As promised - a Gourmet blog outlining some of the delishamundo snacks we've been endulging in while here in Tasmania, or as Alan's started calling it 'Shazmania'. Sure there's a compliment in there somewhere (?!). There's been chocolate factories, cheese factories, country pubs with ace lunches, mega breakfasts, classic coffees, special cakes, raspberry farms, wineries, smashing restaurants, fish n' chips by the water, lavendar farms, delicatessens with excellent meats, pies and sausages, and wonderful breweries. We've even found some Edinburgh Rock, and to our absolute delight....some [View Full Entry]

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Forgive us readers, for we have sinned. It's been ten days since our last blog and we're really sorry an all that. For pennance we'll do ten Hail Michael Palin's, and a Judith Chalmers - OK? So.... what about Tasmania then??? We'll tell you what, it's flippin magic! As the name of the blog suggests, we think it's just like Bonnie Scotland in so many ways, but with improved levels of sunshine. How is it like Scotland you wonder? Well, it could be the atmosphere of the mist cloaked mountains, it could be the grey sheep in the many glens. Maybe [View Full Entry]

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Sydney’s ‘Big Day Out’ one day music festival is the Aussie version of Scotland’s ‘T In The Park’ (TITP). We managed to buy some last minute tickets online by basically sitting for an hour on the internet 2 days before Christmas Eve in Kalbarri waiting for an extra allocation to go on sale. We were lucky as so many peeps have tried and failed to get their hands on these tickets for some months now, such a popular event it is. This year’s line up was due to be really great with some of our favourites listed as playing; including gems [View Full Entry]

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The Powerhouse Museum as got to be one the most excellent museums we've ever been to. It's located next to Darling Harbour in the centre of Sydney, and houses loads of ace exhibitions from days of old, right through to modern design. We spent the whole day there on Sunday and saw; * Totally fabulous Kylie Minogue exhibition which featured loads of her amazing tour and video costumes displayed on models created to her exact measurements. She is TINY!!! They also showed videos and played her music, and there were cabinets showing lots of the awards that she'd won for performances [View Full Entry]

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We lasted 4 nights in total in the Blue Mountains. During this time we managed to only do one walk (as per last blog) as the weather really was so pants. In fairness, it didn’t rain heavily ALL the time. Sometimes it was drizzling in between, and other times it was just so foggy that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. We’ve learned something - do a thorough check on the weather before we go off to a new destination with a differing climate. Seems sensible, however it’s really easy to forget and make assumptions based on [View Full Entry]

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As I write, the clouds outside the window of our room in the Katoomba YHA are moving rapidly in varying directions right across the sky, with bolts of grey and beige, interspersed with shots of electric white and at times near black. Occasionally I can see slivers of pale blue poking through - but there’s not a chance that the skies will clear tonight. It’s already 7pm, and we have about one hour of daylight left to enjoy. Looking out the window, our view is splendid. At the end of our road, there’s rainforest for as far as the eye can [View Full Entry]

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Contrary to a statement made in a previous blog, we’ve not actually organized the big hike over the Harbour Bridge yet. The starting cost is about a hundred pounds per person for a night time walk at 3am, and increases rapidly from there, so we reckoned it would be a good idea to take a stroll across the pedestrian footpath first to get an idea of what we’d be paying out for. So after brekker one morning, we headed out to the Rocks area, which is right next to Circular Quay where we catch the ferry (and where we spent New [View Full Entry]

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We’ve mentioned before that one of the things we were desperate to get to Sydney for was to do some shopping. We’re glad we waited as this city has a brilliant array of high street stores, malls, stalls & boutiques. We’ve spent some cash on new jeans for us both, new trainers for Alan, new tops for Shaz and some bath bombs for relaxation purposes (its so exciting that Paula’s apartment has a bath - such luxury!). There are some gorgeous shopping centres here - one in particular is called the Queen Victoria Building or QVB for short, which is located [View Full Entry]

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Ah, the famed beach of Bondi… we had to go see what the fuss is all about. The day we went, we actually turned the trip into a complete Bondi Experience, in that we also visited a Bondi exhibition at the Museum of Sydney, and took in a short film festival visit later on in the day which is being held at Bondi Pavilions. The exhibition was brilliant. It’s a whole large floor of the museum which has been dedicated to the history of beach life in Sydney, using films from the 50s & 60s (which were really funny - a [View Full Entry]

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Rising at 5am on a misty grey morning, we caught the first ferry of the day from Manly over to Circular Quay in central Sydney, and made a quick dash round the waters edge to arrive at 6:45am at the Stage Door entrance to the fabulous Opera House. Why? To begin our specially arranged Backstage Tour of course! Just about everyone in the Western World must be familiar with the iconic white sails of this splendid structure. Positioned perfectly to view from all angles on the approach to the main Sydney Harbour area, this is a building with its own fascinating [View Full Entry]

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