Sydney at Xmas!!

We arrive early in the morning on the 11th to blazing sunshine!  At last after the dreary weather in NZ!  The hostel is ok and will do for the next 3 weeks although our room looked like a bomb had hit it with people's clothes strewn all over the place.  Very shortly after arriving we heard from our friend of ours we met in Fiji who works and lives in Sydney.  It was great to catch up with him that afternoon and later that evening with our friend Lou from NZ who was spending her last night in Oz. We've now been here in Sydney for about 10 days and really enjoying just stopping the constant moving and packing and repacking of bags.  Also feels good to be cooking more so eating more healthily and we've both joined up with the gym so have been a good few times so far! The weather hasn't been consistenly good and we've had some rain and thunderstorms but at least its hotter than the 1 degree it appears to be in London today - sorry guys!!! We've been really lucky that our friend Nathan has taken us under his wing and we're spending xmas with him and he is letting us stay with him for a week over new year when all of the hostels are fully booked out!  Will be odd being away from home but hopefully an experience we won't forget! Next step is to try and find a temporary job and somewhere to live for the next month or so before we start doing a bit of travelling round Australia!

We had a great xmas with Nathan in his flat.  Wasn't quite the same as being at home in the cold UK with mum doing all the cooking! It somehow turned into us all doing the cooking to me doing the cooking while the boys drank beer! I actually didn't mind and was quite fun to do. Another one of our friends from home was visiting so came and joined us and some more of Nathan's friends in the evening.  Was a very long but very fun day!  We spent Boxing Day doing as you should - lots of eating, sleeping and watching Top Gun on tv! After xmas was over with we needed to move out of our hostel which we'd called home for the last 3 weeks and temporarily moved into our friends sofa bed in his apartment in Manly.  It was quite nice to be by the beach particularly as we were having some quite nice weather. We spent New Years Eve with our friends Damo & Leish (and others!) down at the harbour with a great view of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge for the fireworks in the evening.  We had to get there early afternoon to ensure we got a good spot.  Which did mean that sitting on the hard ground, eating and drinking for that length of time by 9pm and the first fireworks we were pretty shattered.  The main fireworks at midnight were amazing and put anything the UK does to shame! The first task of 2007 was to find ourselves somewhere to live.  After many boring hours of internet searching and calling we managed to find a really nice room in an apartment right in the city next to Darling Harbour (and ominously just 2 mins walk from PwC!).  It is a 2 bed apartment and in teh other room is an irish couple and in the front room is our landlady and her son! Luckily they only sleep there overnight! The second task was to find some jobs.  Its actually really hard partic as we aren't here for too long and as its over the holiday period.  Mike has managed to find himself some work serving muffins in a food court - I am still a lady of leisure at the moment although have signed up with some temp agencies.  I'm making the most of my days of sleeping in late, drinking coffee, going to the gym and shopping! We also celebrated my birthday in January with a trip to the zoo (only 90c for the birthday girl) and dinner and drinks in Darling Harbour in the evening with friends.  (See group pic attached!)  My b'day pressie from Mike were tickets to the Opera House to see Sweeney Todd gave me an excuse to dress up a bit smarter than usual (see pic!) - was really good! Other things we've been up to include; a day trip to the Hunter Valley for wine tasting (although not really all that much wine - you know what i'm talking about Damo&Leish), a visit to the Aquarium, Wildlife World, Bondi Beach to see all the beautiful people, Watsons Bay and many trips to the cinema! We've both rekindled our love for films by tightarse tuesdays! Only $8.50 compared to the usual $15.50 (that's around GBP 3.50 vs 6 for you poms!). Oh and I almost forgot that last week we celebrated Australia Day!  This was a national holiday and day to celebrate being Australian! With lots of food and drink and more fireworks! These were at Darling Harbour and were really impressive almost as good as New Years! Well, I think that's about it... coming up in the next installment will be our trip to see the Scissor Sisters, Little Britain Live and my ongoing search for work!

You left me looking for work.  I found none.  We arrived at probably the worst time of the year for finding work, and although I signed up with four recruitment agencies they couldn't find me anything, apart from when it was too late and we were leaving Sydney.  I eventually gave up and enjoyed being a lady of leisure whilst the muffin man earnt his crust! We really enjoyed going to see the Scissor Sisters in concert, first gig for me in a while - not quite the same as the gigs in Brixton but still really good and the support act was an Oz dance group that I like called Sneaky Sound System.  We also went to see Little Britain the following week which was hilarious and absolutely packed full of people, we had seats near the back but didn't spoil the evening at all. We said a sad farewell to our friends Damo & Leish who left Sydney to continue the end of their travelling in Asia.  We saw them off with a few (!) drinks in our favourite bar in Darling Harbour - Cohi and had a shisha pipe with them!  We also said hello to our old friend Saskia who we met on our travels in New Zealand - she eventually ended up moving into the second room in our apartment.  We saw the arrival and departure of the Queen Mary 2 and the QE2 which were surprising HUGE news in Sydney?! Our friend Wayne arrived to stay with us shortly after for 3 weeks.  We had great fun with him whilst he was here, other than drinking and eating lots we also managed to see the Mardi Gras parade and a raod trip to Canberra.  We took the trip to Canberra with our Brazilian friends Felipe and Rafa.  I wasn't overly impressed with Canberra - apart from the impressive goverment buildings and the war memorial there didn't seem to be much life in the city and we were happy not to have spent much longer there, although glad to say that we'd been. We also managed a trip round the coast to Palm Beach which is where Home & Away is filmed, although only the beach scenes.  Was a long bus ride (during which Mike and Wayne slept most of it!) but we got to see some pretty scenery on the way.  Unfortunately didn't get to meet Alf Stewart though! We were also lucky to be in Sydney for the 75th anniversary of the Harbour Bridge and we did the walk across with thousands of others wearing orange caps with lights on as we did it at night! Quite an experience although quite amusing that so much fuss is made over only 75 years when you think how old some of our buildings and bridges are in the UK and we don't bat an eyelid!

Returned back to Sydney from my trip to Perth for the last week before we left for Melbourne and the beginning of our 10 week trip round Oz.  Had a good few 'leaving' nights out with our friends and revisited a few touristy places like the Opera House and Botanical gardens for more photos. A great time in Sydney was definitely had, but loooking forward to revisiting Melbourne and my friend Mikey from home and seeing the rest Australia has to offer! More updates soon!