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Gud'Day Mate!
So after 3 months of excited anticipation we finally made it to Sydney to meet up with Kim's sister, brother in-law and newly born niece - Isabella. The flight from Tasmania was a little bumpy which prompted Kim to suddenly burst into tears, scared that she might never get to see her family. We touched down safely, relieved that we wouldn't have to get another flight for at least 4 months and made our way from the airport to Sydney on the train. As soon as we got off the train at Circular Quays we were knocked back by the sight of Sydney Harbour Bridge on our left and the Sydney Opera House on our right, not to mention the overwhelming heat.
Kim's family live in a suburb called Manly, which is located on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, and requires a ferry ride to get there. We boarded the ferry and soon enough we were steaming past the Opera house en route to Manly getting more excited by the minute. Kim didn't know what to expect as this was the first time she had seen her sister with Izzy and instead of James offering her any
Kim with Izzy - Day 1
Izzy was only 6 months old at this pointreassurance he was trying to drag Kim to the front of the boat to re-enact the scene from Titanic. 30 minutes later we arrived at Manly Wharf and was soon greeted by Sally and the unfamiliar sight of her pushing little Izzy in her push-chair. We had dinner and made our way back to Sally and Simon#s house, where we stayed for about 6 weeks.
Instead of giving you a day-to-day encounter of our stay in Sydney, we thought it might be easier if we broke it up into 'topics' as we have done so much. It is a pretty good summary of what we have both been up to over the last 8 months and as you will read we have had many great experiences and stories to tell you about!
Wildlife One of the first things you notice about Australia is the abundance of wildlife that is flying, swimming or crawling around the gardens, parks and oceans. As you know Australia plays host to the majority of the worlds most deadliest creatures and one evening we were soon reminded of this when Simon's sister Michelle was in the back garden having a smoke and
suddenly came rushing through the doors claiming that a snake (yes, a snake!!) had just crawled through her flip-flop!! We all ran outside and sure enough there was a 2 foot thin snake making its way casually into the grass. We took a photo and later identified it as a Diamond Python, which luckily for Michelle wasn't venomous.
Sally and Simon live in the outskirts of a national park near to Manly, so are quite frequently visited my creepy crawlies (the snake was a first mind you) including a species of spider called Huntsman which are the size of your face. In the 6 weeks that we stayed with them we never saw one in the house but had been told only days before we arrived Sally had to catch one that was about 15cm wide....after this Kim was convinced she was going to get attacked by one and rarely went outside! James on the other hand was kindly 'asked' by Simon to mow the lawn to earn his keep, so after a brief debate and being called a scared girl, James wearily went to work on the garden. Apart from the odd ant bite nothing attacked him, but you
could see in his eyes that he was as scared as Kim....
The wildlife that we were most impressed with was the numerous species of birds that were randomly flying around. Multicoloured parrots, noisy Kookaburras and long nosed Ibis to name a few all lived happily together in the gardens and parks around Sydney. They are obviously very use to the tourists as James demonstrated one day when he started hand feeding two wild Blackbirds in the Botanical Gardens. Kim on the other hand didn't bond that well with them, as one day she was wearing a pair of large silver ear rings that a cheeky Kookaburra found irresistible and swooped down from a tree 20 meters away and tried to rip Kim's ear off, needless to say Kim was left screaming and in a near state of shock. Ha ha!
So from the trees to the sea, we encountered many more weird and wonderful creatures including the Blue bottle Jellyfish (AKA Portuguese Man o' War) who migrate to the shores of Australia over the summer months. These strange beings are not actually jellyfish but are in fact made up of numerous kinds of minute, highly modified individuals that
give the appearance of one single animal. The first time we come upon these creatures was when our friend Jim saw something blue coloured in the sea, and shortly after we heard a local woman calling out to her kids to get out the sea, we wondered what all the fuss was about. The next couple of days we were swimming in the sea and the life guards made an announcement over the loud speaker saying "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are going into Jellyfish season and there is a good chance you may get stung by a bluebottle jellyfish. If you do get stung it will not kill you, but you will be in excruciating pain for one hour and maybe left short of breath....we didn't go in the sea for a month after this!
This year Sydney experienced the highest number of shark attacks in many years, the majority of them occurring on the northern beaches between Manly (where we live) and Palm beach (where Home and Away is filmed). The frequency of the attacks really shocked the locals, and was blamed on the warmer waters attracting the fish closer to the shore and therefore the sharks. On
many occasions the beaches were closed because a shark had been spotted not far out to sea. More recently, a bull shark that had been blamed for attacking a Navy diver (and biting off his hand) had been caught by a fisherman in Sydney Harbour (See picture). So as you can assume it really opened our eyes to the amazing wildlife that is present in Sydney.
Another creature that we were impressed with seeing was the huge fruit bats that live in the trees around Sydney and the surrounding suburbs. Every evening thousands of them fly around the harbour and towards manly where they nest in the trees. We couldn't get over the size of them and if you look at the pictures you'll see why!!
Sydney is blessed to have the finest network of walking tracks in the world. One of the more famous and most scenic routes is the Manly Scenic Walkway, which James chose to bike one Sunday afternoon. Running 16km's and estimated to take about 4-5 hours James had one of the best afternoons biking through forests, along beaches and carrying his bike up a mountain side. When he asked a few people for
Manly Beach
Out place was in the middle and about 30 seconds from the beach! directions he was surprised to hear them say "I have never heard of anyone doing in on a bike before as the terrain is so difficult" obviously this just inspired him and sure enough after 5.5 hrs he returned a little sun burnt telling Kim of the amazing wildlife he had seen along the way, which included huge lizards, snakes and a random 10 inch plastic spider that was hanging from a tree that nearly gave him a heart attack (see the picture).
Living in Manly So after 6 weeks of living with Sally, Simon and Izzy we eventually moved out as we didn't want to out stay our welcome. As Manly is quite a popular destination for travellers and tourists it was quite difficult to find a decent place, but after a week or so of looking on gumtree we found a nice flatshare in Manly centre, 30 seconds away from the beach with a guy called Ed.
Ed was 30 years old, a health freak and a little eccentric, which suited us fine. The flat was above Manly Cycles in the centre of Manly, and situated 30 seconds away from the beach!
Even though
The Gang!
Us with Jim and Helen. our room had no windows, the rest of the flat was very nice and was adequately furnished with beanbags, 52inch widescreen TV and of course a big Bob Marley picture, James felt right at home straight away!
We negotiated the rent to $150 each, which we both agreed was quite expensive but seemed to be the going rate and worked out a lot cheap than staying in a hostel. This included all bills, internet access, and the use of all the facilities on the large balcony including a hammock, large sofas, a brand new huge BBQ and our own avocado tree! Needless to say that we used all these amenities to the maximum, having BBQ's every other day and now James likes to think of himself as the BBQ King.
Manly is located on the Northern Beaches and is flooded with tourists and backpackers every weekend for shopping, chilling on the beach and of course the surf. It seemed that every Australian was into surfing, come rain or shine, day and night they would be down the beach running into sea with their surf boards. We had both wanted to try surfing but never found the motivation to put
on a cold wet suit and continue to fall off the board for several hours. We never really saw what all the fuss was about until recently when we had some high winds resulting in huge waves pounding the coast. Sure enough this brought the well toned surfers out in their thousands and we agreed that we were both quite content with just watching them and taking photos.
After a couple of months we found out that James's university friend; Jim and his girlfriend Helen were travelling around the world (going in the opposite direction to us) and were planning on living in Manly similar to us. Needless to say, we strummed up a good friendship and enjoyed many drunken days and nights chilling out. It was them who introduced us to 'Goon', the cheap-boxed wine infamous among backpackers through Australia!! This was normally the fuel and cause of drunken antics and stinking hangovers! Ha. Our favourite had to be the Pink Shiraz, which was a little more upmarket and a steal at $14.95 for 2 litres. Apparently there is a trick to drinking goon, and after speaking to some young backpackers we found out that you must remove
the wine bag from the box and give it a good slap in order to mix up all the sediment that settles in the bag. Sure enough it did taste ever so slightly better.
As well as many nights out in Manly with Ed and Jim and Helen, we also went met up with Kim's friend Sarah and her cronies who all lived in the notorious part of Sydney city centre called Kings Cross (aka The Cross). King's Cross has for a long time been known to most Australians as the drugs and red light capital of Australia. Most backpackers who have visited Sydney at one time or another have wandered through the Cross if only for a quick look or to blow some of their travel budgets on rare indulgences. In recent years, however, this sleezy pocket of Sydney has started to evolve, albeit ever so slowly, into a richly vibrant part of the city. The strip clubs, topless waitresses, adult bookshops and tacky nightclubs are still there, but small, trendy cafes and classy wine bars have sprung up on the fringes of the Cross that make it the place to be seen on a Friday and Saturday
night. You see some pretty strange sights around the Cross, an area frequented by people from all walks of life and it is not uncommon to spot the occasional 6'2" transvestite tottering down the street in 5 inch heels and caked in makeup.
As you have no doubt scene our body art has been growing and growing and our addiction to tattoo's wasn't helped when we found out that there was a tattoo parlour no less than 5 minutes around the corner of our flat......and sure enough after a few weeks of living in Manly the temptation was too great.
The first new edition was a large Japanese dragon on James's shoulder, which when completed prompted James to start thinking about extending the Japanese theme down his arm into an arm sleeve. After mulling it over for several weeks James decided that he wanted to through with it and after getting Kim's blessing went to discuss it through with Lloyd; our friendly tattooist. For the next couple of months James went to see Lloyd every couple of weeks for a 2 hour session to complete the sleeve.
James wasn't the only one who was accumulating more tattoos on his
body. Kim chose to extend her Egyptian theme down her back and got some additional symbols to accompany the Egyptian eye she already had done in San Francisco, and more recently got a sexy little heart on her wrist.
This should be the end of our tattoo obsession as we are starting to run out of places to get them done and our parents no longer seem shocked when they see new additions to our bodies, which is never a good sign.
Jobs & Accommodation As the travel fund had been wiped out in New Zealand, we thought we better start looking for jobs so that we could afford to move into our own apartment and didn't out stay our welcome at Sally and Simon's (We had been there over 6 weeks!). So for 3 long weeks we poured over the internet, newspapers and post office windows looking for suitable jobs. As we were in Australia on a Working Holiday Visa we could only apply for temping / contracting work ideally in the city. After tweaking our CV's slightly the interviews started coming in.
As we obviously had no appropriate clothing to go march off into the
city for interviews with corporate companies we had to beg, borrow and steal all out clothing and shoes from Sally and Simon. We both looked pretty comical in our borrowed clothes due to the fact that both Sally and Simon are about 4 foot nothing and Simon is slightly 'wider' around the mid-drift compared to James (sorry mate). So Kim's skirt looked more like hotpants and James's trousers looked like baggy clowns trousers that stopped just short of his ankles. Haha
Anyway, in the space of 2 weeks we had both passed interviews and secured jobs in Sydney CBD. Kim was working at Colonial State Investment Bank working within the redemptions department and James was working at KPMG doing IT support.
Prior to James getting the job at KPMG, Simon had fixed him up with an interview at the company he worked for - Catch. The interview had gone very well and in his first week at KPMG he received a call telling him he had got the job! As the wage was over double, he made the wise decision to quit and go work for Catch doing database work. So for 6 months we both worked and saved as
much money as we could afford so that we could top up our travel funds in order to continue on our travels. Kim didn't really liked her job at the bank and found it the most boring thing she had ever done, but James made a lot of friends and really enjoyed working at Catch, which might have something to do with the free pool table, balcony overlooking Sydney Bridge and a fridge full of beer and wine that was consumed every Friday.
After 6 months of living the Ozzy lifestyle it is a little daunting to be getting back on the road and out of our routines again. No doubt after a few weeks of lying on the beach we would have completely forgot about work and responsibilities.
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Jimma
non-member comment
Simply delish!
Word to you crazy kids, some awesome photos festooning your blogarge there guys! Hope your loving the east coast and finding to be as chilled out and cool as we did. Take care and we shall raise a glass of goon in your honor ;)