28th January - 18th February - Sydney and Blue Mountains

Average temperature: 22 degrees
Rainfall: The whole of February average in first 3 days
Scenic walks: 0
Sunday dinner: 1
Harbour Bridge walk: 1/2
Worlds biggest IMax 3D shows: 1

Arrived around lunch time into Sydney and had to put our watches forward by 5 hours so it was about 6am for us. Tired, after a long trip, we got the tube to Kings Cross and traipsed with our heavy bags to the hostel. We had booked the hostel through the Lonely Planet website so we were surprised and a bit peed off when we found that they didn't book us in because we were given the wrong price on the website. Unfortunately, they had no room and had tried to e-mail us - funny how Yahoo didn't work that time!

We asked them to call the YHA and got us booked in. The YHA was absolutely spanky new and the cost for the rooms reflected this. The cheapest was a bed in a mixed 8 person dorm for $33 each! What a shock to the system after Thailand. We knew it was going to be more, but we started to think how we could afford to live for the duration of our Oz trip.

Not to waste any time, we walked straight to Circular Quay to see the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. We also went into the Botanical Gardens (which is a must if you visit!) where we saw huge Fruit Bats, Ibis, and Cockatoos... and lots of plants. In the evening, we had dinner in Darling Harbour (another place not to miss). This harbour has been redeveloped to cater for drinking and dining in style - a bit like the South Bank in London, but nicer (and warmer).

So, the first thing on our list of "business to attend to" was to sort out our ongoing flights which were all for 28th March, as we couldn't book a year in advance. Our instructions from the St. Albans Flight Centre was to go into any Flight Centre shop and change the flight dates free of charge. This seemed easy, and luckily for us that the Flight Centre Headquarters happened to be opposite the YHA. Well, it wasn't as easy as we thought, as they told us they don't have access to the UK system and advised us to go direct to the airlines. The next day we ventured to Virgin Atlantic, who have an office with great views of the bridge, anyway they sorted all the flights out for us even Air New Zealand who's flight from Fiji to LA no longer existed. Bit annoying that we have to fly back to New Zealand to get to LA, but what can you do.

You can't visit Sydney without visiting Bondi beach. This beach is a little out of the way as you have to get the tube to Bondi Junction and get a 10 minute bus ride down to the beach. We were stupid enough to walk it so when we got to the beach it was already around 4pm. Too late for Carl to hire a Boogie Board once we spent a couple of hours playing in the surf.

Another place we wanted to visit while in Sydney was Manly. This is a 40 min ferry journey from Circular Quay along the harbour to the coast where Manly is. One of the main reasons for going was so that Vik could have some Manly Barramundi and chips from the chip shop by the beach - 'twas one of Viks favourite chips shops in Oz..mmmm Barramundi.

Carl thought it was wise to buy a boogie board after seeing the hire prices, so he got a complete package (fins and leashes) for around $250, and obviously had to try it out straight away in the really bad choppy waves.

Vik took Carl to one of her old haunts, Broadway, which was just up the road from the YHA. Unfortunately things had changed in 9 years and it wasn't as happening as it use to be, but it gave us chance to sit and decide on a few things, such as places we wanted to visit. We came to the conclusion that we wouldn't like to stay in dorms for the next 2 months as that is all we could afford, so we thought it would be a good idea to buy/hire a campervan. We spent a couple of days looking at many campers to buy and hire, and came to the conclusion that we would hire as buying comes with a load of hassle such as selling, insurance, breakdowns, etc.. We finally decided on our Hippie Camper which was the best option for the price, $39 a day! This was a better option than paying around $30ish each for a dorm bed, and we could go where we wanted.

The first place on our list was Katoomba, situated 1 1/2 hours South West of Sydney in the Blue Mountains National Park. It's a great location for view the mountains with lots of things to do such as rainforest walking, vernacular railway, Scenic Skyway (glass bottom cable car). The journey there was cloudy but we arrived late so we decided to do the sightseeing in the morning, little did we know that the weather was going to deteriorate through the night. The next day (and for the whole time in the Blue Mountains), it was foggy and raining. We tried to view the famous 3 sisters, but only saw cloud. The whole day was like this so we postponed our Scenic World activity until the next day. Unfortunately the weather was dreadful for the whole day, night, and next day. We had even heard on the radio that parts of Sydney had been flooded, it had been that bad. Not wanting to waste money on a cable car into the clouds, we went into Katoomba town centre, which is full of original Art Deco buildings. We had Devonshire Tea and waffles in what looked like an old 30's gentleman's club with the original wooden Deco bar.

On the way back to Sydney (as we were heading north), we took a detour down Megalong Valley, which took us into the rainforest. We saw our first Kangaroo's of the trip. One of our things to do was to go to Bobs and pick up our Lonely Planet guides for New Zealand, Fiji and USA. Bob's Howard's (Carl's mate) uncle, who kindly invited us for dinner and a bed for the night. We arrived to a gorgeous smell of roast lamb and all the trimmings which we hadn't had in around 5 months - It was delicious! That night the rain didn't stop, and it pounded on the roof and almost kept us awake it was that loud. Not only did it rain all night, but it was raining in the morning as we set off after a lovely full English Breakfast, towards Palm Beach (Northern Sydney suburb).

Travelling through Sydney we were still hearing about the floods, which we had avoided, and arrived at Palm Beach (where they film Home and Away) to find there was no campsite. The weather hadn't improved either so we thought it would be best to carry on north up the coast to The Entrance. Not a place we were going to stop at but we'd been on the road for 6 hours already.