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Published: January 9th 2009
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Well we promised that the next blog entry would be more interesting and this one shouldn't disappoint.
As everywhere started to gear up towards Christmas I think we both felt it just didn't feel like the start of December with the blazing sun but the Christmas trees and caroles made it feel a little more like Christmas. We had a pretty manic start to December with me starting a new job and Sarah's sister and her friend arriving in Sydney to stay with us over Christmas and New Year. We all decided that our first Christmas in Australia should be spent on the beach with a BBQ, the girls did the majority of the food shopping the day before Christmas Eve and started to hunt for a disposable picnic barbeque. It would seem that disposable barbecues have not hit the shores of Australia yet (Neither has Digital TV/Proper Debit Cards/Proper Credit Cards and lots more) but undeterred the girls put their collective minds together and managed to come up with foil tins,coal and fire lighters so the barbie on the beach was on.
Christmas day we got up very early and opened the presents under our expertly decorated Christmas
tree and got ready to head to the harbour to catch a ferry over to Manly beach. We arrived at the beach by around 10am and the sun was starting to shine so Christmas hats and all we started to celebrate Christmas oz style. I spent most of the time attempting to surf and messing around in the sea as I was safer there than on the beach after hitting an angry woman on the back with my new frisbe. As the day wore on we decided to kick of the bbq. All was going to plan until firstly the fire lighters wouldn't light then when we finally got some flames the damn coal would not light. We persevered and eventually we had enough heat to do some prawns and sausages but unfortunately the chicken and burgers would have to be used another day. After Christmas dinner we headed back down to the beach to top up the tans and spent some more time messing around in the water. At around 5.30 knackered, we decided to head back to the ferry port to catch the boat back to the city. On the taxi journey back home we saw the aftermath
of a guy getting knocked over by a taxi and he didn't look in a good way nevertheless our taxi driver had a fare to complete and no dying man in the street was going to stop him as he repeatedly blasted his horn until traffic started to move again!! Once we got home we were all so tired from our day in the sun that we had some Christmas pudding and watched dvd's until heading off to bed at the end of our first Christmas in Sydney - which was not the same but was a lot of fun.
On the Saturday after Christmas we decided to go to the Australia Museum as we were walking into town we decided to stop off at the Chinese Gardens. The Chinese Gardens are meant to represent the great friendship between Australia & China, the gardens themselves are really nice and you do forget your in the middle of a city as you walk around. We decided to dress up in authentic Chinese costume to take some pictures as we wandered around the gardens, so with all of us looking ridiculas we started to strike a pose and snap away. During
one of these photo sessions I fealt something bite me on the back of my right hand. The bite was painfull but I put it down to a mozzie or an Ant and thought no more about it as we continued our day. The Australia museum was really good with lots of interesting things to see and do.
On Saturday night my hand was still hurting and we noticed it had started to swell up quite a bit, by sunday morning I had a club hand and couldn't see my knuckles or move my fingers properly it was so swollen. We decided that we should probably head to hospital to get it checked out as the pain was moving up my right arm and I was feeling pretty sick. When we got to the hospital we waited for over 2hours without being seen so I asked how much longer and was told it would be another 2-3 hours! Deciding that if they were making us wait so long it couldn't be very serious we decided not to bother waiting and headed back home. I continued to feel pretty bad during Sunday and when I woke up on Monday morning
to go to work I was really starting feel very sick and still had a swollen hand/arm. After about 1hr at work I started to get a fever and feel light headed so decided I really did need to go to hospital. I took myself off to the Medical Center just around the corner from work and it was decided that I should make the short trip to Sydney hospital immediately as it looked like I was bitten not by a mozzie or an Ant but a Redback Spider the second most venomous spider in Australia. At this point a full 2 days following the bite I was really starting to feel bad as we waited in the emergency department I had uncontrollable shakes and muscle contractions, I was unable to control my breathing and felt like I was about to pass out. As the situation continued to go downhill I asked to see a doctor straight away finally a doctor saw to me and once they had confirmed it was a redback he had the cheek to ask me why I waited so long before going to hospital!!! A shot of anti-venom and a tetanus injection later and the
breathing returned to normal and the swelling started to go down. Nobody has died from a redback bite since 1956 but in 2008 I came pretty close.
New Year Sydney Style
On New Years Eve Sarah,Jenny & Chloe got up early to head to Macquaries Point to join 20,000 other people to queue for access to the park so they could get a good view for the fireworks in 14hours time!!! After a few hours queuing they decided to give it up and try the Opera House instead, luckily they managed to get into the viewing area outside the Opera House. Sarah came to meet me when I finished work at 5.30 unfortunately they had stopped people getting into the viewing area outside the Opera House by the time we got back down there so we had to settle for a few drinks on the harbour. We still had a good view of all the fireworks which were pretty amazing but as Sarah points out not really worth a 14hr wait (Luckily I only had to wait 6hours!). And that's pretty much it for now folks, hope you all had a great Christmas & New Year.....
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Ben
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Looks like you're having a brilliant time (apart from the redback). Unless it was radioactive and you now have spidey powers.. It's been minus 8 here so you're not missing much!