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Published: December 1st 2009
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I landed in Sydney after a 9 hour flight from Hong Kong and so that marked the end of my time in Asia and the start of Australasia (or Oceania if you want to call it that). Even as I checked in to my hostel at 8am, I could tell it was going to be a hot day which seemed like being back to normal after the brief few days of cold in Hong Kong. The main thing which I had to adjust to at first when arriving in Australia was the prices of everything. I've been so used to ridiculous cheap accommodation and food in south-east Asia that it seems like everything is too pricey. Due to the terrible exchange rate against the pound at the moment, it does seem like some things are very overpriced here, for instance, a chocolate bar costs 2 pounds and you really have to look hard to find a bottle of water for less than about 2 pounds as well. To make this even more annoying when you go into a corner shop or convenience store there are no prices on anything in there so you have no idea how much you're going to
pay! I was having trouble trying to live cheaply at the start but after a few days I'd managed to figure out the cheapest places to buy everything and so far I've been able to get by on a reasonable budget - but it's a lot of effort and requires a lot of discipline!
I only spent 3 days in Sydney but in that time I think I saw a lot of what the city has to offer. I did the usual walk around the harbour front one day to see the opera house and the harbour bridge which was good. There was a huge thunderstorm that started when I was in that area and it looked like the opera house got struck a few times - I tried to get a photo of the lightning striking it but I couldn't get it (a lot of other people were trying to do the same thing, not sure if anyone was able to get a photo of it). After the storm had ended, it became really windy for about 20 minutes or so and as I was walking down a street in the city centre, one of those big metal
barriers they put around the outside areas of Starbucks came flying towards me pretty fast. I was able to dive out the way of it but it caught my foot and cut it a little bit - didn't do too much damage though and it's fine now. Good job I saw it coming towards me though because it could of been bad if it hit me properly! Whilst in Sydney, I also went to check out Bondi beach. It was a weekend day that I went so it was quite busy there, it was a really hot day as well which I guess would of added to the numbers. It surprised me how cold the water was, I was expecting it to be fairly warm but it was absolutely freezing - it was like being at Scarborough!
After Sydney the next stop was Melbourne. I took a night bus there which took about 12 hours and it was a fairly comfortable journey compared to some of the coaches I've been on in the last few months. I was expecting Melbourne to be similar to Sydney but it seemed like a very different city. The city is very compact and has a grid layout which makes it very easy to find your way around. Most of the outskirts of the city is parkland and there is a huge amount of green land all around the place which I wasn't expecting - it must be one of the most green cities in the world. I also noticed that Melbourne seems to be a very sport-orientated place as all the locals are sport crazy. Very close to city centre there's quite a few big sports stadiums including the big cricket ground and the Albert Park grand prix track is also very near - not on the outskirts of the city like most places put them. I read that it was voted as one of the most live-able cities in the world recently and I can understand why - it just seems like a nice place to be.
From Melbourne I had a one night stop over in Adelaide before making my way into the outback and I'm currently in Alice Springs, but I'll be writing about all that next time. Bye!
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