Australia - Sydney

The flight to Australia was a little traumatic, seeing as I'm not so fond of flying. It was a very long time up in the air. A few drinks on the plane settled the nerves though. Relaxed to the point that I fell asleep half way through some crap film, and began singing along to the music at the end in my sleep. We stopped off in Auckland, New Zealand and had to get off then reboard the plane, so I can add New Zealand to the list of countries visited, even though we were only there for an hour. It was peeing with rain when we landed in Sydney, and we overheard that the plane that landed after us was hit by lightning on its way down.

We've come crashing back to reality so far as prices are concerned here. The hostels are ridiculously expensive and not even that nice. We are staying in the Kings Cross area of Sydney, which is an interesting mix of backpackers, strippers, hookers, beggars and mental cases. It'll have to do for the next few days though.

For the first few days we were here we did most of the touristy things (well the cheap or free ones anyway). We went to the botanical gardens which were very cool so far as botanical gardens go. Wasn't really interested in the plants, although enjoyed the Queensland Bottle tree.

The highlight of this place is the fruit bats, or flying foxes as they're called here. There were loads of them hanging about in the trees.

They're not the most friendly animals, screaming away at each other and biting their sleeping neighbours for no apparent reason. They're really big though and it was great watching them flying about in the daylight. Needless to say Jenny was running about in the trees, with the camera getting very excited about all of this, had to almost physically drag her away. There were also parrots and cockatoos all over the park as well.

The path through the botanics goes right out to a point that overlooks the Opera house and bridge. Get such a good view from here. The Opera House is pretty spectacular, although looked like it could do with a lick of paint.

It was a bit dirty looking, kind of beige coloured as opposed to white. It's an amazing building though, on the outside. We never went inside because they were going to charge some ridiculous price for that, but you can see bits of the inside. It's a bit dated looking as well, reminded me a bit of the Brunton Hall in Musselburgh (bad memories - a place I had to be dragged to, to do music competitions as a child) all the 1960's style wooden walls.

We also took a trip to the Sydney fish market which was interesting, especially the giant crabs that were the size of my head near enough.

It's a huge market selling all kinds of seafood. You can also try just about anything in the restaurants in the place too. Jenny had baby octopus, although she only liked eating the tentacles.

Luckily there was a few giant pelicans roaming about the car park waiting to be fed the other bits. They were quite funny, literally lurking about outside the market waiting patiently to be fed, and posing with all the tourists sidling nervously up to them for a photo.

Sydney's a really vibrant city that we both really like. And we know a couple of people who stay here already which is helpful. Went out for a few drinks with a guy James we met whilst travelling in Costa Rica, a couple of nights back. He's moving here, and so is Sarah his girlfriend hopefully, for the next wee while. Also Russell who's a pal of mine from Uni days, who helpfully took pitty on us both the other night and shouted us dinner. So, having hummed and hawed about whether we were going to head North to Brisbane to settle for a few months to work, the main draw there being the better weather, we decided to stay here. We're planning to stay here for the next 2-3 months to work which is a pretty depressing thing to have to consider, as I have particularly enjoyed being a waster for the past 6 months or so. Accordingly we've been forced into doing grown up stuff over the past few days looking for a more permanent place to stay here. We have now found somewhere, after going to see quite a few really dodgy places. Jenny's contribution to the flat hunting exercise was on occasion spectacularly poor and as a result I'm seriously considering buying her a hearing aid. One property she arranged for us to see we ended up on a road that sounded 'similar' to the road we were supposed to be viewing a property on, although a 'similar' road is clearly not very useful when it's on the other side of the city from the actual street - and on another occasion we ended up at the correct address but were confronted with 75 buttons on the intercom to choose from, with no idea which one to press and no phone number to contact the owner.

We did however manage to find a place to stay yesterday, although we had to use our imagination a little, as the room hasn't quite been completed yet?! We are assured that it will be finished on Wednesday when we can move in. We hope. It should be really good though, self contained with ensuite and own kitchenette. It's well located in Bondi 10 minutes from the city and the beach which is nice.

Going to start job hunting tomorrow, can't wait.......