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 be passing the Opera House on Tuesday so I popped in to see if they had had any returns. Luckily for me they had just received a couple. typically best seats in the house (row J of the stalls) with the prices to match but I am so pleased that I took the hit.

Oprah is coming to Sydney on 14 December to do her first ever recording of her show outside of America with "Oprah and the Opera". As they were in the process of setting up the staging the front steps of the Opera House were closed the to the general public, but as I was seeing a performance we could step out of the doors by the theatre to get outside (with a fraction of the normal crowds).

In the evening it was my friend Carl's birthday, so we went up to the Quarantine Station at North Head for dinner and a ghost tour. From 1830 to 1984 all ships arriving into Australia where someone had died onboard or was sick on arrival had to be anchored inside the Harbour off North Head and the passengers and crew put in quarantine at the Quarantine Station. After an average stay of 40 days the quarantined passengers and crew were released into Sydney. The experiences of those who passed through the Quarantine Station, and it is thought about 12,000 people passed through whilst the station was operating, varied greatly. The general treatment of passengers was predominantly along the lines of the class in which they were travelling whilst on board the ship. Accordingly, 1st class passengers had the luxury of a sewing room for the ladies, a 24 hour bar, a smoking room for the gentlemen etc and the use of a beautiful private beach. The 3rd class passengers were sharing in dorms and had to help prepare their own food and had none of the luxuries that the 1st class guests had. For those who were sick life was a lot harder... Many people died on the site and initially the bodies were buried wherever there was land, then a site near the drinking well was found for a burial ground - what they failed to realise was that the decomposing bodies were contaminating the drinking water and making the otherwise healthy people in the Quarantine Station sick. They then moved the graveyard to another area until they ran out of room there before the end of the 1st world war when many of the returning soldiers were suffering from Spanish Influenza. The majority of the soldiers and the nurses treating them that died are buried in a graveyard which now forms part of the Artillery Training School on North Head. We were told other stories of the disgruntled ghosts who are thought to patrol the site and were taken to various buildings including the hospital, the gas showers (used to clean people outside and inside!), the 3rd class dining rooms and most scary of all... the morgue. The guide was fabulous at setting the scene and had us all screaming (literally!) by the end of the tour. Also really interesting to learn something about the history of the site and what went on during the population of the new country.