Byron Bay, Melbourne and Sydney

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After leaving Brisbane we went on to Byron Bay, finally leaving Queesnland for New South Wales. Byron has the reputation for a being a hippy hideout, when back in the 70s it was transformed from a little town into a early backpacker haven. There is an awesome beach, which seems to stretch for miles, and we did a walk that went up the cliffs up to the lighthouse, which gave us great views across the beach. The weather wasn't too great whilst we were in Byron, lots of rain, but on the last day, just before we caught our night bus on to Sydney airport, we managed a few hours of sunbathing!

Because our flight out of Australia was from Sydney, we decided to fly first to Melbourne and then get back to Sydney later on.

We flew into a tiny airport in Melbourne Avalon, and we were met there by Peter, Claire's brother's Dad, who we were staying with. We went for a nice coastal drive for a few hours, catching a ferry across a bay south of Melbourne en route back to the house.

The next day Claire and I went out to explore the city, we stopped by Federation Square, Claire did some shopping, and we had a couple of coffees, as the rain just kept on falling! We also went on a tour of the massive MCG, a place I've always wanted to go to. That night though we experienced a Aussie Rules Football game, and we both loved it. The game was between Essendon and West Coast, played at the Telstra Dome which holds 52,000 and has a retractable roof, which was on. Before the game we went to a restaurant at the stadium, which looked out on to the pitch. The game itself was completely alien to us when we first started watching it, but we picked up the rules fairly quickly, and enjoyed a Essendon win, which was Peter's team.

At the weekend we went to the Art Gallery of Victoria at Federation Square, then in the evening myself and Peter went to the Telstra Dome again to watch Australia play Ireland in the Rugby, which was a good warm up for next weeks game that we are going to...All Blacks vs. England.

On Sunday we went to Ballarat, a old gold mining town south of Melbourne, and to Sovereign Hill, which is a recreation of the old town. That was a cool experience, we also went to some old sweet shops there and saw how the gold was mined and the techniques that they used.

On Monday we said goodbye to Peter and Melbourne and went on to Sydney. We were met at the airport by Rachel and Steve, and the next few days we were to be completely treated. We were taken to Circular Quay for dinner next to the Harbour Bridge in a really nice restaurant called Wolfies, where I had a mixed grill which included Crocodile Meat and Kangaroo Steak...an experience itself, but it tasted so good!!!

The next day we went and did a tour of the Sydney Opera House, it was so surreal seeing the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, I think its one of those places you always see but you never think you'll have the opportunity to go there.
We went to a chocolate cafe (thats right!) called Max Brenners, which was really cool, then went to the cinema to sit in a VIP area called 'La Premiere' where you sit on sofas, order meals, drink wine, whilst watching the movie! That was amazing too.

Our last day in Sydney, Claire and Rachel went back to the cinema (in normal seat this time!) to watch Sex and the City, I missed that one out! In the evening we went to Doyles seafood restaurant at Watsons Bay which has a really good reputation, and Steve is one of the managers there. Recent customers include David Beckham, Russell Crowe, Michael Parkinson(a regular!) and Daniel Craig. We had some amazing seafood there, and lots of extras, which were thrown in for free, thanks to Steve!

We were sad to leave Rachel and Steve and Sydney, we had such an amazing time there but it brought Australia to a really good end...then, early Thursday morning we flew to Christchurch.

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