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Time has flown since New Zealand, can't believe I am nearly half-way through my Aussie trek already! I am currently residing in Sydney, enjoyed my stay here but looking forward to my next stop in Byron Bay which involves a 13 hour night bus. Speaking of travelling at night, this brings me to the start of my journey to Australia...
My flight from Christchurch to Melbourne was at 6:25am so I decided to do the ultimate traveller thing and sleep at the airport to save paying for another night at a hostel. Clearly I'm not the seasoned traveller (excuse the pun) as all the best sleeping spaces had already gone! I settled on a place out of the way near the entrance, what I hadn't counted on was how thin my sleeping bag was - made worse with a gust of cold night air being blasted in everytime somebody came in or out of Christchurch airport. Still I managed a couple of hours there, with a few winks on the flight meant I was ready for Melbourne.
I had the pleasant welcome of my long-time house of trouser resident Paul "Thommo" Thomas to escort me to my accomodation. Thanks to his excellent connections we had the pleasure of house-sitting an apartment with a marvellous sea-side view overlooking St Kilda pier, cheers Chinky! The first day started with a bang as me, Thommo and a couple of his buddies Smurf and Mono (none of his friends have real names) went to the MCG to watch Australia play a ODI against Sri Lanka. If the Ashes is half as good as that game I am in for the treat! Sri Lanka won the match by 3 runs after being in an impossible position of 125 runs down and just 2 wickets in hand. It made for a thrilling finale, particularly with the 15,000 plus strong support of the Sri Lankan fans - making up over 75% of the total attendance.
The following day I had the difficult task of picking up some smart gear for a wedding I was gate-crashing (thanks again to Thommo's social network). Amazingly enough I found a Salvation Army shop which had everything I needed and all of it was decent stuff, I picked up shoes, shirt, trousers, belt and a tie for just $50! Later that day I managed to wrangle an invite to Kes' stag do where we participated in some twilight go-karting, really really enjoyed this as the go-karts were the fastest I had ever driven, reaching speeds of up to 80 km/hr. However even with my fastest lap being just a half a second short of a record for the track, I could only manage a 3rd place finish in the final.
On the Friday, we managed to fit in a quick stop at Ramsey Street which is definitely the cheesiest thing I have ever done but definitely worth doing if you have ever watched Neighbours - it's a lot smaller than you think! We got to meet our 'star' afterwards who turned out to be Janelle Timmons which was a bit disappointing as there was a rumour that Dr Karl was supposed to attend. In the afternoon we drove the Great Ocean Road to inspect our beach-house for which we were staying for Kes' and Maya's wedding (the one I mentioned earlier that I had free roam to gatecrash). It was an amazing place, with an ocean view and just a stone's throw from the beach. I worked extraordinarly hard for 20 minutes helping set things up for the wedding before descending on the sands to enjoy beach cricket and aussie rules surf brawl.
The day of the wedding was superb, the weather had held out magnificently well and the ceremony itself was a hilarious affair with Kes singing a great cover of James Taylor as part of his vowels to Maya (can't wait to see the video!). The food was incredible - apparently the chefs had catered for the Oz Prime Minister the day before! The evening was a sobre affair, seeing as there was an unlimited amount of alcohol and at no point was any beers or wedding cake stolen to take to an afterparty...
After the carnage of the wedding weekend, myself and Thommo picked up our campervan to drive the epic journey of 1500 plus kilometers to Sydney. The van drove suprisingly well and it was only Melbourne traffic which slowed our progress to our first stop, Phillip Island (naturally a great name for a island). Really great place, had a wander around the grand prix track which was familar to me after driving around it on TOCA. Was also very lucky to see a Koala Bear in action, a feat in itself as they sleep for up to 20 hours per day. After narrowly avoiding running out of petrol we made it to an overnight stop in Malacoota, being quite late when we arrived and very early when we set off we managed to avoid paying a cent!
The next day we had another epic session of driving to look forward to reach our destination of Sydney. After a seemingly perfect couple of days navigating it was inevitable that we would come unstuck at one stage and this was definitely the case finding our campsite, arriving just the 3 hours after we said we would. When we actually arrived in Sydney itself, it was not a disappointment - truely stunning city with the Opera House living up to its iconic image. I didn't think the bridge was that impressive compared to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, but that was before I had the chance to climb it! Boy, that was incredible - definitely up there with one of my favourite things I have so far done while travelling.
We spent Thommo's last day in Australia at Bondi Beach which seemed a fitting way to depart with sun, surf, sand and fish 'n' chips a great send-off. The last few days have been a bit quiet with me chilling out enjoying the sun before the next leg of my travels. Had the chance to meet up again with friends I made in New Zealand which was really fun, it almost feels like I am at the end of my trip but luckily I am only just half-way through it! Rock on...
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