Aus News

Okay so we don't feel like we've written much since we've been in Oz... We've been having too much fun! Here's a few pictures of what we've seen so far. Each day we have made an effort to head out and see something cool - first to Sydney Aquarium (on a Saturday afternoon during school holidays, great advert for family planning!!) then up the AMP tower for a panoramic view of Sydney, during a brief hour when it wasn't raining. After New Year the weather picked up considerably and we headed out to Manly beach for a stroll and some lunch, and to Balmain for a look round the market. A new attraction on Darling Harbour since I was last here is Sydney Wildlife World, which showcases Aussie fauna and is done really well. One of the first exhibits is a floor to ceiling glass case with about 15 different species of enormous Aus spider - made my skin crawl and I've been having stressful spider dreams for the last two days! We also saw wallaby, wombat, bandicoot and koala together with a whole bunch of marsupials and mammals which the 6 year old kids around us could name on sight but we'd never heard of... This country really has some freakish wildlife!
Of course we've also caught up with some friends since we've been here. We spent a relaxing evening with Andy's friend Gemma and her family getting drunk in front of the Wiggles (for any Brits who haven't heard of them they are a human equivalent of the Teletubbies and are so popular they earn more per annum than Kylie), and a lovely sunny afternoon at Sydney Yacht Club where we met Jean, a close friend of the Elmeses, who plied us with champers on the deck of a yacht. Its a tough old life, as we keep saying!
On top of this I've been going a bit mad at the shops, as being dressed like a homeless person goes down fine in Asia but doesn't really cut the mustard in body beautiful Sydney. The girls here have no compunction in showing it all off, and it took me a full week to find some shorts than didn't resemble Kylie's gold hotpants.... Andy has been getting down with the local kitesurfing dudes and is now at the stage where he needs his own gear to keep improving, obviously a bit bulky to drag round out here but its something he'll keep up once we're home, if at all possible.
The hangover situation hasn't been too bad, but we were out on Friday night at The Rocks where we met a whole bunch of people and had a few drinks... The Barmy Army was out in force drowning their sorrows for losing the Ashes. Excitingly, as we were having a couple of sundowners outside The Australian pub the Aussie cricket team strolled past on their way to celebrate their victory. There was mass excitement from the Aussie supporters and the Brits and even I was quite thrilled, despite the fact that I wouldn't recognise any of them in a line-up...
We rounded off our Sydney sojourn by climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge at sunset yesterday. It was a really memorable experience as we were the only group that got the full sunset view, and it was spectacular.