Memories of "Down Under" -- Australia and New Zealand

• Mr. J. Franklin Bullard, Sky III Travel Agency, Birmingham, Alabama, who helped us custom design our trip and took care of our plane tickets, tours, and hotel reservations for us. Every time we talked with him, he also entertained us with some of his delightful travel experiences. Frank retired this past fall and I will really miss his great service and sense of humor as we plan a return trip during the 1997 Christmas holidays.
  
  
• The friendly skies and staff of United Airlines, who provided good service and plenty to eat and drink (even though I was usually trying to sleep so I wouldn't have problems with jet lag). During our eight flights with United (and its companion airline, Ansett Australia) we encountered no problems with missed connections or having to hurry through an airport to catch another flight. We had no luggage problems during the entire trip. Even the 14-hour non-stop flight from Los Angeles to Sydney seemed shorter than I had imagined it would be. And we arrived in Sydney and returned home to Birmingham on time.
  
  
• Australian Travel Services (ATS) who coordinated our hotel and tour reservations, even making a voucher correction for us at the last minute.
  
  
• Dr. John Cantelow, retired Assistant Superintendent of Personnel, Birmingham Public Schools, who allowed me to take a personal leave day the last day of school. A February ice storm which closed the schools for four days required an extension of the school year to June 1 instead of the original closing date of May 28.
  
  
• Mr. Ian White, Year 4 and former computer teacher at Avalon Public School in Sydney, Australia, and my computer keypal since March of 1994, who met us at the Kingsford Smith Airport in Sydney at 6:05 a.m. on Monday, June 3 (it was 3:05 p.m. on Sunday, June 2 in Birmingham), the day after he got out of the hospital following leg surgery. He gave us not only a very thorough tour of Sydney but also introduced us to "yum cha" and squid, hosted a delicious seafood meal at Doyle's where we could view the harbor and Opera House, showed us his school where I got to see the W. J. Christian School home page come up on the computer halfway around the world, and gave us a tour of Sydney at night. Also, thanks for taking the picture at the top of this page.
  
  
• Our bus driver Jim, from Great Sights, who was well informed as well as entertaining during our tour from Auckland, New Zealand to Rotorua, as well as showed his driving skills in a 56-passenger bus on an icy, winding mountain road so we could see Paradise Valley and the animals in their natural settings. If the roads had been that icy in Birmingham, the schools would have been closed. We loved his sense of humor.
  
  

Sydney, Australia Skyline
Sydney Opera House
Harbour Rocks Hotel, Sydney, Australia
Animals of Australia and New Zealand
An Australian Fig Tree
Queen Victoria Building, Sydney
Sunset at Palm Beach
The Quicksilver
Coral on the Great Barrier Reef
A Tropical Paradise

Auckland Ferry Building
An Angora Rabbit
The World of the Maori
Geothermal Activity at Rotorua
Sheep Show at the Agrodome
Paradise Valley Springs
Scenes of Rotorua, New Zealand

Click here to read about our second trip to Australia and New Zealand in December of 1997.