On Monday, our last day in Sydney, Mark and John went to Manly beach for lunch and a walk about while Beth was a coldy couch potato. The boys met up with Dan and Kate at the Local for trivia night and managed to win a free sample paddle of beer. Early Tuesday morning, we hopped a plane from Sydney to Brisbane. We arrived in Brisbane at 6:30am!!! We picked up some maps and found our bearings before leaving the airport. We then took the train into the centra...

New Years Day, we got to a VERY slow start. Our plan was to pack up and start our road trip in the morning, but well, everyone slept in after the NYE party and even once awake, we were pretty sloth-like while getting ready. Finally, just after 6pm that evening, the great Dutch-Canadian Australian road trip began. Three cars and ten people rolled out of Sydney and headed west. Our modest destination for the night was Katoomba, just 2 hours outside of Sydney....

Friday, the 30th, the 3 of us wandered around more of the city - John continued our guided tour to Darling harbour. It was a great day to spend the afternoon wandering around by the water. The harbour is lined with bars and restaurants so we took advantage of the nice day and ate some cheap sushi and had a nice cold drink. We happened to wander up in the middle of a random busker show and catch the end of his act. What was crazy is that we had seen this sam...

Boxing day, we loaded up the Family Truckster, picked up Dan and headed on a mini road trip. Kate's family had rented a vacation house on the beach in Hawk's Nest, about 2.5 hours north of Sydney. Her family was awesome - we arrived in the middle of a game of trivial pursuit and were split up onto their teams. Trivia from the 80s already wasn't my strong suit, but trivia from Australia in the 80s was even more difficult! Still, it was fun and they fed us a...

Arriving in Sydney after our short 4 hour flight from Nadi was great! Although it was raining when we landed (seriously, who knew it rains in Australia?!), John was there to pick us up and whisk us off into the city. We dropped our packs off at John's amazing Darlinghurst apartment (right in the city and with a great open-air layout and huge sun deck), and walked over for a tasty thai lunch. We toured his neighbourhood a bit on foot, and walked around King's...