’re heading south to the city of Hamilton where we will visit New Zealand’s top botanical tourist attraction, Hamilton Gardens. I love visiting botanical […]
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Whangarei – New Zealand’s Surprising Northland City
In 2025 Alison and I spent a far amount of time in the far north of New Zealand known as Northland. We checked out the Nova Scotia connection at the Waipu Museum, we played golf at the incomparable Kauri Cliffs. we explored the Bay of Islands by boat and we drove to the very top […]
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Melbourne – A Most Victorian City
This is my second post from a March 2026 tour of Australia with Adventures Abroad. In the first post I gave an overview of the entire trip from Melbourne to Sydney with stops at Canberra, Cairns, Darwin, Alice Springs and Uluru. In this post I’m going to examine the things that make Melbourne perhaps the […]
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Hobbiton – Well Worth a Visit
In 2025 Alison and I visited the Weta Workshop in Wellington where most of the props for the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies were created. In 2026 I returned to New Zealand a few days ahead of Alison with the intention of visiting another place associated with these great fantasy films, Hobbiton. In this post […]