New Zealand South Island

I ended up breaking my journey at at place called Oamaru which is on the east coast, it took me about 3 hours to get there. I simply stopped at the first roadside motel in the town, had something to eat ready for an early start. In this blog I will let the pictures do most of the talking. Its the morning of the 11th July when I write this blog. I don't know if I will have time to bring you completely up to date, but I must say the past few days have been some of the most memorable days of my life - in a good way. I have seen some amazing sights and shown some tremendous kindness.

Before I go on, I do sincerely hope you are enjoying the blog, but one of the main reasons for this trip is to raise awareness of Colitis and Crohns disease and to raise what I can for NACC. So please pass on the justgiving web address www.justgiving.com/johnhillam and this blog address to your friends, if you can do that for me I would be very grateful.

On the morning of the 8th I travelled from Oamaru to Omarama to Queenstown. The journey took me across the country to the west side of the country through the mountains. The scenery got more dramatic the closer I got to the mountains, every turn brought a new fantastic scene, just when I thought it could get no better it did and just continues to do so.

I checked in at Aspen Lodge backpackers in Queenstown and this is where it all gets really incredible from a people point of view. My 2 nights stay there was entirely free and I even had free use of the Internet, they had decided upon this as a gesture for NACC long before I arrived.

I owe my thanks to Sally and Mandy the owners of the lodge for this kind gesture.

The parachute centre in Queenstown is a very professional operation and employs over 5o people. The centre is called NZone (the also have the DZ in Rotorua on the North Island where I jumped). My main contact at NZone is Derek Melnick, NZone were just fantastic, everything they did for me was free, they even arranged for the local press to be there. Derek had arranged a cameraman to be with me on my first jump and they took some incredible stills as well as a DVD. Some of the pictures are attached. At the end of all this Derek Presented me with a cheque for NACC for $200. I have been jumping now for over 15 years and I have never seen scenery as dramatic and beautiful as that I have seen over the past few days both at Queenstown and Lake Wanaka. Finally before I finish on Qheenstown I did a further live interview with Rhod Sharp on BBC 5 Live from NZone just after I jumped.

On the 10th July I moved onto Skydive Lake Wanaka which is owned and operated by a wonderful family wonderful family. Dave and Jools. They have two smashing children Max and Maye (please see a picture attached of us to-gether). Something very moving happened for me here, Max who is 7 presented me with $10 , he had raised this from selling chocolate at his school - they had been looking forward to my visit and Jools had brought the children down just to see me, Jools was an absolute inspiration for me and has given me even more determination to see this thing through. I have done two jumps here and have been given a ride in the co-pilots seat up to 15,000 feet. The weather was perfect and the view unforgettable. Dave and Jools will not accept anything from me, they have given me the jumps for free as well as the use of their Internet to send complete this post.

The set up at Skydive Lake Wanaka is very modern, great turbine plane and friendly staff. I have even got a fellow Sunderland supporter to talk to Andrea who runs the operational side of the DZ comes from Hewith and is a big Sunderland, she has been out here for 7 years now and loves it. John 11th July