OZ....

We arrived in Sydney just before Christmas, with the intention of spending a few weeks catching up with friends & family over here. Unfortunately Kerry & Gus who were due to join us in Sydney & Tasmania were unable to make it across at the last minute - & they were definitely missed…(although we didn’t miss your snoring in the campervan around Tasmania Gus, it has to be said ;-)

We spent the first few days staying with Kate & Kassan & their family (Kate being a friend of Claires from Uni), a little bit of luxury for us for a change staying at their family mansion in the Sydney suburbs. Next we caught up with Gus’ best man, Tom - who along with his better half Becs, had very kindly offered us the run of their lovely home just outside the city in Stanmore, while they took their 6 month old daughter off to Bec’s family for Christmas. Their place is a lovely Victorian style cottage, not too dissimilar in feel to some of the properties in Leamington. It was great to have a place to ourselves for a few days that felt a little like home - all we were missing was friends & family from back home, who Christmas just isn’t Christmas without.

Leanne had some old friends from her college days living in Sydney who she was staying with for the duration of her stay, so we had a good few nights out in Sydney with them all, as well as some other travel friends we had met along the way in South America - & what with being on the tail end of a heat wave Sydney had been experiencing - massively at odds with the weather in Europe at the time, things were all good.

Boxing Day Claire & I took a flight across to Tasmania for the road trip we had planned to do with Kerry & Gus, though now just the two of us. We picked up the monster campervan Gus had booked on our behalf & set off on 5 days of cruising around the wilderness’ & peculiarities of Tasmania. This time of year Tasmania is renowned for getting a fair bit of rain & being a bit chilly, though thankfully for our entire time it was glorious sunshine - & about the perfect temperature for us heat shy Brits of around 26 deg each day. We set off from the city of Launceston on the North of the island, headed out to the west coast, then cut back across south east through Cradle Mountain down to the Southern city of Hobart. Tasmania is a ruggedly beautiful unspoilt wilderness, with only one road to choose from in most places & blink & you’ll miss it towns dotted around - which literally consist of just a few houses in places. The West coast is full of mountain ranges, lush forests, pristine beaches & sleepy fishing villages. One of the great things about Tasmania is the fact you are allowed to just park up wherever takes your fancy & camp for the night. This made for some dream beach front & mountain side sleeping locations in our campervan that was better equipped, more comfortable & cleaner than half the hostels we have stayed in during the course of the last year.

When we arrived in Hobart the place was alive with the ’Taste of Tasmania’ food & drink festival that was being held & the arrival of all the yachts from the annual Sydney to Hobart boat race, making for a good place to spend a little time. From Hobart we also set out on a trip down the Tasman Peninsular to visit the old British Colonial Prison of Port Arthur, a prison modelled on London’s Pentonville & it’s use of psychological torture. The conditions in the prison were undeniably horrific, though the actual location of the prison is in a beautiful spot - now one of Tasmania’s biggest tourist attractions.

After spending another night camped by the side of an idyllic bay on the Tasman peninsular we took a flight back to Sydney for New Years Eve.

We spent most of the day of NYE with Tom, Becs & Isla at their house, then head down to Paddington to meet up with Leanne, Paul & Vicky for a picnic & drinks at a place on the harbour called Rushcutters Bay, from where, along with thousands of others, we watched the Sydney Harbour fireworks display.

New Years Day we all went across to ’The Domain’ in Sydney downtown, where the 'Field Day' festival was on. Highlights of the festival were LCD Soundsystem, 2manyDJ’s, Architecture In Helsinki & a previously unheard of one man band, who was dressed in a black sparkly Elvis outfit, with a spaceman helmet on that had a old style telephone receiver strapped to the front of the helmet that acted as a microphone, called Bob Log III - who played the most brilliant load of nonsense we have heard for a long time. We spent another few days in Sydney, one evening taking in a performance by Andrew Bird at the Sydney Opera House, which was absolutely outstanding.

Moving on from Sydney we took a bus down to the Capital city of Canberra, where some of Claire’s family now live. Annette, Nathan & their two children - David & Kate, kindly put us up for a couple of days, Annette taking us around the sights of Canberra - including the impressive War Memorial museum. After a couple of BBQ’s, some Kangaroo spotting & a bit of skateboarding with David, we said farewell & took another bus down to Melbourne.

Hostels in Australia are ridiculously expensive, & for a cheaper price than what we could’ve booked into the cheapest hostel in town, we managed to get a room at a 3* Best Western in Melbourne’s main CBD area overlooking the Docklands.

Melbourne is a really nice city, much more English in it’s general feel than Sydney & we spent a really nice few days around here - Brunswick Street being a favourite area with lots of bohemian bars, restaurants, shops & galleries. While here we also caught up with friends from home, Deborah & Gary in St Kilda, who along with their baby boy Ben, emigrated to Melbourne last year. They seem to be loving every minute of their new life which was really good to see.

We could’ve quite easily spent a lot more time in Australia, though it is a pretty expensive to be a tourist here, & what with being over 30 & no longer eligible for the working visa, on this trip we couldn’t really afford to spend any more time here than the 3.5 weeks that we did. It was great to catch up with family & friends over here though - a real shame however that Kerry & Gus weren’t able to make it out, but thankfully they have managed to reschedule their trip & we’ll be able to get together for a few days in Malaysia in April. So a huge thank you again to Kate & Kasan, Tom & Becs & Annette & Nathan and their respective families for putting us up - if we had actually had to pay for our accommodation on top of everything else in Australia it would’ve pretty much bankrupted us!

And with that we headed off to Bali.