Posts in Category: Oceania
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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 […]
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Australia with Adventures Abroad
Alison and I have just completed another journey of a lifetime with Adventures Abroad. This time it was the vast continent of Australia and in this post I’ll explain why I thought this itinerary was about the best way to get an introduction to The Land Down Under. Realistically, just as you could not expect […]
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Paraparaumu Beach G.C. Hole by Hole
In 2025 Alison and I were fortunate enough to play three great New Zealand golf courses, Kauri Cliffs, Cape Kidnappers and the Coronet course at Millbrook Resort. Returning to the North Island in 2026 we only had the chance to play one course, Paraparaumu Beach, which is considered to be the spiritual home of Kiwi […]