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Published: September 5th 2007
We flew from Queenstown in New Zealand to Sydney...a good three hour flight and booked ourselves into the Railway Yha and slept in an old train carriage which was interesting! It was comfortable though and didn't look like a train in the inside at all. We spent the first night having a walk around the centre and we saw people from all walks of life except from Australia! We couldn't believe it! There wasn't an Aussie in sight! They must be all in London and Dublin....I think it must have been about a week before we actually met some Australians! David couldn't believe it...it was definitely not what I imagined for Sydney! And where are all the Aussie bars?? Every bar you pass is called Paddy O'Flannigans or Shenannigans or Molly Malones! I think if we gathered all the Irish up from around the world and brought them back to Ireland, we wouldn't be able to fit them all in!
Anyway...moving on, the next day, we got up and jumped on a train to Circular Quay where the famous Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge is. It was such a beautiful day and the Opera House is massive. It was
Bondi Beach
A chilly Bondi...really difficult to take a good photo of it and get it all fitted in. In fact, up close, I think it looks quite ugly, it only looks good from the distance or from a boat with the harbour around it. So, we spent a couple of hours dandering about taking photos of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and then we wandered into the Botanical gardens just beside the Opera House. It was lovely there, gardens right beside the harbour and the sun was sparkling off the water. At one stage, it was a bit like that scene out of Indiana Jones, the one set in India. I looked up into the trees and I said to David, "My God, look at the size of those huge birds!" and David said, (in a Harrison Ford accent) "Those aren't birds honey, those are giant bats!" Everywhere and there were hundreds of them. Black and yellow and flying about all over the place! Apparently, the Aussies call them "Flying Foxes". I couldn't believe it, huge bats in the middle of a city!
We left Circular Quay and returned to our hostel and later that night, just headed out for
Jen and "Conor"
Funny nite..sooooo cheesey a few quiet beers.
The following day, we caught the ferry across to Manly, a small port town just across the Harbour from the city. It was a beautiful little port town. It was a lovely day (apparently we managed to be in Sydney during a heat wave as it's normally quite cold according to the Aussies) and we had a wander around, stopped for lunch in a lovely restaurant and then headed down to the beach. The beach was lovely, lots of surfers but not many waves. We then walked around the shops and David managed to meet Nathan Sharpe from the Australian rugby team and got his photo took with him so he was rapped about that!
The next day, we had booked the Harbour Bridge walk. It was expensive and pretty much tipped us upside down and emptied our pockets out but it was worth it! The entire trip took about three hours with one of those hours getting you sorted out with your suit and all your gear for the walk. Nothing that we had on us was allowed to be taken up on to the bridge in case it would fall out of
Karl Kennedy
State of him our pockets and hit a car beneath us and cause an accident. Even earrings and cameras so we have no photos for you! Ofcourse, all the days that we had in Sydney were lovely except for this one. Typical but it wasn't raining, just slightly overcast but we still had the excellent view from the top of the bridge. Being scared of heights I was worried but the entire walk was fine except for this bit where they made us climb up these steep, narrow ladders and at that stage, I started to sweat and thought I wasn't going to make it. It was grand though as once you get up to the top, the walkway is quite broad so there's no worries there. They told us the history of the bridge, pointed out landmarks in the distance and told stories of drunken Aussies trying to climb the bridge and base jumpers nearly killing themselves jumping off it.
The day before we left, we went to the famous Bondi beach and what a disappointment! It was a nice beach but quite small and nothing in comparison to any of our beaches in Ireland! There were a few surfers out
on the waves and after a short walk around, we left the beach and went for a coffee and some breakfast before leaving for Melbourne...
We booked a flight to Melbourne because it was basically the same price as the bus. We were going to stay with Aunty Pamela's relatives, William and Nerole and William was very kind and came and picked us up from the airport which was lucky for us as it was in the middle of noowhere, about an hour outside the city! We spent about 4 days in Mebourne and it was a lovely city! We think we liked it better than Sydney. It was much more of a cultural city and everywhere you went, there were famous exhibitions in the galleries and shows in the museums and theatres. We basically spent the few days walking around the city, visiting the museums and exhibitions and drinking coffee and having lunch so yes, we had a great few days there. One of the exhibitions we went to was the Pixar exhibition which was just fantastic. They are the people who make animated movies such as Toy Story, Cars and the new movie Ratatouille! It was really interesting learning how they transform drawings of characters from paper to life. They had all sorts of demonstrations as to how they do this which I couldn't exlain here on this blog but its basically how they can fool the human brain into thinking still objects are moving!
The best evening in Melbourne was the Neighbours night! It was so cheesy but we had such a laugh and in fact, it turned out that the Neighbours street (Pin Oak?) that they film on was just a couple of blocks away from where Will and Nerole lived so we were able to take a drive over and check it out! It's actually a really small street. Anyway, the Neighbours night started at 5.30 in the evening which was probably not a good idea, a bit early but they strted off with a quizz. During the quiz they brought out the stars from the show and we got to meet Dylan who was really cool and hilarious, Connor who had put on ten stone, was drunk and a bit of an embarrassment to any irish people in the room - no change there then, Janele (and it turns out Nerole used to babysit her kids....how random is that?), Carl Kennedy and the Parker family but I dont think they're on UK tv yet so we didn't know who they were. The stars took turns coming round to your table and talking to you and giving you a chance to get your photo taken with them. However, as the quizz was continuing and there was a chance of winning 500 pounds, we weren't really interested in the stars and when they came to talk to us, we ended up asking then questions such as if three men eat 3 pies in one day, how many pies can 6 men eat in 6 days?? So, a bit embarrassing when we look back on it! Ah well! We got our photos taken with them so that was good! Two Glaswegian girls who were in our quizz team entered the dancing competition and one of them won! She won a trip for 3 days and 2 nights on a cruise in the Whit Sunday Islands but she couldn't use the ticket as they were leaving the next day! Luckily for us though, we were in the vicinity and we were going to the Whit Sunday Islands so she was really kind and gave it to us as she could not make use of it...so we were ecstatic about that! Thankyou Laura!
Anyway, the Neighbours night turned from being a civilised occasion to complete carnage as Carl Kennedy's band entered and we might as well have been in a rock concert as everyone was up on top of their chairs and tables and pushing their way to the front of the stage screaming "I predict a riot, I predict a riot!" so I'm sure you can just imagine the scene! We had a fantastic night and have some awesome photos and videos clips to prove it so must get them uploaded!
From Melbourne, we had a flight booked to take us further up the coast to Brisbane so we said goodbye to Will and Nerole and the kids, packed the rucksacks again and headed to the airport...
Hope everyone is well at home and keep the messages coming,
Love Jen and David x x
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