Being greeting with a smiling woman in Sydney airport was such a treat after the stone-faced Indian airport staff that I almost fell forward and clung to her shins in tearful ecstasy - thankfully, I held it together and handed over my passport for inspection without so much as a whimper.

Despite our passports having to be scanned a few times (Chelsea's finger marks are still in my arm, where she gripped me in fear that I'd done something else wrong) we had easy passage to our baggage reclaim and were soon out in Australia's evening sunshine and jumping into a taxi.

We arrived at Coogee after a thirty five minute drive from the airport. Our driver lectured us on the dangers of Uber and how his business is suffering as a result of the new driving phenomenon. Shockingly, he was also outwardly and lavishly racist, apparently to every culture that I could think of, no one was exempt from his narrow views! In an awkward silence we stared out of the window, occasionally throwing out a few words of protest though this seemed to only fan the flames of his views. Deciding that we weren't going to change his mind we reverted back to looking out of the window for the remainder of the journey.

Jodie, Chelsea's sister, greeted us at the door of our Air B and B. It was great to see her and we quickly fell to verbally bashing India whilst shovelling nachos and crackers into our mouths. Jodie had some plans of what we could to for the remainder of our five day visit, which all sounded fantastic as we were going to tick off the major sights that Sydney had to offer.

Feeling ever so slightly jet lagged we decided to have a tame night in order to stockpile some energy for tomorrow's itinerary. We set up the laptop and all cwtched up on the sofa with tea and Tim Tams (a chocolate biscuit very similar to the British Penguin) and settled into a film.

After the film and yawning heartily I descended the spiral staircase to my room. At the foot of the stairs I was faced with my first ever encounter with a cockroach! Letting out a shrill shriek and practically jumping onto the handrail of the stairs I attempted to fathom the size of the thing, it was literally gargantuan! What followed was a bit of a blur: I walloped the thing on the noggin with a fire extinguisher which seemed to enrage it rather than kill it and it required a further serious shoeing before it finally gave up the ghost. Apparently cockroaches are quite common here and 'bug bombs' are regularly let off in homes here to stop a cockroach invasion.

Shakily getting into bed and making sure that I was perfectly tucked in on all corners of my body and with the bed sheet pulled firmly up to my chin, I eventually settled into an uneasy sleep where I was haunted by dreams of being carried off into the night by cockroaches.