We're having our last night in Sydney tonight before setting off on our own to head down to Melbourne where we will be meeting Mandy from home and hopefully completing our pilgramage to the neighbours set! We did actually watch it the other night - for those of you from home, all I can say is it all gets a tad weird! and my prophecies havent come true, yet...(housemates should know what i mean!)

We did manage to fit a lot in whilst here in sydney, but it still feels like wev barely scratched the surface! For example, we havent even made it to bondi beach yet, though a combination of trying to buy a car, and staying a bit further out of the city, has lead to that - all in good time though! In the week before this one Ryan and I explored on our own, masterfully negotiating the cityrail system using our amazingly useful weekly travelpasses - for any visitor, these are ace, including ferries, trains and buses. We visited manly beach with all the kids about to go back to school, did the aquarium, chinese garden of friendship, toured the opera house and went to the zoo for 5 hrs - pretty busy couple of days! Each of these was worth visiting, especially the zoo! We saw platypuses (or platypi, who knows?!), kangaroos, emus who were way too friendly, and the infamous redback! euch. we also visited the jenolan caves, where ryan had a parrot fly onto his back whilst attempting to eat his lunch...too funny to explain!

We spent this last week investigating and finally buying a car to aid our travels! it was really daunting, but we think wev found a good deal. we went through travellers-mate, a backpacker-designed car dealer, and the car (a 1994 ford falcon sedan, shiny white!) seems to be a pretty good deal - $2999 including a years oz-wide warranty, rego until end of aug 2007, a 40% buyback written guarentee and camping gear. we probably couldve got it cheaper going private, but the reassurance of knowing the car has been serviced, and the warranty etc was worth it for us.

We spent this last weekend up at the central coast with some family friends of ryans relations who we are still with. They went completely out of their way to welcome us, with bbq's, and even some pommie neighbours fromliverpool and southhampton to make us feel right at home!! we spent the day no sta at The Australian Reptile Park, which was probably the best attraction that wev been to yet, for a mixture of reasons! First of all, its a lot smaller, dealing exclusively with australian wildlife, and also its the stuff that every tourist has on their checkoff list of to dos! We spent the day namely watching the shows, one of which was one of the scariest experiences iv had! It was the spider show, which focussed on the sydney funnel-web. The show area is about 15m sq at least, andyou stand around the edges. The guy doing the show was excellent, and explained about the difference between male and female funnelwebs, what to do if ur bitten etc, which was all v useful. the problem came when he had a funnelweb in an open pot to take around the onlookers. Initially i was fine, however when he came close he mustve seen the scared look on my face, because he then pushed the pot towards me, asking if i wanted a closer look. This illicited a very girly "NO!" from me as i rang backwards, much to the amusementof ryan and the family we were with (except shelley, who understood my fear, god bless her!). Anyhow, embarrasement over, the rest of the day was absolutely great - we saw how to catch a funnelweb (as if we would), and stroked a koala, wombat, kangaroo and emu, saw an echidna that poked its tounge out at ryan, dingoes, and alligator and crocodile feeding! And wer still alive!

Tomorrow we head off for melbourne along the coast road, before starting to look for work. Fingers crossed the car will be ok - anyone watched wolf creek recently??!!!!