I had a fabulous day yesterday starting with a matinee performance of Peter Wright's The Nutcracker at the Opera House. The ballet was originally choreographed for the Birmingham Royal Ballet in 1990 and is a stunning production - the dancing was perfect, the costumes beautiful and the set design epic! It was howeever slightly surreal watching The Nutcracker and then stepping outside into near 30 degree heat! The production sold out months ago, but I happened to...

Sydney is gearing up into Christmas mode which does feel pretty strange. There is something decidedly wrong about people in bikinis next to Christmas trees and people wearing santa hats in the heat! Ashling and I put up our Christmas tree (fake) about 3 weeks ago! It does look very pretty though (I will have to take a photo). I went to my first Aussie Christmas party at Jim and Jill Hingston's (Lucy and Andy's brother and sister in-law's) on 27 November which was...

Another fab week in Sydney! The weather since last Friday has been fabulous. Monday's highlight was the X Factor finale (Altiyan deservedly won). Tuesday I took a surf lesson with Manly Surf School. Really good fun, despite the fairly strong winds which made paddling extremely hard work and some massive waves which totally smashed us! Had a huge brunch with Suvi at Ground Zero after my lesson and then headed into the city to catch up with Kiyomi over a bottle o...

One hour on the bus from Manly is an beautiful spot called Pittwater (named after William Pitt the Younger). Michael Doherty, who was part of the Lord Howe crew manages a YHA there in the middle of the Kurin-gai National Park with his partner Sarah and suggested that I went up there for a couple of days. The hostel is water-only access and the "normal" way of getting there is by the little ferry from Church Point which drops at various points around Pit...

Recovering from Lord Howe and sorting out my gear took a couple of days, but it was really nice to be back in Manly and catch up with everyone. We spent a morning scrubbing Copernicus down and cleaning everything after the race and I had a much needed haircut! Went to my first gig in Australia at the Metro Theatre on George Street with Carl, Carl and Maria to see the Charlatans (UK mid-90s band) which was good fun. The entire audience was English. We are really ...