Gi’day to all our family & friends in good old rainy Scotland (sorry couldn’t help but slip that one in!!).

Last installment we left you just before Christmas so we will start the next update from Christmas Eve………………..

Packed up the cars and headed off bright and early to Pearl Bay and our holiday home for the next 3 days….skies didn’t look too promising but hey it was Christmas Eve and nothing could spoil that!! Got to the beach house and unloaded the cars…..oh and what a totally amazing place, it was like a tardis…..had the obligatory beer or 2…..then headed down to the beach to get to know the place. All of us headed down and it took us all of 2 minutes to get there….sweet…..managed to get halfway up the beach before we had to make our way back as the Scottish weather was kicking in and the heavens opened!

Due to the sheet rain we all had to stay indoors on Christmas Eve which meant only one thing……much drinking……and more drinking…..a few games….oh and more drinking!!! We managed to pull ourselves together and made spag bol’s for everyone’s dinner (that’s all 13 of us) and then commenced the shots and a bit of a competition on sing star (Frankie thought he won but we have some bad news for you my luv, you don’t take after your namesake…Frank Sinatra!).

Christmas day was a bit surreal…we all waited until everyone was up, popped the bubbly and sat together and opened all our Crimbo pressies along with our Secret Santa gifts we all got each other….have to say that Steven topped that with his gift for Sarah…take a look at the pictures and you will understand…will make your eyes water!!

Spoke to both our families both in the morning and at night to make sure we wished each other Merry Christmas when it was Crimbo Day in the UK and in Oz. Emotional as you can imagine but we have many years to come of family Christmas Dinners.

Spent most of Christmas day baking ourselves on the beach along with some beach cricket and Lummy and Gary acting extremely grown up with their new toys….radio controlled cars….ended up in disaster as Frankie managed to burn one out and Gary drove his straight into the sea!! Headed back later on to sit at the pool and start our next boozing sessions and then we all pulled together to get our Christmas BBQ ready. Obviously the boys were on the BBQ and then girls were doing the rest of the stuff, turkey, ham, potatoes, sauces, salads, prawns……completely different from a Crimbo dinner at home….. oh and the grub was amazing, can’t beat an Ozzie Barbie!!

After dinner it was much of the same, drinking and games and more drinking….seems there was a pattern to our time away!!!!!!

Boxing Day was much of the same as we sunned ourselves on the beach and stuffed our faces and more booze, had quite a sensible night for us lot as we settled down with some vino and a few DVD’s……just as well as we had to tidy the house the following day and you can imagine the amount of empties we had to deal with along with cleaning up after 13 people!!!!

So that was Christmas over and we have to thank everyone there for a totally awesome time………..we never thought we would be experiencing Christmas in Oz with so many friends and in such amazing surroundings!

Next we headed to the outdoor cinema in Centennial Park to see the new Oz flick, Kenny. You are in the open air in the park with a huge cinema screen and you can hire bean bags to lie on and take along your own booze and food….totally different experience…….oh and Amanda managed to fall asleep half was through the film as the bean bag was just to comfy after a few glasses of vino!!! Need to watch that one again!

New Years Eve we spent at a house party in a flat of Gregs friend from work in North Sydney, it overlooks Sydney Harbour and we saw the fireworks from the 4 different points they were being let off in Sydney….the certainly know how to put on a show….unfortunately we didn’t get to see the bridge from where we were…..but who needed that when we had 4 different sets going off at once in our view?? We had aimed to be sensible and be home in our flat at around 2am as we had Field Day festival on New Years day….however…as you can all imagine…that didn’t go to plan….we ended up leaving the house party at around 4.30am and headed back to Ninas house to stay…managed to get to bed around 5.30am!!!! Had to be back up by 11am to get the train back to our flat and get ready for field day………nasty!!!!

We managed to get to Field Day around 3pm and after a few beers we were feeling merry again….Amanda found herself her usual wandering partner in the form of Liz (cheers babe) and went off for a jaunt…found a stage with better music and everyone headed there for a dance. Around 8.30pm the worst happened…….as with Christmas Eve…..the heavens opened…sheet rain…and nowhere to hide as it was all open air!! Managed to have an hours dance in the rain but then the novelty factor wore off and we were soaked to the skin and totally freezing!! We all headed home to get changed and had a party in a warm flat for the rest of the night.

We had our leaving night along with a leaving night for Liz and Clarky and headed down to the rocks to the Bier Keller and a Restaurant where you BBQ’d your own steak…Frankie needed some help with that one!! After that headed to the Opera Bar for one last time and had the usual drunken night……thanks everyone again for a great night…think we will need some detoxing after we leave Sydney!!!

Thanks to Frankie, Sarah, Stephen and Clare who took us out for a leaving dinner to Hurricanes where you get the best damned ribs in Sydney…mmmmmmmmmmmm!!! Sarah and myself who are both known to have eyes bigger than our bellies opted for a full rack of ribs each after starters as well…take a look at the size of the portions, unbelievable….we both done a good job…managed to leave only 3 (which the boys polished off obviously). Oh and we have to thank Clare for pointing out the table of 3 girls behind us who were sharing a rack of ribs between then……wimps!!!! Thanks again you guys…..oh and we still have the bibs as well!!

Need to bring this one to a close as once again it has been war and peace and that’s not everything we got up to….would have you here for a week if we wrote about everything!!!

Finally we just want to say thanks to all the awesome friends we met for the totally amazing time we had in Sydney, we never thought we would meet so many good friends or that we would get attached to them and not want to leave Sydney….but that’s exactly what happened!!!! Missin you already guys!!!!!

To all our friends and family back home the usual love goes out to you and as ever we miss you all loadz every day….we are now more than halfway through our travels and will see you all again in around 5 months time……how time flies!!!

We are now off on our travels up the coast, first stops are Coffs Harbour, Byron Bay, Nimbin and Surfers Paradise (we will update you on the rest as we go)…..and our wee car is packed to the brim with our backpacks and all our camping gear…..yes you are seeing right….we are camping our way up the coast!!!!

Update you all again soon.

Luv,

Maz and Flem xxx