Fun in the sun

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Sorry for lack of blog lately, I think its been a combination of good weather and bad wine that have kept us out of the internet cafes since we arrived.

Most of our activities in Sydney involved the typical touristy things, we walked down to the harbour and took some photos of the harbour bridge and the opera house. We also went on a city tour on a very English looking open-top-double-decker bus. After sleepy NZ we were both happy to do some city time, Sydney is a big city but it didn't seem too hectic.

We spent a day at Bondi and a day at Manley Beach, both were amazing and the surf looked pretty good, but we were happy just to soak up some much needed sun.

Whilst we were in Sydney we booked all our travel and our main activities up the coast, but that is for a later blog.

After Sydney we headed North to Newcastle, which was a quite run down place, much like the colder version in England. Whilst we were there we went to Blackbutt reserve, where we saw an abundance of animals native to Australia, Koala Bears, Kangaroos, Wombats, a Python and an Emu, as well as many other birds.

Our next stop was Port Macquarie, home of the Koala Hospital, where you can go at feeding time and get a tour of the hospital. The best bit of this trip was seeing a koala outside of the cages running up a tree with its Joey hanging onto it's back!

Whilst we were in Port Macquarie, we played some very wrong drinking games, and met our current travelling companions who we are now travelling up the coast with for a bit, and also built the biggest sandcastle in the world ever. Our usual drink is now something called goon, look it up on wikipedia if you have the time, the cheapest we've found is 4 litres for 4GPB (no pound sign!-and this is supposed to be a colony).

We are now in Byron Bay which is a very funny place, there are lots and lots of hippies everywhere. Our hostel had Possums, Turkeys and "Water Dragons" (giant lizards that swim like crocodiles). We went on a bush walk with a guy who had feathers in his hair and kept saying 'Cool Bananas', and he taught us some stuff about living in the bush (Think Ray Mears crossed with a mad hippy who can play a 7 piece drum kit with his feet whilst also playing the dijerido).

We have now visited the most Eastery point of Australia and got to see dolphins jumping in the water around Cape Byron. Had it not been really windy and rainy, we might have seen whales, but being reunited with Flipper was good!

We did some more extreme activities, such as playing Monopoly and even Risk, with a Canadian who played Risk everyday, from that point we called him The Riskmaster, then all ganged up on his army and killed him off.

As I sit here and write this it is raining outside, but it was been very sunny up until now, we both have sunburn to remind us of that and the more north we go the warmer it will get.

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