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Hi there peeps!
How's it goin? Hope all's grand with you all my lovelies. Well comme d'hab, I'm behind with the blog - oops! There's lots to fill you in on so here goes:
Three wks ago I left Melb. Was very sad to leave my wonderful surrogate family The Grohers in Melbourne and I miss them lots. It really felt like a second home. Was v nervous to head off again, it was almost as bad as my feeling of leaving the UK way back in November. A night bus journey later, those anxious feelings passed and excitement had taken over as I started on yet another part of this wicked trip - Gudday Sydney!
Hmmm Sydney is not as great as the mighty Melbourne. Fact. Even though I only spent 5 days there, I saw all I needed to see and made my judgement, I have (I've become a little Star Wars fan since living with Nathan at the Grohers - Yoda rules) They say it's one or the other here in Oz and in my opinion Melbourne ROCKS! Darling Harbour, The Rocks, The Bridge, Opera House, Circular Quay, Botanical Gardens are all very stunning don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed discovering everthing and was amazed at the sky scape and the birds eye view from the sky tower but it's just a nice city to visit. The Blue Mountains are wicked though! Absolutely stunning views and did you know, they get their blue haze from a very fine oily mist given off by the Eucalyptus trees. Did lots of hiking and took the steepest railway in the World back to the top of one the mountains.
At this point I hadn't really started travelling on my own as I met up with some mates from Melbourne who'd moved on before me and also Janina, another childhood friend from Africa! (truly wonderful catching up with her) Had a coffee with a kiwi experience mate and visited Bondai beach, where all these Japanese tourists insisted taking pictures of me : s Maybe they thought I was Annie Mac again!? hehe Took a ferry ride to Manly and visited my old school friend Chris who works in a tres trendy cocktail bar looking out onto the bay. FIT FIT FIT cocktails - on a par with those Caipirinhas in Brazil! Oh and get this.....shared a room with 4 Liverpudilans, one of whom I went to junior school with!!!! And the other 3 were friend with all my old work colleagues. This World is indeed smaller than I thought.
Took the overnight bus to Byron Bay, a lovely chilled surfy place. It was a wee bit chilly to get into the sea so just relaxed on the beach and headed up to a lighthouse for a good lookout over the bay. Stayed at a really cool hippy place called the Arts Factory which has it's own talking pet cockatoo who wandered around the place amusing guests; and a super trendy art house cinema which I took advantage of.
Next stop was Brisbane where I met up with an old friend from back when I used to live in Toulouse! Was great fun to catch up but a rather odd feeling reminiscing about the old times. Dan and Christie, his girlfriend showed me around and took me to Surfers Paradise one day which has the most amazing beach ever but I wasn't too keen on the big high rise buildings and commercialism of it all. Back in Brisbane we visited the lagoon in the evening, a man made beach along the river side. Christie and I took a very scenic but chilly ferry ride back to Morningside and tried desperately to capture Brisbane at night but the camera was having non of it as the ferry was moving too fast.
Christie and I headed to Australia Zoo the next day - Steve Irwin's enormous creation - crickey! Had a really excellent day and I have to admit, it's probably the best zoo I've ever been to. You can tell that the Irwin family really care about animals just by looking at their enclosures - they're so green and spacious. There were some wonderful tributes to Steve, made me feel quite emotional. BUT... the BEST thing ever was that the rangers had cute stocky little wombats on leads so you could pet and stoke them - brilliant just brilliant! Also got to feed an elephant (slimeeeeeey), hold an aligator, feed cheeky little roos, goats, pigs, sheep and saw two tigers play fighting nad crocs being snap snapping away whislt being fed. I was in my element! On the way back to Brisbane Christie took me a very steep hike up Wildhorse Mountain to catch the sunset over the Glasshouse Mountains, lovely silouettes but came away with about 7 new mozzie bites.
Noosa was next - one of my favourite places so far. A region of beautiful fresh water inlets and rivers, with stunning beaches and a rainforesty national park. Place was scattered with crazy wild turkeys, bright white pelicans, reg+green galaars and herons. Loved it, just loved it. Plus the weather was FAB.
Hervey Bay (Fraser Island) :
After all 4wheel camping action I headed North to 1770 + Agens Water, the most chilled out place I've been to in Australia! Gorgeous bay, teeny sleepy town, lots of hammocks, reading books and watching dvds.
So now I'm a further 10hrs North in Airlie Beach. It's considerably warmer but very humid and wet :-( I really don't know what's going on with this freakish wet stormy weather (altho I managed to miss all the storms thankfully). The Aussie Winter is supposed to be the dry season. Shouldn't complain though cos they are in the middle of a terrible drought so hurrah for their land but poo poo for my tan! Meeting a friend I met in New Zealand tonight for dinner and my Fraser Island tour ppl are here too so looking forward to our sailing trip round the Whitsundays tomorrow.....even if it is wet, we'll still have a fun!
Lots of love and hugs to everyone. Missing you all lots, Soph xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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