Hi there everyone!!

So sorry about the huge delay in writing our latest blog but since we've settled in Sydney we have got out of backpacker mode for a while...including updating our blog.

We arrived in Australia on the 19th November and luckily found a place to stay after only a day of searching! As luck would have it we were offered a room in a student house by an Australian couple we met in New Zealand. It is in a cool location halfway between town and the beach and the people we live with are really nice so tis great! I am even more delighted with the house because the lads are all sports mad and have introduced me to the world of cricket! Even Linda is beginning to understand it a bit! We went to watch Australia and South Africa play last week. It went on for 8 hours! It was great to see it live but it was a very long day!! Although for Jake, Robbo and Sam (our housemates) it was like Christmas day all over again...they were so excited.

Our main priority was to find a job as soon as we arrived here so we were on the case straight away. I got my licence to work on building sites and even did a training course to be a lollypop man! Well, they call it traffic controlling over here but that's basically what it was. Unfortunately, or fortunately maybe, there were no jobs in that field so I'm now working in a language school as a registrar. It's a shirt and tie every day for me which is a change! Linda was very proactive in her search for teaching jobs as she had already sorted her registration to teach here before we left Edinburgh. She wanted to do some subbing/supply teaching so she sent her CV to loads of schools and we even spent a day trekking around what felt like the whole of Sydney in the baking heat personally handing in CVs, although Linda swears it was only about 6 schools in the nearby suburb! But like everywhere in the world, teachers don't take too many sick days just before the summer hols! Once the schools shut for the summer, Linda did some work with a charity organisation. For two whole weeks she was an expert on Australian Conservation and climate change. At one stage I thought Australia was on the verge of sinking into the sea with the amount of facts she was throwing at me! After Christmas Linda found a nicer job working in a childcare centre so she's happy out.

Christmas and New Years Eve were both great for different reasons. We spent Christmas at a friends house with Linda's cousin Catherine and about 20 other Irish, stuffing ourselves with roast turkey and ham as well as a traditional Aussie BBQ! The sun shone and the craic was mighty going on into the early wee hours!! St. Stephens day was then spent at the Randwick Races nearby where we live. This was the Galway races all over again with everyone dolled up to the nines and practically everyone was from the Emerald Isle!

New Years Eve was spent at the wedding of Kristie and Luke, an Australian couple we know from their time in Edinburgh. Friends came down from Ireland and Edinburgh for the wedding so it was like a great big reunion. The wedding was out in a small country village called Grenfell, 5 hours drive from Sydney. Grenfell is totally off the backpacker trail and is real country Australia! It was so nice to get away from the city for a while. The wedding itself was held on the groom's father's farm. They have a bit of land out there (4000 acres!!) so they had plenty of room to host all 160 of us. It was a fantastic wedding with the ceremony taking place under a big tree in their beautiful garden followed by dinner, dancing and drinking under the stars!! All the Irish gang ended up spending 5 days in Grenfell...I think the town is still recovering! A big congrats to Luke and Kristie! One memorable evening was spent 'Yabbying' (fishing for crayfish) on a local farm. We rolled into it to be met by a farmer with a bottle of beer in one hand and a gun in the other....he was out "playing with the Gallahs" apparently. Anyway he showed us where the fishing hole was and we went to work with meat tied to one end of our line and the other end tied to a stick stuck in the ground. The Yabbies didn't know what hit them and we quickly filled a cooler box full of them! The fishing was only interrupted at one point by a gun shot in the distance...which we later found out was that same farmer hunting for Kangaroos in a field nearby. We had a feast of yabbies that night!

Since the New Year has arrived it has been reasonably quiet apart from on January 3rd, when we got the phone call to tell us that Linda was an Auntie! Ciara, Linda's sister, had a baby boy called Donncha so there's huge excitement in the Mannion family. He's a beautiful baby, very happy and healthy apart from the fact that he's already wearing a Man Utd babygrow! Daddy Joey needs to get on the case with a Liverpool jersey fairly lively before that baby is swayed! Linda can't wait until the 21st Jan as she's flying home for a few weeks to visit her new nephew. Congratulations Ciara and Joey!

So far Sydney has treated us really well. It's a big busy city but has some fantastic beaches, which we try to visit as often as possible. The weather has been averaging high 20s since we've arrived so there's definitely no complaints there. We're going to be here for another 6 weeks or so and then we'll hit the road again (Linda is dreading the packing of the rucksack!) It's been really great catching up with people from Edinburgh and Ireland over Christmas and the New Year. All the familiar faces has made our time here extra special.

Happy New Year to you all and best wishes to Marianne and Francis who are expecting their first baby any day now!

Lots of Love,

Ger and Linda