Here I am in Sydney, on the morning of of my flight to South America. Just thought I better give a quick update before I leave Australia, I won't have time for all the adventures of the last month, but I'll try my best and tell the rest in flash-back. My first blog of 2011...

My time in Melbourne was pretty legendary. I loved the city, it's much more spacious then Sydney and has a really unique vibe and atmosphere. Fell in love with it immdiately and still missing it a lot. My first few days I spent checking out the local area of Brunswick where I was staying with the lovely Jess and Julie. Also cycled down through the city to St. Kilda beach to have a pint in the sunshine and see the penguins (yes, penguins!). It's true what they say about the weather down there, it can really be all 4 seasons in one day, so I experienced everything from hail, rain, hot sunshine and freezing winds over my time there.

One of the things I really wanted to do was visit the Great Ocean Road along the southern coast, but it is best to do this trip with your own transport so you can stop wherever and take your time about it. I wasn't keen on the tour option, as you know I have a bit of an aversion to tour groups... So I got straight onto Gumtree (a free travellers ad site - really useful!) and pretty quickly found a car-share road trip with a few other backpackers looking to do the same thing. We met up in Maccies to plan the trip the next day and then early (5am!) headed out on our voyage of discovery. We were; Ben - Malaysian, Maiju - Finnish and Luisa - Swiss, with an average age of 25.5 and a range of 4 (work it out maths buffs!). We made an awesome team. Ben was our chauffeur, chef and his Aussie-accented slightly deranged SatNav was our guide. I was chief language consulant, spokesperson and DJ. A role I took very seriously. First stop was Bells Beach. The birth place of Australian surfing (apparently) and we were not disappointed. Never seen such beautiful waves and so many surfers in all my life. We stopped at looks of little lookouts to taken in the views of the coastal cliffs and beaches, and visited cute beach towns and even went on a hike to a waterfall that first day. Stopped the night in Apollo bay where Ben cooked up some delicious Nasi Goreng, which made me reminisce about my Malaysian days. And of course I had to start watching the 3rd test of the Ashes. The next day we headed out again despite some Weather and got to see the famous 12 Apostles - massive sea stacks off the coast. There aren't 12 of them, but they were beautiful. Antartic winds drove us on pretty quickly and we had arrived at Warnambool by mid-afternoon. It was nice to wander around and chat, drink coffee and eat our picnic lunch, we all got on really well. The cricket was going badly... England seemed to have completely lost the momentum from the last win, and to make matters worse a big group of Aussie Army Reserve boys was staying in our hostel. Banter was had. We cooked some tasty spag bol and decided to go out for a 'quiet drink' in a local irish bar... you all know what happens when you just go for 'one'. Yep, the lads had different ideas, and it turned into a late one, but made some great friends and me and Maiju were in constant fits of giggles. Feeling a little worse for wear the next morning we headed off into the Grampian Mountain region to the north. Driving through crazy hail storms and rain with our delightful SatNav clearly trying its best to get us lost we eventually arrived at Halls Gap. A plague of locusts had decended... which was nice. We did some short hikes to see nice waterfalls, had more coffee and sandwiches and then it was time to drive back to Melbourne. I loved this trip, and was sad that it had to end, but we all met up again the night after and I have been seeing Maiju nearly everyday since beacuse she came to Sydney too. She's one of those people I've met that I clicked with immediately and we are such close friends already.

Back in Melbourne I had some nice chilled out days, sightseeing and going to cosy pubs that reminded my of home (they had real pints!). I also went to the night market at the huge Victoria Markets, which is so worth doing. I don't know what I expected, but it was like a mini festival! Live bands, lots of delicious food stalls, everyone sitting on big communal tables with drinks and friends. I loved it, such a good atmosphere. My time in Mel was coming to a close, far too early for my liking, and I was wishing that I hadn't booked a flight back to Sydney to be honest. Had to bite the bullet and get on the plane eventually. Met up with Liam who we met on the Great Ocean Rd trip, and he took me to the airport (apparently Avalon isn't actually in Melbourne?! damn you Jetstar!) Lovely guy though. Waved my goodbyes to Victoria, and it was off to NSW once again...

A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR...

So since coming back to Sydney, which is feeling a lot like my home town now, I've been back and forth to here that much. Stayed with my lovely Amber another few nights, and then xmas was upon us. That came up quick didn't it?! Despite having absolutely no hint of christmassy spirit, I tried to make the most of it and headed out with Maiju for a backpacker's xmas eve cruise on the harbour. Fantastic night; many funny events and beautiful sunset over the harbour bridge and we sipped our beers and mingled with the internationals. I woke up xmas morning on Amber's friends sofa - Donna, Amanda and Sarah. Who have adopted me as their house-guest for the past 10 days now. Love those girls. Cracked open a cider and then it was off to Manly and Shellys Beach on the ferry for our xmas day picnic! Beautiful, beautiful day. Pretty much perfect I'd say, apart from the lack of friends and family from back home, who I sorely missed. It is a funny time to be so far away from everyone. Swam in a gorgeously fresh pacific ocean and ate turkey sandwiches and drank warm cider. There were families and groups of friends all around us, xmas is such a more public and sociable time over here. I really enjoyed the different approach. When the weather is this good it's understandable to make everything into an outdoor event. Boxing day I went back to Amber's and had a very Aussie boxing day bbq, wathcing the cricket in the backyard with lots of lovely friends. Things were getting busy for everyone at this time, so I popped myself off to the backpackers where Maiju was staying for a night, just to get out of people's way. We went out in Kings Cross and cooked yummy salmon pasta. I wanted to arrange a trip to Newcastle with a few of the girls, but it fell through because I ate some bad pizza and the weather went bad. Ah well. Donna and the girls then very, very kindly put me up in their gorgeous flat in Sydney city centre. It has amazing views of Darling Harbour from the balcony. We all made friends so fast, it feels like I've always known them, but its not even been two weeks.

New Years Eve rolled around; the plan was to head across the bay to get a good view of the legendary Sydney fireworks. So that's what we did. Lugging lots of food and drinks we took the slightly stressful ferry across to Taronga and walked through the bush to get to Bradley's point. It was about 31 degrees and I have never been so relieved to see we could swim in the harbour! It was packed with backpackers, expats and a few token families. Luckily we had a good spot reserved on the grass by some friends. Settled down for a long wait, the kids fireworks at 9 and then the big uns at midnight. They did not disappoint. Really spectacular, and I loved seeing in 2011 with my girls and Maiju popped up too! Such a great night. The journey home was an adventure... but we made in back by about 4am. So Happy New Year evveryone!

I've been feeling overwhelming lucky to have met so many great people, and had such a good time. Really do think I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

The last few days of my time in Aus have been some of the best... I haven't even told you about our trip to the cricket yet either! But that is for next time I feel. Time to go and have brekkie with my girls, and then off for an 18 hour flight to a new continent, new culture, new language and new adventures. I'm naturally pooing my pants... but also very excited.

Love you all very much, miss you, and wish me luck!

Ellie