Days 54-57

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We have now made it to Sydney and I love it! The whole atmosphere around the place is really chilled out yet it still has the vibrancy of a city - I really like it. I guess I better go back to how we got here though first! Our evening in Byron Bay was really good fun - we met up with Helen and James from our Whitsundays trip and so had dinner with them. The bar we were at had this guy going around with a microphone asking questions from Trivial Pursuit and if you answered correctly then you got a free beer. We managed to get a couple of free beers between us (who wrote ‘Around the world in 80 days’? What is the longest river in the British Isles?), and then there was a game of Giant Jenga which I managed to win, winning myself free surf board hire for a day. Unfortunately the next day was too cold to use it and so we decided to make our way further south, stopping at a place called ‘Nimbin’ along the way. Nimbin is the craziest place I have even been to; it is basically a tiny village slightly inland that just ignores all laws and openly sells cannabis. In the 60s loads of hippies moved there and began starting various communes in the hills surrounding the main town, and just decided to boycott the law regarding drugs. The main part of town consists of one street of shops and cafes and stuff but every building is painted in bright colours and decorated with rainbows and smiley faces and all sorts. We headed to the museum and it was weird! There is a kombi coming out of the wall that apparently crashed into the building at some point and they just left it there! The museum is full of different newspaper clippings, paintings, and aboriginal proverbs and sayings. There is one room that is totally black with luminous paint depicting skulls and devils and stuff - like I said, WEIRD. As you walk down the street people offer you weed, and there are people walking about the place totally off their heads. It is not just in the illegal form that you can buy the drug - there are also hemp clothing stores and places selling herbal remedies for various different ailments. My legs are still pretty bad so I bought some sort of lotion that is supposed to stop them from scarring. We didn’t stick around for very long, we bumped into someone from our Fraser Island tour so we went and had lunch with him, and then made our way back to the highway. We spent the night in a place called Coffs Harbour (where we ate a delicious Italian meal) and then arrived in Sydney the next day at around 5pm. Phil’s husband Mike had given us a discount coupon for a campsite just outside the city so we headed straight there for the evening and just ate and slept. The next day we got up and headed into the centre of Sydney; our campsite is pretty far out of town so we had to get a half hour bus journey to Manley and then we caught a ferry from there. The ferry was such a good idea; it only takes half an hour but as you get closer you see the opera house on your left and the Harbour bridge on your right - it was amazing and a really great way to enter the city. It dropped us off right next to the Opera House so we went and checked that out and then just took a walk around Sydney itself. On that specific day me and Andy had been going out 5 years so we wanted to go somewhere nice for dinner (well nice for travellers on a budget!) and Andy came up with the Hard Rock Cafe as there is one in every major city right? So we asked someone if they knew where it was and they said it was in the part of town called The Rocks, so we headed there but when we got there someone else told us it had been closed down! Apparently they weren’t’ making enough money and so it shut! We were kind of disappointed but it was still a nice way to take a walk through the city and we had passed loads of other places we might like to eat so we just picked one of them and had a nice meal. Later that evening we headed back to the wharf to catch the ferry home. Public transport over here is some much cheaper than in England; we paid about £20 each for a weekly ticket in Sydney that would take us on all buses, ferries and trains while we were there. Considering we are staying pretty far out of the city that is a really good price. The opera house is right next to this bar that has outdoor seating allowing you to watch the ships and ferries go by under the harbour bridge when you look in one direction, and the Opera House lit up at night when you look in the other. As it was a special occasion we each bought a glass of champagne and sat out listening to live jazz and taking in the view, it was a really lovely evening. On Monday we did pretty much the same thing - we took the ferry into town and then visited parts of the city that we hadn’t been to yet. Then we headed for the part of the city named “king’s cross” (which has the same reputation as the part of town in London with the same name) for something to eat. We walked past this bar named “O’Mally’s” and they were selling jugs of beer for $6 - £3 - so in we headed! To cut a long story short we got very drunk and entered the quiz that was going on that night. We traded some answers with some Canadians that were next to us (they didn’t even rank and we came joint 4th) and we somehow ended up back at their house for a while. Today, when we woke up, I was feeling quite ill (in terms of a cold, not a hangover) and it was absolutely pouring down with rain. We were supposed to meet two of our friends from Whitsundays but we didn’t really want to have to go into the city with such weather. Instead we decided to go to the cinema (which is also half the price of and English cinema ticket) and we watched “The hangover” which is tooooooo funny. That evening we decided we wanted pizza so we went to Dominos and it was cheap Tuesday! A large pizza cost $5! £2.50! FOR A LARGE! So we bought two and we are going to have the second on for lunch tomorrow!

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