After a tearful reunion at Sydney airport, Ma, Pa, Tom and I all travelled back to my apartment and had dinner while watching Tom’s daredevil skydiving DVD and the home recording of my leaving party which Mum hadn’t seen till this point, she claims she was never that drunk-just slightly tipsy although the video recordings prove otherwise……….! Am now fully into the swing of Sydney working life, the company I am temping for have a huge property network, I am in the ‘residential communities’ marketing department and loving the free juices, biscuits, sweets and fresh fruit that is constantly in supply in the kitchen (in case your wondering, yes of course I am still stick then, if I turn to the side you’ll miss me etc.) although it is very different and not nearly as good as Penguin which I miss a lot (I’m sure that’s not allowed for me to miss my job!!).

Our first day trip together involved (bickering) and driving out to Palm Beach, for those of you unaware this is the beach setting for the Australian soap ‘Home and Away’ where we also got to see the surf club-with the sign ‘Proprietor A. Stewart’- how cool that Alf Stewart actually exists!(ha ha, I know he doesn’t really…) And also the kiosk used, in fact we even had a drink in the kiosk but unfortunately there was no filming to be seen (probably a good thing as I didn’t really have the time to star as an extra!) Pushing on we arrived several hours later in the famous Hunter Valley with our pallets ready and waiting for the wine tasting. Enroute to the first estate (Bimbadgen) Nicola spotted a group of kangaroo’s lazing around in the bush, we all jumped out and Tom made them skip along for a great photo op! Stumbling along we went onto 3 more wineries (Tamburlaine, Peterson’s champagne house and Mistletoe) and did some chocolate tasting too-unfortunately Dad felt the need to take the ‘scenic route’ home which consisted of bendy bumpy roads in our small hire car with barely any suspension! Next up was ‘Good Vibrations’ festival, Tom (slightly worse for wear after arriving home at 8am v.v.drunk) Nicola and I all went to the all day festival, had an amazing time in the hot hot sun, dancing, drinking and partying away-a surprise performance from Snoop Dogg in the evening was brilliant and the beastie boys and London electricity had wicked last sets, at which point we were all dancing like crazy people with glow sticks and fluorescent jackets and wigs-ha, no not really but we were giving it some wellie on the dance floor! We took off the next day dropping Tom at the airport enroute to Nelson Bay in Port Stephens famous for the beautiful wild, bottle nose dolphins swimming in the area. Had a lovely couple of days relaxing, was so picture postcard with white sand and turquoise sea and Mum even managed to squeeze in 4 dives while we were there (and saw a massive Shark, not quite Jaws style though!), we went out on a cruise in the afternoon to see the guaranteed dolphins and in true ‘Dent’ luck we did not see 1 flipper-they must of seen us and decided to hide or go for a snooze, we were given another complimentary cruise which we did the following morning and got to see lots of them swimming and jumping along with the boat. That evening we returned to a massive event in Sydney both the Queen Mary 2 and QE2 HUGE cruise ships were arriving on the same day-the traffic was gridlocked and the atmosphere electric, everyone was so hyped up about the event-I went out on my friend Dan’s boat to watch the QE2 arrive and honk horn’s with it’s big sister when passing and then watched a massive fireworks display. Was a fantastic night-the harbour was full of boats, it looked busier than both NYE and Australia Day on the water-everyone had their lights on and cheering (the copious amounts of food and wine being served also helped things run v.smoothly!).

Mum and dad have now left me in Sydney and moved onto Melbourne, was very sad to wave them off in the taxi this morning…..sniff sniff.

Ooh and just before the family arrived we squeezed in Nicola’s birthday present from me, the Opera performance of Sweeney Todd, at the famous Sydney Opera House-what an experience after a particularly heavy night out the previous night and 3 hours sleep before work that day was almost convinced I was going to fall asleep and not be that interested but was the complete opposite, absolutely loved it and am now a converted fan of Opera, especially as we got to dress up and wear our best dresses!