New Zealand

Ah New Zealand....how I wish I had discovered it a lot sooner!! Despite a near disaster at Sydney airport trying to get out of the country we found our way to our first stop on a whirlwind tour of New Zealand and arrived in Christchurch. Our flight landed quite late so it wasn’t til the next morning that we got up and were able to explore. The lovely staff in our very old fashioned house hostel which was brilliant pointed us in the right direction to head towards town. However on the map the girl marked off the CBD section of the map and said it was still closed after the earthquakes...this was our first realisation that things were still pretty bad. So we started wandering and got so far before we were confronted with a fence closing off a whole road and diversion signs all over the place...and it hit me that this terrible thing had happened here not so long ago and the city is still very much in its recovery stages. As we walked around the perimeter of the Red Zone, as they call it, we couldn’t help but notice destruction all over the place. In the centre of the Red Zone there were still skyscrapers that were semi demolished and I could see how badly damaged they had been by the quakes. There were empty plots of land everywhere, where buildings had been damaged and then completely demolished by the companies and they just didn’t rebuild them, whether for fear of another quake or for financial reasons I do not know. Even outside of the Red Zone there were these beautiful old buildings that had windows boarded up, or fences around sections of them. One building even had its turret on the ground at the foot of the tower it had once stood on top of. We passed the site of an old historical church that had been damaged beyond repair and so to mark the fact that the church had existed at all a memorial had been set up. There were 183 stones from the walls of the building laid out on the ground surrounded by a floral arrangement, one stone to mark each fatal casualty of the quake. I think the most poignant thing that I saw though was when we walked past a cemetery one day. Lots of the headstones were knocked over and crumbling down, some of them had been picked up and leant against the graves the belonged to, but in most cases the stones were just lying on the ground as the graves were so old that they had no one around to look after them anymore. I also saw the headlines of the newspaper the day we arrived and the story was about the buildings that had been destroyed by the quakes. Very few buildings were actually completely destroyed by the quakes; most were just so damaged that they couldn’t be repaired so the city council was tearing down what remained of them to make the area safe for people and cars to pass through again. Since the quakes thousands of buildings had been demolished. And the headline of the article that day was discussing the fate of another 30 buildings right in the heart of Christchurch. Some had already been marked for demolition, some were uncertain and out of the 30 buildings shown, only 4 were deemed safe. All of this on the first day really brought it home to me just how bad the quakes had been and that the city isn’t even a tiny bit close to being back to normal.

Having said all this there was signs of regeneration, the most notable of these being the Restart. The Restart is a shopping area that was built after the quakes, made from shipping containers to give shop owners and banks etc somewhere to continue conducting business, so that the city could continue something of a normal existence. Since the Restart was first built it has gotten better and better and now seems to be a permanent fixture in the city. The containers have been fitted with full display windows, electricity, plumbing and everything they need to function as a normal business. It is a really colourful area, each container painted a different colour and there are lots of benches and seats for shoppers to rest at and to sit and enjoy a coffee or slice of pizza from some of the cafes that are around. It was really inspiring to see and as much as I hope the city eventually gets back to normal I do hope they keep the Restart as a sign of the city’s refusal to give up after the quakes.

Our first day in Christchurch also gave us our first introduction to Kiwis! And holy God were they a lot different from what we had been used to! Something me and Joe always said about Australia was that in a lot of cases we found customer service to be somewhat lacking in most places. In stark contrast to this we met Graham. Graham was a man in his 50s who worked at the iSite (tourist information) in Christchurch. The first time we went in he spent almost an hour talking with us, helping us organise all we wanted to do and suggesting extra things for us to do along the way that would fit in with the rest of our plans. After all this was organised we pottered about the city, having lunch at a little cafe with extremely cheery staff and a wander around the museum where we were greeted by a lovely lady. This lady came to give us a map, welcome us to the museum and explain that only the ground floor was currently open as, as we may have heard, “a lot of Christchurch is closed”! We found this explanation to be slightly amusing and it was nice to see how the people of the city explain it without making it all too heavy for tourists. The museum had a whole section of it dedicated to the quakes, with before and after pictures that showed just how devastating it was. It was, well I don’t want to say great to see it, but I certainly appreciated the opportunity to fully understand what affect the quakes had on the city and most importantly how they are dealing with the aftermath. After this we had a couple of other things to sort out so went back to Graham...and spent another 45 minutes with him! He was a chatty man but he just seemed to love his job. He knew everything about every mode of transport, entry prices and costs of almost anything a tourist would want to do and also wasn’t pushy about different activities, he gave the information and was happy for people to come back if they wanted it or to leave it if they didn’t. It was refreshing to see someone so enthusiastic about their work...and put both of us in a good mood just cause of his enthusiasm.

The next day we decided to head to Akoroa. Akoroa was the first French settlement in New Zealand and is situated on the peninsula about 80km from Christchurch. We got collected early (on a cold morning...our first in 4 months yikes!!!) and brought for an amazing drive up through the mountains. This drive gave us our first taste of the New Zealand scenery and I was stunned. It was beautiful. Our driver would stop every now and then to let us hope out of the bus to take a photo and I just couldn’t get enough of it!! There were beautiful green rolling hills as well as snow capped mountains and crystal blue lakes whichever way I looked. I was very quickly falling in love with this country. Akoroa itself was very quaint. It is very much influenced it its French roots with beautiful buildings and gardens. We wandered about for a few hours, dodged the little bit of rain that we got and then got dropped back to Christchurch that evening.

 The following day was another day trip, this time up to Kaikoura. Kaikoura was a 2 hour drive north of Christchurch and I had read lots about it so we decided to go see what all the fuss was about! And it was stunning! We had great weather that day and walked from the town. , along the Esplanade and right down to the tip of the peninsula to a seal colony. The seal colony itself was a bit of a disappointment as it wasn’t so much a colony as 4 seals scattered about bathing themselves! But we were able to get close to them and even saw a little cub. We had a picnic lunch then and decided to walk up to the lookout point that was also on the map. This walk took us up a steep path...and then into a field full of sheep!! At first we weren’t sure we were quite going the right way but when we realised there was absolutely nowhere else for us to go we shrugged our shoulders, hopped over the stile and meandered in among the sheep and sheep shit and up to the top of the hill!! Once we got to the lookout point we didn’t want to leave. We could see for miles and the most stunning thing was this massive snow capped mountains that ran right up to the crystal blue waters of the sea. We sat for awhile and took it all in...and fell in love with New Zealand just a little bit more!

After that it was time to say bye to Christchurch and head south to Queenstown.

On the way to Queenstown we did stop in a lovely little place called Lake Tekapo for a couple for nights. This was to enable us to go and see Mount Cook. Tekapo was beautiful in itself though with a crystal clear lake surrounded by snow capped mountains! We had an early start for our drive to Mount Cook the next day. It was a lovely drive and the driver pointed out a few Lord of the Rings filming sites to us which was pretty cool! When we got to Mount Cook though, as was our luck...it was misty, overcast and threatening rain...and bloody cold!! Bear in mind I had just completed nearly 4 months working in the desert and then suddenly I was in places that were raining sleet (is that possible? Is it just “sleeting”???) We still braved the element and went on a 2 hour walk to a lookout point...where we couldn’t look at a whole lot to be honest but at least we did it!! We headed back to the little village then and wandered around before getting a cup of tea (yes me!! It was bloody cold!!!) and wait for our bus back. We actually ended up sitting down and having a nice chat with our driver...who is an extra in the next Hobbit movies!! And oddly enough had also trekked Punhill in Nepal!! He also managed the Annapurna trek and did a total of 15 days up the mountains...fair play to him...5 days nearly killed me!!!

Next it was onto Queenstown! Queenstown has a reputation as the adventure capital of the world...and I’m not sure that I would dispute that! There are hundreds of opportunities to bungee jump, skydive, white water raft, jet boat, canyon swing and just about every other adrenaline-pumping activity in the world. My reason for going was slightly less death defying however!! I wanted to go to Milford Sound. Milford Sound is one of the natural wonders of the world and is famous for its cascading waterfalls down the cliffs that line the waterway. I had heard a lot about it and was really looking forward to seeing. However the downside of its beauty is that it needs rain for its waterfalls...and as such it is one of the wettest places on earth! So the day we were heading to Milford Sound we got our bus at 6.45 am and started our 6 hour (six hour!!) drive. There was a beautiful sunrise over the Remarkables that made the clouds on top of the mountains look like they were on fire. It wasn’t long though before I fell asleep...and when I awoke it was too a pretty rainbow...against a VERY dark sky!! As we drove on it got darker and the rain started falling...and continued to do so for about 4 hours! The driver was giving us a commentary on things we were passing...but not stopping as none of us were too eager to climb out into torrential rain and soak ourselves and our cameras for a rainy picture! As we got every closer to Milford Sound the rain seemed to get worse and the driver decided to tell us that it doesn’t happen very often (about once a year) but sometimes they have to cancel the boats that go out on the Sound because of bad weather. Now call me a pessimist, but the fact the driver even felt like he had to tell us this was a bad omen to me!! When we did get to the drive way into the Milford Sound harbour the driver was quite concerned about the amount of cars driving out of the car park and the lack of cars or buses in it. Then we passed a coach coming in the opposite direction...and the bus driver of that bus gave us the thumbs down. Our driver told us that it was 99% certain that we wouldn’t be going anywhere. He pulled up to the wharf building, made a mad dash inside and popped back to us soaking wet to tell us that all the boats had been cancelled and we had to get out of there cause they were closing the road due to the amount of rain that was falling (I should mention here that although the drive to Milford Sound is one of the most beautiful in the world it is also the most avalanche prone public road in the world!!!) As it was I couldn’t even see the water or the boats we were supposed to get on, despite the fact that they were only 50 feet away from where we were parked, the rain was lashing down and the trees were being blown in fifty different directions. I for one was glad the boat was cancelled as I’m pretty sure my fear of drowning might have been realised that day if I had gotten on a boat!!! Our driver pulled out pretty quick and gave the thumbs down signal to the rest of the buses we passed. And so after 6 hours of driving on precarious roads in the rain, we doubled back and did the exact same thing...except this time in a race against time before we got stuck on a closed road!! We did make it back to Queenstown without incident though and a relieved, yet slightly disappointed group of tourists alighted in a very sunny, not at all rainy Queenstown!! We did stop feeling sorry for ourselves though when we heard one coach group that was going for an overnight bus trip was made up of a wedding party who were to be wed on a boat at sunset in the middle of Milford Sound that night. And because there was no accommodation available the party of 50 would have to sleep on the boat regardless of it being moored in  choppy stormy waters and hope that the weather might be a bit better the day after to have an early morning ceremony instead. We did hear the next day that the tour groups all went out and had a lovely day...so yay for them!! Also as an aside, a week to the day after we went to Milford Sound there was an avalanche on the road that brought 300 tonnes of rock onto the road, some boulders the size of cars! Lucky us I say!! Anyway once we got back to Queenstown nothing would suit us but to have a drink to drown our sorrows, so we headed to a pub and a drink turned into a few and we headed home slightly merrier!

After Queenstown it was off to Wanaka. Wanaka was a one night stop over as I really wanted to go to a place called Puzzling World that I had heard about. Puzzling it was! One puzzle in it (for display only, not to be played) would have taken one person something like 700 billion years to complete doing one move a second, doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun to me! But what was fun was the tilted room. This is only the second time in my life I have walked and acted like a drunk person when I have been completely sober (first time being on the top of Nemrut Dagi in Turkey for those of you who are slightly curious!!) It was such a surreal feeling. There was a pool table in the room that gave the illusion that the white ball was rolling uphill to pocket itself in a corner pocket...could have played with that for hours!! Funniest of all though was when a family came in with a little girl of about 3. Well her body just didn’t know what to make of the whole thing! She got a bit confused and tried to walk to her Dad but ended up stumbling backwards...she managed to get her balance only to give it another go and to end up running backwards down a slope with no way to stop herself. Her Dad ended up running after her and catching her by her face before she crashed into a wall!! Those of us in the room were in tears laughing while she just looked totally flummoxed...I did feel a bit bad but once I say her Mam laughing as hard as me I just lost it and couldn’t help it!! It was great fun though and I was glad we stopped in to do something a bit different and to have a few laughs!

After Wanaka we made our way up the west coast of the south island to Franz Josef Glacier. We were there for 48 hours...and it rained for the entire time!! Honest to God there was not one let up in the rain! That didn’t stop us though and we still went on a little walk to see the glacier. It wasn’t quite what I expected, although we did go to the end that it was slowly melting so there was a lot of rubble and rock around it. It was still pretty cool and there were loads of pictures of what it used to look like and how it is now...and it is definitely melting is all I can say! Other than our dash out into the rain we didn’t get to do much in Franz Josef...though once the glacier is ticked off the list there’s not much else to actually do anyway! The only thing of note is that I met a girl from England called Ruth in the TV room of the hostel one evening. Without even noticing we ended up spending about 3 hours talking about our travels etc as she had also been to a lot of the places I have been to. Then we commandeered the TV room and along with another English girl put Mamma Mia on. Quite funny as every now and then a couple of guys would walk in, sit for all of 10 seconds and get up and walk out again!! First time I have ever seen girls control the TV in a hostel!

Our next stop was our first stop over in the North Island, Wellington. It’s a pretty nice city and we got out of the central city for a little bit and headed to the suburbs to visit Weta Caves. Weta Caves is the special affects studio that Peter Jackson worked with for Lord of the Rings. When we walked in the door we were greeted by a very realistic looking Gollum and then the big massive scary Orc that kills Boromir!! It was a pretty small place but still so good to walk around. There was lots of the weapons that were used for the films about, even saw Legolas’s quiver, the normal size one and the one that made the hobbits look small! There were lots of different types of armour that was used for the elves, orcs, hobbits and human armies. And then there was stuff from King Kong, Avatar, alien movies and of course lots of new stuff from the Hobbit. It was a small place and a short visit but well worth it. After that we took a ride on the old Wellington Cable Car to the top of the city and walked around the Botanical Gardens. We were very glad we got the Cable Car up as the gardens are at the top of a steep hill and walking up probably would have taken me days!!

Next we were off to Rotorua. Rotorua was where we spent the longest amount of time in New Zealand, 5 days in total. There was a few reasons for this, firstly there was a few things we planned on doing here so we wanted to give ourselves enough time to do it, and also we were just over 2 weeks into our 3 and a half week travels in New Zealand and we were ready for a break and a day of pure and utter relaxation!! Rotorua is famous for its geothermal activity, so one our first day there we wandered around to some of the parks to see what it was all about. Well first off it was feicin smelly!! There is a lot of sulphur in the air and it’s hard to find somewhere that isn’t downwind of something geothermaly!! I was a bit shocked by it all at first, I walked by a rock in the first park we went to and there was steam coming from underneath it and a loud hissy noise! I expected it to go flying into the air as I stood there! Well obviously it didn’t but it just made me realise exactly how active the area was. On our walk we came across steaming pool, bubbling mood pools and areas where the rock had turned a burnt orange colour from where the sulphur had settled! At one stage we were walking through a village and the cobble stones were starting dissolve a little and there was steam and water coming up through the cracks! Mental!

Our next adventure in Rotorua was to go to a Maori cultural night. This was one of the highlights of New Zealand for me. We got picked up from our hostel and brought outside the town a bit to a placed called Tamaki Village. Sonny, the driver, gave us a few guidelines about what was going to happen. The first thing we had to do was pick a chief who was going to be challenged by the chief of the village to ensure we came in peace and were not a threat to the Maori Village. I’m glad I wasn’t the chief! It looked quite intimidating as the warriors came up nose to nose with our chief and was doing a whole load of tricks with his spear. After the attack display the chief determined we came in peace and we were welcomed into the village. The reason the Maoris did this years ago was to prevent any wars. If a new tribe appeared on the territory of another tribe the tribe that owned the land would have its warriors do a display of their skills and then the haka and the hope was that this would frighten the other tribe off and there would be no war! Apparently it worked quite a lot and I’m not bloody surprised. I would have run to the hills if I was planning on invading Maori land!

Once we were finished the welcome ceremony we were then escorted through the village to see displays of different Maori crafts. We saw a display of how the warriors trained to ensure they had a lot of speed and agility. We got a lesson in the haka and poi twirling. I also ended up playing a Maori game at one stage, running around trying to catch sticks before they fell to the ground!! Once all that was over we went to the Hangi area. Hangi is how they cook food; they dig a pit and put white hot stones in the bottom of it. Then they put their meat on it followed by their veg. It is then covered by wet sack cloths and this is then covered by the soil from the pit to ensure it is completely air tight and none of the steam can escape. 3 hours later and the food is ready! We were there for when they took the food out of the pit and it smelt amazing!! The food looked gorgeous and I think we all started to get very hungry at that stage! While the food got prepared for us we went into the village Town House and were entertained with Maori songs and dances and the night was finished off with the haka. I’m not sure if they were trying for it not to be totally scary as we were all sitting quite close to the stage but honestly, the All Blacks scare me a lot more when I watch it on TV than the people at the show did. Not to say it still was amazing and fun to see! After that it was dinner time! We were led into the dining room and allowed one table at a time up to the buffet table. There was the chicken and lamb that was pulled from the hangi, as well as all our veg, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and something New Zealandish that I can’t remember! There was also fish, bread, muscles (yuck!) and a million different types of fresh salads! It was so good, and I could actually taste the smoke off the chicken from the hangi. I wish I had been able to fit a second plate of food in...Or at least taken a doggy bag!! After dinner it was dessert time which was a Maori sweet baked pudding and a gorgeous Pavlova!  Of course I had a little space left to give a traditional Kiwi Pavlova a go!! Then there were a few more songs for us, courtesy of Sonny our driver and then the evening was over all too soon and it was back into the town. It really was an amazing night and so much fun to experience so many cultural traditions.

Next day was an early start for a day I had been looking to for a long time! Hobbiton day!!! When I found out there was a place to go and actually see the Shire there was no way I could be stopped going! It was about an hour’s drive from the town and the further we went the greener and rounder the hills got and I got more excited. When we got to the Alexander farm we were all popped onto a bus called Gandalf and driver through the farm. When we got off the bus I was like a kid on Christmas morning, I just wanted to walk down the path and see what goodies there was for me! And I was not disappointed...it is exactly like it is in the movies!!! We walked by Rosie and Sam’s Hobbit hole. We stood right outside Bag End where Frodo and Bilbo live. We saw the party tree and the Green Dragon. We even got lots of insider tips from the movie. Here’s one, next time you watch the 1^st movie and Merry and Pippin set off the big dragon firework, listen out for a very high pitched scream. That scream comes from the actor who plays Merry. He wasn’t expecting such a loud bag when it went off and that yelp is his true reaction to it. Apparently when they played it back and heard the scream everyone laughed so much and took the piss out of him that they decided to leave it in to forever be a joke for the actors and anyone in the know! So there you go...insider knowledge!!! In all we spent an hour and a half walking around the set and seeing lots of hobbit holes and being told different stories from the filming. Me and Joe both loved it and felt like complete geeks because of it! But nothing could take the smile off my face for having actually been to the Shire...so if you ever watch it with me...be warned...there is a whole new world of “I was there” to come!!!

In Rotorua we also got to go to Te Puia, a geothermal village that had geysers in it. They geysers go off about every half hour or so. They spend the whole half hour building up, with steam and some splashes of water shooting out of them...and then it explodes. And it’s not just a blink and you miss it kind of thing, it keeps on erupting for at least 20 minutes before it dies down and starts to build up again. It was so cool to watch it and to be waiting for it to go off. In Te Puia we also got to see real live Kiwis (the national bird!) it was nice to finally see the bird that the country is so well known for. It was a bit bigger than I thought but fluffier too!! We also got treated to another Maori culture show before heading back into town to pack our bags once again and head to our penultimate New Zealand destination, Bay of Islands.

Both myself and Joe had been advised by a few different people that we had to make this one of our stops, so with a re-jig of a few dates we managed to fit in a couple of nights and book ourselves on a dolphin spotting cruise in around the islands. Think the highlight of the day was seeing dolphins within about 30 minutes of being on the water. They came right up beside the boat and it was amazing. They were bigger than any dolphins I had ever seen and there was a little baby in with them too. They kept coming right up beside the boat and then swimming underneath and popping back out again. I was mesmerised, but the boat had to adhere to certain guidelines as the bay is a world heritage site so we could stay with the dolphins too long so that we wouldn’t disturb their habitat. So once we spent about 40 minutes watching them the captain put the throttle down and we sped off in through the islands. The sights we saw were pretty cool and we stopped at one island and we able to walk to the top of a hill that gave a stunning 360 view of the area. The waters were crystal clear and there were lots of little islands with sandy beaches dotted among the sea. It really was a great day and well worth the stop over...so thank you to everyone who told us it was a must see!!

It was then time to head to our final destination (not in a creepy going to die movie kinda way!)Auckland....well it was rainy! But we were also there for the World Championship Triathlon. This was cool in one way, but sucked in another, because when we got to our hostel we discovered that they were completely overbooked so we had to try and find somewhere else to stay in a city that was fully booked! Lucky enough Joe found us some space and we made the most of it! Our first night we found out that New Zealand was playing Australia in a rugby match. So we decided to seize the moment and cheer on the All Blacks in their home country...something I’ll probably never get to do again! With the time difference between Australia and New Zealand the match didn’t start til about midnight but we were determined to stay up on account of it being the All Blacks. Hmm...in the end they bloody well drew!! Not a try was scored and it was game of penalties! I was not impressed and the All Blacks have some making up to do...though as long as they don’t do it against Ireland I’ll be happy!!! The next day, on our last day in New Zealand we went and watched some of the triathlon, I cheered on a few Irish athletes across the finish line and then we went up the Auckland Sky Tower. We were up there for about 3 hours, having a drink and taking in the views over the harbour. It was a pretty cool way to round off an amazing 3 and a half weeks and reflect on everything we had seen and experienced. New Zealand will definitely go on my “must come back here list” and also on my “tell everyone else to go here list”!!!

A few facts I found out about New Zealand before I sign off...

It has a population of 4 million [people...and 40 million sheep!!

 We passed by a farm that had 14,000 cattle on it. 6,000 of which were milking in 3 rotations of 2,000 each. (That fact is for the family farmer for those of you who think I’m a bit crazy!!)

Hostels are on a whole different par to most of the world in my opinion...in a good way!

Kiwis are extremely friendly, happy people.

It’s a rainier place than I thought!

Overall I think New Zealand will be up there with Nepal and Vietnam as one of my favourite countries in this 20 month trip that I happily call a holiday! Despite the fact that I wore my coat and a hoodie pretty much the entire time I loved every minute of it. The landscape itself is enough to keep anyone mesmerised. From the glacier green lakes I saw in the South Island surrounded by snow capped mountains to the geothermal areas in the North Island and the Shire-like mountains that dominate the landscape I just could not get enough of. And I know that I only hit the tip of the iceberg on my whirlwind trip. There are lots I would go back to New Zealand to do again...and lots of things I would be doing first time around. Either way, New Zealand can expect to see me in the future!!!

And so it is back to Australia to finish off the last of my travels there. A colourful Hippie Van awaits me in Cairns and 3 weeks of open road before a last final farewell to Sydney. Hopefully I will have plenty of stories to tell from that part of the journey too. So keep your eyes peeled for the next update.

Australian Life

Hmmm....so my last blog ended with a promise to not leave it so long until my next update...oopsie my bad!!! But again it was mostly because of the routine of work, home, dinner, bed that was my life up until the end of April. Again this blog isn’t in any particular order....it’s a mish mash of stories and things!

Some quite fun things did happen tough. The first big event after New Years was Australia Day. This is celebrated on the 26^th of January each year. We decided to head out and see what we could find...we didn’t have to go far. There was a big fair set up in Hyde Park and lots going on up at the Rocks too. There was a boat display in the harbour too and street performers everywhere. When we had walked for hours and taken in a lot of stuff we decided to head home...and stumbled across what I can only describe as the world’s biggest classic car display!!! We walked though it for about an hour and a half...and at this point I had reached my limit for looking at classic cars! At first I was looking at them all and then after awhile I would look as I kept walking. After the 1.5 hour point I was waiting for Joe to take a picture and a guy walked past saying “ok I think I’ve reached saturation point” which worried me slightly as I thought we were coming to the end of it!! About another hour later going at a much quicker pace we did actually reach the end of the display! There must have been thousands of cars there, and all of them were in perfect condition too!

 Chinese New Year was really cool also. There were loads of different events on, culminating in the Twilight parade on the Sunday evening. The parade didn’t start till 8 when it had started to get dark so everyone in the parade had little fairy lights all over them. It was really nice and there was people dancing and playing music and all kinds of things.  Crowds starting gathering quite early so they had different types of entertainment on like a BMX bike display and graffiti artists and break dancers...totally random things but something to look at while we waited!!

The next big event was Paddy’s Day! Luckily Paddy’s Day fell on a Saturday so I knew I wouldn’t be working. But for some odd reason Sydney always has the parade on the Sunday before or after Paddy’s Day...thought this was slightly odd but I was just glad that they did do something!! It was tradition in work to have drinks on a Friday evening for the last hour of work...this normally consisted of beer or wine but on this particular Friday they had ordered in cans of Guinness too. Geoff (the boss) was going around with the cans offering them to everyone...funnily enough very few Irish people actually accepted one...when we were asked why the response was that “Guinness is disgusting”!! No one believed us and still took a can and after about 3 sips went back to their usual tipple!! On the Saturday then myself and Joe got ourselves up to go and see what fun we could find in the city. Courtesy of a Christmas pressie of the Irish jersey and Triona’s Paddy’s Day survival post with flashing badges and earrings in it (for me, not for Joe) we  were well identifiable as Paddy’s Day revellers!!! So we left the apartment and started walking towards town. I started to get really worried as for the first 10 minutes we didn’t see an iota of green anywhere and I was starting to think we’d be celebrating on our own. But then we hit George Street...and walked into leprechaun land!!! There were people everywhere in green hats and big tall Guinness hats, Irish flags draped over everyone and everything and hundreds of people dressed as leprechauns!! And so I was happy! We stopped in one pub on George Street and had our first drink taking it all in. Then we decided to head towards Darling Harbour. The Harbour was actually pretty dead but it looked like they were building up to a night time party as all the staff in all the bars were wearing green so I think we just arrived a bit too early. So after a drink there we left and headed towards PJ O’Brien’s...and Irish bar. I have been here a few times as it is where me and the girls from work used to head for our Friday pub lunch. So we decided if we could find a party it would be there....and we weren’t wrong. However when we went to walk in the normal door the bouncer said that was the “out” door and to go down to the next door...a peek in the door told us the placed was rammed...and then we looked at the “in” door...and there was actually a queue of 100+ people waiting to get in!! I immediately refused to queue to get into a pub on Paddy’s Day so we looked around and across the road was another put...there was a good crowd in there and it looked like it was full of people who like us said “screw that” and looked for the nearest hostillery!! So we popped into that bar and had a couple of drinks there before deciding to head back towards home. As we walked towards home we bumped into a group of about 8 lads who all had the tall Guinness hats on them. I had been wanting one all day but refused to buy a Guinness just to get a hat! These lads though saw me coming in my green get up and started cheering saying “Yay Paddy’s Day”. Of course then they copped my Irish accent and got very excited that they had actually met and Irish person on Paddy’s Day (though one of them did get slightly confused and when I said I was from Dublin, though I said Canada...to which all his mates gave him a few digs!) Anyway one of them had their Guinness hat and decided he wanted to give it to the Irish person on Paddy’s Day. I told him if he put it on my head he wouldn’t get it back and he said he didn’t care...so I acquired myself a Guinness hat!! Further down the road we stopped to look at something in the window of a shop and these two Irish lads stopped to talk to us. They were heading off to another bar but wanted to get rid of the stuff they had acquired such as a sparkly green bowler hat and a green Guinness t-shirt. So they offloaded their stuff onto us and went on their merry little way!! So just as at home it was a totally random day, meeting strange people and feeling like you’ve known them forever!! We decided then to stop in the Darlo (our local) for one last drink before going home to cook dinner. So in we popped and spread some Irish cheer! They were promoting a new drink (Bulmer’s Blackcurrant...yum!!!) and were giving free samples. Of course as an Irish person on our national day it would have been rude of me to refuse a free drink so I had one. Then they had 2 glasses left over after going to the rest of the pub (it's not that busy of a watering hole!!!) so they came back over and gave them to us!! After finishing our free drinks (and the ones we paid for too!!) we decided it was time to call it quits...BUT decided we needed a drink for dinner. so we went into the bottle shop to get ourselves some Bulmer’s Blackcurrant (their promotion worked!!!) and got a couple bottles of that and also discovered what was to become my new regular drink....Dirty Granny (a very yummy cider!!) so off we headed home had a Dirty Granny and some food and that was my first Paddy’s Day away from home!!

We got up the next day and got ourselves organised to head to the parade.  The website said it was the 2^nd biggest Paddy’s day parade in the world...hmmm. It said it started at 12 so we left the apartment at 12 to make the 10 minute walk to where we were going to watch it (at the end of the parade)...and arrived as the first float was coming around the corner!! So it was quite the small parade really! Mostly it was made up of local GAA teams that had been set up by the Irish who are over here with a couple of other floats for the Irish bars and Irish Dancing clubs in between, and of course the customary bag pipe bands and marching bands. My favourite I think was the Mr Tayto part where people were campaigning for him to be Taoiseach I think!! When the parade was over there was then a festival in the park so we wandered into that and my little heart skipped a beat!! Over on the other side of the park I spotted...THE TAYTO TENT!!! I grabbed Joe and darted across before the crowds grew...and got myself a delicious bag of Tayto!!! I tell ya they truly are the best crisps in the world!! So once I had a little taste of home we wandered around the park and found a stage with this music on it, dancers all over the place and a tent or two with real Irish sausages being cooked in them!!! After a couple of hours of soaking up the sun and people watching we decided to head home after a busy weekend...but not before a stop off again at the Tayto Tent for a couple bags for a rainy day and also some Club Orange!! So all in all Paddy’s Day was a success! At first I thought it was going to be a big disappointment but as always Sydney delivered...though I did have a couple of moments where a tear came to my eye because I was missing home! But I will be back next year to make up for lost time...so that’s a head up to whoever I am with next Paddy’s Day!!!

Had a lovely day out then a couple weeks after Paddy’s Day with Sarah and Steph, two girls from work. We headed down to the Rocks for a few drinks in the sun. It was our first time properly down at the Rocks...and we wondered why we had waited so long to get down there!!! It’s a gorgeous part of Sydney. It’s been well preserved and there is no high rises in it or anything, just quaint old buildings and a big street market at the weekend. Sarah’s 2 friends Darren and Donna were there and Steph brought her friend Craig. The 7 of us had a great day. We started off in the Australian...and after me and Joe introduced everyone to Bulmer’s Blackcurrant, managed to drink the bar out of their supply of it!!! After a few hours there...and when the heat of the sun got too much even with some sunscreen that Darren went on the hunt for we headed off to the Orient. In the Orient we ended up in a really nice beer garden/courtyard and we spent the rest of the day in the lovely shade. It was great to be out and about and discovering somewhere new.

The weekend after that we went up to Newcastle to visit Kay. This is the lady that we had met when Joe’s parents were over. After a stressful couple of weeks in February for Joe she invited us up to get out of the city....and it was great!! We got the train up and Kay and her son Paul picked us up at the train station. Then we drove a little further north to Port Stephens...and we fell in love with it!! Kay has a holiday apartment up there and it is a 30 second walk from the apartment to the beach of Dutchman’s Bay. We went and dropped our stuff off in the apartment and then Paul and Kay took us on a little tour of Port Stephens. Paul put the top down on the convertible and we saw it in style! The weather was amazing and the whole area of Port Stephens is stunning. There are white beaches the whole was around the bay and some gorgeous lookouts with breathtaking views. After exploring a bit we went and got takeaway fish and chips and headed back to the apartment. We sat and chatted for awhile and then Kay and Paul headed home. Me and Joe went for a walk down on the beach then at sunset and it was gorgeous. The colours in the sky and the beach were fab; totally fell in love with the place. The next morning Kay and John (her husband) came out to the apartment and we had a nice Aussie BBQ by the beach and then went to explore the bay a little further. It was a really great weekend and so good to get out of the city. On our first day there when we were driving from Newcastle to Port Stephens we were driving by green fields with cattle in them and I got so excited! Didn’t realise how much I missed driving in the country!!!

The weekend after that was Easter so I had a nice long weekend with Good Friday and Easter Monday off. So on the Friday we got the ferry out to Watsons Bay and yet again we discovered another stunning part of Sydney!!!! Watsons Bay is the southern tip to the entrance to the whole of Sydney Harbour. The ferry was eye opening as it was quick to see where millionaires’ row is!! All the houses looked out over the bay with the whole side of the house made of glass and had little boats moored outside them! Though one friendly ferry passenger told me and Joe and the boats are pretty much there for show and the only time they are moved is on New Year’s Eve where they go into the middle of the Harbour for the fireworks!! When we got to Watsons Bay we went for a walk up to a lookout point called the Gap. The force of the waves of the Pacific was unreal, crashing against the cliff walls. We then went and got ourselves some fish and chips and sat in a park by the sea while we tucked in before going for another walk up to Macquarie’s Lighthouse which apparently is the oldest lighthouse in Sydney. It was really white and looked lovely against a completely blue sky that didn’t even have a cloud in it! After spending most of the day discovering Watsons Bay we decided to head home and by pure fluke we perfectly timed a ferry to be going back towards the Sydney Harbour Bridge as the sun was setting behind it and a huge full moon was rising behind us. It was breathtakingly beautiful and made me realise once again just how lucky I am to be experiencing all of this!!!

The next day we headed to Darling Harbour for the Sydney Hoopla Festival which was a street performance festival. There were loads of free street shows and then we could buy tickets to some other shows. The tickets cost all of $5 so we got tickets to 2 different shows, one called The League of Sideshow Superstars and the other called Ring of Fire. Both shows were brilliant. We saw lots of hoola hooping and straight jacket escaping as well as a guy who picked up a car battery by attaching chains to his nipple rings, while being electrocuted!!!! That one was kinda squirmy to watch!! Then in the second show there was a bit of audience participation. One girl had her act based around Barbie and she picked a guy in his 20s who did actually look like Ken to come and help her. Oh my God I have never seen someone look so awkward in my whole life!! He wanted to be anywhere else rather than standing in front of about 100 people doing the hoola hoop! I think his awkwardness made the whole thing a bit funnier though, but my heart did go out to him! It was a really cool day though and something totally different. In Sydney there are always street performers of some sort at different spots around the city, some of them really good and some of them not so good but it was nice to see the best of the best from all over the world and to really enjoy it.

On Easter Sunday we took it easy as the weather wasn’t the best so we had a lazy day and cooked ourselves a nice Easter Sunday dinner, complete with roast potatoes, stuffed rashers and gravy!! Amazing the things you can pull together in the world’s tiniest oven!!! So after a day off from our adventures we jumped straight back in and on Easter Monday we went to the Royal Easter Show. The show is held every year and it is basically a big country fair. They have competitions for the best cow, goose, pigeon, chicken, dog...every kind of animal that you would possibly find on a farm...and every species too!! Then there was a petting farm where we could get up close to all kinds of baby animals like lambs and kids and little puppies too!! There was far too much cuteness in that room!!! There were also plenty of wood chopping competitions, which were pretty cool to watch as I’d never seen it before. These guys had to chop little steps into a 20 foot pole and get themselves up to the top of it and then chop the top 2 foot of it off while the stood on a little pole sticking out of the side of it!! Not sure the quite describes it but if you’ve seen my FB pics you get the idea!! Then we headed to the big stadium where we arrived just on time to see a competition between lots of old fashioned horse drawn carriages and then there was a rodeo! Now me and Joe have become big fans of bull riding as it is on the TV every Sunday morning (before Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman and 7^th Heaven.....don’t tell me you don’t remember what I’m talking about people!!!) So when we heard there was a rodeo we weren’t sure that it would actually be bull riding...but it was!!! And not only that but it was kids between 12 and 18 doing it!!! They were wrangling cattle and all kinds of crazy stuff! But it was really good fun to watch and no one got injured so I didn’t have to feel guilty that I enjoyed it!!! We had another little wood chopping display then followed by the Stockman’s Horseshow. This was pretty impressive as it was 40 or 50 horses and the riders all doing a kind of choreographed type thing. There were a couple of moments where I was waiting for some of them to crash but it was all perfectly timed and very impressive! Then there was a BMX display which was all going great until one guy stuffed a landing and he went off fierce quick and we didn’t see him for the rest of the show...though they assured us that he was fine! And it was all finished off by fireworks! It was a really good show to go to and we were so glad we went across to it...and even gladder that we waited till the Monday as there wasn’t a cloud in the sky for the whole day! So all in all it was a pretty good Easter. Again not the most conventional of yearly events going by my past experience but it was jam packed and fun filled...and an Easter parcel from home supplied some chocolate too!!!

The next event after that was Anzac Day, which meant another day off work...yay!!! Last year I spent Anzac day freezing my ass off for a night camping out in Gallipoli which is where the battle took place that Anzac remembers each year. This year I spent the night before Anzac Day toasty in my bed!! But somehow I managed to end up out of bed at 4am to keep Joe company while he cheered on Chelsea in one of the Champions League semis!! We watched the parade then later in the day but all in all it was a quiet day and far less eventful than last year’s Gallipoli adventures!!!

After that then it was a countdown to my last day in work and the arrival of Mam and Dad the following day!! I was really looking forward to finishing up work and being officially unemployed again. When people in work asked me if I was sad to leave my answer was always no purely because the parents were arriving the next day. Part of me wonders if Mam and Dad weren’t coming the next day if I would have felt any different or more upset to be leaving somewhere where I had just spent 6 months and the honest answer is I don’t think so! I will miss some of the people I worked with but having arguments with people day in day out over the same stupid stuff definitely gets old after awhile! Though I always loved it when I won an argument with someone who was being unnecessarily rude or who thinks they are more important. I had one very rude woman one day tell me her husband was a director of a worldwide bank and that he wasn’t a stupid man and if he was told something on the phone he would have remembered it...thanks to the wonders of call tracing I was able to provide her with proof that her husband obviously wasn’t nearly as smart as she thought because he had been told on 3 occasions in the phone call!!! Loved ringing her back and telling her and I could hear her deflate as I told her! Little victories like that made it possible to stick out most of the rude people on the phone, they all seem to think that it was me personally who had done something to them...though one day a lady said she didn’t want to get annoyed at me as I was obviously working while on my holidays to help me with my travels and she wasn’t going to take her frustrations out on me and wanted to speak with a manager who works with the company full time....I liked that lady!!! Anyway as you can see there definitely weren’t tears when I left and it was with a very jovial heart that I walked out of there on my final day!!!

And then the next day arrived! Mam and Dad were due in at 8.30 on the Saturday morning so it was bright and early that we headed to the airport. Of course when they appeared around the corner there were tears and very squeezy hugs and then lots of chatter as I was filled in on all the news back home! We took it fairly easy on the first day, but we did make it to Darling Harbour that       evening for some fireworks which was a nice welcome for Dad and Mam. On Sunday we brought them down to Circular Key to get their first look at the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House...I think they found it just as stunning as everyone else who sees it...and it was on that day that me and Mam decided we were going to do the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb!!! After we had explored a little we headed back to our local, the Darlo and decided to show Mam and Dad where we hang out for a quite drink. We arrived there at about 5 for “A” quite drink...and left at midnight!!! Joe and Dad started playing pool and Joe seemed to think my pool skills were a reflection of Dads...he was wrong! Dad proved himself to be quite the pool player and of course nothing would satisfy Joe but to stay there until he beat Dad at least once....it did eventually happen but took quite a few games...and a number of jugs of beer, which suited them both down to the ground! While all this was going on me and Mam sat and chatted and I introduced Mam to Dirty Granny!!

During their first week here we went out to Bondi and walked down to Bronte Beach...we were trying to make it to Coogee but Bronte was as far as we made it before deciding to head back and we cooked a nice dinner in our apartment that night. I spent the next day with Mam and Dad over in Manly. Manly is on the Northern Shores and is beautiful. We went for a lovely walk along the sea front and had a nice lunch before perfectly timing a return for sunset over the harbour. Me and Mam also did our Bridge Climb and it was amazing. In total we were there for three and a half hours. This included an hour of getting kitted out in very sexy onesies and tying down everything to us!!! I took the phrase “speccy four eyes” to a whole new level by asking for two glasses strings so that I could bring both my sun glasses and my glasses glasses! Then we had to have a practice of climbing up and down the ladders we were going to be climbing before we finally got to step out on the bridge. It was amazing!! We walked along the gangplank underneath for awhile. Rhys, our guide, explained to us that they were repainting the bridge. They do this every few years but there was a new type of paint they were using that meant they had to strip back all the other paint to properly protect the bridge. While doing this though they discovered that the first few layers of paint were lead based which meant they had to use a special treatment and basically sandblast every inch of the bridge to get back to the original metal for the new paint to work! They estimated the whole job to take a certain amount of time (can't remember exactly what it was now) but because of the problem they encountered it took the estimated time to do only about 100feet of it! So it’ll take a long time to do it but will totally be worth it because we got to see the before and after and it looks like a completely new bridge! Once we walked along the flat for a little we then got to climb the first set of ladders and start walking up the arch of the bridge. It was stunning to be up there and to see the whole Harbour. Its stretches so far and has the bluest water with all these little inlets. Rhys told us lots of facts about the different things we could see, including pointing out the Prime Minister residence for when she is in Sydney and lots of other very expensive (and stunning) properties along the water front. As we reached the top of the bridge I just couldn’t stop looking around me. No matter which way I looked it was breath taking. We spent a good half hour or so standing at the summit, having our pictures taken and chatting with the other climbers in our group. There was no rushing, it didn’t feel like we were being marched to the top and back down again, we got plenty of time to take it all in and truly appreciate what we were seeing. I loved every minute of it and will always remember it as being one of the biggest highlights of my whole trip.

I also got a lovely surprise from Mam. I had asked her to bring me a few things from home and when I went to the hotel with her to collect them she also handed me my pretty bag that I used for going out at home, then from another drawer she produced a pair of my heels, another press had accessories and tan in it and then from the wardrobe came one of my favourite dresses!! I was so excited and gave Mam the biggest hug! So we planned then to have a fancy night out on the Friday and go to the Hard Rock Cafe and have a nice dinner and some drinks. And with everything Mam brought me and part of Triona’s Christmas pressie (a beauty bag with pretty make up, eyelashes and nails) I was all ready to go...all I had to do was remember how I used to do it all!! We had a great night and a lovely meal, and I was very impressed that it only took me about an hour or so to put it all together and look semi respectable!!! The day after our lovely meal was the day we were leaving Sydney on our road trip. It was a very odd morning as it was the day me and Joe were moving out of our apartment. I knew it would be odd as I had the same feelings when I left Berlin, I was excited about what was next but pretty upset to be leaving somewhere that I called home. Mam and Dad picked up the rental car and came to the flat to put all our stuff in it....we had a lot more crap than we thought and everything just got bundled in! There was a teary moment or two while we said bye to our little flat but then we shook that off and got excited about what was next.

It took us awhile to find our way out of Sydney and get on the open road, but we eventually left the city behind and were on the road to Melbourne. Melbourne is about a 12-15 hour drive from Sydney if you take the highway...we were taking the coast road so it took us 5 days to get there! It was so much fun; we stayed somewhere different every night. Our first night was nearly a disaster when we picked a place to stay only to finally arrive there after a very long day of driving and to discover that there was nothing there!! So we had to backtrack slightly and find our way back to Huskinssons for the night. We arrived in the dark so weren’t quite sure what it was like but me and Mam went for a walk in the morning and discovered that it was a beautiful little town. After some breakfast we hit the road again and decided that rather than a repeat of the night before we were going to drive until about 3 each day and stop wherever we were at that time , find somewhere to stay and have some time to relax and explore each place.

That plan ended up working pretty well for us. We were able to plan where we wanted to get to, fit in a coffee break and some sightseeing stops along the way and still have time to chill out in the evenings. We became quite the fans of Keno (a Rapido type game for those of you in the betting business back home!!) and would give it a go every evening. It was a bit of fun but we never had a real lot of luck on it!! We managed to have accommodation sorted in most places by the time we arrived with the help of our mobile internet...and Mam and Dad even gave a backpacker’s hostel a go! Ok so it wasn’t dorm rooms and it wasn’t packed to the rafters but they were quite proud the next day to say they ate their breakfast in the hostel common room!

When we stayed in Wagga Wagga one night on our way back to Sydney we found a restaurant called “Hog’s Breath Cafe” which I though looked like fun so in we went. The food was pretty good but the best part was dessert. Me and Joe decided to share a Rocky Road...I have a picture of it on Facebook, I’m sure most of you have seen it by now....we didn’t fully finish it but we sure as hell gave it a good go!!

We also managed to find an island full of koalas too!! When we got to the island we drove around a bit and then stopped off in a woodland area to have a look. The four of us wandered around for ages with our noses stuck in the air trying to spot one to no avail. Eventually Dad caught sight of one and there was great excitement. Of course once we had seen one and knew what to look for we suddenly saw they all over the place! It was nice to see them in their natural habitat...but the ones in the wild don’t look as cute as some of the ones you see in pictures!!

While on our road trip I also got to try my hand at driving for the first time since I left home! The car we rented was automatic so that was a bit odd but after a couple of days Dad said it was my turn. We were on a fairly quiet stretch of road so I popped in the driver’s seat, buckled myself in and set off. About 1km down the road there was a sharp turn in the road and when I turned around it, it was to discover that I was about to drive up a very steep, very corkscrew-y road!!! I was not happy and a profanity or two may have been uttered while everyone else tried not to laugh at my bad luck! Thankfully I survived that ordeal and it certainly reminded me of how to drive!! Driving again was great! I forgot how much I enjoyed it and how nice it was to just be able to go where I want! I didn’t do a whole lot of driving as Mam and Dad did most of it while me and Joe navigated and booked hotel rooms for the night ahead. It was quite the organised random road trip in the end!!

One of my favourite places we stopped in for a couple of hours was a placed called TIlba Tilba. I felt like I suddenly drove into Little House on the Prairie!! The houses and buildings were so quaint and old fashioned...and my favourite part about it was the old fashioned sweet shop we found! It also had a little hippie shop in it where we spent a while poking around. The funniest thing about this was as we walked in the lady who was working there said she had to pop out to the Post Office but would be back in a few minutes and to have a look around. So while we stood there slightly shocked that this lady walked out of her shop with 4 people standing in it and didn’t bat an eyelid she, popped off, did her Post Office business, came back and had a nice little chat with us!

Another random thing on our road trip was Dad getting breathalysed! We were driving in the middle of a very empty road (like most of them!!) where we had barely encountered another vehicle when we rounded a corner and there was a massive police road block! There was about 30 police, 5 or 6 cars and a Random Breath Testing truck. We pulled up and Dad wound down the window. He said hi to the officer (nearly calling him “Guard”!!) and the policeman explained what was going on. He asked to see Dads licence and then obviously copped the accent, realised it wasn’t Aussie and asked if Dads license was Australian. When Dad said no the officer just smiled and said don’t worry about it. He then got Dad to blow in the little tube checked the reading and we were sent on our way! We all laughed about it because as Dad said he was all the way on the other side of the world, and got breath tested for the first time!!

We arrived in Melbourne after our 5 days on the road and then had to find our way into another city! Melbourne has a lot of bloody one way streets and a lot of VERY narrow alleys that cars and trucks are supposed to go down. Our hotel was on one such street and once we found it me and Joe jumped out while the car was still in a slight bit of motion to find out as quickly as we could where we were supposed to park without losing Mam and Dad to more one way streets trying to find their way back to us!! Luckily Mam was able to pull in just up the road and we were all able to get back in the car, go to the car park and then come back to the hotel. I actually really liked Melbourne even though we didn’t spend long there. We found a lovely pedestrianized area with lots of cafes and restaurants with narrow alleys to explore.  That evening we were meeting Niamh a friend of Mam’s who used to work in Otis but had moved to Australia a couple of months before. Once we met her we of course all headed to the pub for a drink or two....and about 6 hours later we finally all left when Niamh had to catch her last tram home! We had a great night with lots of laughs and stories. On the way home we all realised we hadn’t had dinner and being after midnight there wasn’t a lot of choice of where to eat....so we turned to trusty Micky D’s!! Once we got our food we went back to the hotel and found the laundry room which had a microwave in it to heat up the food as it was a longer walk than any of us remembered getting back home! It was at this stage that I realised I really needed to pee and ended up dancing around the laundry room to try and distract myself...and it worked cause Dad joined in with me and we jumped around like a pair of eejits till the microwave pinged!!

From Melbourne we took the quick road back towards Sydney and headed to the Blue Mountains. After all the early mornings and packing every day we decided to find somewhere to go and stay for a few days and have a bit of relaxation time. We picked the Blue Mountains because it was close to Sydney so when it was time to head back to the city we wouldn’t have too long of a drive. It was my third time up in the Blue Mountains but it was nice to actually stay for a few days and explore. We stayed in Katoomba which is where Echo Point is with the famous Three Sisters formation. This was the first time that I actually walked to them rather than just looking at them from the viewpoint. It was pretty cool to actually stand on them but it was steep steps up and down to them!! After that we paid a little visit to Scenic World where we took a cable car across the valley. Then we took the Vernacular Railway which was not what any of us expected. It had very odd seats as when we sat in it, we were nearly lying down. The next thing we took off as Indiana Jones music played and went on a near vertical drop down a dark hole!! Everyone got a bit of a shock but we all loved it! When we got to the bottom of the railway we had a little walk through the rain forest and then got the cable car back to the top before the Sky Cable car back to the other side of the valley and a long uphill walk home in the cold!!! We stopped somewhere for some nice warm food and relaxed for the rest of the day.

The next day myself, Dad and Mam went for a visit to the Jenolan Caves. It was a couple hours drive to the caves on a very hairy road. Poor Mam was having a fit in the passenger seat cause when she looked out the window she was looking down a on a very vertical drop!! Was funny to me and Dad until the mountain twisted and turned and suddenly the vertical drop was on our side!! When we arrived at the cave they had a very grand entrance...we literally drove through a cave...how a bus makes it through the gap every day I have no idea!! Once we parked and explored a little we picked the tour we wanted to go on and off we went. The caves were fabulous. The rocks all had an orangey tint to them and spectacular crystals all over the place. The tour lasted just over an hour and then we wandered a little more to some of the other caves before hopping back in the car. We had fluky perfect timing again and saw a beautiful sunset across the mountains as we drove back to Katoomba.  We had a nice relaxing night with a tasty dinner and low and behold we found a pub that stayed open past 9pm that evening...and of course it was an Irish pub!! We had an entertaining evening as the toilets flooded so we then had to start running around the corner to their sister pub to use the loo. That closed at 9...so the bar staff then opened the club upstairs and we started using that! It was like our very own VIP club!!  So we had a lovely evening to round off a great road trip that allowed us to take in a chunk of Australia.

We headed back to Sydney the next day. Mam and Dad went back to their hotel and myself and Joe moved into a hostel. It was so weird being back in Sydney and not having our little apartment to go to. It was a fairly relaxed last couple of days with Mam and Dad. There was a bit more wandering around the city and having dinner and drinks and then the day of their flight home came. Of course there were tears and that horrible feeling of having to say bye for God knows how long again. Mam and Dad got home without any big dramas, although their luggage did arrive a couple of days after they did!

The next challenge for me and Joe was to figure out what to do next! We wanted to get working again but out of the city so we started looking for jobs in out of the way places. We searched for about a week and applied for many, many jobs but the Gods of luck were not on our side. Then at the end of a week of searching we got ourselves a job in Mildura, Victoria orange picking. So we got ourselves all packed up and flew to Melbourne and then up to Mildura. We got off the plane in Mildura and were greeted by actual tumbleweed!! We stood there in a bit of shock before someone walked up and asked if we were Orla and Joe...a plane full of people and this fella couple pick out the backpackers at a quick glance!! He brought us to our hostel which was to be our new home. First impressions...all I thought was that the job had better be worth it! The hostel had a decent kitchen and a TV room but the dorm room was a bit on the dingy side. We were sharing our room with 2 English girls. We arrived on the Friday and were due to start work on the Tuesday but Kate and Amy, our roommates, filled us in on how things worked at the hostel! They had been there for almost a month and had about 7 days work in total. Quickly me and Joe became a bit suspicious about the whole situation....and our suspicions were right when Monday came around and we were told the work wouldn’t start Tuesday, that it might be the end of the week.  We weren’t happy campers but had no option but to wait it out and see what happened. Living in the hostel was a bit of a nightmare too. There was about 100 backpackers there all waiting to start work and with nothing to do all most people did was drink from one end of the day to the next, which got old very quickly when there is people banging on the dorm room window at 7am after a night out. We grew sick of it very quickly and with work constantly starting in the next few days me and Joe hit the internet once again to see if we could get ourselves out of the situation we were in. After a couple of days of looking I stumbled upon an advertisement for roadhouse staff in Wauchope, Northern Territory. The ad was brief and to the point “1 or 2 bar staff needed to start immediately, Call Bruce”. So I gave Bruce a call!! We chatted for awhile and then he said he’d give me a call back shortly....longest 20 minutes of my life! But when he did call he said they would love for us to come down. In the dorm room I was on the top bunk...I nearly threw myself off it in excitement!!! Me and Joe literally jumped around the room before composing ourselves and starting to figure out how to get to Wauchope and how soon we could get there. We got the job on Saturday and were there on Monday! We packed our bags on the Saturday and left the dismal hostel and stayed in a nice hotel for our last night in civilisation! We flew out of Mildura, found ourselves in Melbourne airport once again and then had another flight up to Alice Springs. Then it was a 7 hour wait in Alice before we got our 5 hour bus to Wauchope which is 400km north of Alice Springs. When the bus dropped us off just after midnight we were greeted by Nathan, an Australian who worked at the hotel. We were then introduced to Marco the Peruvian chef, Riki a Finnish backpacker and Jean, another Australian. And then Nathan said words that I will never forget “Congratulations, you have just brought the official population of Wauchope to 8”!! We dumped our bags in our new room and had a drink at the bar. After an hour in Wauchope I had a much better feeling about it than I got in over a week in Mildura!

We were straight into work the next day with me starting off in the kitchen and Joe starting a week in the bar. Working in the kitchen reminded me a lot of when I worked in Peamount as the kitchen had the same set up so that put my nerves at ease. Before I knew it the first week was over and I was having great fun. Wauchope literally consists of the hotel property. There is the pub/dining room/beer garden area. Then we have the caravan park out the back where the rooms also are and then there is the backyard which is where the staff quarters are. Being in the middle of nowhere is kinda fun though, there is always people passing through. Also 40km down the road is a place called Ali Curung which is an aborigine community. There are always government workers out at the community and building contractors for fixing up the houses in the community so we have a lot of regular customers who are with us for a couple of nights every week. Then there are the caravaners to keep us busy too. We are 10km from the Devils Marbles which is a big tourist attraction in the Northern Territory. Because we are so close many people stay with us and travel to them rather than staying at the Marbles as there is always a huge amount of caravans camped out there. Our other main customer groups are people coming in for petrol or some food while they are on the road and also aborigines. Ali Curung is a dry community and the Elders of the community have given the roadhouse guidelines to sell alcohol by so that they can try limit the effects of drink on the community. At first I found it a bit weird but after a few weeks here and seeing exactly how much they drink I can understand why the Elders have limitations.  The other thing that took some getting used to is the Banned Drinking Register! No matter who you are, what you do, or how old you are if you want to buy takeaway alcohol in the Northern Territory, you must provide an ID that gets scanned through a computer. The computer than either flashes a green screen to say yes you can sell this person alcohol, or a big red no sale. In the time that I have been here I have only seen the no sale screen three times, which is pretty good. I always try to figure out how a system like that would go down at home and somehow I just don’t think it would work!! But it’s the way they do things here, most people are used to it but you get the odd group of tourists who get slightly offended when you ask for ID until you explain why you need it.

Considering we are so isolated here time goes by pretty quick. Working every day has its advantages I guess because I am always busy and have something to do. And even if one or the other of us is off if it gets busy in the bar, or you just walk through we always generally end up helping out and serving the odd customer or two. Since myself and Joe have been here there has been a good few new staff pass through. The first people that arrived after Jean left lasted all of 3 days before being told to pack their bags. Then we had an English girl who lasted 3 weeks....there is more to that story for a private conversation rather than a blog entry!!! But after all the comings and goings we got Kris, a German girl who fit in really well and has lasted a whole month so far!!! While getting to know Kris we discovered that she actually lived in the same building as Joe and I in Sydney at the same time we lived there!! Very odd...but just goes to prove that it’s hard to get to know neighbours when living in an apartment building!!! 

One of the not so fun things that happens in Wauchope and surrounds is car crashes. Wauchope is surrounded by Singleton the closest station to the hotel. I never knew how big the station was until one evening we were talking to Will (the son of the guy who owns the station) and Luke (an English backpacker who was working on the station to get his 2^nd year visa). They had been putting out bushfires on the station for most of the day and I asked how much land was affected by the fire. Will replied that there was about 100,000 acres affected (no that is not a typo). Naturally this led me to ask how big the station was and the reply to that was that it was 900,000 acres!! Obviously with a station this size it is hard to contain all the animals and when the locals cut holes through the fences so they can drive on “bush highways” rather than go on the roads and get pulled over it makes it all the more difficult. Add to that the fact that it is pitch black here at night and the cattle roam and yes, you have a recipe for disaster. Of course it doesn’t help that some people are stupid enough to drive at night. Pretty much everyone says don’t drive after sundown but there is a few very special people who think they are invincible and unfortunately they find the opposite when their car slams into a large animal and loses the battle. Since my time in Wauchope has begun the only casualties of these accidents have been the animals and luckily no person has been severely injured. There was a fatality one night soon after we arrived though. Two brothers had been driving most of the day and taking turns driving and sleeping so that they could get where they were going. Not long before they passed by us they switched drivers but the guy who took over hadn’t quite woken up yet and started falling asleep, swerved off the road and while trying to correct himself overcorrected and flipped the car. The only reason the two of them didn’t pass away was because the passenger wasn’t wearing his seat belt and got thrown from the car. It was pretty sad to hear it and because I had only just arrived at Wauchope made me determined that I would not drive on Northern Territory roads at night....which didn’t quite happen (more on that later)!! I think the stupidest thing about all this though is that people don’t listen. We had two English guys rock in one night at about 10.30 and ask for coffee. While they waited we all started chatting. They told us they had already driven 1,000km that day and had another 600 or so to go until they got to where they were going. We all started telling them to be very careful and basically told them it was a stupid idea and they should stop until the sun came up again and get some sleep. We told them our stories about cattle wandering on the roads, people falling asleep and still they were determined to keep on going. And to top it all off the last thing they did before they left was buy some cigarettes cause they guy who was driving had “started to doze off” just before they stopped in Wauchope. We didn’t hear any stories in the following days so I can only presume they were lucky enough to not encounter any cattle along the way but I still thought it was pretty stupid to have 5 people talking about all these accidents and say we would never drive in the dark and they hopped back in the car not a bother on them!! But I guess these roads are down to luck and they had it that night.

And so to my story of driving at night! As I said I had always said there was no way I would drive at night, it’s too dark and too dangerous and I just wasn’t comfortable with it. But getting over my fears started when Joe got ill. One day he wasn’t feeling great and asked Bruce if he could take the day off. This was fine and later that evening he had started to feel a bit better. But then that night he spent the whole night being very sick and as soon as the pub was open I went in and asked Bruce and Kerstin where the nearest hospital was. Tennant Creek was the nearest which is 113km north of Wauchope. So I hurriedly packed Joe a little bag and hopped in the car. When we arrived at the hospital they put Joe on a drip, gave him some medicine and a few hours later told him he had gastroenteritis and that he would be ok in the next day or two and sent him home. After the medicine and fluids Joe was feeling better so we hopped back in the car and came home. The rest of the day he did fine and I went and did my closing shift. When I came back to the room at midnight I found Joe once again really ill so had no choice but to get back in the car and drive at night to get him to the hospital. The car is fitted with a kangaroo/bull bar whichever you prefer to call it and has extra spotlights on it which lit up a whole lot more than normal heads! All of this helped with my nerves but certainly didn’t get rid of them! Thankfully all the cattle were wandering elsewhere that night and we made it back up to Tennant Creek without incident. I won’t go into too much detail about Joe’s hospital experience over the next two to three weeks; all I will say is that if you ever find yourself sick in the Australian Northern Territory the best thing you can do for your health is to get to anywhere else in Australia. There is a saying in the NT “If in pain, get a plane”...never a truer word has been spoken after my experience with the health “professionals” I encountered over the three week period. In the end the doctors had to admit it wasn’t gastro, as much as they insisted on it for the first week and a bit. They seemed determined for me to fall ill as they would constantly ask me “how are you feeling, do you have any symptoms”. To which my reply in my head) was always “ I am fine, the other 5 people we live with are all fine, stop calling it a contagious disease and get it into your thick heads that what he has is not gastro!!!” They never did find out what it was in the end, it seemed to work its own way out of his system and thankfully he is back to normal...just a slight bit skinnier than he was before hand!!

When Joe was well again I took a couple of days off work and went down to Alice Springs. It was a bit of an odd experience due to that fact that there was always a large number of people, cars and shops around!!! Living in Wauchope is kind of like being institutionalised and I kind of forget that there is still a whole world of cities and large populations out there!! As I got closer to Alice the day I drove down I felt slightly panicked when I encountered my first set of traffic lights and had to remind myself what all the pretty colours meant!! The first thing I did when I got to Alice was buy a fresh bread roll, ham, cheese and coleslaw, make my way to my hotel and enjoyed a very yummy roll that I didn’t realise I missed until I had it again!! I stayed in Lassiters Hotel and Casino, which was a beautiful hotel but I had to be given a map to find my way to my room. When I did make it there, it was only to discover that my key didn’t work. So I walked all the way back to reception where I was informed with much apology that the receptionist had written down the wrong room number. So she sent me on my merry way again. Once again I was back outside my room again (this time the right door with the right room number) but alas...they key did not work!!! So once again I plodded my way back to reception with my hotel buzz very rapidly wearing away. The receptionist once again check they key, couldn’t see why it was working until another girl looked over her shoulder and pointed out that the right room number had been written down but the wrong room number programmed into my key!! She handed me back my key cards with a big smile, a bigger apology...and a little stack of complementary drinks vouchers! Thankfully it was third time lucky and I eventually made it into my room! I unpacked, made my yummy roll and sat back and relaxed fully for the first time in two months!! That evening I did nothing more than found myself a Chinese takeaway, a bottle of wine and a movie on TV and I was very content!! The next day I got up after a nice lie in and went and got my hair prettified with a much needed hair cut. Then it was time to do some shopping and then back to the hotel for another yummy roll. Then at 5 o’clock Jean picked me up to bring me to feed tiny wallabies!! Now I have seen a few wallabies since I have been in Australia but these ones were ity bitty and so cute!! And two of them had little joeys poking their heads out which made them even cuter!! Once we had fulfilled our cuteness factor we headed to Jeans to dig into some pizza, wine and get ourselves ready to go out. I put on makeup for the first time in months and Jean gave me some pretty heels to wear for the night....which I surprisingly survived in!! Then we headed out and started off the night with a bottle of wine and tequila shots!! Alysha and Leish (two teachers from Ali Curung) then joined us. More shots followed as well as more drinks and then a need to go dancing! So we left Monty’s and headed to the Casino, which was a nice happy coincidence for me as it meant I was home already!!! We drank some more, danced a lot...and I fell over!!! In my head it was quite a dignified fall but when I think about it I think it may have been more along the lines of Bambi trying to learn how to walk and failing miserably and falling to the ground! It made it abundantly clear to me though why Irish bouncers never allow a drink on a dance floor and why as soon as a drink is spilled someone appears out of nowhere with a mop! The floor was bloody slippy and with every flourish of an arm or shake of an ass somewhere on the dance floor, someone’s drink was being seriously depleted without a drop of it being consumed!!

The next day through the powers of Facebook, all four of us knew we all felt as bad as each other so we had sympathy in our hangovers! I ventured out to go to the Botanical Gardens (which didn’t last long as there was some hippy festival on) and then went to do everyone’s shopping. I had a rather long list by the time I left Wauchope for what everyone wanted there, the list ranging from painting canvases and 10 packets of corn chips, to tobacco and hair mousse! Once I had ticked everything off it was McDonald’s time and it was so nice to get McDonalds on a hangover day!! I brought it back to the hotel, curled up and tucked in and then had myself a lovely nap before me and Jean went to Anzac Hill to watch sunset. Then it was an early night for both of us!! On the last day of my mini holiday I went in to panic mode that I was going back to the Outback and decided a few more purchases wouldn’t hurt....just as well I had a big car with plenty of boot space!! Then it was time to hit the road once more and go back to reality for another couple of months!! It was really great to get the break even if it was only for a couple of days.  Despite the fact that we are in a very wide open space it was kinda like cabin fever was setting in so it was nice to be reminded that there is life outside of Wauchope!

Since I have been back from my little trip it is back to working and planning what comes next. We only have about a month left here before we pack our trusty bags again and head off to see what New Zealand has to offer us, then it will be back to Australia for a couple of weeks to experience the east coast before completing the round the world journey by travelling back though America. It may have taken ever so slightly longer than 80 days but at least I can tick “travel around the world” off my bucket list!!!

And so it is the end of another blog for awhile! Since I have been in Australia I have only managed to do two blogs which is in stark contrast to the many, many blogs I did while I was travelling. But stationary life is a little less exciting than entering a new country every week or so, so I guess that’s part of the reason! Hopefully once I am back on the road and experiencing new places once again I will get my arse in gear and get back to regular blogs! My travels will start once again around mid to late September...so a date for my return should be confirmed in the not too distant future...YAY!!!

 

 

The First Few Months in Sydney

So people I have been slightly AWOL since my arrival in Sydney! And I’m please to say it’s not because of lack of adventures....in all honestly it was mostly about enjoying being stationary for the first time in months and loving it!!! That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy my travels but after 7 months of living out of a bag it was nice to actually unpack my bag and own a drawer again!!!

So I’ve been in Sydney for almost 3 months now and I love it! Sydney is an amazing city...there is always something going on or something to see. This blog will be a mish-mash of random stories from the first couple of months here. There is no order to them, I’ll just write about them as I remember them and hopefully it’ll give you all a glimpse of what I’ve been up to over the last couple of months!

So the first story is about my fab new home! When we arrived in Sydney we moved into a really nice hostel that was quite comfortable but me and Joe knew we didn’t want to stay on the hostel long term (which is what a lot of people do!) So we started our apartment hunt straight away...and on our first night in Sydney we went to view an apartment!! It was in a really great location, just a half hour walk from Darling Harbour and only 5 minutes from Kings Cross. The apartment itself was brilliant too. It was nice and modern and bright and we instantly liked it. The Di (the woman who lived in it) asked if we wanted to see the laundry room. We did so she took us up onto the roof....I think this was a ploy of hers to make us fall even more in love with it! When we walked out onto the roof there was an amazing view over the city and a fantastic sunset...and as we looked around we saw the Harbour Bridge! We have a perfectly unspoilt view of it from the roof of the building! We both decided then and there without saying a word to each other that we wanted it!!! So the next day we got the ball rolling and went to the real estate agent and put in an application. It was a long week waiting to hear as the landlord was away on holidays but we eventually got news from the estate agent that we had got the apartment! We were delighted! So after just over a week in the hostel we packed up our bags (again!!!) and moved into Darley Street! And almost 3 months in and we still love it just as much...and let me tell you it does not get old to go up onto the roof and see that view! Every time I go up there it takes my breath away and I still can’t believe I actually live here!!!

I do have one story from the hostel that I will share with everyone. I’ve told it to Triona and if her reaction is anything to go by it’ll be a funny one that I should share with everyone else! So here goes! In my hostel room there was ten beds....7 of which were long stays which meant they were basically living in the hostel full time. There was one English guy who was in his 30s and over working as a tradie. The guy who shared the same bunk as me was a hairdresser and one evening the English bloke (Lets call him Tom!!!) came in at about 11 after a few pints after work and told Blake (the hairdresser) that he had been waiting around for him all evening to cut his hair. Blake said he had been waiting to see him but the obviously missed each other...so at 11pm the hair clippers came out and Tom got a haircut...then the HOOVER came out to clear up the hair clippings!!! After it was all cleared up Tom decided to pop out again and show off his new hairdo! In the hostel the doors are all opened by key cards so only the people in that room can get in. Our room always had the door jammed opened with a flip flop. When Tom came home that night he started banging on the door making Beth get up out of bed and pull the already open door open for him!!! Once he had finally made it into the room he decided it was the perfect time to plug in his electronic work device thing and charge it for the night! So he got himself undressed...got down on the floor to plug it in...And promptly passed out on the floor!! And so Tom slept curled up in a ball on the floor for the night...but he obviously has a pretty vivid dream pattern as in the middle of the night he started shouting “high five, high five” really loudly all over the room and waving his arm around in the air! So as you can see...hostel living has its moments but it’s definitely not something I could live with full time!!! And to add to that the next day Tom walked in and saw the new people in the room (me and Joe) and introduced himself to Joe. Joe said we met last night and Tom’s reply was “I wasn’t naked was I?”!!! Joe told him no and he said “that’s good....it’s happened before”!!!!

The next big thing on the list after sorting out our apartment was getting a job! Part of me was really looking forward to working again....and now that I am working again I’m not sure why! But nonetheless I threw myself into job hunting. Then one Friday morning at about 11 I applied for a job online. At 12 I got a call asking me to come for an interview at 2.30...so off I went to go to my first interview in a long time. I walked into the office and heard Irish voices all around me! The job itself was for a Collections Officer but my interview was in the call centre for the business. And most of the staff in the call centre were Irish or English on working holiday visas! So in I went to the interview (with a Liverpudlian!) and after talking for 15 minutes he asked me to wait around until 3 to meet the finance team. So I popped outside for a of couple minutes and went back at 3...and next thing ya know I’m sitting at a desk getting trained in!!! So it was all very quick and part of me wasn’t quite sure what I had gotten myself into! I ended up having 3 hours of training that evening...and then I was flying solo as the girl I was replacing was leaving that Friday. So when I went in on Monday I was slightly over my head! I gave the job a go for a couple of weeks but knew after a few days that it just wasn’t for me! I don’t like asking people for a fiver that they owe me so ringing up people and telling them they owe almost $200 and asking them for it really wasn’t a good job for me!! Luckily my boss was nice enough to see that I wasn’t happy and offered me another job that didn’t involve pestering people for money!! And so I have been doing that for the last couple months. Its office admin and data entry and such things...nothing too stimulating but its paying the rent so I’m not one to complain!!!

I did have a slight drama in work one day! They needed a hand on the customer service team so I was down in the call centre for the day. We have lifts in the building and after 6 you need a special fob to make the lifts go anywhere but the ground level. When I finished on CS I needed to go up to my desk to get my bag but the lift wouldn’t bring me up...so I decided to do the clever thing and walk up the stairs instead. So I opened to door to the stairs and walked from the 2^nd to the 9^th floor. When I got to the 9^th floor I pulled the door handle...and discovered it was locked!!!! Slightly pissed off as my legs were killing me after walking up all the stairs...so I went back down to the 8^th floor....and the door was locked!!! You can see where this story is going already! I walked all the way back down and tried every door on the way and none of them would open! I went down to the basement to the car park...and that wouldn’t open either! So I stood there slightly stuck not able to get out of the stairwell! After a couple of minutes I found another set of stairs that went down another level and then brought me back up two flights! So I just kept following the route, finding myself in a building site at one stage and then eureka! I saw a door to the street. My only last obstacle was that this door was going to be locked! So I tentatively tried it and thank God it opened! Even in my relief of being free I thought it very odd that a door out onto the street that lead into a whole building was unlocked...but then it dawned on me that even if someone came in they weren’t going to get far what with all the doors to every level being locked!! So what did I learn from this little adventure...mostly that if a building goes on fire in Sydney and I have to evacuate do a little test run first and go into the stairwell shut the door and see if I can get out again before continuing in my effort to evade the fire!!!!

Working on the phones in work has thought me a few lessons. The first thing I noticed was when I asked a customer for their number they would rattle it off in about 5 seconds! They were finished saying the number and I had the first 3 digits typed in!! So I very quickly had to learn to memorise number sequences! I think the funniest and most annoying thing about being on the phones though is the letter “R”. A simple enough letter but did you know that Irish people pronounce it “oar” rather than “ar”? This is something that was pointed out to myself and Dee a few weeks into the UKtoOz trip and became a running joke. However the problem continued when I got a job on phones that involved me saying the letter r a lot while also having to spell my name quite a bit!! In work we have to issue return authorisation numbers...which funnily enough all begin with the letters R and A!! So trying to get people to understand can become quite an ordeal...to the extent that I know don’t say the R at all and give them a code beginning with A instead!!! But more distressing than that is spelling my name. Here is the conversation:

“What’s your name?”

“Orla”

[Silence]

“Can you spell that please?”

“No problem...its O, R for Roger/Rabbit/Robert, L, A”

“Ok so that’s O, Four, L, A!

[In my head the reply is “Yes you silly pleb, I spell my name O 4 L A!!!!!]

[In reality I say]

 “No its O R for ROGER”

“O FOUR??”

“No, no not four, R...R for Rabbit...the first letter of the word Rabbit”

“What?”

“The LETTER R. The first letter in rabbit”

“Oh R. Ok so O R L A”

[EUREKA!!!!]

“Yep that’s it”

This exact conversation I have had hundreds of times over at this stage. And I alternate my R words wondering if that will help....it doesn’t!! Although thinking about it Ofourla probably wouldn’t be an odd name over here...the weirdest one I have come across so far was Seismetota or Nhgugayeh and then my absolute favourite has been Clammy Orifice!!!!

In our first week in Sydney thanks to Bui and his brother we managed to score ourselves some tickets to see Don Giovanni in the Sydney Opera House! It was a great performance and amazing to see inside the Opera House. The performance was great, it was my first opera and the costumes and singing were brilliant. And luckily they had a small screen over the stage which translated the words so we actually knew what was going on! The Opera House is as stunning in real life as it looks in the pictures or on TV, especially when the sky is brilliant blue behind the curves of the roof. It’s definitely one of my favourite things in Sydney and it’s so easy to just stand and look at it for ages.

We have had mixed weather since being in Sydney. The first couple of weeks were amazing with really hot weather but then towards the end of November it started to suck a little! It was rainy and overcast but happily enough still quite warm. December marks the start of the Australian summer...which should also have been the start of the scorching hot weather. However we seemed to have jinxed Sydney this year as all the news reports said it was the wettest December they had had in 60 years/worst start of the summer in 50 years/lowest temperatures in 4o years or so!!! Now if the weather we were having here was at home nobody would be complaining!!! But for Australians it was not a good start to the summer and they didn’t mind talking about it! I did feel kinda sorry for them and for me at the same time...I mean I’m this far away from home in a country that is supposed to have great weather...and it rains!! But there wasn’t much I could do about it and it didn’t bother me all that much! Luckily the good weather did arrive back just in time for Christmas and we got some great weather for the festive season!!

One of my favourite things about Sydney is the fact that there is always something happening! Every Saturday evening at Darling Harbour they have a big fireworks display...not for any reason in particular, just because! Then before Christmas there was Santa Fest where Darling Harbour had Santas everywhere...including the lampposts getting Santa heads over them! At the moment there is the Sydney Festival where there are hundreds of events all over the city ranging from music to dance performances and art displays. And Sydney is in full swing of preparing for Chinese New Year at the moment with events planned over a 2 week period to mark the Chinese New Year. So no matter what day it is or what the budget it is, there is always something to go and see or do.

For those of you who are wondering about the shopping situation in Sydney...it’s pretty cool!! There is one shopping centre in particular that stunned me! I went into the Queen Victoria Building which is 4 stories in itself but when you go down to the basement you can walk in three different directions which stretches out across a couple of blocks and has shops all underground. One direction also brings you to the Myer store which had about 5 stories and is along the same size at Debenhams of Henry Street...and then from there you can walk to the Westfield shopping centre which is another huge centre. And there is access to all these buildings spreading across 3 blocks all underground! So you can be in it for hours and not know that it’s rained or snowed or anything outside! Part of me thinks it’s like the shoppers Vegas....no idea what time of day it is outside but endless entertainment and ways to spend money!!!

The shopping centres did come in very handy when we first arrived! After 7 months of living in the same clothes I thought my clothes had held up quite well and was quite pleased to think that they were still acceptable to wear in public. However after a few days of walking around Sydney in soon became abundantly clear that my clothes were old, tatty and well worn! However much to my joy I soon found that all the shops were in the middle of sales...although I did find the advertisements very confusing!! All the stores had signs up saying “Get your summer wardrobe” right beside big posters advertising “Christmas Sale”!!! Now that took some getting used to!! So I managed to find myself some socially acceptable clothes to get me by for awhile without feeling like I crawled out of a backpack every morning!!!

One of my favourite things that I’ve done in Sydney so far has been to go to Palm Beach (that’s the beach in Summer Bay to you and me!!) and have a BBQ. We first did it when we arrived in Sydney with Brian, Rhona, Rosie, Greg, Andy and Dee. We all headed up the road in a couple of cars and I will tell you that it is just as pretty in real life as it looks on the TV. We found the Surf Club and it had Alf Stewarts name on it any everything! Quite exciting! Though anytime anyone burst into “you and me belong together” they did ran the risk of getting Andy’s flip flop launched at their head...apparently he used to be forced to watch it with his mum and sister so has a few issues with the program!!! Anyway after we explored the beach we headed down the hill a little and went to the public BBQs. These are little units just in the middle of the park that anyone can use for free. The only thing that they ask you to do is to clean up so that it’s ready for the next people to use. So we rocked up with lots of burgers and sausages and had ourselves a nice feed. This is something we did again when Joe’s parents and Eddie came over for Christmas. And we were joined by Greg and Rosie on this trip too...but Joe did most of the cooking this time...he didn’t have much of a choice as he got two chefs hats for Christmas!

Joe’s parents and his Granduncle Eddie came over for Christmas and the New Years. It was great to have them here and to show them around. They went to the Aquarium and had a walk around the Botanic Gardens and we had a day trip up to the Blue Mountains and to Palm Beach. We also went up to Newcastle to meet a friend of Josephine’s that she had seen in about 30 years. It was nice to get right out of the city and to travel up the coast a little and see some amazing views. We had a fairly traditional Christmas with turkey and ham with all the trimmings on Christmas day. And Santa managed to find me a few times over in Sydney with parcels arriving quick and fast in the couple of weeks leading up to Christmas (once again thank you to everyone who popped something in the post!) We had ourselves a little tree too that looked nice and festive beside all the cards. But it still felt like an odd Christmas due to the fact that it was quite warm out and instead of being all cosy in a woolly Christmas jumper I was in a summer dress and flip flops for the day!!! Once again another new experience....I think I do prefer cold Irish Christmas though...it doesn’t feel right otherwise!!!

We had a great New Years Eve too. We went to a place called Barangaroo where we had a great view of the Harbour Bridge to watch the fireworks. They had a fireworks display at 9pm for all the kids and then at 10pm they let a few more off, then at 11, 11.15, 11.30 and 11.45...so there was a countdown to the countdown! One funny thing that did happen was that we nearly ended up in 2012 10 seconds early. From the side of the bridge we were standing on the countdown was backwards so when it did begin we could quite see it. Then there was a beam of the bridge that was in the way so when the countdown hit 19 everyone on our side of the bridge started at 9 and counted down, then when they got to 0 (which was actually 10) and no fireworks went off everyone started again!! So had a bit of a laugh at that! And with most of the city viewing points being alcohol free I cheered the New Year in with a can of Club Orange instead!!! The fireworks show was spectacular! It always looks stunning on the TV and it definitely takes your breath away in real life! Apparently there was 1.5 million people watching it from various viewpoints in Sydney...and it felt like that once we started walking back towards home as the streets were packed. It was a great night though and something I will always remember!

We also had a couple of visitors just before Christmas with Brian arriving back in Sydney at the start of December and being our first house guest! We had a lovely few days with him and he even though us something about our apartment. We have an extractor fan over our cooker but try as we might we could not figure it out when we moved in. So we just did without and didn’t bother with it. Brian arrived and decided to cook us dinner to say thanks for the bed (sofa!) and within minutes of him starting to cook he had the fan working! We both felt slightly stupid but what can ya do! At least we have it working now!!! Just after Brian left Rhona flew back in after 6 weeks in New Zealand. We had a great few days with her before she flew out to go and spend Christmas in Nepal with Rachel, Brian and the Chitwan family we had gained while in Nepal!

And so that is a very concise version of some of the highlights of Sydney so far! Much more has happened but due to the routine of work etc it seems like I’d be telling the same stories over and over again! I absolutely adore Sydney! It is a great city and even though it is quite big, all the main things to see are all within walking distance of each other...and within walking distance of our little apartment too!

I will try not to leave it so long next time to let you know what I have been up to over here. I know I have left loads out and no doubt I will think of more random stories to fill you all in on but for the moment I hope this will keep you satisfied in terms of my Aussie adventures thus far!!!