Sydney

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Howdi,

I left Melbourne on Thursday morning which started a 4 day trip to Sydney. Ive met a lot of Southerners on this trip so have obviously taken a lot of flak for being a Northerner. Having said this, I managed to bump into a guy last night from Bramhope who went to Prince Henry's plays rugby with Chris Tinker's brother!

A parcel has been sent home with all my pictures, skydive dvd etc. so if anybody wants to have a look at them, just ask my parents!

On thursday I went to Wilsons Promontory National Park which was spectacular forestry with white beaches and aqua water, it was incredible. Went to a beach called Squeky beach and its definitely the squekiest beach ive walked on! We also managed to lose two french girls aswell so had to go on a bit of a mission to the find them around the National Park. Found them laying down on the beach! Other than that nothing else really happened, other than getting pooed on the head by a seagul. 24 people and yep, it landed right on my noggin!

The following day we left Wilsons Prom for Foster. Was a pretty chilled out day compared to usual. We went to the beach and went wine tasting which was a lot fun, mainly because of the our guide who was drunk when we turned up. Told us lots of vulgar stories about him and his wife and had a large array of objects underneath his desk including a pair of glasses and a penis nose! I didnt get a picture with it though, which im sure isnt a bad thing.

I finally saw my first two wild snakes on this trip aswell - the copperhead and the blacksnake, highly venomous of course like most creatures in this country! Certaintly wouldnt want to poke them with a stick...

The penultimate day was a great one. We visited Mount Kosciouzko - the tallest mountain in Australia. The drive up the mountains involved a lot of drops. You would have loved it mum!! The surrounding area was a ski resort in the winter which was pretty hard to believe in 30 odd degrees! Also went water skiing on Lake Jindabyne which was a lot of fun even though I was pretty hopeless! The longest I managed to stay up was about 5 seconds so Ive got just got pictures of my skiis in the air and me underwater!!

Our final day took us to the country's capital - Canberra, and quite frankly, its not worth going apart from seeing the Parliament building. We had a tour of the House of Reps and the Senate. The building looked like a modern hotel - made you realise how little history there is in Australia! But it was good to see and worth stopping off for a couple of hours.

My firsts memories of Sydney was coming through Kings Cross to see a few transvestites sat on a hill. This is because of a huge gay/lesbian festival here which finished just the previous day - Mardi Gras. It attracts people from all over the world and is a huge thing over here.

Today I visited the skytower and saw incredible views of the city - the opera house and the harbour bridge, the scg etc - it was a really worthwhile trip.

Thats all for now folks!

Rich

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Photos

Bondi Beach
With the Southern Boys

Jindabyne
A social drink!

Snake! Holy Cow!
The deadly Copperhead....

Squeky Beach
Squeky Beach at Wilsons Promontory

Sydney
The mighty Opera House

Bondi Beach
Lots of Jellyfish out to play...!