The Great New ZOzLand Road Trip

Up early, showered 10 min walk to car hire at airport. Tried to programme sat nav but couldn't get any map After a quick check in and a long walk to find the car turns out it was an Automatic - yuck yuck Yuckety yuck yuck yuck! I find automatics non-sensical   for starters how can Park be forward and drive be further back than reverse? Walked all the way back to the office, re-queued but no manuals left. Drove it joylessly to the hotel. Discovered that the sat nav needs the Australia map downloading and to do that it has to be connected to a computer (wirelessly to iPhone doesn't count), gave up after 20 mins and went for a hearty breakfast. Reluctantly I gave up on the sat nav debacle and resigned myself to the £5 daily charge to use my data roaming in order to google map my way to yarra valley. This included a five mile stretch on an unmetalled road - not ideal in a small Kia hire car! Weather is typically Melbournian, four seasons in one day - sun, wind, rain and hail. Got t...

Having got up at ungodly o'clock to leave Exeter, we made it to Heathrow in good time. We got checked in and through security with pretty little fuss, the usual slow-slow-hurry-hurry-slowly routine. As usual I picked the shortest queue with the most indecisive punters and rudest staff. The lovely clear plastic wash bag full of lovely calming flight yummies to keep me hydrated, wrinkle free and glamorous had to be roughly and hastily decanted into two plastic bags as it "didn't comply" with regulations, although considering it just get thrown in a tray and xrayed with no one actually physically looking at it I'm not sure I'll bother asking next time and just chance it. The shoes had to be off and then suddenly they didn't as one was on and the other in my hand hopping around trying to get it back on again whilst being glared at by Miss Trunchbull working the conveyor - "get your iPad out, sure you haven't got anymore liquids, what's in your po...