So, what did we think of Sydney and our first experience of Australia? On the whole, we loved it.

Getting our bearings at the Sydney Tower
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On Monday we end the first leg of our Oz trip and start the drive up the coast towards Brisbane and the Barrier Reef, taking in the Hunter Valley wine region for a couple of nights and one or two night stopovers at coastal resorts along the way.

Our combination of a few nights in the city of Sydney, followed by some time on a beach location was absolutely the right thing to do. There’s so much to do here that it’s quite daunting when you first arrive and every hotel/apartment/visitor centre has endless information about the many day trips and excursions on offer – you wonder how you’re actually going to fit it all in. What’s really important is to get your bearings. Because Sydney is so very different from any city in the UK, being located on a waterfront with many different harbours and the public transport primarily being by ferry or catamaran, it all seems initially quite difficult. However, we were given a piece of valuable advice and that was to familiarise ourselves with the location by taking an early trip up the Sydney Tower and just looking right around the City and its suburbs, then taking a monorail around the town itself. This takes in Darling Harbour, fish market, the shopping areas, the business district and the arena at the entertainment centre. Very good advice indeed and it put everywhere into perspective that we’d heard or read about.

A quick tour of the city on the monorail (avoiding the traffic!)
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We realised quite quickly that the ferries from Circular Quay are all very efficient and easy to negotiate your way around, and found that even if you book a day trip by coach anywhere, you tend to get dropped back at a ferry terminal somewhere outside Sydney to save sitting in traffic on the way home.

Talking of traffic, what we hadn’t expected that Sydney (whether the rest of Oz is like it, we don’t yet know) suffers from some of the worst driving we have experienced anywhere in the World (yes, including New York and Rome!!)  We have been absolutely amazed at how dangerous the place is as a pedestrian – they have no rights whatsoever, even when the pedestrian crossing is green! There seems to be little action taken against the appalling and dangerous driving, yet if you dare to put your rubbish in the wrong colour bin for recycling … well there lies another story!

The tower from the Harbour
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The wildlife here is unique too. After getting used to seeing sealions and seals on the beaches in California, we’ve now become accustomed to the daily visits from the large white cockatoos and little (but very noisy) green parrots on the balcony. Indeed we’ve heard stories of them coming in through the french windows and nicking any food they can find!

So, things we liked and would do again:

• Manly Beach

• Taronga Zoo

• Blue Mountains

• Opera House backstage tour

• Botanical Gardens

• Sydney Tower visit

• The Rocks

• Darling Harbour

• The coffee – best lattes EVER!

The houses don't come cheap here!
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Things we’d miss out:

• Sydney Wildlife Park (only just opened but given the very good zoo, we’re not quite sure why they have it)

We didn’t do the Harbour Bridge-climb but spoke to people who had done both the day and night-time climbs. It sounds a fantastic experience, but does take a good couple of hours and involves several hundred steps – enough said!

Accommodation-wise, there’s loads to choose from at all prices and you really can pretty much leave it until you’re here – certainly when it comes to the beaches. We’ve loved Manly and the northern beaches, and never actually visited Bondi in the end. We’d been told by people we met that it’s more for the younger backpacking set (although again we’ve been surprised at the sheer numbers of ‘older’ people like us travelling) and that it’s full of English & Irish bars, so we decided to give it a miss.

That one's not Mike, and that one's not Mike ...
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As we mentioned before, weekends on the beaches are great and it’s amazing to watch people just turning up from all over the world and heading for the beach from the airport meeting up with like-minded others, and swapping stories and sorting out where to stay. We understand however that other parts of the City are not as friendly and best avoided – like any major City I guess.

On an anecdotal note – the Aussies are certainly not backwards in coming forwards … at any age. On Thursday morning we duly queued for some time for a taxi to take us to the local shopping mall. By the time one came, there was a reasonably lengthy queue behind us. Not content with that, a little old lady – yes, complete with walking stick – came from the middle of the queue, hopped in the front of our cab, asked the driver where we were going and firmly directed him to drop her home en-route to the mall. Her home being in completely the opposite direction!! Both we and the cabbie were speechless, so did as instructed, booted her out at home, restarted the meter then promptly fell about laughing! I don’t think any of us believed what has just happened!

That one is!
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Now another thing that appears to be a complete myth is the great Aussie barbeque. We’ve yet to see one, experience one, or find a shop that sells one. Maybe that’s because we’re in Sydney and hopefully that will change as we move out into the suburbs?

That probably sums up Oz fairly well so far … more to come as we experience the Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast, Whitsundays and the Barrier Reef.