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As we live 2 minutes from the beach, it would be crime for us to not take full advantage and swim in the sea every spare minute we have. Unfortunately, we are pretty guilty..! The life of a backpacker consists of some serious job hunting (hello gumtree!), some serious sight seeing/exploring, some serious budget food shopping and some serious time off to do absolutely nothing. We've all worked so hard at home to muster the money needed for this kind of trip and quite honestly, we deserve a break! So when we do get some spare time in between all our internet searching, bus hopping and cheap food eating, we've only made it to the beach a handful of times!
So last Saturday (24th nov) Dino, Nat and I decided it was time to hit Bondi Beach, hard!We covered ourselves in sun cream, made sandwiches and were at the bus stop in record time!Though we may have been super organised and eager to hit the beach early...we totally forgot to check bus times and ended up waiting almost half on hour - such rookies!We eventually arrived to a crowded Bondi beach and met Olivia and a couple of her friends. We spent a couple hours tanning then headed out for a walk from Bondi to Coogee, a popular 4 mile walk that goes along the coast and passes a couple beaches and bays. First stop was Tamarama beach, a cute small beach where Olivia and I played in the sea with our under water camera whilst the others recovered in the shade. It was ice creams all round then off along the walk to the next beach, Bronte, which was larger and had a great chilled out vibe to it. There were families having bbqs and games of cricket on the grass, and there was a pretty cool natural sea pool. Olivia was able to cross "swimming in a natural outdoor pool" off her bucket list and we took some more silly underwater photos before heading home - it had been a loooong day and we were getting hungry!We still had a good mile to do through Clovelly bay,where I jumped in and swam across the bay whilst the girls walked all the way around, kindly carrying my stuff and met me the other side, thank girls!Im such a water baby, even at 5pm and after a full day at the beaches, I still couldn't resist a swim. The beach life is definitely the one for meeee :). Clovelly is a popular snorkelling place with lots of fish, who are clearly used to people, and a huge blue fish swam a little to close to me, spooking me and causing me to swim like a mad person. Some woman looked at me as if I was crazy so clearly Im the only one who is creeped out by big fish! Might need to work on this fish issue if I want to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef! We got home, met Rachel and Georgie for some drinks after dinner and our Saturday night consisted of hanging out in our back garden, imitating the Aussie accent and crashing a house warming party.
Sunday, it was again up early for us as after swimming at Clovelly yesterday, I wanted a snorkel and mask to investigate these huge blue fish that creeped me out! I got a good deal in our local dive shop and us three headed to Clovelly, where a lot of locals seemed to be, which was refreshing as Sydney centre is tourist central!We made friends with some aussies, who even made us a delish baguette after Nadine hinted how hungry she was (crafty Dino!), and spent the afternoon chatting with us and sharing local info. It wasn't long till I was jumping in the water, eager for some snorkelling action!I taught Nat and Nads how to use the snorkel before we were all taking it in turns swimming around. This guy kept tapping the rocks,which was weird, but then all the fish were coming closer so clearly it was working!He saw I had a camera in my hand and started coaxing the fish to swim near me. this was alright till one pretty much was tried to sit on my shoulder and I completely freaked! I managed to get water in my snorkel in my panic, swallowed a lot of water and made a bee line for poor Nadine waiting on the rocks. She looked at me as though she thought I'd seen a shark whilst the guy was floating behind me laughing, calling out promises like It won't bite me. After that little drama, we decided to play in the waves, teaching Nat how to dodge the big ones as she's still a little wary of the sea. The day ended with some more snorkelling (without any large fish near), a BBQ at the beach with some people in our building and hanging out on the grass in front of the beach.
PERFECT WEEKEND :)
Monday meant down to some serious business. Nat went to Sydney centre to sort out some job stuff, Nadine did some hard core job hunting and I went to my induction for my NEW JOB. I have a part time job in a shoe store at a shopping centre 15 mins on a bus away, and the induction was fun. I've now worked a couple shifts, and the hardest part of the job is how friendly Australian people are. I LOVE it, almost everyone that walks through the doors of the store smiles, responds with more than a "oh..hey" when I greet them, and half the time I get stuck in a conversation about anything from shoe sizes to buying hot dogs (it happened). So this doesn't sound hard at all, but as someone who enjoys talking, its so difficult when talking to a friendly customer who isnt going to buy shoes to just end the conversation. In England, I can't remember many shopping experiences that involved a conversation with a shop assistant, and very few smiles as I walked into the store. So after working a couple shifts, I've spoken to more Aussies than I have in the whole month I've been here, made friends with the girls I work with and they even enjoy laughing whilst teaching me to imitate the Aussie way of saying words.
FYI - water is pronounced warda and Coogee is actually said Coodg-ee !!
This week I have also:
-been working on my tan
-dodged a seagull attack
-been to a meditation sesh (story for another blog post!)
-explored Sydney some more
-been for a morning swim in the natural sea pool
-seen the sea turn red from seaweed (Google bondi beach closed seaweed)
-spent too much time laughing at the weird food in Aussie supermarkets
- comments
debbie tomlinson Dear Claire, How about sending some pics from underwater camera....but this time keep your eyes open. Love Dad
julia Claire, your blog is 5 star! not 1 star, stupid rating thing went wrong. glad to hear you are doing well. Keep on blogging.
debbie tomlinson it refuses to get to 5 star rating so you will have to do with a 3 start!xxx