Sydney Goodbye

Well...for those of you who don't know. last wednesday I made a snap decision to go travelling up the coast to Cairns rather than stay in Sydney right up until New Years. I had had a good month but couldn't see much excitement on the horizon in staying another one and was starting to fel like the adventure I set out on in September was grinding down slowly to a safe standstill. My itchy feet got the better of me and now I am gone.

I am now in the visitors centre of a small town called Mullumbimby which even the people half an hour away in Byron Bay have not heard of. I came to meet up with some friends here from the Blue Mountains who were camping here at a music festival. I think we were safely the only internationals there, and the whole festival was a fantastic affair full of more hippies than I have ever see, young, old, middle aged and toddlers. My own highlight was a final rave to aboriginee didgeree doo band but the real life Aussie Sound of Music styule family country jug band were also memorable!

I'm sorry I can't add any more pictures now but we are on our way up to the Gold Coast where we hopefuly won't have any TVs thrown on our heads by partying "schoolies"!

here are a few of my last images of sydney...

Sydney the third

Hello there!

Well I am once again writing to you from sunny Sydney, although I'm sorry to say that this time there a few less exciting adventures to report because I was actually doing some work for several days this week! I have moved base from Coogee which is down in the south, near Bondi beach to Mosman which is a lovely surburban area on the north shore. I am currently house sitting (and more importantly plant watering) here pending a probable move even further north to Manly if I can find a place I can afford! Later today I am going to view a room in an apartment up there which makes me feel very grown up indeed!

The real highlight of this week has been dinner at Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron (I am not sure why it is known as a squadron rather than a club...but if you can shed light please leave a comment :) ). It is in a beautiful location with sweeping views out over the harbour but I was shocked to find that on ordering the marinated lamb it was given to me raw on a plate. Now, call me old fashioned, but not cooking the food in a posh institution in England would not go down so well I don't think! It turns out however that these folks are so addicted to barbeques that it is not infrequent for it to be a DIY job. Being both English and a girl I felt about as unqualified as you can be for cooking steak on a barbie, but luckily there were some Aussie blokes around with helpful tips, like please go away and leave it alone. Perfect!

Mountains and Sea

Hello again from Sydney again!
Australia is a stranger place. It is the most like England another country could possible feel I think. It is full, well, firstly of us. I work with english people (who all had the same idea), I live with a half english person, I go travelling and meet english people. It is also full of our history, Queen Victoria buildings, Prince Henry Cliff walk, and Queen Elizabeth Road. The coins are stamped boldly with the face of our Queen, and the dollars strangley mimic our pounds and the 50cents are link enlarged 50p hectagons. They even have a national holiday for the birthday of OUR Queen, we don't get that!! My heart warmed a little when I saw that I could take the train to Croydon, which along with many other English place names is immortalized here. It si strange to think on the way past Penrith (lake dist.) or Torquay (Cornwall) that really is what the founders of these places came from and yearned. On the other hand the Australians wear pants, drive on freeways and eat chips out of foil packets so its not quite right. Oh, and the sun shines (one of my favourite bus advertisements here states simply "someone has to look after the English backpackers" It is for suncream). I find it ironic that here we are colloquialy (I would say fondly, but I suspect it is more mocking) referred to as Poms, translated to me as "Prisoners of Mother England". Centuries ago we packed off our convicts here and now the ones are left are all thinking ...dammit, if only my great grandad had been a bit more wayward I could have had all this too!

I am sorry that it has taken so long to update you on things here, just as I thought it was getting boring alot of fun things started happening again! I thought I would let you in on a few of the best bits! The picture opposite is believe it or not the hub of one of the wprlds most succesful, innovative and influential companies: Google. Although you could be forgiven for mistaking it for a children's play area. This here is the "barrier reef room" but there were beaches and jungles galore throughout the building. Still, you can't knock a system that has worked so well, and besides they let guests eat their amazing staff buffet lunches for free :)

A little while later (even if I wanted to tell you exactly I can't quite remember any more) I decided to take a trip to the blue mountains. This was partly because in all the excitement of google's inflatable crocodiles, sailing schools and living in a nice apartment I wasn't feeling much like a backer and I was becoming increasingly suspicious that I hadnt seen much of a glimps of Australia at all or met nearly enough random characters. I am extremely glad that I decided to go, because I got the lucky fortune of staying at a fantastic and friendly hostel where they had a fire outside in the evenings and once brewed a big pan of mulled wine just for free :) Also despite a setting out in the rain (again! why does this happen everytime I start walking anywhere?) on my own, ipod plugged in and stomping away, I soon stumbled upon another english girl on my route and having got chatting after about 20 minutes we then caught up with a set of 3 banterous American guys and the five had a fun day of wondering about in the bush, eating cake in town and talking about the little idiosycrancies of all our commonwealth countries. I was more than chuffed at the days social success and the next day I went to Wentworth Falls with Sarah, the girl I had met first (the guys headed back to Sydney), it was an absolutely stunning walk in glorious sunshine and here is a picture that does it no justice at all.


Today, as I write this I have just got back from my first yacht race which started in Pittswater, about 25miles up the coast from Sydney and finished up in none other than perhaps the most famous harbour in the world. It was fantastic fun, the wind was good, the sun shined, we messed up the start but still managed to pull in about 5th across the line. Here is a picture of the exciting arrival at the opera house and bridge, pleased note the actual matching team kit!!

Sydney

I arrived in Sydney after an epic 2.5 days travelling of which the vast majority was spent in zombie boredom apart from the suprise magic of a butterfly park inside Singapore airport terminal 3! It is an incredible airport and if you ever get the chance to transfer there then you should! There's also a free cinema, free internet, free butterfly park and if you're there more than 5 hours then there's a free Singapore city tour. Really, they could charge entrance fees, I'd go!

On arriving in Sydney I made my way to the apartment of Ashley, a friend from college who is Australian and works here as a lawyer, and his fiance Allison. I was very chuffed to find they have a lovely spare room, with a double bed and a fantastic view across the suburbs of Sydney towards the airport where you can watch planes taking off and landing from a distance. They are also a mere 10 minutes walk from Coogee beach which the next big place south of Bondi and the next day I walked with Allison from Coogee to Bondi along a coastal path lined with sculptures which were there for a competition called "sculptures by the sea" highlighting a simple philosophy here that if you take something and put it by the sea it will be better. They are afterall mostly descended from us sea-side loving brits! And I was not dissapointed either by the endless series of beaches or the endless numbers of posers in speedos, bikinis, clutching surf boards and clearly trying to test how far away you can sneak from the beach before your beachware counts only as underware.

The next day I had the surreal coincidence of meeting my Dad just down the road here on the other side world, which was fantastic because I got to join him for his hotels all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast and believe me I took on the challenge. He also offered the handy service of whisking away some of trekking gear to make more room for beach kit! So overall I came off well.

Over the next few days I headed into to the city (to the North) and then even further North up to Balmoral Beach where I was hoping to work as a dinghy instructor. I turned up on the off chance I might find the place in jeans and a t-shirt and all things undesigned for sailing instruction and was immediately told to go out, introduce myself to people and help out with the next session. Luckily it turned out to be a cool place, full of English people who had all had the same idea and the next day they even gave me some paid work...so here is a picture of 'the office', and another picture of 'the commute'. On the downside it really does take a good hour and a half to commute over from this side of the harbour to where I work and so soon I will be moving North to Manly (although I have been informed/ found out the embarrasing way that jokes to do with how 'Manly' the people there are will drop like a led balloon).