As we landed in Australia, it was wet and really cold! Maybe the fact we had just spent 8 months in Asia hadn't quite prepared us for such 'england-like' weather conditions. We stayed a week in Sydney and experienced our first real hostel-hell like challenge (at least staying there made us get up and out in the mornings!). We were based right in the centre of the city which was great for getting out and about.

The weather aside, it was fab to catch up with Ed and Russel (who we met in China) and Sydney is a really nice city, clean and has quite a mellow feel to the place. Obviously we headed down to the Opera House to get some snaps and to see the harbour bridge too. While we were there we had a night out in Kings Cross and experienced our first encounter with 'goon'. This is basically cheap and strong boxed wine that all the travellers drink... to get drunk! Great to catch up with the boys and to get to know Ed's friends Rose, Mike and Steve who we get on really well with too.

Spent alot of time round at Ed and Mikes house having dinner and just chilling out together. It was really nice to be able to just go round to their house and relax. During the days while everyone was working we went to Sydney Zoo, pottered around town and ate Sushi. People in Sydney obviously love sushi and exercising during their lunch hour-we saw so may people running around the botanic gardens during lunch hour,mad!

We went for a coastal walk from Bondi Beach to Coogee one afternoon with the boys and had a BBQ close to the beach. Great views of the coast and fantastic seeing all the locals witht their families truely showing that aussies do the 'outside life style'. Everyone just seems to chill out at the beach, surfing, swimming etc. In all the parks there are BBQs areas so people can just rock up and have dinner by the beach-its great!

One of the days we went over to Palm Beach were they film Home & Away! luckily that day they were filming, we couldn't believe our eyes when Alf Stewart turned up to shoot a scene! you can really recognise the beach and the kiosk which is by the beach. It's a really windy beach there though so once we got a few shots of the man himself we were on our way.

We booked our campervan to leave after a week of being in Sydney. We decided to head down to Melbourne as Ed was going there for the weekend. We ended up with a people carrier rather than a actual campervan but it has all the necessities such as a fridge, DVD player and was automatic!very cosy...

Next, we head down to Melbourne. We persuaded Ed and Mike to coem on the road trip with us.