So this week has been as eventful as ever! On Thursday we took the walk from the Sydney Opera House through Botanical Gardens to Kings Cross. Seeing the opera house still makes us look up at the sails and wonder, it really is a very beautiful icon. As I love flowers and trees, being in the botanic gardens for a picnic on a sunny day is very appealing. That is, until I looked up into the trees and saw hundreds of fruit bats. Yep that's right, bats in the middle of the day in the middle of Sydney. Could this be [View Full Entry]

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After a not too heavy night on Saturday, it was an early start to go and collect our hire car for the trip to the Blue mountains. Unfortuately it was not as sunny the weather forecast had predicted. We set out on the 250 km round trip in the rain, however it was to clear up later in the day. Our first stop was at a Shell garage were we went in to aquire some cups to allow us to drink our coke and lemonade that we had brought with us in our cool bag. Several distraction tactics were put in [View Full Entry]

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Mardi Gras in Sydney is known as one of the biggest in the world. We started the night by getting the train to Kings cross for $10 steaks including chips, salad and pepper sauce. We washed these down with well deserved VB, our favourite!! From here it was on to get some propper jelly sweets and chocolate. The British Lolly Shop at the corner of Darlinghurst road has all the old favourites. Custard and creams, cola bottles, hum bugs, throntons toffee, the list could go on and on!! Our only diappointment was that the Tayto cheese and onion crisps were all [View Full Entry]

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Exploring Sydney is easy......the transport system is convenient & the city is relatively small, easily explored on foot. There have been many times we have been out in Sydney without our camera, so in an effort to capture some of the more unusual or unseen Sydney sights Sarah headed off into town. The National Museum of Australia has two exhibitions I wanted to see; Face to Face. An exhibit of more than thirty larger than life photographic portraits & biographies of many young or orphaned gorillas, chimpanzees & orang-utans from sancturies around the world. Although scary at first wit [View Full Entry]

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Last week we managed to spend some glorious days on the beach with temperatures in excess of 30 degrees. This was why we wanted to live so close to Bondi beach & when the sun came out we got straight down to the sand, along with a very well organised cool bag of lunch, enough water for 10 hours of fun & some nibbles! Michael was able to get out into the surf & is doing really well. He is going to take his surfboard on the rest of our trip around Australia, so no doubt will feature in quite a [View Full Entry]

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Well, to my shock and horror, I discovered that Valentines night is actually celebrated in Australia, and it is on the same date!!! I had thought they might have been 6 months out, given that we were in the southern hemisphere. Aw well.... Valentines night started with a relatively clear sky. We had previously eaten fish and chips from Mongers shop in Bondi Beach. The food is fantastic, so I thought it would be nice to get food from there and go to the beach with a bottle of wine. The food was great, a box of fish, calamari, prawns, oysters, [View Full Entry]

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News Flash.....Global warming is real. We have experienced this first hand this week with nonstop rain from last weekend, this in the height of the famous Aussie summer. Yes, that's right, there is rain in Bondi!! The beach mecca for the tanned and toned has become home to the likes of us walking around with our overworn raincoats & sad smiles! On a brighter note Gray's Anatomy & Desperate Housewives start on Australian TV so all is not 'lost'!!!! We have managed to explore more of our new home and been getting great use of our 10 ticket discount bus passes! [View Full Entry]

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Well this week we have done alot of surfing and body boarding. At this rate we may even be able to stand by the time we leave Oz!! When we checked in to our last hostel, we were given a book with 15 free drinks vouchers each for different bars around Sydney. We plan to find them all during our 6 week stay here. Our first one was at the Icebergs bar and restaurant in Bondi Beach. The restaurant looked very swanky, Bentley and Mercedes parked outside. The bar, which was a club we had to be signed into, was terrible. [View Full Entry]

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After an early flight back to Sydney, we touched down about 8.30 and cleared customs surprisingly quickly. The Jolly Swagman hostel where we were to be staying offers a free transfer, so it was straight there for check in. The Swagman was located in Kings Cross area of Sydney. We hit the computers early to try and find accomodation longer term. We are staying in Sydney for 6 weeks so wanted to find somewhere in Bondi Beach area. We had no luck at all, turns out that the adverts for new properties comes out on a Saturday morning, so we figured [View Full Entry]

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After a busy few days on the west coast of South Island, it was back to Christchurch for a few days to have a look around and recharge the batteries before our flight back to Oz. After checking out from Noah's Ark hostel in Greymouth, we hit the road. We had slept well on our last night in the hostel. The hostel was an old monastery, complete with high ceilings and creaky floorboards and doors. 8 of us did the obvious thing and watched 'THE OMEN' horror film. It was raining heavily outside and was dark inside. I wasn't scared, though [View Full Entry]

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