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January 24th 2011
Published: January 27th 2011
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23 January 2011

I am becoming extrememly fond of being awoken by the sun's rays and this morning was no exception. The by product of this fondness is that we are also awoken daily before 8am and, remarkably, I really don't mind. It seems that in Manly (and, I suspect, only in Manly) I have turned into a morning person.

There were two important happenings in the pot for today - one important for us, and the other important for Anna. We had been invited to Katherine and Andrew's house for brunch and Anna have been invited to appear on TV.

Katherine is one of the girls that I rowed with at Law School what now seems like many moons ago. She is currently living in Old Cremorne in Sydney with her husband and baby son Alexander. We met Katherine and Alexander earlier in the week briefly and had plans for a bigger chin wag this morning. Since we had to take two ferries to get to Old Cremorne, and we were up, we decided to crack on speedily towards the Manly Ferry and were on board by something like 8.15 am - small wonders will never cease - having wished Anna the very best of luck for her lunch time TV appearance (more of which later).

We arrived at Circular Quay (the hub for most of Sydney's ferries) with time to spare so took the opportunity to wonder along towards the Opera House for the opportunity to take some close-up shots of the world famous building. Today was another scorcher and, even just after 9am the sun was making it perfectly clear that she wasn't going to be messing around today.

Since there is only one ferry an hour out to Old Cermorne on a Sunday, I frog marched us back towards the Quay early in order to ensure that we didn't miss it. Having made, I think, three stops, we arrived at Old Cremorne and wondered up a path shaded by the boughs of gently aging trees towards a little piece of England. The buildings in this suburb are some of the oldest that we have seen since arriving in Australia and none of them would look out of place in any Victorian/Edwardian suburb of any town or city in the UK.

Brunch was a truly British serving of pancakes (if you call them Scotch pancakes, then I guess you are nearly there) encased in some heavy duty chatting and little snippets of baby Alexander reminding us not to forget about him. Towards the end of the meal, one of us mentioned that Anna was going to be on TV and, hey presto, the TV was turned on and there we were watching our friend in her debut small screen appearance.

It was odd watching someone we knew on TV for nearly an hour. She did a brilliant job and even had Katherine's mum interested in a couple of the items that she was helping to sell. Just before the programme finished, Katherine suggested that we go out for a walk around the headland which was both beautiful and boiling hot! Having paused for the obligatory catch up photo, Katherine deposited us back at the ferry and we were on our way back to Manly via Circular Quay.

Adam and Anna had another house viewing at 4pm close to the Manly Ferry so met us on the beach there where we shared a few rays before they headed off to their viewing and we had a little meander around the shops. There followed a supremely relaxing evening with Anna feeling relieved that the TV appearance had taken place and us all chatting intermittently about things that had amused us during the show - it was a shopping channel after all, so there were numerous moments of amusement that had nothing whatsoever to do with Anna's performance.

24 January 2010

This was a penultimate day in Austrailia, and more importantly Manly, and we both arose feeling a little glum. It has been wonderful staying and spending time with friends and family and the weather has really gone to town for us since we arrived in Sydney such that we just don't feel like we are ready to go. Today had been pencilled in as washing and admin day since sometime last week however with the admin neatly filed during the week, we needed something else for entertainment today.

Since I dropped my camera in Singapore in December we have been scouting out a replacement but decided to wait until we reached Australia - figuring that making such a purchase in Bali would likely be somewhat imprudent. I had done some web-based research from our apartment in Bali and had established, I thought, that such kit retails in Australia for roughly equivalent prices to home. Wrong. Big fat wrong! Prices are roughly equivalent for internet based purchases but if you want to buy in most shops think again.

I had, however, found a shop in Sydney that allowed me to order online and collect in store. Great. What was not so great was that the website allowed me to reserve the item without giving me any indication of whether they actually had it in stock. This is common, so I have discovered, for Austrialian online shopping which is years behind the UK when it comes to online retail. I have concluded that either I could make a fortune by training Aussie businesses in how to sell using the world wide web OR the country has such a small number of heads per km (therefore complicating delivery outside of the big cities) that it would simply never take off and I would end up bankrupt despite my efforts. The most significant hurdle to this win or fail business plan is that I have no intention of emigrating to Australia. It was worth a moment's thought anyway.

I reserved said camera, relieved that some day soon I would actually be able to enjoy taking photographs again. The following morning (one day last week) I called the shop to check whether the camera was in stock and, no, it was on back order and was due in "any day" - surprisingly, somewhat less reliable than the Apple shop in Bali. A couple of days later, still no call to say the camera was ready for collection and we therefore took to the internet to find an alternative supplier. I rang two or three and all said that they were currently out of stock...and on back order. With our days in Australia rapidly running low and in the knowledge that making the purchase in New Zealand would be considerably more expensive, we developed an alternative strategy - give up on the Sony I wanted and find an alternative - a Canon. The only trouble with this? The one that I want seemed to be actually showing as out of stock on the websites I was looking at. So, this morning I got back on the phones and I found one shop in Sydney CBD that had one in stock and sold from the shop at internet prices.

So, we hopped on the Manly ferry only to find ourselves further disappointed - they had the body but not a lens we wanted at a price we could justify. Just as we were about to completely give up hope, Gregg noticed an electronics store advertising a sale. Quite out of nowhere, not only had we found the camera and lens we wanted but it was also on sale. Bring on oodles of photographs once again.

Today the weather was the most humid that we have expereienced in Australia (although nowhere near the humdity that we experienced across South-East Asia) which meant that even the hop across the harbour and back to Manly was not particularly comfortable. Still, once back there, we got the camera out of the box and soon forgot how uncomfortable we were.

When Adam returned home he and Gregg decided that they wanted to go out for a final surf (Gregg on Adam's mini-Mal - a sort of spongey long board) whilst I accompanied them to take photos on the beach. An hour passed pretty swiftly for us all, then we returned to the flat for a quick change before all heading out for dinner with some of Anna's friends and their own guests (Olympic yachtsmen, don't ya know).

After dinner we said our goodbyes to Adam, just incase we aren't awake enough to do so tomorrow morning when he leaves at before 6am and retired for our last night in Manly.


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I just like the composition (get me!)I just like the composition (get me!)
I just like the composition (get me!)

Shame about the subject matter of the sign 'tho.


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