I went to mass at St Mary's Cathedral next to Hyde Park yesterday morning. It was solemn mass led by the cathedral choir, who sounded magnificent. The choir was made up of boys attending the cathedral school as well as professional men - a great, free concert!

I also took a walk across the harbour bridge, having decided that the bridge climb was too pricey. Annoyingly, I had to check out of the nice YHA on The Rocks and move to Base Hostel for the night, as that's where my tour was starting from, but it's not a very nice hostel - more like an old warehouse. It's near Darling Harbour and ChinaTown, which is all a bit crazy as there's a big festival going on for the Chinese New Year.

I met the group and our leader yesterday evening and we went to a local pub for an introductory talk and dinner. I could feel everyone's trepidation (and still can), no one really knows what to expect from the tour. There are 13 of us, so a nice, small number, and I am actually the youngest, although everyone is between 22 and 30. No big personalities (yet), just a nice group of people which I'm relieved about! 4 of us are English, 6 German and there's a Dutch, an American and a Canadian. One of the girls actually works in Birmingham on Colmore Row and lives in Leamington!

We left the hostel at 8am this morning (I was pretty glad to be out of there!) just as Syndey was waking up for work and morning rush hour had begun. It was a pretty long journey today. I had my second wine tasting experience of the trip (at 10:30am!) at Tyrell's Winery in Hunter Valley. We were given a tour and it was like being on a school trip - we kept being picked on to answer questions! The wine was nowhere near as good as Forrest Wines in Marlborough, although I liked their Riesling enough to buy a bottle to share with Leonie tonight (the girl from Leamington.)

We also stopped off in Singleton, which has nothing much other than the world's largest sundial - not particularly exciting! The scenery wasn't too interesting on the journey either, although we did see some kangaroos and emus! We arrived at Nundle Sheep Station in the back of beyond at 5pm. They've converted it into a pretty nice hostel and country music venue. We're staying in the shearer's quarters, which does indeed look like a big shed and each room has 20 beds in it, but it's actually very clean and comfortable, just a little old fashioned. Much nicer than Base Sydney!

I went for a run out along the road/dirt track, although it was extremely hot to be out running. There are nice rolling hills all around, but they're all full of animals and there are no tracks, so to avoid getting lost/trespassing, I stuck to the road that the owner had recommended. Ten minutes into my run, I was very grateful to be running on the road and not elsewhere, as I met a big black snake! It was lying just at the side of the road, but thankfully scarpered into the grass when it heard me coming. I also got chased and barked at by four dogs (at the same time) on my way back to the sheep station, so I managed quite a sprint for half a mile, in spite of the heat. I wish people would keep their gates shut!

We also had a sheep shearing lesson this evening which was interesting... Someone took a photo of me pretending to be useful so I'll have to ask her to send it to me - photos of me with animals are pretty rare after all so I need the proof!

Except for a few lunches, all of our meals are provided on this tour, so I'm enjoying not having to worry about food myself. We got a pretty big feed tonight - we even got a big slice of pavlova for dessert! I hadn't realised this when booking, but G Adventures, the tour provider, have actually only just established themselves in Australia and this is only their third tour, although they have a very good reputation in South America. It's certainly a very different style of tour to the hop on, hop off bus in NZ. I'm still quite apprehensive about it, but we'll see how things go...