Dreaming of a 35 degree Christmas

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So the Asia leg our the trip is over, and I will be the first one to say that I am going to miss it. I have been lucky enough to have witnessed some of the great sights of the world; the Taj Mahal, The Great Wall, Angkor Wat, Bangkok's Grand Palace, Java's Borobudur monument. As well as the sights there is the diversity, the cultures, the people, the food; all are incredible! This will not be the only time that Asia will be visited by me!

The prospect of leaving Asia for the familiarity of Western living in Australia was one that was recieved with mixed feelings. Australia offered great natural sights, they speak my language, and kangaroos, but came at a price. The Aussie dollar was at a record high and climbing, maybe leaving Australia until the end wasn't the best idea...

Anyway we didn't have to worry about accommodation in Perth as we were being put up at Annie and Dave's house (friends of Rhian) in Quinns Rocks, just north of the city. This was an absolute blessing as it meant we would get to spend Christmas and New Year's with familiar faces and in a lovely home environment. We had an absolutely amazing time in Perth and it is definitely somewhere I could see myself living in the future above anywhere else I've visited! Beautiful weather, an endless coastline of pristine beaches, great restaurants and nightlife. It's a city but it never really feels like one. We spent the first few days re-adjusting to the western world, walking Dudley the Dalmatian along the beach, chilling out in the pool (this got used A LOT) and basically just kicking back and relaxing over the festive period!

Christmas Day was immense. A luxury breakfast cooked up by Ashley, Annie's son, before the boys took on the girls in a thrilling, end to end game of water volleyball which was settled as a draw in the true Christmas spirit. Experiencing Christmas in the searing 35 degree heat is a strange feeling but I could totally get used to it! Especially when you only have to jump into the pool if it gets too warm! We spent the day either poolside or walking to the beer fridge, before digging into an amazing lunch served up by Annie! It's been a while since I've had food this good!!
Inbetween 'Chrissy' and New Year we borrowed the guy's car, Terry, and drove down to Margaret River, around 6 hours south of Perth, stopping at several places along the way including Geographe Bay. Imagine the most beautiful beach you've ever seen... yeah Geographe Bay is better. The most crystal blue waters you can imagine dissected by a 2km long jetty giving postcard perfect views back to shore; the white sandy beach and a beaming sun made me want to just drop everything and live here forever. You would never tire of this view.
We carried on and made it to the YHA at Margaret River which turned out to be a bit of a shambles, I won't go into details but I've not had to deal with service that bad in a long time. We figured that we hadn't driven all the way down here to spend our time in the hostel so we let it pass and just went out and enjoyed the local area. We spent the next day driving further south to the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, Australia's most South-westerly point and the place where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet. You can actually see a line in the ocean where the currents cross! From here we drove back north to Lake Cave (come on, I had to) which turned out to be absolutely amazing! A descent down around 100 steps where it suddenly got very cold, took us to an underground river with thousands of rock formations, stalagtites, stalagmites, and it's most famous feature, a suspended table; A massive, 5 tonne piece of calcite that appears to be hanging precariously from the ceiling, defying gravity and hovering what seems like millimetres off the water's surface. This is apparently only one of two known 'suspended tables' in the world and you can't go and see the other one, in France somewhere! So a great place for my camera battery to run out!!!! Argghh!! To make up for this we went to the Margaret River Chocolate Company and indulged somewhat.
On New Year's Eve we all headed across the water from the city to Rottnest Island, a favourite getaway for Perthians and it was easy to see why. We hired bikes and rode around the island, stopping several times to take in the views of perfect, unspoilt bays with footprint-less beaches being swallowed by the green-blue ocean, before deciding on one stretch to lay out on and dip our toes in.

Our stay in Perth had been great fun and made all the better by Annie and Dave, so thank you guys! The 10 days we stayed felt like a real break from travelling, what with the home comforts and the great company, and to get ourselves worked up for the next leg of the journey took some effort!

A late night flight across to Melbourne, with a 3 hour time difference (it's like flying from the UK to Greece!) meant that we landed at Tullamarine Airport at 6am a little bit dishevelled and not with it. We managed to get onto an earlier shuttle bus than we'd booked, and were taken to the doorstep of our hostel, Habitat HQ, in St. Kilda, which is about 15 minutes south of the city and has a real English Seaside Town feel about it. There's a main street of sit-outside cafe's and cake shops, a golden beach covered in sun-worshippers, and a rickety amusement park with a massive, scary clown face as it's entrance containing Australia's oldest rollercoaster. Which we found out was still completely hand-operated by a guy who sits between the two cars! I think I'll pass on that one.

Getting into the city was easy on the tram system that acts as the city's veins carrying it's citizens around wherever it needs to go, but mostly into the heart of the city at Federation Square. Opposite Melbourne's main transit centre, the grand old Flinders Street Railway Station, Fed Square is an awesome urban space where people meet, eat and watch the cricket on the big screen in their lunch breaks. There's also the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) which documents the history of cinema, TV and video games with some excellent hands-on exhibits (my favourite being the matrix-style slow motion camera), obviously focussing on Aussie Cinema but not solely. We spent a good few hours here, wandering around the museum and playing with all the exhibits and all for free!

Melbourne's streets are lined by buildings that wouldn't have looked out of place in early 20th Century London and are all preserved magnificently. Flinders Street station, as I mentioned, Parliament House, The Mint, and countless other governmental offices all competing for grandeur. We spent half our time walking around gazing with our necks strained skywards!

Our 3rd day in Melbourne was one that Rhian and I had been looking forward to for several months before we'd even left the UK. The Neighbours tour to Ramsay Street!!

*If you have no interest in this momentous TV show then you should probably skip this section and ask yourself what you've been doing with your lives..*

We joked that we were really sad for even doing this tour but when a British woman waltzes in to the office where we were waiting for the bus, and declares that she had drive. Anyway, we first stopped at Erinsborough High School where our very cool tour guide pointed out where all the awesome different storylines had been shot. Obviously we couldn't go in, it's a real school after all. We drove on to the studios where all the location shots are done, Lassiters and the doctor's surgery, but we weren't allowed to roam freely around the site even though the crew were on holiday which seemed a bit mean, but we did see Dr Karl's and Skye's car and Grease Monkey's Cafe and the cabin where Zeek was found after he lost his memory and some other new parts that we had no idea about...

From here we took the short drive to Pin Oak Crescent, more commonly known to the student and retired world as Ramsay Street! A very surreal moment in my life I will admit. This is just a normal street in a suburb of Melbourne where normal people live (and get handsomely paid to do so as long as they don't mind a tv crew rocking up outside their house every day), and then there's us lot stood outside taking pictures of ourselves outside their front doors. I'm not gonna lie, it was freaking awesome! Karl and Susan's house! Toady's house! Paul Robinson's house! This was mental! They have security there 24/7 now as fans were stealing mail and fruit from the trees as mementos, and knocking on the door expecting the characters to answer!

When we got back on the bus, our guide then started talking about which star we were off to meet. We had no idea this was part of the tour! Amazing! So we (conveniently for us) drove to St Kilda to meet Skye Mangel! The proprietor of many a male student crush and she was stood in front of us chatting away! The group were timid and not really asking questions so I brought up that she performed at my graduation ball in 2005 and did she remember it? She didn't unfortunately but loved that I did! (Rhian later said that she seemed drunk on the stage at the Guildhall back then so no wonder that she didn't remember) After a hug and a (now treasured) photo later she was off to meet the group for that afternoon's tour, and after a whirlwind morning we landed back on Planet Earth! One of my favourite days of the whole trip for sure!



Melbourne was also the location for one of the saddest days of our trip. Our last one as travelling companions. Rhian would be heading back to Perth to work for 6 months before finishing her travels across Oceania whilst I was continuing on up Australia's East Coast. A really emotional departure and I admit that the impact of not spending every day with someone didn't really strike me at first. It has now. Travelling on my own just isn't as fun as I have nobody to share sights, views, good meals, funny moments with. It will force me to break out and talk to more people which can only be a good thing but I wouldn't have been able to do this adventure up until now without Rhian. It has been truly unforgettable and I have been privileged to see things wih you that most will never set their eyes upon

So thank you. Really, thank you.



A long, long bus ride to Sydney awaited me but I was fortunate enough to have somewhere to stay upon my arrival. We'd met two girls on the bus from Thailand to Malaysia, Ange and Phillipa, and then kept bumping into them across the country, and they kindly offerred to let us stay with them when we got to Sydney! This was a real god-send as it is rather expensive to stay in the city!

Sydney is a busy, busy place! Apparently home to 1 in 4 Australians, and many more tourists, it is a fascinating place to walk around. It's dominating feature is Sydney Harbour, the world's biggest natural harbour and fully utilised by cruises, ferries and water taxis and crossed by two bridges, the most famous being the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Built from British iron and steel and designed by the man who built the Firth Bridge in Scotland (Both bridges are strikingly similar) it is a magnificent structure dominating the city's skyline. It is much bigger than I ever imagined, and I think it's sheer size is what makes it so well-known as it's looks are simple, graceful but not ground-breaking in terms of bridge design.

Paling in the size stakes but not in the iconic, the Sydney Opera House proudly stretches out into the harbour, a throw's distance from the bridge. The parallel buildings' curving sails glisten in the Southern Sun, the 1950's design never once looking dated and still dropping jaws of all those who first set eyes upon it. I saw the Opera House a lot in the 3 weeks that I stayed in the area, and each time you cannot help but stop and admire. It is a beautiful building and a marvel of engineering. I did the guided tour of the building and it's ingenious auditorium designs to overcome the shortage of space, and also learned of the story of the building's Danish architect, which is a sad one. He struggled with implementing his intial sketches into reality, with costs spiralling and deadlines passing by, so he was sacked before it's completion, and sadly never returned to Australia to see his dream come to life.

Sydney's streets are full of grand buildings, similar in design to those in Melbourne. Again it's mostly goverment buildings, the town hall's magnificent clock tower standing out amongst the skyscrapers, but the highlight is the Queen Victoria Building, surely the grandest shopping mall in the world, with chandeliers, detailed tiled floors and art-deco ceiling paintings stretching for it's entire length. The shops play second fiddle inside here. Sydneysiders love their open spaces and the city's parks lay testament to that. The botanical gardens stretch from the Opera House round the south side of the harbour, a lot of the harbour's edge is in fact national park, and once you get to the ocean there are, of course, beaches. We (Rich and Ally and I) visited Manly beach on the north-east of the harbour which was a lovely stretch of sand full of locals and tourists enjoying the bright sun and blue sea. I also went to Bondi (on my birthday :D) but it wasn't the best of days so I strolled along a coastal walk around the next few bays to Coogee Beach alongside the joggers and dog-walkers, surely here for the postcard views provided at each turn.
I was in Sydney for 3 weeks in total but I split this time up by staying with Rob and Leslie (my uncle's friends) in a suburb called Penrith. The two of them could not have been nicer to me, but this blog has gone on for long enough so I'll save it...

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