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Published: April 5th 2011
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A couple of weeks ago Seth sent me to his friend Jeff, who lives in Sydney, Australia. Luckily I arrived just in time for Jeff and his friends to take me on a roadtrip. We had four days to explore places in New South Wales. New South Wales, or NSW, is the name of the state that Sydney is in (a bit like Dorset is the county Stalbridge is in).
Day 1
The first day we went to the Northern Beaches which are just up the coast from Sydney. It took us a long time to drive there though because we kept getting lost trying to get onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but it was exciting once we were driving over the big bridge. We stopped at Palm Beach. This beach is famous as it is where the TV programme Home and Away is filmed. It looked smaller than it does on the TV. We didn't see any famous actors there.
At Palm Beach there is a big hill with a lighthouse on it. We climbed up to the lighthouse. It was a hard walk. Along the way we saw a rock that looked like a huge crocodile's
mouth. Me and my new friend Frankie climbed in to the mouth! We walked through the Australian bush, which is their word for the forest and plants and countryside. All the trees look a bit different to the trees I have seen in the UK. Some of them have big spikey seed pods and fluffy red flowers. At the top of the hill we could see a really long way. We could see Palm Beach on one side and Pittwater on the other (Pittwater is an inlet of the sea). After our walk we were tired and hungry so we went for lunch.
In the afternoon we drove through the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. It is a National Park because the countryside is very special and beautiful and needs to be protected. It has a strange sounding name to us because it was named by the Aboriginal people who first lived in Australia. They have been in Australia for 50,000 years! The Aboriginal people have their own languages so the names of places in Australia are sometimes in these languages and sometimes in English. The park is full of trees and lots of inlets of the sea. It was
very pretty to drive through and made me feel a very long way away from the big city of Sydney.
Day 2 and 3
I met some more new friends today so it was a bit squashed in the car. This time we drove south from Sydney. We drove along the coast road and saw some nice views of cliffs and beaches. We went along a bit of road that stuck out above the sea on stilts! We were in the car a long time today because we got lost again trying to get out of Sydney and then my friends kept stopping for food. They like to eat lots of nice food!
Eventually we arrived at Jervis Bay - you say it like Jarvis though with an 'a' sound rather than 'e'. Jervis Bay is a big dent in the NSW coastline with lots of beautiful beaches and national park with wild bush. The beaches have very very white sand that makes your eyes hurt when the sun shines on it. We walked to lots of different beaches, some had really big waves coming in. One of the beaches had squeaky sand! My friends found it
amazing, they were dancing and jumping all over the beach and the sand made this squeaking noise every time their feet landed in it, it was very funny to watch and listen to!
We stayed overnight at Jervis Bay at a campsite. We didn't stay in a tent though, instead we had a cabin with a little kitchen and a bunk bed for each of us. My friends cooked a big feast on the barbie. This is another funny Australian word I have learnt on my travels here. They don't mean Barbie like the doll! In Australia a barbie is their name for a barbeque. They love to cook food outside here and luckily it is usually warm and sunny so you can have a barbie most of the year.
The next morning we drove around the Booderee National Park. We saw lots of signs warning us to look out for kangaroos. Frankie and Kate took me to get a photo of a kangaroo sign and our other friends in the car saw a kangaroo hop across the road right behind us! Then some more kangaroos jumped across the road right in front of us as we were
driving along, which was very exciting. And then we saw three kangaroos when we were walking back from a beach. It was brilliant because they were not scared of us and just went on eating the grass while we took photos!
Kangaroos are amazing animals. They have big back legs and a big, strong tail and they jump along on their back legs and use their tail for balance. They are marsupials which means they have pouches in their bellies where they keep their babies safe until they are big enough to jump around and feed on their own.
Day 4
We drove to the Blue Mountains today. The mountains are two hours drive west of Sydney. They are a very famous sight to see when you are in Sydney and my friends had all been told they had to go see them. Unfortunately it was raining when we got to the mountains and there was so much cloud and mist we couldn't see anything at all! It was like the weather in the UK in winter. All we could see was white cloud everywhere around us. It was cold and wet so we had a hot
chocolate and then a picnic in the car. But the cloud still didn't go away and the rain was heavier so we went home. Hopefully some of my friends will take me back there on a nicer day as I would like to see the mountains properly.
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Not flat Seth
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Thank you!
Thank you for looking after Flat Seth. It looks like he is having a really great time. I like the picture of him with the kangaroo and with the clouds-he will think he is in England with all that cloud! I am surprised he is still flat after eating all that food!