Sydney

I arrived in Sydney on Monday and headed to find my friends Chris, Hannah, Jo and Jill. The weather was a bit cooler than elsewhere in Oz so far, but still a good 18 degrees!!We had a good mooch about the city and headed to the Observatory. This was one of those trips round a museum that you suddenly find yourself on, despite not really wanting to be there! We paid about $7 to watch this film about how the moon and Earth are really small and the Sun is massive, but nowhere near as big as other stars. All stuff you learn in GCSE physics! Anyway I did get to look through a telescope and sea the sun which was cool!! Or hot!

We then headed across to Manly on the ferry. Manly is a little island about 30min ferry ride from Sydney harbour. It's a pretty little town with a few shops, lots of bars/cafes and a big beach. Apparently it used to be a really big surfing town. It certainly seems quite trendy and I can understand why a lot of business people commute from here to the city everyday. Unfortunately we didnt get here until gone 4 and by the time we'd faffed about and met up with 2 more med students from Newcastle it was time to head back over to the mainland. Seeing the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House lit up at night was totally out of this world though!

Anyway a trip to any city wouldn't be the same with a night out so off we went to a big backpacker bar for a few little tipples. This made me really miss Newcastle and all the fun nights out I have there and finally made me realise that maybe I do miss home a little bit sometimes. Obviously I miss friends and family before any of you reading this take the hump, but I didn't really miss England until this night (and to be fair, then it was only for a split second).

Blue Mountains

The next day we got up pretty early, the other 2 girls with slightly sore heads, and headed to the Blue Mountains - famous mountain range about 2hrs train ride away from Sydney. We got on a hop on/off bus and got off at various stops to take in the stunning scenery. One problem - it was so misty all you could see was whiteness behind the lookout points. At one point we did get a little view of the mountains but we basically couldn't see anything! Once we reached the "3 Sisters" the most famous rock formation in the Blue Mountains, the mist was finally starting to clear! The 3 sisters comes from a famous tale in which a father sent his 3 daughters to guard this rock from the ogre-type person that lived at the bottom. One day one of the girls knocked a small rock off the top, which went crashing to the ground and the ogre hurried up the giant rock and turned the 3 girls to stone. So anyway, the 3 sisters is basically 3 triangles that have formed on the top of one of the mountains and is set amongst a back drop of some blue looking mountains and a massive green canopy beneath. Here, we also went of the world's steepest railway and had a look around the forest floor. There are loads of mines here where they used to send convicts to work ans sleep in. We then got a cable car back up to the top and here I got some excellent snaps now the sun was shining!

Sydney continued...

On my final day in Sydney, I decided to go on the free(!!) guided tour - this was one of the best guided tours I've ever been on. Not only did the woman tell us lots about the history of Sydney, but she also had lots of quirky stories from the past.

I'm not going to go into details of the history now, but we basically saw the Town Hall, Cathedrals, Central Business District, Hyde Park, the hospitals (apid for by the revenue of rum sales back in the day), the Rocks (the place where the convicts first landed in Sydney), the Harbour Bridge and of course the Opera House. I really expected Sydney to be one massive city, but in actual fact you can walk from one side to the other in about 40mins. Also for anyone that doesn't know, Sydney is not the capital city, Canberra is! It is the most populated city but Melbourne is the biggest in terms of size. Canberra was chosen as the capital because there was so much rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne and it is between the 2 cities and in land, therefore less likely to be attacked from the sea. Just for clarification, I am defintely TEAM SYDNEY!!

After bidding farewell to my friends, myself and Jon (guy I met in Brisbane who was also in Sydney at the same time), went for a mooch about the city including the botanical gardens and back to the Opera House for more snaps! I also invested in my present to myself to remind me forever more of what an AMAZING trip it has been - a Pandora bracelet, complete with a Kangaroo charm - very Australia!

Next and final stop Melbourne, before the long journey back to the motherland!

And for those of you paying close attention and wondering why I've entitled this blog, Sydney -the eternal city, it stems from the fact that a man called Arthur Stace, an illiterate criminal and reformed alcoholic, learned how to write these words after casually entering St Andrews Cathedral in Sydney and hearing a gospel in which the priest said, "Eternity, Eternity, I wish that I could sound or shout that word to everyone in the streets of Sydney. You've got to meet it, where will you spend Eternity?". Arthur then went about the streets writing the word 'Eternity' in chalk. He wrote it almost 30 times a day over many, many years. It's written on the clock tower above the central post office, in the cathedral and was even written in the fireworks from Sydney Harbour Bridge at the millennium. So there! Consider yourself educated!

xxx