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Hi im sorry i havent written for so long but time has gotten away from me here! However as requested by my dear mother i will update today what i can before i go off into the back of beyond!!
I shall start with sydney. I arrived at 6.25am filled my arrival card out in the loo as united (rubbish airline no free stuff!) ran out of then by the time they got 2 row in front of me and got my visa stamp (am now temporary resident in australia - check me out!). got picked up from airport and flight was all ok and on time so no dilemmas.
In brief met and chatted to people who i am staying with and went out to botanical gardens where there are bats in the trees in daylight!! and cockatoos and spiders and the like. Then walked to sydney opera house 4 some pix and then to circular quay to get on a harbour cruise and around by shark island and fort dennison. v beautiful and sunny day if a little nippy. had a bit of jet lag that first day and the whole ground felt as if it was moving although i persevered and went to bed at normal time after much more chatting to people (i'll talk to the wall me).
Went to Bondi beach the next day and then did coastal beach walk to clovelly along past 7 year beach, tamarama beach (glamarama!), also past a man who lives in a cave on bondi beach randomly and is allowed to do so! had a bbq at clovelly beach but it was pretty cold and i couldnt be bothered to play vollyball. went to maccy d's 4 dinner and had a 'mcoz burger'! its the same as normal burger but with beetroot in it! went to pub for a couple schooners (what they call glasses here a bit smaller than pints so beer doesnt get warm!) that evening we had to have heaters all around us as it was freezing! the strongbow here is totally different its so sweet and ive decided i hate tooheys and vb (the most popular beers) theyre horrible!
So much disrupted sleep in this hostel (surfside, coogee) as in 20 bed conjoining dorm and everyone is always coming in at all hours and the restaurant downstairs plays dance music i can hear it in my bed and the big mcdonalds sign glaring at me all the time! nothing like waking up to smell sausage and egg mcmuffin in the morning, i swear this place is like the mcdonalds hostel!!
The next day i got my bank card and stuff and registered at medicare and went to travellers at work etc. Then went to cargo bar at darling harbour for free food and champers with oz intro gang! I think it was almost the best free pizza ive ever eaten! That evening i was the ONLY person in my 10 bed room who didnt go out...guess what! i got woken up at godknows what hour!!! its all fun and games really...! im getting used to sleeping anywhere with any level of noise at any time of day these days.
On the thursday i went to taronga zoo on the other side of the harbour, the sky was bleak and pretty soon it was torential rain consistently for about 4 hours, luckily i had brought my trusty umbrella so i didnt have to look like a weirdo in a poncho (yet!). saw bears, koalas (not allowed to hold them in new south wales so when i go back to queensland i will), kangaroos, wallabys, dingos, lions, tigers and wombats(so cute! look like huge hamsters with little piggy faces!) the highlights of the zoo had to be when this evil looking emu chased rob or when this gorilla lunged at stuart and we all freaked it was hilarious! I went out with some of my dormies (people in my dorm) to the pub and i cant remember what time i got in!
I had started to feel ill after the zoo but on friday it broke out into full blown cold/tonsillitus (or was it a hangover?!) it was awful! i stayed in bed pretty much the whole day apart from getting up to go to mcdonalds and use the internet.
Saturday was windy and raining like ive never seen (cyclone on its way) and we had blue mountains tour booked, i still felt awful (cant have been hangover then!) and didnt really want to go but our tour guide jimmy was so happy all the time it was infectious! I really enjoyed the trip, i had to buy a poncho (sad act!) which i ripped doing an hours walk around the misty blue mountains rainforest, stopped in glenbrook, also a place with the coolest sweet shop ever! and a chocolate factory. saw katooba falls (just) and the three sisters. also saw a sydney funnel web spider (and she was home too!) and got face painted with ochre and went up death defying vertical train back up mountain! however my camera ran out of battery and the girl who i went with says she will email them to me but that was weeks ago now but i think i will go again when its not winter to see more!
That evening i went on the route 69 bar crawl with everyone to coogee palace hotel on the funbus (bus of hell) to the gaff, then scubar, then side bar, then finally empire. everyone was so drunk it was hilarious but i couldnt get drunk as dosed up on painkillers and still not well!! got free t shirt tho and apparently there are pix online somehwere!!
on sunday and girl called nikki and i booked flights to cairns on a whim to go towards good weather as its diabolical in sydney at the moment (although winter is supposed to only last 10 weeks here - bit like out summer eh!) found out a few of the guys (chris, dan and ryan 'scouse') are going to cairns on same flight but staying in diff hostel (asylum and we are satying at gilligans) to nikki and i so thats cool. went to centrepoint tower (the revloving one - my table kept running away from me!) for dinner that evening had about 5 plates from the buffet and ate camel (disgusting!) amd kangaroo (quite nice actually). i have learnt from that evening never ever to eat oysters....
Moved out of surfside the next day and got bus (crazy foreign man shouted 'americanos!' at me and my friends for taking out backpacks on the bus!) to wake up! hostel next to central station which is much nicer and has a proper tv room with cushions everywhere and a lift so i cant get lost (how is it i can navigate some of the biggest cities in the world yet i always get lost in whatever hostel in staying in!?). i spent most of the day in between the bar and washing everything in my backpack because somehow it all stank even though some of it i hadnt worn yet!
the next day nikki and i walked up george street, bumped into our other roomies chris who was doing his rsa ($80 course you have to do to work behind a bar in nsw) that day and then we walked across the harbour bridge and back and got a ferry from circular quay to manly (palm beach is but a bus ride away from here - for those who dont know thats summer bay) and had a mooch round and got city rail (double decker train that goes underground a little bit, reminds me more of the DLR in london) back to central station. it was raining all day so not so good!! headed back to hostel and got ready to go out to world bar in kings x which wendy reccomended for selling cocktails in teapots which you drink out the spout (genius!).
The next day we flew to cairns with jet star in the afternoon.... sunshine here we come?!?!?!
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