The Birds of Sydney

We have been taking life in Sydney pretty easy and we haven't done much in the last week but walk around. However one of my highlights has again been the cockatoos. Someone in our hostel told us that the cockatoos in Royal Botannical gardens would fly over to see you and somene else told us to try feeding monkey nuts to attract them. So guess what we did!? Yep, we went straight out and got monkey nuts.



We went down to the gardens looking for the cockatoos but we couldn't find any so we sat in the middle of one of the greens. I then caught sight of a single cockatoo so I jumped up and went on a hunt. I then found a tree filled with them. One landed on my shoulder and I started walking back to see Samantha with it (I was so excited). As I walked back there was a woman walking through the park completely naked (sorry we don't have pictures of her) who stole my thunder as Samantha was too busy laughing at her to share my excitement.

We then walked over to the tree, Samantha was adament that I could feed the birds as she did not want them landing on her, however the cockatoos had other ideas as one flew straight over and landed on her shoulder. As we feed them we ended covered in them (and I ended up with poo down my shirt).



If the next box we sent home has holes in the side could someone buy some nuts.

Snorers

We are back in the dorms now, mainly because they are cheap and a bed is a bed.

However, my one HUGE gripe is snorers! They know who they are and they know that they snore, they are generally overweight men, although I have been on the top bunk above a skinny girl who snored like a train and smacked her lips all night, until I got really cross and shouted for her to shut the hell up!

But seriously, this guy 2 nights ago took the biscuit, he SNORED and when I say snored I mean it was the loudest, continuous noise I have ever heard coming from a mere mortal, all night! I actually had to stop Alan from walking across the room and putting a pillow over his head - it was that bad. Alan gets so mardy when sleep deprived. We finally got to sleep at 6am and needless to say we ignored him all day, I just kept glaring at him.

Sydney

We arrived in Sydney on friday and have spent this last week having a good look around, which is why there has been a delay in blog posts.

We are staying in the lovely Kings Cross area of Sydney, it is generally nice although a bit seedy in parts at night. It is always interesting when you see scantily clad ladies beckoning you into their strip club.

Our hostel is aptly named the Asylum. When we arrived we were shown into the smallest 6 bed dorm we have ever seen, there was bearly enough room to put down our heavy rucksacks. My facial expression obviously conveyed my thoughts because Alan prompty spoke to the manager and we upgraded to a private room for a couple of nights. The view from our room and the dorm was amazing! The Sydney skyline is awesome and I spent many hours watching and filming it, whilst watching mindless TV.
The hostel also provides breakfast and dinner (although we can upgrade to a better menu for $5) which is very nice and means that we don't have to do any cooking or washing up for a bit. There is also a hostel night out - mad monday, for $15 we got a t-shirt for people to graffitti ( I got 2), dinner from the nice menu, free goon (wine in a box) and free drinks in 3 bars in Kings Cross. Needless to say we got completely trollied and had a fantastic night out.

Our first whole day was spent exploring Kings Cross and doing our washing. Whilst we were in the launderette, I got a bit cold so went for a hot chocolate in the cafe next door. Alan started acting a bit weird, when we got outside it turns out that he was getting checked out by 20 or so fellas in the cafe. I laughed and laughed and told him if he didn't behave himself I'd send him back in.

We have walked pretty much all the streets in central Sydney now, due to our long 2-3hr walks a day. We have visited the Harbour bridge, the Opera House ( looks like a giant armadillo), the botanical gardens and Darling harbour.

Canberra

Before we even booked to go to Canberra everyone told us that there was nothing there and it wasn't worth seeing, but given that were touring Australia we couldn't miss out their capital city.

We arrived under the cover of darkness so the wonders of Canberra remained a mystery until the following day (one day we'll arrive somewhere in the light again). However our first night got off to a good start as we found that in the hostel we had booked into you weren't allowed to do your own washing up, they did it all for you (bonus!).

The next day we went for a walk to see Capital hill and the parliment building which looked a bit too American but the highlight for me was see wild Cockatoos and Gallars just on verges and in parks (I was so star stuck, yes I'm sad). Then on our walk back we saw two red back spiders on the pavement by a bush (I had to stop Samantha walking on them for fear they might chase us).

Having now seen the centre of Canberra too eveyone was right there is very little here for a capital city but it does have nice houses so it would probably be nice to live here.

The Ice Bar

Our last day in Melbourne was supposed to be action packed - going to Melbourne museum and then the Ice Bar. However, me, Alan and Dave didn't get ourselves out of bed until midday much to the disgust of Lizzie, so unfortunately by the time we were ready, the museum visit was struck off the list.

Our first stop of the afternoon was obviously to Boost for a mango passion smoothie with an added energiser booster for me. Alan had an energy lift smoothie - yummy.

Then it was a half mile walk to find the Ice bar. When we got there and paid our money, they gave us ski jackets and gloves to keep us warm as its -10 degrees in the bar, although when the fans are going it has a -30 degree wind chill factor. We ordered our cocktails and were served them in ice glasses which was novel. We were only allowed to spend 30 minutes in the bar but it was well worth it.

Victoria Market

Lizzie and Dave seemed to have had two main influences on us in Melbourne, the first of which was Lizzie's organised get up and go attitude which got us motivated again and to do a bit more.

The second influence came from their obsession with the juice bar Boost. They encouraged us to go there and the addiction has been passed on. Our way of justifying it to ourselves and our wallet is that they are a cheap way towards our five a day (so it healthy).
We went to Victoria market on Sunday morning which is one of the most amazing markets I ever been to. Lizzie had shown us the amazing tuna she had bought there and told us stories of giant pork chops for only a few dollars.

When we got there we weren't disappointed, there was a massive range of meat and fish at really cheap prices, I was like a kid in a sweet shop after living on the hostels free pasta for so long. We ended up buying two large pieces of tuna and a large piece of rump steak for $12 (around £5).

So that afternoon we feasted on the tuna and veg that we got from the market (yum yum, it making me hungry thinking about it).

The Realto Tower

We had been planning to go up the Realto Tower since arriving in Melbourne, but hadn't got around to actually doing it. Luckily for us Lizzie is a real motivator and said that we could meet her and Dave at Krispy Kreme and then all go up the tower together.

We had 2 hours to kill until our designated meeting time and place, so we decided to walk the mile to the train station from the hostel and buy our backtracker rail/bus passes. Just as we were about to hand over the credit card to pay for them, the cashier said "I need to see your passports". Well, we didn't have them and she wasn't going to accept our drivers licences so we had to walk a 2 mile round trip back to the hostel for our sodding passports and back to the station. Not chuffed!!!!

3 miles later and clutching our rail/bus passes, we crawled into Krispy Kreme where Lizzie and Dave were already in the queue. Taking pity on us we gave them our order and put up our weary feet. Let me tell you, a cuppa (or what the Aussies think is a cuppa) and a strawberries and cream filled doughnut was heaven.

The Realto Tower was basically like all the other very high towers we've been to so far. However the sunset over Melbourne was stunning and the views amazing both in daylight and night. Alan took about 300 pictures and went outside on the balcony, I stayed inside and admired the views.

We watched the Realto film about Melbourne, which had the cheesiest theme tune we have ever heard. The 4 of us were singing along by the end of the 20 minute film.

St. Kilda

After four nights around the busy built up city centre we moved to an area just outside of the centre called St. Kilda. Given that it was only fifteen minutes away on a very speedy (or not) tram it was like a different city. It is so relaxed and chilled out with a little beach and a Great Yarmouth style pleasure beach theme park thing.

The day before we left central Melbourne we had met up with Samantha's friend Lizzie and her husband Dave who luckily for us, kindly offered to help us carry our bags, which is quite fortunate as we've amassed quite a few bags now and Melbourne was clean out of packhorses and donkeys.

We stayed in St. Kilda for about five days which although is a nice area that is less polluted there was little to actually see so that was quite long enough. The highlight (for me at least) was supposed to be visiting Albert park where the Australia F1 grand prix takes place. But when we actually got there it was just a big park with some short sections of road around it that look nothing like a track. Apparently they link them all together using the public roads to make the race track. I was completely underwelmed, however there is a nice lake that we had a walk along (didn't really make it more exctiting though).

By now we had put together a plan of how we intended to traverse the east coast and had decided to stay in Melbourne for a few more days. So we moved back to the Urban Central hostel where we had been staying before, this time to share a room with Lizzie and Dave.

Neighbours

"Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours............"

One of my must do activities was the neighbours tour in Melbourne, so we booked to do the 3hr tour on tuesday morning. When we got on the bus, I told one of our other tourmates I would be happy just to watch old reruns. Funnily enough I got my wish (after being totally oblivious to a massive car accident behind the bus), we got to watch Daphnes death and Brad and Beths wedding.

Our first stop was Erinsborough high school, which looked slightly familiar but not really. We had our picture taken by the school sign though.

For any of you neighbours fans out there and I was told by the tour guide, there are 14 million in the UK and Ireland, Erinsborough is an anagram for "all the neighbours". Not entirely sure how that works out either.

Our next stop was the TV studios, we weren't allowed in, but we did get to look and play around with the external sets like, the mechanic shop, grease monkeys and Marlenes bric-a-brac shop.

Our last stop was Ramsey Street, which is an incredibly small cul-de-sac. It only has 6 houses which are all the ones they use in the show. Apparently they have contracts with the people who own them and they close off the road, make the houses inaccessible to the residents and film 3 days a week.

On our way back into Melbourne, we stopped in St Kilda (luckily the district we are staying in at the moment) to meet a neighbours star. Well, we got to meet Janelle Timmins and get her photo and autograph. She looked a bit tired (rough) but was really nice and gave us a few hints as too whats going to happen. Email me if you really want to know.

Melbourne

Well after leaving our much loved New Zealand we finally made it to Australia.

We thought that getting through immigation and customs was going to be a difficult job (mainly due to Samantha's thorough research back in the UK watching many episodes of Airport down under), thankfully despite declaring everything under the sun on our customs forms it was easy and when we tried to show the customs officer our washing powder he just laughed us through.

By the time we made it out of the airport it was dark which meant we got to see very little of Melbourne on the way in. However we were staying right in the centre so there was plenty to see the next day.

On our first full day in Melbourne we started out with a short walk around to explore which turned into a three hour marathon and took us right through all the huge skyscraping office building until we found all the shops, which we were by then too tired to look around and walked back to our hostel through one of Melbournes many parks.

We later attempted to find information on the best way to travel up the east coast which unlike finding information in New Zealand was like trying to get blood out of a stone (although I'm sure that would have been easier). Who would have known that one of the most heavily travelled backpacker routes could be so hard to navigate.

We found it easier to find things to do in Melbourne however as we have visit the Aquarium and plan to visit the Observatory soon.