I begrudgingly left Fiji last week and made my way to the airport to catch my flight to Sydney. After what the people I met on the Feejee exp bus told me about the heat and how horribly hot it was going to be I was expecting to walk off the plane into an oven! However, when I got through the airport and walked outside it was bloody freezing, and raining! Not impressed!

Got to Base, where I've been staying and learnt that I'd be spending one night in one room before having to move the next day. I wasn't overly impressed with this as its hard enough living out of a backpack as it is without having to pack it up and move again every day or few days! Met some nice guys in the room and after a bit of a wander to get some food we ended up going to get something to eat anyway. The kitchen at Base is pretty rank, and one of the girls I've met has had food stolen from her. There are only about 8 pans between 200 people or something ridiculous like that and it doesn't help when people are selfish and put pans of food in the fridge because they're too tight to buy some tupperware!

Spent my first full day in Sydney walking round up to Cirqular Quay where the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge are. When I first saw the Opera House I was slightly disappointed, the pictures you see of it are taken from some very good angles! I met a girl at the Harbour after asking her to take my picture and we spent the rest of the day wandering around chatting after first walking across the Harbour Bridge and back again. I've been a little disappointed with Sydney, loads of people I've met have said how amazing it is so I think I built up my expectations. It is an amazing city but there isn't really that much to do unless you want to spend a heap of money!

I met Gemma that night while we were attempting to cook food and moaning about the kitchen. How terribly British of us! The next day we ended up going over to Taronga Zoo together which was pretty good. It's on a hill, which makes for a lot of walking up and down to see all of the animals as the lay out is a bit higgledy piggledy but I really enjoyed myself and there are some amazing views from the zoo back over the city, the bridge and the opera house. After all the walking around I was pretty knackered so spent the night watching films on my iPod and chatting to some of the guys in my room.

Beach day! Alicia, Gemma and I headed off to Bondi Beach to 'catch some rays'. We only lasted on the beach for all of 5 minutes before we moved up off the sand to the grass right by the beach. Way too windy! Poor Alicia was covered from head to toe in sand! Unfortunately I managed to get a bit of sunburn on my back and bum so I've had an uncomfortable few days since! We went out for a few drinks that night across the bridge with an old school friend of Alicia's. A dress, wicker furniture and sunburnt thighs do not make for a happy night!

On Saturday I had a pretty lazy day and went for a walk up to the Royal Botanic Gardens and to the point I was told about where you can get the best views of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House together. After that I was really sad and went to see New Moon, which I've been waiting to see since I left the States!

As everything is so expensive here the cheapest thing to drink is GOON. It's basically cheap bag-in-box wine which costs about 8 quid for 4 litres and as I was told before I got to Oz, is made from fish eggs. Nice. Funnily enough this really put me off, but I've managed to find a nice one and if you pretend you don't know about the fish eggs its ok to drink! So that night Gemma and I tucked into my box of goon and then headed up to one of the bars underneath another hostel down the road from us. It was a pretty good night, the goon made me forget about the sunburn! And a McDonalds on the way home managed to ensure I didn't have a hangover come Saturday morning!! Score!

Yesterday we all got the ferry across to Manly Beach and spent a few hours in the sun before the wind picked up and we got cold! Manly is so much nicer than Bondi, and less busy! Everyone harps on about how nice Bondi is but Manly is definitely the nicer, and larger of the two beaches. We were starving by the time we got back across to the city so went and stuffed our faces at the Pizza Hut buffet, much nicer than the buffet in England!

I'm off to Melbourne on an overnight coach tomorrow to spend a week there. Still not sure what I'm doing for Christmas and New Year yet. Everywhere in the City is fully booked and ridiculously expensive so everyone I've met has heard that they might be having an extra body sleeping on their floor if they're unlucky! I'll write more when I get to Melbourne, hopefully I'll have something more exciting to tell you then!