Hey everyone,

We've now been in Australia since Wednesday 13th Feb, when we flew into Sydney from New Zealand. Sydney has been lovely and we've seen all the main sights, visiting the Opera House, Harbour Bridge, Darling Harbour, The Rocks, Chinese Gardens (where we dressed up in traditional Chinese clothes, quite embarrassing, but luckily no photos to prove it ever happened)!! We've also been to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Manly beach, Bondi beach, Palm beach (where they film Home and Away, Josie was extremely over excited, Danny not bothered), Blue Mountains, Olympic Park and the Sydney Tower.

The weather has progressively got better and better, when the sun did come out, we took full advantage and have spent many days soaking it up on the beach!

We managed to meet up with a few friends and family. Josie met two old school friends, Zanny and Georgie. We spent a day with the girls in Manly. We also enjoyed an evening out in Sydney with Zanny, and a day on the beach with her in Bondi. We met up with Josie's cousin Vicky and her boyfriend Chris. They took us up to Watson's Bay for lunch, and also cooked us a lovely home dinner (a delicious shepherds pie, made by Chris) in Vicky's apartment in Rose Bay.

Danny's best mate Lance was also in Sydney at the same time as us, with his girlfriend Vicky. We spent two days at Bondi with them, and shared a couple evenings together. One of these evenings we went to the Minus 5 Ice Bar, which was a very cool evening! Danny also met up with his mate Jason, who is working in Sydney. We had a couple of nights out with him, both very funny, with pictures of Jason to prove it!!

On Sunday 24th, we went to Palm Beach with some of our Contiki friends, Lisa, Lauren and Amy (and Aaron and Harrison) from NZ. They drove us from Manly and we spent a great day with them, having a bbq and playing beach cricket. As we said before, Home and Away is filmed here, as Summer Bay, but sadly for Josie, there was no filming, so she couldn't be an extra!

Our trip to the Blue Mountains was amazing! We had a guide who took us on two lovely walks, where we saw wild kangaroos, the three sisters, stunning waterfalls and rode on a vertical train, quite scary for some (Josie) but not for the fearless (Danny).

We've had such a fantastic time in our two weeks in Sydney, but we need to move onwards and upwards. We're travelling up the east coast by the Premier Bus, leaving on Tuesday 26th, with our first stop being Coffs Harbour for two nights. We then will visit Ballina, Byron Bay, Surfers Paradise, Brisbane, Noosa Heads, Hervey Bay (Fraser Island), 1770, Airlie Beach (Whitsundays) and finally Cairns on March 24th.

We hope everyone is well, we do miss you, but only sometimes, as we're having too much fun seeing so many new things to think about cold, rainy, grumpy England....!!!

Lots of love to you all,

Josie and Danny XXX