On the 17th I landed in Sydney to meet my old head-of-house/school chum Nick Stafford. The flight was easy as my fellow flyer was a South African grandmother who after a few (6) hours tierd of telling me about her aussie grandchildren and let me get some well earned sleep. I had craftily attempted to somehow dodge getting jet-lag by setting my watch to Sydney time well in advance, and was proud when I felt not a little bit sleepy on meeting Nick at the airport. The big shocker however was that he'd brought his car with him which meant that as soon as we left the airport I was plunged into the position of navigating him through sydney rush-hour towards our Hostel which just so happened to be in the cities most central point. A $40 car parking bill later and we were safely checked in at Base Sydney Hostel Sydney.

Nick had spent the past three months teaching at Geelong college near Melbourne. Tierd of children, teachers and Austrailian TV he'd set out on a road-trip across Oz and had ended up in Sydney (well.. we'd planned it back at school). The week before he'd been travelling Tasmania with a bunch of fellow backpackers and this was a fact evident from the state of his car which came complete with an overflowing ash-tray, dirty clothes and beer bottles (which added an authentic backpacker feel to the car). Weirdly, we bumped into one of his fellow backpackers at our hostel in Sydney called Seb who was German and attempting at staying in Austrailia's most expensive city with just $35 (an impossible feat). He ended up travelling with us for alot of our time in Sydney.

 On our first day in the capital, the morning was spent trying to relocate Nick's car as far away from the center as possible, and we eventually found some cheap parking out in a particularly dodgy suburb where we nabbed some poor residents parking spot and headed back to the city center. This feat was followed up by a quick bacon sarnie and coffee whilst we chit-chatted about old school gossip and Connaught (our boarding house at Bryanston) myths and legends. By the end of this, jet-lagged had hit me and so we flew back to the hostel where I dozed for a good three hours in an effort to recover. I found a disgruntled Nick waiting in the TV room downstairs watching repeats of the Simpsons. We decided to do something easy and so headed out on a harbour boat cruise. The Cruise lasted an hour and was conducted by a short-wearing ozzy-hat wearing maniac who drove the boat at breakneck speeds out of Darling harbour towards the opera house. We had a quick 15 seconds to take some souvineer piccys of the bridge before shooting off again. Mid-way through the tour Nick, who had been frantically texting, informed me that we were to meet Shona, another old-bryanstonian, for a drink on arrival back in Darling harbour. Thirty minutes later tierd, jet-lagged and now soaked we rendezvoused with Ms. Doran for a beer and yet more catching up on post-bryanston. That evening we stayed in for an early bed and ended up watching tv for a bit in the evening before finally retiring to bed at around 10pm.