...Australia Day Weekend Celebrations: Fireworks at Darling Harbour. Meal with Lheanne at Nicks. Australia Day Anthems Sunday stomp...

The Aussie's love a bank holiday and this weekend was no exception. The Australia Day celebrations are huge with tons of events going on to commemorate the day.

In the evening I met up with Lheanne from my wobbly wine tour and found out all about her trip around Oz whilst we enjoyed a lovely Japanese meal. Afterwards we headed over to the Watershed and joined the guys from my Blue Mountain's tour for some drinks and to be amazed by the spectacular fireworks at Darling Harbour.

One thing the Aussie do do right are pyrotechnic displays. How much effort and money they put in to them is unbelievable but it makes for a good show and an awesome experience. It was a great excuse to meet up with everyone again and turned into a funny evening with the guys trying to teach me about rugby and Grant nearly going for a swim in the Harbour until the Rangers caught up with him.

On Sunday Lheanne and I met up at Darling Harbour again for a lovely seafood meal at Nicks. Contrary to its humble name this restaurant is anything but average with a gorgeous menu of fishy delights. Lheanne & I enjoyed King Prawns to start and followed with a wonderful grilled John Dory fish for mains. I've never had Dory before and was pleasantly surprised with the taste & texture of this ocean fish.

Bless Lheanne she bought me a Crème Egg as a treat as she knows I've been getting a bit homesick recently. I just think I need a bit of a change of scenery as I've been in Sydney quite a while now. Can't wait to finish up at DP World in a few days and start my travels again.

Then in true bank holiday Sunday tradition I headed out for a stomp. I wanted to see Steve Hill play again before I left Sydney and also needed to hear some hard house being blasted out at ridiculously high levels.

I had quite high hopes for Australia Day Anthems as the previous hard dance event I'd been to in Sydney was amazing but unfortunately this wasn't in the same league. It was still a pretty good night but the music and the crowd didn't create the same type of atmosphere as before.

The beginning looked hopeful with some wicked hardcore and scratching, then followed by an awesome female DJ who played a hard dance set, the evening progressively got heavier until Steve Hill came on and played a classic anthems set with tunes like Silence. Unfortunately the next DJ decided to fluff it up and killed the dance floor. Amber Savage (yeah I know, talk about an original DJ name!) came on and tried to salvage what was left of the evening and did a fairly good job providing a finale stomp to some heavier tunes.

Although the event wasn't everything I'd hoped for I did meet a cool Irish raver called Keith. It was great chatting about music again with someone and having a stomping partner for the evening. During the fluffy period in the main room we stumbled upon the second room and got our mitts on one of the DJs vinyls. It was great checking out his tunes, made me realise how much I missed riffling through Stash's collection so much so that I gave him a call on the way home; was brilliant catching up mate.

Photo: Me at the Darling Harbour fireworks display