View from my window #2

This week I'm in Taupo, in the middle of New Zealand's North Island, and when I woke up this morning I looked across Lake Taupo to the three active volcanoes that sit on the other side of the water.

Lake Taupo, which is actually the crater of a great volcano that exploded many centuries ago, and it is so big that the island of Singapore could float on the water and not touch the shore.

The three great volcanoes - Mt Ruapehu, Mt Ngauruhoe and Mt Tongariro -- sit in Tongariro National Park which is also one of the United Nation's World Heritage Sites and it's an easy 90 minute drive from Taupo around the lake to the peaks.

Trip #11

TRIP number 11 is done and dusted, now I must write the stories...

Kilometres flown – No flights, but we did drive 803km during the three-day excursion

Hotels – Lighthouse Lodge (Warrnambool)

Total number of hotels in 2011 –32

New stamps in my passport – Passport was at home in the safe

I will be on the road again next week, and in the diary is a hop across the Tasman to New Zealand's North Island to see Lake Taupo.

View from my window...

...the Lady Bay Lighthouse in Warrnambool.

I'm spending a couple of days exploring Victoria's Shipwreck Coast - that's the stretch from the Port Fairy to Moonlight Head where hundreds of ships went to the bottom during the 1800s - and my accommodation has been in Lighthouse Lodge on the edge of Flagstaff Hill in Warrnambool.

Lighthouse Lodge was built in 1911, as the Warrnambool Harbour Master's house, and was recently restored to let visitors stay within the grounds of the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village.

The lighthouse, with a blue and a white light that flashed like a pulse outside my window from sunset to sunrise, was originally built on Middle Island in 1859 but relocated - with all its outbuildings, including the outside toilet - to the current position in 1878.

Warrnambool Harbour was a dangerous spot in the 19th century, when it was one of Victoria's most important export ports, with more than 16 ships sinking and more more stranded but successfully refloated.