As my dad, sis and bro live in Oz & dad kindly pays for most of our trip, it makes no sense not to go - while June & I can Not going to bore you with family holiday photos but here are few of the places/interests we enjoyed.
This year we got ourselves rides on the A380 airbus to and from Singapore - their airline is top notch in my books for customer care so off we at the end of March.
The plane is very smooth and quiet and if you thought the Brembo's were good I'd love to know what brakes they use on that as there was no sense or reverse thrust on landing - on the proverbial sixpence too.
Rather than fly straight through to Oz, we stopped over in Singapore - it is fabulous place to visit where you feel safe, it is clean and everyone is so polite and helpful. They also have brilliant business sense IMO.
Pic taken from the Singapore Flyer (their London Eye) which allows a great view of the harbour area and the F1 track (part of the track/stands can be seen that mimmics the Monaco swimming pool complex).
Some of the sculptures were so life-like you could be forgiven they weren't!
Onto Oz where I picked up a hire car at Canberra (a nissan, not a ZED but a crap tillda thing and auto too ) Drove out to our 5* accommodation :
But the family also has a home in Bermagui - a game fishing on the NSW coast where we spent a couple of weeks and did a little fishing:
(Its a Mako - unfortunately the sea was to cold in April for the Marlin)
Had some spectacular sunsets;
After dropping dad back to Canberra we flew down to Melbourne to go and see the sights on the Great Ocean Road (I had specifically requested a small manual but the best Hertz could do was an auto Corolla so I gave it hell - June) Much of the road is a dream to drive and in a ZED would be great, within the speed limits of course
Saw some weird 'vans but at least most Aussies use decent V8's to tow em, unlike here where morris marinas seem to be the standard.
The '12' apostles (only 8 now) and coastline there is stunning:
And even better when we took a whirly bird ride to see a little more
Then drove back to Melbourne and found a small motor museum (Fox collection) with some rare and stunning cars.
Immaculate 300SL gullwing complete with pristine fitted luggage:
A pristine 1937 540K Merc cabriolet (like the one Adolf paraded around in) worth around £1.5m:
Various Ferrari's, Porsches Jags and Rolls Royce and somewhat looking a bit out of place but a real beast in the form of Skyline GT-R (another 'Godzilla') producing 550bhp and winner of several championships. Note one of the massive air jacks behind the front wheel:
Melbourne is a stunning city and easy to get around on the trams (good fun). Didn't appear to be any sign of a recession there and much of the architecture about the river Yarra is :
That tower (Entec) is the highest offering great views over the city - this one is towards Albert Park (yep, F1 again) and the pic shows a glass floored 'cube' that floats out the side of the tower - chickened out on that
With our last night in Melbourne we had our evening meal on a colonial tram that travels out to the St.Kilda area and had a fright when strolling along the southbank - check this out :
The noise and heat on that final explosion was amazing.
After that we flew back to Singapore for another stopover before coming back home -I have to say that ariving at Heathrow is something of a down-to-earth reality check, compared to the immaculate and slick operation of the vast Changi terminal in Singapore.
That's it, time for a