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Zak and Mel's Excellent Adventure
Sorry for not writing sooner, no excuses we've been slack! So since Port Macquaire, we travelled down the coast to Sydney going through Bonny Hills where Zak did some of the best surfing he has done yet, unfortunately no photographic evidence to show you guys. We stumbled across a place called Pacific Palms which is amongst the Myall Lakes National Park. It's an amazing spot with great surf, great beaches and beautiful surrounds. Although we were a bit reluctant to go in at one beach (due to lots of blue bottle jellyfish being around) the waves looked so good that we both wanted to give them a go. Zak managed to get out only to find himself well out of his depth in about 10 foot waves. Mel only managed a few metres out before she lost her board, got stung by a blue bottle and then got called in by a local lady who proceeded to tell her that this beach was notorious for being dangerous and lots of people have to be rescued there. We left shortly after! Our next stop was the Nelson Bay area. Here we surfed at One Mile Beach and went to another nearby beach famed for having the largest moving sand dunes in the world. As we were just deciding whether to get our boards and head in, an alarm went off and everyone rushed out of the sea. Zak went down to talk to the lifeguards and it transpired that there were eight sharks patrolling the beach! Great Whites, hammer heads and tiger sharks upto about 5 metres in size, so surfing was given a miss that day! After lunch at Nelson Bay we headed off towards Sydney, sleeping in a car park at a place called Avoca. After enjoying the beach in the morning we drove further to a place called Bouddi National Park, where we stayed the night and we could see the northern beaches of Syndey across the water. We arrived at Zak's uncles the following morning after a near miss in the van on the way there. The clutch had been going for a few days but it let us down going round a corner with another car next to us. Luckily everyone escaped unhurt! We spent the next week in Syndey with Uncle Nick and family who live in Avalon (for those Home and Away fans amongst us - this is about 5kms from Palm Beach where the opening scenes are filmed). We did all the usual touristy things like the Bridge, Opera House, Doyles restaurant (for the Doyles in Mels' family I have some memorabilia), Bondi Beach, Manly, etc. We caught up with friends from home (Dave, Shell and Tom who Mel knows from London) as well as people we met on the Whitsunday trip. We spent the weekend on the beach in true Aussie style, and watched Zaks' cousin Jack doing Nippers (loads of kids running around doing stuff) on Sunday morning. After getting the van fixed, we headed up to the Blue Mountains on Monday to spend a few days seeing the sights. We checked out Echo Point, Katoomba Falls, Three Sisters and Zak hired a bike to go for a ride out on the Narrowneck Ridge, which he very much enjoyed. Yesterday we went on a canyoning/abseiling adventure which was awesome. After doing 3 abseils in the morning (5m, 16m and 26m) we then headed into the canyon and hiked down it donning wet suits and crash helmets. After a few slides and jumps along the way we came to the climax of the trip and had to abseil down a 30m waterfall which was interesting to say the least! There was one final jump we could do at the end, it was about 3m high (so not as big as the one in N.Z) but it was into a small pool, surrounded by rocks so it was quite scary for Mel. After a lot of encouragement - she did it, so she was very happy!! Unfortunately after a mix up with bags we realised we'd left the camera so we have no photos - sorry! Shortly we will be leaving the Blue Mtns, which by the way you will be pleased to know has been quite cold and cloudy, so made us feel a bit home sick - for a moment anyway! Our next stop is Wollongong (Jilly - is thingy still living there? Can't remember her name) to meet up with Alana (the girl we met in Hawaii and went climbing with in NZ) and then we head inland to Adelaide so until our next update take care everyone. Miss you all. xxxx
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