Four days in Sydney and I only slowly start to settle in. I found it so far much harder here than in Asia. I did not feel jetlag in Bangkok or a culture shock but surprisingly I feel it now.

The flight to Sydney was much more unsettled and disrupted by tourbolence than the flight to Bangkok. Especially while flying over the Uluru (Ayers Rock) area the plane was shaking constantly for a few hours. My guess is that the Aboriginal ghosts did not like us being there.

The funny thing about the flight though was that the girl next to me came from a small town near where I grew up and had also been living in the UK for the past five years. Funny how small sometimes this world is. Hilarious coincidence.

My first surprise when landed was that the border control did not ask for any documents despite being told so by the visa people.

As my German bank is absolutely useless it was a good thing they did not check it. After being told the bankstatement would arrive within a week it took a good month hence it got to London by the time I was already in Asia. And still they tell me what to do with my money. No other bank cares about what I do with my money. It will be a relieve once I got all my Euros saved before it all goes downhill over there. The Aussie bank has been the opposite so far - super friendly and helpful and everything set up within four days. Germany is simply a bit backwards sometimes.

As for the visa all I got in my passport is a stamp like every other tourist. Everything is online so an employer would have to check the online database to find proof of my working holiday visa. It feels a bit naked in my passport but ok. I would prefer to have things in black and white written down into the passport but I guess I got to go with the time.

Sydney - the Australia's best known city, especially after the Olympic Games in 2000.

From here you can't go much further before hitting the dateline and if I dig a hole in the ground straight through the middle of the earth I would come out the other end close enough to home - in the Atlantic Ocean just of the Morroccon Coast. So I can proudly say I made it to the other side of the world.

Australia is as big as Europe but has only about 22Million people living here - comes at no surprise with the middle being one big, dry peace of massive land where hardly anybody is willing to live.

So if you want to live in the middle of seriosusly nowhere in dry, hot climate with 100 miles no neighbours, no mobile/internet signal and lots of poisonous snakes and spiders than this is for you. Another draw to the outback might be that you get paid well for obvious reasons.

After Bangkok Sydney feels very small, quiet and a bit boring. I am still waiting for the wow factor to set in.

A big downer on everything is the huge price tag on everything. London, one of the world's most expensive cities, suddenly seems cheap.

Most annoying is the bad internet access. Free Wifi is unheard of and wifi costs a lot. It took Bhav and I 2hours to each book our flights to New Zealand and the hostel in Auckland. We made a race out of it - Apple vs Windows who gets to the booking page first. It stands at 1:1.

The guy at the bank told me he pays AUD100 for his home wifi on a flat rate. That is £66 or $105 - yes the Aussie Dollar is currently stronger than the US Dollar! In the UK you wouldn't pay more than £10 for that.

It is a nice coincidence that Bhav my ex-colleague from Christ's College Finchley is currently also in Australia on a Working Holiday Visa so we met up in Sydney.

Together we had a look around central Sydney. The harbour is quite nice but the Opera House on a close up is one ugly building.

Old or historic buildings are even less existing than in the US. It comes to no surprise but still makes the city feel lie it lacks something.

And like the settlers in the US the British Convicts in Australia were not creative at all in the name giving. There is a Liverpool, Newcastle, Sydenham, Kent Street and so on.

To avoid confusion it should be mentioned that Sydney is not the capital of Australia and nor is Melbourne. They argued a while between the two and as they could not make their mind up they decided tp build a new capital city in the middle of the two - as you do. And that is now Canberra.

Even though all the Aussies are super friendly, open and laidback I'm still not blown away by Australia, or at least Sydney.

We went to Bondi Beach which was an utter let down. It is supposed to be one of the best surfer beaches in the world but the waves were small. We saw much better ones out on Manly Beach the next day.

We also had to learn that "Home and Away" (Australian soap opera and big in the UK also) is not always a reliable source on Australian life. We expected Lifeguards to wear yellow shirts with red writing on it but all we saw were blue fashioned lifeguards. They explained to us that they were the "real" ones, the professionals who work here everyday whereas the yellow ones belong to surf clubs and only show up on weekends.

At the same time on our Friday night out we bumbed into one of the girls from "Home and Away" (for those of you who know the show and care to know, it was the daughter of the doctor who lives on the farm) and Bhav saw Colin from Home and Away on the street that our hostel is on. Unlike Bhav I am not going to bother to go to Palm Beach where the show is filmed.

I instead will head off to the Blue Mountains tomorrow for a week, where I will be doing scary things like abseiling and rock climbing if I can get over my fear. I am also hoping that I can clean the hostels kitchen in exchange for free accommodation.

Next Saturday then Bhav and I are flying out to Auckland, New Zealand, for three week. Neither of us really liked Sydney so we thought best to get out asap. I am hoping to do a weeks worth of work with Habitat for Humanity in Christchurch at the Earthquake relief center. You pay NZD150 (£80, $140) and get accommodation and food completely provided. After that it is straight to Perth to make the most of working and living there and leave the Great Ocean Road between Melbourne and Adelaide and Uluru near Alice Springs for the end - best for last.

And with that "G'Day" to you all!