So back in Sydney I land just before Christmas, I spend a few days staying at a friends before I check in to my hostel over the Christmas period. I end up working for a children's cancer charity for a few days selling reindeer ears and asking for donations, its quite funny to me all dressed up in my reindeer get up!
On Christmas eve I head to a house party, it is such a lovely hot sunny summers day, everyone gets very merry (it is Christmas after all!), the boys wrestle in the paddling pool, we play beer pong and generally have a good fun time! I don't leave too late as I have to be up early to help cook the Christmas dinner, but I stupidly on the way home leave my bag with my bikini, cardigan, sunglasses and some other bits on the train! NIGHTMARE!! Merry Christmas me eh!! Funnily enough though I head to the lost property office a week later and my bag with all of the items is there!!! So thankfully I got everything back! Not sure that would ever happen in England....
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| The chefs! |
Christmas day I head to the girls flat (which is where I will move into) and I help Sharlene prepare the food for Christmas dinner, we did a traditional dinner with a twist! Turkey, chicken, roast potatoes, pigs in blankets, pasta, rice, and salad! There are 15 of us all celebrating together. Although it doesn't feel very Christmassy and it rained!!! So none of us could head to the beach, which we were all a bit gutted about.
On Boxing day I got invited by my friend Siobhan to go on a boat to watch the start of the Sydney - Hobart boat race. What a lovely day it was, free food and drink - I was topping up nicely on the champagne! And the buffet was immense, probably the best food I've eaten since I've been travelling! I really miss nice good healthy good and decent wine/champagne!
The next few days I don't really do that much just job searching, although everything is closed over the Christmas period so not a lot gets done, not through lack of trying. I start to realise that maybe I have come back to Sydney at the wrong time....
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| NYE fun! Me and Sharlene |
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| Rosa, me and Josh |
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| A few others :0) |
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| My view |
New Years eve - well, where to start with this, we all decide that we are going to watch the fireworks at Mrs Macquaries Point because we suspect it might be busy, we decide that we are going to camp out from about 3am to ensure we get in. This is quite fun and we all have a good giggle and a massive snuggly spoon as we try and get some sleep (and warmth) before the sun comes up. The gates open at 10am and this is when the fun starts. So for some stupid reason the security team, seem to overlook policing the queue and basically trying to get in becomes a free for all. So all the people who had arrived after us are all in front of us, around us or already in the venue, whilst we are still 'queueing', its ridiculous, we are all rather fed up to put it mildly. However, the main thing is that we made it into the venue, got our spot and then waited for 12 hours for the fireworks! It was soooo unbelievably hot, a got quite a nice tan from being out in it all day. By the time the fireworks came around we were all knackered, the view wasn't the best in all honesty, which was a little gutting but at least I can say I saw New Years Eve Fireworks in Sydney!
A few days later I move in the flat with the girls, Liv, Sharlene and Holly. I'm replacing Sarah who is off on a trip from Perth to Adelaide. The flat is in Kingsford, which is about a 20min bus ride out of town. Its a really nice flat and I'm sharing a room with Liv. I had such a good time staying here with the girls, cooking together, watching DVDs, going for runs, nights out together and generally just being a bit silly. I was really sad when the time came to leave them.
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| Slightly soggy! |
Sharlene kindly treated me to a day trip to the
Blue Mountains. I have not laughed so hard in a long time. So we forget to check the weather before we leave - error number one, as basically if the weather is bad, you can't actually see much.... second error assuming that it would be warm; after we got off the train it was freezing! So cold in fact I had to buy another top from a factory outlet store, but the only top that looked warm enough and wasn't expensive was a mans long sleeved top - so I brought that!!! We headed off walking trying to navigate our own self guided tour, but before we even leave the town we decide we should stock up on sweets, crisps and chocolate!! Is it any wonder I've got fat since I've been in Oz!! We eventually find a starting point only to see a sign that the walk ways are closed! We decide to take a few of the easier / short / not dangerous walks anyway as we've come all this way. We aren't the only ones there are other people doing the same thing, so off we head. The heavens decide that its now time to pour down on us, so we are literally soaked through to the bone, the visibility is also questionable in the sense that there isn't any from the look out points, just mist...this mist then decides to descend inland to the point where you can't see whats in front of you! So we decide its time to head home, but hold on - which direction do we need to walk in? We take an educated guess and head off, thankfully finding the way back easier than we thought. Although we didn't actually get to see anything, we did smell the eucalyptus and we both swear that the mist had a slight blue tinge!
Randomly, 2 of my friends from Rose Bruford were performing at the Sydney Festival on in January. Not having seen them for about 2 years (maybe more) I not only got to catch up with them but also got to see their show 'As the flames rose we danced to the sirens, the sirens' which was awesome! (Their company is
Sleepwalk Collective- check them out they are doing so well!) we met up after their show in the
Festival Gardens in Hyde Park - such a cool little pop up venue, with some food and drink tents, a DJ, a Spiegeltent and loads of outdoors seating. I also got to see a 2nd show complimentary of Iara and Sammy as well, as they were guest starring in it 'The Blind Date Project'! Was so nice to get back into seeing some theatre! Would have been too expensive for me otherwise on a no job/backpacker 'salary'!
I also went to see Hot Dub Time Machine by Tom Loud at the Spiegeltent another night, great fun dancing away to one song from each year all mashed up and mixed together from the 1950's all the way through to 2013!
Sydney during the festival also had an open air cinema in the Darling Quarter, so a few of us went there one evening to watch Finding Nemo, sometimes its the simple things that are so much fun! We then went to see the giant rubber duck in the Harbour and for some drinks. Funtimes!
One of our good friends from the group, James, decided that it was his time to leave and head back to England to propose to his girlfriend! So we threw him a few leaving do's! Also had a few random nights out in Bondi and Coogee (for all my English friends they are beach towns) and too much fun! I seriously had the best group of friends in Sydney it was so hard and sad to say goodbye. But as I struggled to get a job in Sydney I decided it was time to look to leaving, I'd thankfully managed to get about 6/7 days worth of odd work here and there which kept me going but it wasn't ideal, so whilst I still had a few pennies left in my pocket I decided to head off to Melbourne! All a bit last minute I didn't actually get to see everyone to say goodbye which was such a shame but I'm hopefully we'll meet up again, I do still have 9 months left here!
So I leave Sydney on Australia Day and head off on my 2 night/3 day 'Safari' to Melbourne.
So first stop is Canberra the ACT - Australia's Capital Territory. We stop off at the Australian War Museum, a look out point over the whole city where you can take in the cities architectural design and Parliament House and have a drive around the city center. Its such a quiet Capital city, you can understand why people assume Sydney is the Capital. Nice to stop in for a few hours but in all honesty not much to really see or do there. Next we headed to the Snowy Mountains, where we stayed in Ski Lodge accommodation. We all had dinner together and then did a 'shot ski' basically shots are put in a ski and there are 4 shots, so 4 of you do the shots at the same time - slightly problematic! My shot glass fell from the ski has I tried to shallow the shot and ended up breaking on the floor! 2nd time round was much better!
