October 6, 2008 Not every day is totally great. We spent a frustrating morning dealing with rental campers. I told you it was too good to be true. To make a boring story short we ended up driving a nice rental car out of Sydney at 2 PM. Joe didn’t seem to have much trouble driving on the left side of the road sitting on the right side of the car, but he is still turning on the windshield wipers when wants the turn signals and we both always seem to start to get in the wrong side of the car. [View Full Entry]

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October 4, 2008 We woke to the unfamiliar sound of water hitting rooftops and ate breakfast looking forlornly out the window as today was supposed to be Bondi Beach day. We spent the next few hours in the room trying to set up transportation for the next two weeks and if all goes as planned we will be driving a camper van up the coast to Cairns. The hotel manager hooked us up with a relocation broker and because the deal sounds too good to be true, I’m a bit leery. (Everything’s a “bit this” and a “bit that” here.) More [View Full Entry]

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October 2, 2008 After 14 long hours, five movies, and little sleep in a winged sardine can, we arrived in Sydney at 6 A.M. Customs went quickly, we got some colorful money in the ATM, then hopped on a shuttle bus and found our hotel, Mariner’s Court in the area of Wooloomooloo, our first funny sounding Australian name and the only word I know that has 8 o’s. We are near the wharf where the naval ships sleep and are a short walk through the stunning Royal Botanic Gardens to Circular Quay with the ferries, the sidewalk entertainers, the fancy shops [View Full Entry]

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We are finishing up business in California before we leave. We've got a packing list, but need to keep it under 30 pounds each for travel to NZ. Not easy to do, but we had the same limit for Argentina so we know we can do it. Just have to leave the hiking boots behind. I mainly wanted to test out this format to see how it works, as I'm new to this. We leave from Los Angeles on Sept. 30 and arrive in Sydney on Oct. 2. Too bad my birthday isn't Oct. 1 so I could have skipped it [View Full Entry]

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