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Right. Now that I have some spare time I'm going to attempt a brief update of our travels since leaving Newcastle. From Newcastle we headed to Sydney and on arrival were greeted with streets of people wrapped up in coats and scarves and hats. We were worried it would be really cold when we got off the coach and we were wearing sandals, light trousers and t shirts. Not to worry though as it was actually quite mild. Obviously the Aussies aren't used to cool weather.
On our first full day in Sydney we took the ferry across the harbour to visit Taronga Zoo. The views from up on the hill in the zoo are amazing and the animals were pretty good too, though we once again failed to see the tasmanian devil, as it was hiding somewhere in its enclosure. We didi learn however that there's a massive breeding programme set up acorss Australia to try and save the devils as they are being killed in the wild by a contagious face cancer. Sounded horrible. We also checked out their new Ocean Enclosure and saw lots of penguins some seals and a MASSIVE leopard seal. I couldn;t believe how big it was and it looked quite scary too. We spent most of the day at the zoo and in the evening checked out a few bars as we had some free drink vouchers from our hostel. We found one bar celebrating the Dutch Queen's Birthday,which was a bit odd and everyone in there was veeeery drunk.
While in Sydney we also went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which had some really good pieces on display, including an exhibition of Aboriginal artwork which was interesting to see. We explored the harbour, walked across the bridge (on the pavement, not on the bridge climb). We went into Sydney Opera House just so that we can say we've been in it and walked through the gorgeous botanical gardens.
Disappointingly the weather in the Blue Mountains was awful so we couldn't book a tour out there, which I had really been looking forward to. Instead we decided to do the walk from Bondi Beach to Coogee Beach, which was quite fun and we got to see more of Sydney and it's coastline than we otherwise would have. We also saw two guys whowere jogging around the bay of one of the beaches in their speedos and then swimming across the mouth of the bay. Round and round and round they went. It was a bit odd really, but impressive that they kept it up.
On our final day in Sydney we did a tour of the Olympic Stadium. I was excited as I thought it was going to be the biggest stadium I'd ever been in, with 110,000 seats. However, when we got there I was told that since the olympics they'd reduced the stadium down to 80,000 seats . Rubbish! Though it still looked pretty impressive. Also, they have installed moving blocks of seats so that they can make the pitch rectangle for football and rugby games and then oval for australian football and cricket games.
So now we are in Melbourne, where we are staying for 5 weeks. Because of this we decided to go and find a houseshare to live in as hostels get annoyng to live in for long periods of time. We found a place to stay on our first day (saturday) and said we'd move in the following day, Sunday. Our final night in a hostel for a month was rather eventful. We were in a 6 bed dorm room with 1 Chinese guy, an old smelly man and a goth guy who looked about 12. Anyway, at 4am goth kid gets back in from his night out grabs a couple of beers from the fridge and goes to continue drinking with his mate. He also brings in this couple who he tells can sleep on the empty bunk bed above the Chinese guy. The Chinese guy wakse up and isn't very happy about this. All the lights in the room are turned on while he has a go at this couple in the bunk above him and starts saying he'll call the police and all this. In the end the couple leave after having to explain to the manager why they are there. So, now goth kid is in biiiig trouble and he gets told to leave the hostel immediately. So about an hour later the lights get turned back off and we can all go back to sleep. Lovely. We couldn't wait to get to our new house share!!!
The place we're now staying in is in a suburb called Armadale, about 15minutes from the centre by train. We got the first week and a hlaf or so rent free as the kitchen was being refurbished so we were told we didin't have to pay rent. Yay! We've also been attempting to find jobs. James is working for Seeing Eye Dogs raising money for them by knocking on doors, and going into businesses asking for donations. I do that a bit too, but mainly I'm working part time in a pub called Pugg Mahones (which translates as Kiss My Arse, apparently).
As neither of us have particularly time consuming jobs we've been able to do all the touristy things too. We have been to Phillip Island and seen the penguin parade. For those of you not familiar with it, there are these penguins called Little Penguins (original name!?) who every evening come waddling out of the sea to spend the night on the shores of Phillip Island. Hundreds of the little things appear out of the sea and it's a massive tourist attraction! The penguins are absolutely adorable, and we managed to see some fairly close up before the parade, as we found some hiding under the decking on different part of the island. During our trip to Phillip Island James went o na helicopter ride, which he got at a discounted price and said was really good.
We've also been to the Game On exhibition at the Australian Centre of Moving Image (basically MOMI in Melbourne). It's an exhibition celebrating the many years of computer games and has loads of games from Pac Man and Pong to Pro Evo and Zelda. James managed to convince me to have a go at Pro Evo, but only after I'd got him on that Dance Mat computer game, which is huge in Japan. We were both quite comically bad at the dancing game, and I was just bad at Pro Evo! We also got to have a go on a Nintendo Wii which was really good fun, though I kept doing badly as I was laughing so much. There was also a Sega game which had no controller and used a video camera to sense your movements to interact with the game. You had to hit all the zombies who appeared on the screen. It was fun to watch people playing that game as they looked really silly.
As mentionede in the previous blog update we did the Neighbours Tour and now have done the Neighbours Night too. Had a brilliant time at the Nighbours Night. We met Marco, who chatted with us for a while about England and his plans to move there. We met Rachel, who is small, but very sweet and Libby, who I was very excited to meet. Finally, of course we met Karl and saw his band, Waiting Room, perform. We were about a row from the front during the performance and I was standing next to this guy who was absolutely loving it and singing along to all the songs, and then he later told me he doesn't even watch Neighbours, he just loves Karl Kennedy!?!?! Mental! Also, the girl in front of me was getting really annoying and kept shoving us all backwards, when there was plenty of room for her at the front, and then I accidently hit her on the head with my camera...which was a genuine accident. oops. Anyway, she seemed to have had enough after that and left. She had obviously never tried to get to the front of the crowd at Reading Festival!!
I think I'll leave it on that lovely violent note as my bum is getting numb from sitting on the floor. With any luck I'll be able to put up some Neighbours photos later today.
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