Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens are beautiful, huge landscaped park with thousands of plants.

The red center of Australia, the outback is beautiful, very green now due to unseasonable rains. Uluru (Ayer's Rock) is amazing. Quite hot, 100F and the flies were numerous.

Flying into Sydney from New Zealand we saw the harbor, the famous bridge and opera house are in the center of the photo. We changed planes at Sydney and flew on to Cairns, Australia.

Cairns, Australia is in the tropics and it is the rainy season now. Yesterday I saw more rainfall in one day than I thought was possible. And of course, we went to the Botanic Garden. Giant spiders, huge flying bats and gorgeous tropical plants, very colorful.

Grasses in New Zealand. They are beautiful and cover the hills. The most common grass is probably red tussock, Chionochloa rubra, shown in the background of this photo. It forms a dense clump and the flowers are often borne in the fine foliage.

Some areas are preserved as scenic preserves of tussock grasslands.  This photo is from the farm we visited, this is an area in the hills they use for pastures.

Yesterday, Feb 22, 2011 there was another major earthquake in Christchurch, where we were last week. This building was across the street from our hotel, and we saw on the news that it was greatly damaged yesterday.

Christchurch had so many beautiful buildings that are of historic significance. What a tragedy.

Food in New Zealand has been great. Tremendous selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, most locally grown. Remember it is summer here and crops are coming out of the field now. Here is the largest celery I have ever seen. It is hard to get the scale right, but let's say it was double the size we normally see. I do not remember the price of the celery, but most of the grocery items are similar, except milk is higher.

Beef, lamb and venison are very popular. Venison is the farm raised we see quite often in the fields and was at the farm where we stayed. In Queenstown, they are serious about hamburgers, especially at Fergburgers, this was delicious.  It was the largest hamburger I have eaten, Jim only ate 1/4 of it. A plain one cost $10, I opted for cheddar cheese, which was $11.