I just thought that I'd leave a message before I start my trek tomorrow. Me and Megan spent the last two days doing some sightseeing, and getting over jetlag.

The flight itself went really well, the food was great, I managed to nap, and though the movie system broke-down, some Kiwi toddlers kept making funny faces at me, so I managed to keep myself amused making stupid faces back. We also started over our descent over Central Australia, around Uluru and the surrounding desert. It was beautiful, and officially the thing that I'm most excited about. Dozens of shades of red, rust, gold and umber spread out as far as the eye could see, with strange craters and outcrops of rock.

Sydney itself is really pretty cool. Well, except that it's currently hosting the Catholic World Youth Day, and we keep getting confused for lost pilgrims, which is not the best feeling. We went to visit the Opera House and Harbour Bridge yesterday, which are conveniently right next to each other. We also took a wander through the Botanical Gardens, which were full of tropical birds just flying and squawking overhead. We also saw the largest bats I've seen, about the size of crows as they came out to hunt for the evening.

Today, we went to on a lunch cruise round the harbour, enjoying the good weather and great food. Everyone else on the boat was from a Korean tour guide, so I think the stewardess took pity on us, and made sure we got good seats, and was really friendly. The best part of today though, was going to Sydney Zoo, which was freaking awesome. As well as kangaroos, wombats (which kind of look like guinea pigs with a pig nose), wallabies, there were also some really weird animals (the duck billed platypus is proof that whoever is responsible for creation has a sense of humour!). We also got to see some of the snakes and spiders that I really do not want to come across later on, so we all went to the bookshop and read about how to avoid them. I fully intend to be as loud as possible whenever I'm in the bush to scare them away. I'm that intimidating.

I better go turn in, got a lovely early start in the morning!