HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Since Christmas I have been making the of the special tourist attraction ticket that you can buy here in Sydney.For $50 you get entrance to the Aquarium, Wildlife Park, Sky Tower and the Aquarium at Manly Beach.This is a pretty good price considering individually they are $40, so you save a lot of money, which as a backpacker is essential.So far I have done the Wildlife Centre and the Sky Tower.The wildlife centre was very cleverly done with lots of information but not enough to overload you and get board.It has all the deadliest spiders and snake you can imagine and as most of them you can find here in Oz I spent most of the time thinking that something was constantly crawling up my leg!The deadliest spider is considered to be the Funnel Webb Spider and its main area of distribution is Sydney….yippeee….I am living in the centre point for the deadliest spiders!It takes me ages to get to sleep knowing this..Especially considering if you get bitten you have around 30 minutes to get to medical assistance or you quite literally a goner! Ohh the joy!

I also made it to the beach one day….aimed for Bondi but ended up at Brote due to bus confusions.But still an amazing beach although waves were a little too rough to swim properly.You just have to be so careful of the sun here or more the UV as it is just so strong.You won't ever really understand this until you have been here but even just walking down the street the other day for 10 min to get some milk I managed to slightly burn my cheek and have a great tan line from my sunglasses!So I was only on the beach for around 2 hour before I had just had enough of being BBQed!

Sydney has been pretty busy of late due to the main school summer holidays so all the attractions have meant hours of queuing.However, the other day I managed to get up early enough to beat the crowd up to the sky tower.It was a really good day so I had a clear view over all of Sydney.Being up high really helps get a perspective of a new city.

Spent New Year's Eve down by the Sydney Opera House.We arrived at 11am…yes AM and picked the best position we could.Just to the side of the opera house so we could view both the house and the harbour bridge and we were in the second row. It is all very well organised, as each location has a capacity.By 3:00pm the opera house area had reached its 8000 capacity so no more people were allowed into this section.We waited in 30oC plus heat and it really was a killer.We had to go buy an umbrella just to get some shade as otherwise I am sure I would have passed out.We played lots of cards and chatted to other crazy people who were also waiting for it all to kick off.Around 6 pm things began to happen with more boats present on the harbour, planes doing acrobatics in the sky and one or two air proposals.Around this time the ticketed event in one of the bars started to play music and so time passed even quicker with a really good party atmosphere forming.Around 9 we had the first lot of fireworks, which are for the children.These alone were fairly impressive so I was super excited for the midnight ones.They sure were worth the wait…didn't know which direction to look in as they were everywhere!Some coming from Darling Harbour, others from over the Opera House and the others obviously off the main bridge.They lasted for 10 minutes but it really felt like only a few seconds.If you ever get the chance to see it I would highly recommend it although save the money and pay for the ticketed parties so you don't have to wait for house like us poor backpackers!It really was a new year to remember and hope that it was a great start to a good year ahead!

Since then I have moved into a house for a few weeks as it is a lot cheaper than staying in hostels.Staying in an area called Surry Hills, which is about 10 min on the bus from the city centre so really good location for getting to potential jobs.I spent the last few days' job hunting and have a few days as receptionist for a big accounting firm.So I am on the 29th floor of one of the sky scraper smack bang in the middle of the city.

Weather has been a bit rubbish lately. Luckily nothing quite like all the flooding in Queensland but not the summer I thought Australians had.Hope to make it to Bondi this weekend or to the Botanical Gardens but if it rains it will be a trip to an aquarium me thinks!

Bye for now!