I haven't found Frodo yet... but hell, Elijah's too short for me anyway

Well here I am again with a few glorious days fo at home internet before I head back to the uni computers in Canberra.
Thursday through SUnday were an intensive few days of travelling -- Thursday on a bus to Sydney to see the sights, Friday on a plane to Christchurch, and Saturday and Sunday non-stop driving to experience the amazing scenery of New Zealand's South island.
Sydney was, or rather my rushed one-day general impression of it was, a beautiful city with lots of beautiful people in it, all of whom seemed very posh, metropolitan, and basically way cooler than me. If I had to choose, I might actually go with Melbourne as a place to live. It just seems more chilled out (that is relative to the fact that ALL of Australia is pretty chill).
One thing I will say for Australians, and hell, for Europeans too, they sure do know how to do their public spaces. Every city I've been in so far this year -- Kyiv, Munich, Paris, Melbourne, Sydney (with the exception of the SUPREMELY pedestrian un-friendly Canberra) -- has had some huge, open, green space smack in the middle of the city, and they're WONDERFUL. Why don't Canadian cities do more of that? Coming up soon is my series of animal and flower pictures from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney -- gorgeous.
Friday we flew in to Christchurch and took off early the next morning in our rental car to drive down the West coast, and then back up again on a different route with a slight detour to check out Mount Cook - the highest peak.
The thing that is really striking is how diverse the scenery is -- you can drive for half an hour and go from subtropic forest, to something like Lake Louise. It's incredible, and not hard to see why the Hollywood film industry keeps returning to the tried and true. New Zealand really does have something to fit every bill.
Sometimes it's easy to imagine dinosaurs jumping out of the foliage, and in some places you imagine Peter Jackson scoping out the scene. It's a lot of fun.

Back to see the wizard on Friday.