Advertisement
Published: January 5th 2010
Sydney Opera House
Family photo of all of us who stayed together in Sydney for 4 daysHappy New Year Everyone!
Welcome to our first blog of 2010. We too had a festive break (it’s tough work travelling) and are now back-to-business with a blog to cover our last three weeks...
Since we last wrote we have covered a lot of ground: travelled around Tasmania for a week; spent Christmas Day in two states; been to Sydney for NYE and started a road trip back up the East Coast to Brisbane with my sisters and Marc. We’ve made it as far as Byron Bay where I’m writing this now.
The 1,500 miles we covered in our week in Taz meant it was non-stop and the island deserves a blog in its own right - here goes it in a paragraph. Wrongly so, Tasmania is a place that often gets overlooked when visiting Australia - a fact not helped by the rumours of 6 fingers and webbed feet spread by the mainlanders. We absolutely loved it. It is like a mini-Australia that can be toured in a week rather than two months. Our favourite place was Wine Glass Bay in the Freycinet National Park and was just one of the stunning beaches on the East Coast;
Bay of Fires
The Bay of Fires on Tasmania's North East Coast, extends from Binalong Bay to Eddystone Point the tiny “Fairy Penguins” in Launceston were ridiculously cute and equally amusing, as were the dolphins in Peppermint Bay; walking around Dove Lake under Cradle Mountain and the view from Mount Wellington were breathtaking; and quad biking in the sand dunes near Strahan was adrenaline fuelled. A special thanks to Lois and Vince who we stayed with and made sure we didn’t miss a thing, as well as their son Theo who quickly became the highlight of the visit, entertaining us non-stop. Thanks also to Maya, Esther and Annie who seemed to know every bar, bouncer and person in Hobart for a great couple of nights out, even if the morning after was somewhat fuzzy.
Christmas Day was spent as the guest of first Lois and Vince in Taz with my family, then Qantas and finally with Katie and Ben in Brisbane. We hope you all had a great Christmas and we’re really grateful to all our hosts for their hospitality. Especially Theo for teaching us the words to the Aussie version of Jingle Bells:
“Oh jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way
Christmas in Australia on a scorching summers day hey
Jingle bells jingle bells Christmas
Our view on NYE
Worth the 12 hour wait to get this view... time is beaut
Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden ute”
Sydney saw us reunited with our families again, along with our friends Lee and Emma and the other 1.8 million people who flock there for the NYE countdown. In total there was a dozen of us that headed for the Royal Botanic Gardens at lunchtime - a full twelve hours before the both hands were going to chime twelve again. There were no moans though as we managed to secure a spot that overlooked the Harbour Bridge with a stunning view. The hours actually passed by reasonably quickly thanks to a combination of games, music and eating and the 12 million dollars worth of fireworks didn’t disappoint.
In total we had four days in Sydney and managed to cram a lot in. With Ben as appointed tour guide we got round Taronga Zoo, an afternoon on Manly Beach and a tour of the Opera House and he even managed to navigate us home at 2am on New Year’s Day when his legs weren’t as in tune as they were earlier! He and Katie then headed south to Melbourne, my parents flew to Brisbane
and Andy, Sarah, Emily & Marc and myself started our road trip to join them in Brisbane. I’ll leave Andy to tell you about that next time.
See you all very soon (only 4 weeks left!)
Bex & Andy x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.1s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 13; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0625s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
alan
non-member comment
gaol
Another entertaining blog (fantastic itinary) but you never explained how bex ended up in gaol!