Hi Everybody,

Sorry it seems so long since our last update............but we're on holiday. Well, holiday in as much as we have been getting very wet! We arrived in Sydney last Sunday at 6am, dropped our bags off at our Sydney suburb apartment (!) and hit the city whilst it was still asleep. We walked along Kings Cross High Street where people were still celebrating Saturday night out! This meant the smell of stale beer, vomit coated pavements and young kids who didn't know who they were! "What have we come to?" are words that came readily to our lips. We perservered and continued walking through the Botanical Gardens where we stopped for a coffee and overlooked a huge flying fox (fruit bat) colony. This restored our faith in life and we marched on to view the sights of Sydney...................the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, Circular Quay, the Rocks (craft market)........what a truly amazing city, it 'blew our minds' not only with the close proximity of everything but the sheer friendliness of the people. Feeling upbeat, we bought two tickets for the following evenings show-boat harbour cruise -3-course dinner, free drinks all night and full west-end style cabaret. It was at about this time that it started spitting...............then raining...........then pissing it down -and this carried on for the next three days. During showers of torrential rain and electrical storms we managed to use the fantastic Sydney public transport system to get around. So, by using bus, train and ferry we saw................Bondi -in the rain, Manly -in the rain, Walked the bridge -in the rain, etc, etc -in the rain. Can you believe, we still had a fantastic time even though Doreen started to 'go down' with a cold!

On Thursday we picked up our campervan -it is enormous! It sleeps 4 adults so there's loads of room for two of us and we really have now settled into a nomadic existence....and love it! We journeyed into the Blue Mountains -in the rain, arrived in bright sunshine by late afternoon and went for an exhilerating clifftop walk (see photos -eventually!). What we hadn't allowed for was the huge drop in temperatures when dusk falls and, needless to say, we were well and truly caught out by being dressed as Brits on holiday whilst the natives resembled eskimos! We arrived back at our 'van shivering almost uncontrollably! A hearty warming meal of bog-standard Spaghetti Bolognaise soon revived us and we set about planning the following day over a glass (or two...) of wine.

We slept well and woke early to -guess what? &@$%ing rain. We made the most of a washout day by following a local bush walk which included riding on the world's steepest railway and gliding over sheer cliffs in a glass bottomed cable car (see caption photo). Because of the weather we left the Blue Mountains a day early and have travelled to the Hunter Valley (of winery fame) so that we can get totally drunk whilst the rain pours down around us............guess what -the sun is shining!!!

Our intention is now to hug the coast northwards in the hope that we leave the unseasonal weather behind us. Speak soon and will try to upload photos when we can -so you can enjoy Sydney in the rain as well!