Well my gut feeling about Newcastle was right; it's much better than Port Macquarie! The hostel is fantastic too but, unfortunately, it's right next to a building site. I was woken up this morning at 7.30am by the sound of drills and diggers so, once again, I am severely sleep-deprived!

I took advantage of the early start to do boring things like my laundry as I literally had no clean clothes left except for a bikini (and I didn't want to inflict that sight on everyone at the hostel that early in the morning). Jim surfaced around 10am and I went for a little walk whilst I waited for him to get ready. I pulled a Nara though (new phrase referring to the phenomenon experienced in Nara where I felt like I was going to faint and started pouring with sweat) so had to have a lie down. But I'm feeling much better now so it's all good!

We went to the beach this afternoon as the weather was really warm. I desperately tried to get a tan, despite the fact I'll be losing it in New Zealand, whilst Jim read and then we went for a wander. We climbed Queens Wharf Tower (referred to by locals as 'the giant penis') for a view of the city and then ambled along the main street, veering off to see the rugby stadium, town hall and civic park. The latter was really pretty so I hung around there whilst Jim went to get his noodle fix (he's developing a worrying addiction to them that can only end in tragedy, him flogging his possessions to get more crispy duck).

There's a local art festival going on here called 'This is not art' so I went to an exhibition at the Tafe Front Room Gallery. It consisted of a wall of different illustrations of faces, cut into segments so that you could mix and match them to construct a new face. On the other side of the room were speakers, decks and other audio equipment, mounted on podiums of different heights, and little notebooks hanging from the ceiling, suspended by wire. Not sure what it meant...

In fact, Newcastle seems to have quite a thriving art community and I walked past a workshop space for artists and the whole exterior of the building was a mishmash of different pieces of art: vivid paintings, stencil work, mirror mosaics, collage. I like Newcastle! But we're off to Sydney tomorrow and that's VERY exciting...

Love you all loads, x x x