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Weekends away There are quite a few nice weekends away that you can do around Sydney. The first that we did was a trip up to the Blue Mountains, situated within a world heritage site two hours West of Sydney. We set off on a beautiful Saturday morning for what we thought would be a lovely drive into the mountains…..if only we knew what an epic trip it would be.
We borrowed Simon’s little Suzuki jeep and folded back the soft top roof as the weather was amazing, but after speeding down the motorway we soon realised this was a mistake. Firstly; the remaining half of the roof collapsed, blocking James view out of the rear view mirror and sent him into a bit of a frenzy. Secondly; it was reported to be the hottest day of the 2008 and sure enough we didn’t think to bring sun-cream so ended up getting burnt to a crisp; Kim’s thighs were a nice shade of pink and James had the worst driver’s suntan (One arm that tends to hang out the window). Finally, as we didn’t know where we were going we decided to take the GPS. This was a complete waste
of time because all the directions were muted out because of the wind and the noise of the traffic. This caused several arguments between us both as normally the GPS would give you a few minutes warning when you were expected to make a turning, but as we couldn’t hear and were only going by the shabby map on the 3 inch screen, Kim gave James about 2 seconds warning, shouting “TURN LEFT NOW!!, SHIT JAMES YOU PASSED IT!!” resulting in a near death collision and making James’s anxiety levels peak!! This happened 3 times on the same junction………Divorce was around the corner!
Also, as it was so hot we had to keep drinking water, which obviously made us want to pee all the time. After the fifth time of Kim telling James that she was going to wee herself, James slammed on the breaks and pulled into the hard shoulder and told her to squat. Desperate time, desperate measures - but Kim still couldn’t go because she got stage fright with all the cars and lorries whizzing past, so she had to hold it!
So 3 hours late we rolled up to the 5 star hotel James had
booked in a clapped out jeep that looked like it had been blown up by a road-side bomb, burnt to a crisp and cursing each other about the lack of navigational skills. Also when the porter came to move the car and asked if we had any luggage, we threw him our smelly rucksack and all the toiletries fell out, so you can assume we didn’t make a good impression on arrival.
The hotel was called Lilianfels Blue Mountains Resort & Spa and was very plush, in fact it was so posh (compared to our backpacker standards) that we could only afford to share one tuna sandwich and a glass of cola over lunch……hard times! After our extensive lunch we went for a walk to look at famous mountain range called the 3 Sisters (see picture) and en route we found a winery where we sampled a few varieties of wine and tasted some fudge. After fighting hundreds of Japanese tourists for the perfect picture of the mountain range we wandered back to the hotel and chilled out in the spa area, before going for a meal in the award winning restaurant called Darleys.
The meal was fantastic, consisting
of 5 courses which by the end made us feel so stuffed that we passed out when we got to the room.
The following morning we ordered room service and lazed in bed until we had to check out at 11am. After breakfast we decided that we wanted to attempt the epic valley walk that we had heard about, this was a steep descent down the side of the mountain followed by an 8km walk through the forest along the valley floor. Unfortunately Kim’s sandals had broken that morning with the soles hanging off meaning that she kept tripping over them, and when we saw how steep the stairs were we knew it was going to be a long slow decent down the mountain.
But it was well worth it, as the walk was very peaceful and boarding on romantic if not a little eerie as we were the only people on the trek. At the end of the trek there were two options to get back up the mountain, either a long and no doubt tiring walk up the endless steeps or paying a small fee and riding a rickety train, which we later found out is apparently
the steepest train in the southern hemisphere. Obviously we chose the latter as we were to lazy to walk and was quite impressed as the scenery overlooking the valley was amazing; even if Kim chose to close her eyes all the way to the top.
After our walk we decided to drive into town for a pub lunch before heading home. We hadn’t put the roof back on the car as the weather had been glorious the day before, but as many of you will know the weather in Australia can turn in a few minutes and on queue it started to rain as we were driving. So we pulled over into a lay-by and franticly tried to remember how the roof clipped back on to the car. Within seconds the heavens opened and we have never seen rain like it! Luckily there was an umbrella in the car, so while James was busy clipping the roof in, Kim was following James around the car trying to keep him dry. It was obviously a very amusing sight to people that drove by as we received numerous ‘toots’ of the horn, but no one stopped and helped! Soaked to the
bone, we drove back to Manly after an eventful weekend that we will never forget! So much to a romantic getaway!
In March we headed to the Hunter Valley; the famous wine producing area of New South Wales, which fortunately went a little more smoothly than the Blue Mountains. Again we borrowed the dodgy little blue jeep and set off after work one Thursday for a long weekend.
We arrived at our YHA hostel, a large converted wood cabin located within the vineyards around Cestnock. We checked-in and sure enough a large insect flew straight at Kim’s face prompted her into a near frenzy state and cursing loudly in front of the hostel manager. He just burst out laughing and said “You’re in the country now love, better get use to it” which made James laugh as he knows that Kim and creepy crawlies don’t mix well.
The following morning we booked ourselves onto a wine tour and headed off for a full day of wine tasting and cheese sampling. First stop was the ????? winery where we enjoyed about 7 different wines ranging from a sweet fruit Chardonnay to a more full bodied red. We got shown how
James a little worst for wear!!
This is after a bottle of Red and the majority of a bottle of Port! to taste the wine in the correct way by smelling, sipping, gargling and spitting. Obviously no one chose to spit the wine out and sure enough after one hour of sampling all the wines we knew it was going to be a long drunken day…woohoo!
Next stop was a larger and more commercial winery called Draytons Family Wines, which had just reopened after a tragic fire that had killed 3 people including the owners nephew who was the head wine maker. Again we sampled about 9 different wines, but this time the range included some dessert wines and a port which James took a liking too and bought a bottle of ‘Rum-Port’ (a hybrid mixer). It was now lunch time, and a welcome break from all the drinking as we were soon becoming pretty phished and it was only 1pm! We stopped at the Hunter Gardens, a beautiful area that had boutique shops, award winning gardens and a huge lake that was being used as a golf driving range.
After a good feed we continued on the wine tour stopping at one of the largest wineries in the area and famous for producing the range of Rosemount and Lindeman’s
wines you will probably see down the local off-licence.
Our final stop was a small winery called The Hanging Tree and was run by an amazing couple called Barbara and Diamond Barbara was a self confessed wino and had extensive knowledge about how all her wine was produced and obviously took a lot of pride in her trade and Diamond was a horse whisper. After sampling their range of wines, Diamond took us to meet his horse which was a great experience and clear that he had developed a great bond with the animals as they were very loving and friendly with him. The Hanging Tree was our favourite winery as the vineyards were set among some amazing scenery and Barbara and Diamond gave it a real personal touch. If anyone is reading this that is planning to go to the Hunter Valley we highly recommend this place.
So after a full day of drinking we headed back to the hostel merrily phished and had a quick sleep before our stone-oven BBQ that was being prepared by the hostel manager. For the remainder of the evening we enjoyed making our of pizzas and drinking the bottle of wine we had
bought that day.
Kim decided to go to bed early as all the wine had gone to her head (light weight) but James was well on his way, thought it would be a good idea to crack out his bottle of port and share it amongst the hostel guests. Unfortunately not many people fancied it, so James being James managed to polish off nearly the full bottle. Needless to say when he fell through the door at 2am he was a little worst for wear and received several elbows to the face from Kim when he collapsed into bed because of his unbearable snoring. ZZZzzzzzz
Obviously the following morning James felt and looked like he had been hit by a bus and then reversed over again. We had planned to attend a rodeo show that was taking place in Cessnock but as James was unable to hold anything down it had to be postponed for a few hours while he slept off his hang-over. After mustering up enough strength and several dashes to the toilet we set off to the rodeo show a few hours late.
We wasn’t sure what to expect as we had never been to a
rodeo show before, but sure enough when we turned up everyone was dressed like cowboys/girls and riding around on horses and shouting what seemed to be Yee-haa!!
We watched the several shows such as the lassoing and bull riding, which seemed to disturb Kim slightly as she thought it was very cruel to the animals especially when James explained how the bulls were made to ‘buck’ in order to flip the cowboy off….for those that don’t know, a spike is attached around its waist and hangs between its legs, when it bucks it swings and crashes into the poor animals ‘crown jewels’, no doubt resulting in eye watering pain and causing it to repeatedly buck in an endless loop of poor agony!! To lighten the mood we went to get some ice cream and a snow cone, which later made James feel a little nauseous again so headed back to the hostel. The following day we had a lazy drive home and both agreed it had been a great weekend with good company, great scenery and obviously free wine!! :O)
Family and Friends Living in Manly for 8 months and being based only a ten minute drive away
from Sally and Simon we developed a good bond and relationship. It was especially nice to watch little Izabella grow from a young 6 month old baby to the fully developed 1 year old she is today. In fact the speed that she developed was so fast we are all convinced she is going to be a super child!
When we arrived mid September, Izzy was like any other newly born baby and was only capable of the simplest of thingss……crying and pooing. But as the months went by we all noticed subtle advances in her skills and confidence and by November she was sitting up and rolling around on the floor. Shortly after she was fully crawling and by Christmas she was crawling all over the place, with Sally and Simon in hot pursuit trying to baby proof everything!
Shortly into the New Year, Izzy got to try her first taste of solid foods, beginning with a homemade concoction of mashed carrot and potato followed by puree apple. Lets just say, being Simons daughter its no surprise that Izzy soon became very fond of her food and not before long she was feeding herself, which was always a
comical sight as most of it ended up either all over her face or on the wall 2 meters away! Now eight months later she is walking, which is also quite funny as she reminds us of E.T. when she walks, wobbles and steadies herself. She also has a habit of helping Sally load the dishwasher, clean the house and hides Simon’s car keys, causing a manic search every time he is due to go out.
It was especially nice to share her 1st birthday with everyone, and really opened our eyes to what the future might be if we were to have a couple of ‘mini-me’s’ running around ourselves.
As we tended to get roped into changing the odd nappy or bath time (which also ended with us getting more wet than Izzy) allowing us to learn a lot about bringing up babies which is good as prior to arriving Kim wanted 3 kids, but isn’t so sure now :O)
We had a few visits from Kim’s parents while we were in Sydney, the first in November and more recently at the beginning of May where they hired out a luxury Penthouse apartment over looking Manly beach for
a week, which we took full advantage of and crashed over a few times. This was a welcomed break from our small room, especially as our bedroom had no windows
Kim turned 24 in March and we all celebrated her birthday at Star City Casino on Darling Harbour, where we attempted to top up our travel funds. However, our hopes didn't go to plan as we ended up leaving a few hundred bucks down :O( but still had a fun night!
As well as Simon and Sally, we also became close with Simons sister; Michelle and Simon’s mate; Andy and regularly went out all together. For our leaving party we all got together for a murder mystery night at Michelle’s house. This was a great night which required us to dress up and put our acting skills to the test. At first everyone was pretty nervous, reading directly from the prompt sheets, but as the wine started flowing everyone got into character. James was a Captain in the Italian army called Romeo, and was meant to be swarve and a bit of a ladies man while Kim was a newly famous actress called Madonna Malerious; who was glamorous
and ostentatious and she seemed to pull off the character pretty well with a brightly coloured dress, a feathered scarf and lots of cleavage!
May 6th was our 10 year anniversary!!! (yes it has been that long, and no James hasn’t popped the question yet…..) and instead of celebrating with a romantic meal and a saucy night, we escorted Kim’s mom to the Sydney Opera House to watch Air Supply. Even though we only knew a couple of their songs, the most famous being ‘All out of love’ we thought they were pretty good and it was good to see Kim’s mom rocking out! We plan to celebrate our anniversary either in Noosa when the mother-in-law isn’t around to stop James trying on his moves :O)
Our last night in Sydney was spent chilling at Sally and Simons where we ordered takeaway and watched a movie. James was shocked when Kim and her mom bought a birthday cake through to celebrate his 26th birthday early, which was really nice and made us realise how much we are going to miss the place. The following day, we said our teary good byes and made our way to the airport
to continue our travels around the world!!
Good Bye Sydney! We both had a great time in Sydney and are glad we got to experience living and working the Ozzy lifestyle, which James seemed to adapt to easier than Kim. It was really nice to bond with Sally & Simon, and also watch Izzy grow up over the months. We also became good friends with Jim & Helen, sharing many drunken days out, and also developing new friendships with Andy and Michelle. Thanks guys for making our stay in Sydney so much fun!
We did have the chance to stay in Australia for longer as James got offered sponsorship from the company he was working for, meaning we could have stayed for an additional 4 years. However, after considering the offer we decided to get back on the road and continue with our travels to Asia, as that was the reason for leaving in the first place.
Australia as a country is great, with exotic wildlife, glorious weather and lots of opportunity to play sports, so you can understand why so many people find it hard to leave. However it does also have some weird habits
that we couldn’t get our head around including; Petrol prices changing everyday, traffic lights that go green for both cars and pedestrians at the same time (we lost count the number of times we nearly got run over), Christmas in summer and selling its national emblem - The Kangaroo, as meat in the local supermarket.
After our extended stay in Sydney we travel 3 weeks up the East Coast of Australia, visiting such places as Byron Bay and Fraser Island prior to flying over to Bali for some well deserved beach time.
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