Australia Part 1

---

Hi everyone,

A new chapter of our journeys, we have made it to Oz. However it did take a while. We set off from Queenstown and headed to Christchurch. We picked up and dropped a few people on the way but eventually we got to Christchurch at about 4pm. Our flight was not till 6am the next morning and we decided not to stay anywhere, maybe hanging around in Christchurch even though there was still a lot of devastation in the center. However, we thought we would take a chance and see if we could get a earlier flight, so instead we got dropped off at the airport. We were lucky and there were spaces on a earlier flight, BUT it was going to cost $900 for us to change flights, so that idea went out the window. So we had to kill a lot of time in the airport which was not easy. They try and stop people sleeping at the airport so make it as uncomfortable as possible for people, so our attempt to sleep was not a fun one. All that aside, we got to Melbourne early and through customs quick and were met by Jessica in arrivals. We really needed food so we went out for breakfast which Jessica says 'is the thing to do'. Obviously Saturday was st paddys day and Jessica's friends planned to go out for a knees up, so showered and fed we spent the Saturday in a park with a lot of green people. It was hot and having been awake for more than 24hrs, our energy levels were fading, so headed home for dinner and a film. It got even more exciting the next day, grand prix day. It was perfect weather and our seat were pretty good too. We bought ourselves our mclaren outfit ready for the race. It's got us wanting more now. The next 3 days we just went around Melbourne seeing museums, the old jail and wandering around finding fun spots and nice cafes. We met up with Jessica in the evenings and she took us to some trendy bars and nice restaurantes.

On wednesday, we headed off to Sydney on our 12 hr overnight bus, ya! It wasn't too bad, although we realised that we needed to invest in a pillow for our other long bus rides. We arrived early thursday, and we were staying with Samantha's friend Heather, but weren't meeting her till the evening so we had a whole day to kill. Unfortunetly the weather was overcast but we thought the hop on hop off bus would be the best thing to do so we could get an idea of the geography of Sydney and what we wanted to see for the few days we were there. Even though it rained a bit it was still great fun, and we thought Sydney looked a really nice place, even got to see Bondi beach, which looked like an english beach in early winter. After the bus, we just wandered around shops, through parks and streets. At 6 we met up with Heather and went back to hers, where we decided a takeaway pizza and night in was in order. Refreshed and ready to explore, the following morning we set out to walk from Heathers all the way round the harbour to Sydney Opera House, stopping at the Harry Potter exhibit (lots of fun, even for big kids). The weather was much nicer and the park and harbour looked lovely, a nice place to stop for lunch and get attacked my masses of sea gulls. The walk was a bit longer than we thought but eventually we got to the opera house, passing all the amazing harbour flats and their boats. We took a million photos of it and just walked around it as it was getting onto dinner time once we got there. We were shattered again so had a chilled night in after dinner. Luckily the following day was as beautiful so we set off to see Bondi again, hopefully in a better light. Unfortunelty it was a saturday and they had replacement buses for the trains, but we got there eventually and it was packed. We enjoyed the sun and then went for a walk around the coast line and headed back to sydney harbour. Nothing particually exciting in the evening again, just had tapas and sangria. Again we booked an evening bus for the following day to take us to Byron bay so we went for a swim in the morning and then went around some markets and the maritime museum.

Lots of Love xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

---