Oz; Blue Mountains, Sydney, Byron Bay

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... After our brilliant picnic we got talking to Tom and Vicki who offered us a trip to the Blue Mountains to stay with Pam and John. We were picked up kindly from Manly on Friday and went to meet Tom at work. We managed to miss most of the traffic and arrived at Pam's house that was perched overlooking the valley below. Unfortunately we arrived after dark and were unable to see the views. We had a great Chinese followed by dessert before we headed out onto the veranda to watch the two dogs Chester and Sheila play fighting endlessly. John had a long day of controlled firefighting in the bush planned and left the rest of us to play with the dogs and moths.

The next morning we awoke to the fantastic views all around. It was a really steep drop to the river below and very few other houses were in sight. We had a eggy crumpet breakfast - amazing - in order to energise us for our walk in the Blue Mountains. The Covetts Leap walk was around 3km but had us all perspiring with the steep climbs and rapid drops. The views were spectacular with the haze from the lush valley floor below setting off a blue glow to the landscape. We met up with Pam and were taken for a welcome drink in Katoomba before heading off to the scenic railway near Leura. The railway is the steepest in the world and it felt like the gradient would reach vertical. It was part of an old mining town as a way of extracting the coal from the tunnels. When we reached the floor we went for a brief walk exploring the old mining equipment that were now entangle between a vast maze of vines. It was an amazing and very eerie place. When we re-surfaced we went to look at the three sisters, a rock formation of three outcrops that looked like figures, said in Aboriginal mythology to have been turned into stone by their father to stop them marrying three men from a rival tribe. We then went into Leura for a fantastic lunch in a organicy type of bistro.

We said our farewells to Pam and went back with Tom and Vicky to Sydney. We settled back down again after a long day preparing for a quiet night in until Mia tried to break down the front door. Nick and Mia came in a told us we would be heading into Manly for a night out. After re motivating ourselves we had a great time visiting a few different bars with Nick orchestrating the activities. We returned to Manly with kebab in hand where the unit's sofa bed was brought into action. We went to the beach the following day for a paddle before going back to Wahroonga with Nick and Mia where we spent our last night in Sydney with Chris and Ian. We got our coach the next evening at 6.00pm turning up late with us worrying whether we had gone to the wrong pick-up point. However, we eventually got on our bus and were sad to leave the friendly atmosphere that we had been treated to the previous couple of weeks.

After a longish 12 hour coach ride!!! we arrived into Byron Bay at 7.00am in the pouring rain. We quickly waterproofed our bags and ourselves before trudging in our haste to the wrong YHA hostel. We waited for them to open and relaxed in our room and watched a couple of DVDs. The weather improved slightly enough for us to go to the beach. It was deserted, and despite the sporadic rainfall Mark went surfing. The beach was really pretty and we got to see it in full glory the next couple of days when the weather returned to it's 22c normality. I tried to surf and by the third day had seen improvement, getting up frequently and driving shorter boards. We stayed for the sunsets which were beautiful and then went out for a dinner in Cheeky Monkeys which was cheaper than cooking, a place where frequenters are encouraged to dance on the tables. It was a lively place with cheap beer and average food, but sufficient for a good time. We both really enjoyed Byron, and found comparisons to Raglan in NZ, a small surfing town with trendy people, lots of surfing and a good beach to top up tans. It was definitely one of our favourite places in Oz.

Thanks to all the people that looked after us in Sydney, your hospitality and generosity were hugely appreciated. We really enjoyed ourselves and it was fantastic to see some familiar faces, meet some new ones and get to visit places that otherwise we would have been unable to see.

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