Sydneys End + Melbourne

---

After a long few months without any contact or posts I decided it’s about time that I started posting things more often as we are finally starting to get moving on our travels once more.
So, what have we been doing since our last post? Well during our last few days in Sydney it was all go! For our last few weeks we moved out of 773 South Dowling Street into 499 South Dowling Street!! An amazing far move I know, and trust me carrying everything you own on our backs it certainly felt like a long move. In the last few days at Sydney I said goodbye to Strictly Aquariums and Kate said goodbye to her job at Cossies (Cafe)¬. Katie and David disappeared down the coast for a week staying at our new landlords place whilst I spent it saying goodbye to everyone that we had met during our time there.
I went and saw a Sydney art festival where entire buildings were lit up in different fashions, like the Opera house as i’ll try post as a photo up here. There all sorts of different things going on like clever illuminations and effects set up all around an area known as ‘The Rocks’. This is basically the first area that the Sydney founders made and is very nice and old fashioned area compared to the rest of the city.
For my final goodbye to the 773 people I have been living with we decided to do a sky dive at 14000 ft. Was I nervous?? Well yes i was extremely nervous... but the exhilaration of the freefall followed by how graceful the descent is once the parachute has opened was such a contrast that you went from a pure adrenaline rush to a relaxed fall to earth. Unfortunately Kate didn’t manage to arrive in time to see me jump, she managed to time it so that she arrived about 3 minutes after i landed... which was somewhat of a pain but i have a DVD of the fall, which is colourful to say the least.
Finally we said our goodbye’s to Sydney after nearly 9 months of living and working there. It has been one hell of an experience and is a lovely city both to live and work in and we were both a little nostalgic to see it fade into the back ground. But we had to move on sometime and move on we did, to Melbourne. The contrast between the 2 cities, in my opinion couldn’t be much greater. Whereas Sydney was a bright city with, an almost artificial air to it i think is the best way to say it. Melbourne is more of your typical city with a well defined CBD and suburbs with their own feel. I guess the cafe element is that much stronger in Melbourne, people don’t go to the pub on their lunch breaks out here, it’s far likelier that they will head down to a favoured cafe and sit and take in the afternoon in a far more relaxed style. You can walk around the city down what you would expect to be a dingy alleyway but in fact is more of a little treasure for coffee lovers and is usually full of cafe’s or little restaurants. I liked both cities, but for totally different reasons... i guess that could partly be put down to the fact that i didn’t spend much time in Melbourne so was not able to explore it’s little nooks and crannies as much as i had Sydney. But we will be going back there for a few days before we leave so I’ll try and do abit more exploring. Which will probably end up in shopping as I’m starting to detest wearing almost the same set of clothes for the past year now.

---

Photos

Not sure
I think this is Sydney's Cathedral, though i never did find out..

Opera house
Lit up like you've never seen before!

Random
Not sure what this building is but it changed colour schemes alot.

Spectres
Ghostly figures in the night

the 499 troop
All the guys from 499 South dowling Street