CHRISTMAS, ROAD TRIPS AND NEW YEAR IN OZ

Arrived back in Adelaide to stay with Ab and Trav for christmas. so nice to be back in a house with my own room and be able to unpack my bags!! Trav made an excellent tour guide and showed me all around Adelaide for a few days. his parents also have a beach house down in Yorkes so we all went there for the weekend, saw some beautiful beaches, soaked up the sunshine and even went out on my first fishing trip! it was such good fun....especially as i caught myself a king george whiting :)

Christmas itself was different, but great. we spent christmas eve down at the beach, eating fish and chips, drinking champagne and watching the sunset. cant say ive ever done that at christmas before...a million miles away from sitting in jeans, a hoodie and fat socks in a warm house back home! we had ourselves a champagne breakfast on christmas day morning out in the garden before opening presents and stockings. the whole day felt very strange because i was away from home but the roast dinner, wine, party poppers and crackers certainly made it all feel a bit more christmassy!

On boxing day morning me, ab and trav left adelaide on a massive road trip to get to sydney for new year. it certainly makes you realise the size of australia when you try and drive that far in 4 days! we drove down the great ocean road and had a sunny day so it all looked very different from when i went there in november. such spectacular scenery, i could look at it forever and never get tired. even saw my very first wild koala which was pretty cool. our evenings were spent camping under the stars (me and ab in the tent and trav outside in his aussie swag!) and cooking up pizzas on our pizza maker and drinking beers. stayed a night on phillip island near melbourne which was a pretty special place. the scenery reminded me of the south west coast of the uk....rugged coastline, waves, green hills....definitely made me feel at home. another highlight of the trip was wilsons promontory national park where we climbed up mount oberon to give us the most spectacular views down along the coast.
went for a little drive up to palm beach which is where home and away is filmed, behaved like proper tourists and took all the typical pictures...all good fun....unfortunatley alf stewart wasnt out filming that day ...! having passed through south australia, victoria and new south wales we finally arrived in sydney all ready for the new year celebrations to begin.....

new years eve started with a swim down at little manly beach, a big breakfast and a visit to the bottleshop! ab and trav stayed over in manly but i went over to the city to meet up with andy and some others from my travels so far. getting the boat over through sydney harbour was awesome...you go straight past the opera house and under the bridge. it was like the calm before the storm cos we knew full well that sydney was gona be a crazy place to see in the new year. we found ourselves a good spot at dawes point, right on the water and under the harbour bridge....and then we waited....9 hours to be precise until the first fireworks went off at 9pm and then at midnight. the atmosphere was amazing, the fireworks were like nothing i have ever seen and the buzz of being in sydney on new years eve was incredible. not one i will forget anytime soon :)

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