Touching down into the early morning sun of Australia phoebs and I prepared to part from each other…Ryan would be joining her here and not wanting to be a gooseberry I was staying elsewhere for the next 2 weeks! Our separation however was delayed somewhat on discovering that his flight had been cancelled and that he wouldn't be arriving until much later. This meant that our first day was spent mostly in the air conditioned arrivals terminal of Sydney airport. It wasn't until early afternoon after we had caught up with internet, sim cards and of course cured Phoebes cravings for Macdonalds (she was having withdrawal symptoms after the 24 hrs they'd been apart) that we stepped outside…the heat which hit us was immense! And so until the plane carrying Ryan (and unfortunately not his bag) arrived we lay on a bench in the car park soaking up the glorious sunshine! [From this point on I can only tell what I have been up to as Phoeb's adventures will have been entirely different and more extravagant which I'm sure she will update you on soon!]I pulled up to the Excelsior Hotel early evening and was shown up to my home for the next 2 weeks in happy chappy backpackers…it was more like a student flat than any hostel we'd been in so far and I found out later that I would be the shortest staying resident (in time not in height before you say anything-there was an irish girl a good inch shorter than me) as everybody else seemed to stay a minimum of 3 months and normally ended up staying a lot longer! That evening I met up with Chappo - one of my cousins friends who ran the place. He introduced me to scooners (an Australian measure of beer) of VB, the other residents and new aspirations...to follow in the footsteps of my Chandler predecessors and match the mischief they have already caused in this country! (This would be a difficult task I discovered after the stories I heard that evening and I am still slacking -as of yet I have not been searched for drugs, turned up at unsuspecting distant relatives houses, bought any ancient vans, broken down in the middle of nowhere, drunk for 2 weeks solidly or most disappointingly become accustomed to carrying a light sabre on me!) My time in Sydney was spent very differently to my time in New Zealand as I wasn't hopping around all over the place, it was the combination of "living" somewhere and the fact that this somewhere happened to be part of a very good live music bar that the two weeks all blur into a big jumble of sight seeing, partying and new people! In the first few days I jumped on the open top tourist bus to see all the icons that Sydney is renowned for - you know the Opera House, The Sky Tower and the Bridge- but to be honest as impressive as these were they will not become the highlights of my trip by any means. Obviously nothing can prepare you for the size of the Opera House when you're standing up close to it and it is beautiful but the parts of Sydney which I attracted me most were places like Hyde park where you could sit and watch the city life speed past you, the rocks - the oldest part of Sydney which is full of the original buildings built by convicts and now converted into shops and cafes that look out over the harbour from beneath the bridge and Manly which boasts a spectacular commute for its inhabitants across the harbour though the hundreds of racing yachts and cruising power boats. I spent a fair amount of my time in Manly actually, meeting some family friends for lunch in the cosmopolitan corso and hiring surf boards for my first chance to get out on Australian waves! I also met Matt Walsh on one trip to Manly and he took me round to Shelly beach where we went out snorkelling! This was amazing - it was like being in a tank in an aquarium with shoals and shoals of multi coloured fish of varying sizes surrounding us! We saw jellyfish, sharks and even a cuttlefish! It was amazing how much wildlife could live so close to such a big city! On one day I met up with Phoebs and Ryan (whose bag had finally arrived!) and we went to the famous Sydney aquarium and wildlife centre it really is an impressive place with underwater walk ways and rooms and rooms of fish, turtles, seals and crocs. I got very excited to see a platypus too as they've always intrigued me with their odd looks and peculiar habits - did you know that a mother platypus produces milk for her young by releasing it through glandes in her skin- a bit like sweating it out? And of course their couldn't be a wildlife place in oz without their sleepy koalas propped in eucalyptus trees or their wallabys trying to jump out of their enclosure at any given opportunity! I saw more of the Australian wildlife in The Sydney Zoo which is really bizarre...When you see a group of elephants looking out over the opera house you get a little disorientated or when you see girraffes with a backdrop of the bridge you forget exactly wi=hich continent you're on! But Shane and I had a fun day out at the zoo and his impressions of monkeys were incredible...i swear he should look into persuing it as a career! Living in Excelsior the social life was a vital component to my stay in Sydney…the residents were all really friendly and every night you would find a group of them sitting at their corner of the bar - the residents consisted of 2 English girls, Kate and Sarah, who worked behind the bar, Lou, an irish primary school teacher who worked as a traffic controller but would often be found spinning round on an office chair on a deserted railway platform, Seb and Andre - 2 sweedish guys who were drawing near the end of their stay, an English guy called Jim who had been there for 7 months, Stu - an Australian man who worked as a sound man at Excelsior and elsewhere, some germans who didn't really socialise with anyone else and the Asians…who were almost a myth…nobody ever saw them they just knew they were there and always had been there…some say they were there before Chappo himself moved in - nobody really knows! Anyway so with the residents and the other bar staff most evenings were spent entertainingly in the bar sometimes til a long time after the bar had shut! It wasn't really an option -my bedroom was directly above the nightly live music! But I wasn't complaining…Excelsior felt like a home. My first weekend in Sydney was St Paddys day weekend so dressed in green Lou, Jim, Seb, Andre and I headed down to Hyde park for the parade…There are a lot of irish in Sydney and this was a big day! Every bar you walked past was advertising the celebrations and all the irish bars were jam packed, everybody wore green…some had even painted their bodies head to toe in the national colours! After the parade with a representation from every state had passed we joined the crowds in the park drinking bourmers and Guinness in the incredibly hot sun! On the Monday - the day itself - Jim and Andre bleached and dyed a green Mohawk in lous hair and lou, kate and I headed to the rocks…the rocks is known for its abundance of irish pubs and the atmosphere was awesome! Todd (who lives in Bondi) joined us for the afternoon too! That Evening we went to Bondi Junction and spent the evening in the biggest irish bars (one was called the c*** and bull!)…somehow I managed to loose my irish flag which was upsetting but I did acquire a fluorescent green feather boa from somewhere so it wasn't all bad! On my last day in Sydney I managed to convince Stu to take me to work with him…he was doing the sound for some bands in a fairly well known bar - the Annandale - on the other side of Sydney…apparently the starting place for all the big bands! He was bemused by my enthusiasm to come but between him, a younger guy called Bret and another guy, whose name I have forgotten so will be referred to as Joe, I learnt how to control a sound desk and set up the mikes, I even perfected my "Give me some bass/snare/vocals baby!" in the sound checks and it was fun to talk to the bands afterwards - apparently its really rare to have girls in the sound industry . I got offered a job too! Joe said that if I stayed in Sydney he'd train me up…he had defiantly been the best teacher(I'd felt a bit like a parrot but I could name and explain every button and gadget in the place by the time my lesson with him had finished)- but I wasn't looking for work this time and he was kind of annoying plus Bret told me it gets a bit lonely being a sound guy -especially if you're on tour with a band. You do get to meet some interesting characters though…it made me laugh when he suddenly had a thought: "You're British!""Yes…""Have you heard of some band…they were in here the other night and I had to do sound for them…noone had ever heard of them but I think they're quite popular in England…um what were they called Mc Fry? Lots and lots of under age girls tried to get in…Have you heard of them?" We packed everything away and headed back to Excelsior for my last night there.It was sad to leave Sydney the next day…it hadn't been as stunning or as eventful as New Zealand but I could have seen myself living there…I understand why people arrive at Excelsior meaning to stay a week and end up staying months…"it traps you" one of them had told me-get out while you still can! This time I took the advice but after university I can see myself back there for longer-I don't think I'd mind being "trapped" in Excelsior and Sydney!