Hi everyone. I've lied on this blog I'm afraid. The location says I'm in Melbourne when I'm actually in Kaikoura, New Zealand. It's been so long since I updated this I haven't even finished Australia yet, so sorry about that!

I always seem to start with something about the long and boring bus journey to a place so why change now. It was 14 hours from Byron Bay to Sydney and it seemed to go on forever! I should be used to it now, but I had a Gernman couple sat behind me who talked the whole way. It's ok if you understand what they're saying but when it's just noise to you it gets irritating rather quickly. Me and Hannah wondered what an old married couple could possibly be saying to each other for 14 hours! We run out of things to say within the first 3 minutes of a journey then it's i pods in for the rest of the way. Anyway we finally arrived at Sydney and the hostel we wanted to stay at was fully booked. It didn't occur to us that we may have to book in advance at the most popular hostel in the most popular city. So anyway we trudged around Sydney with our bags for a while and came across a cheap hostel which pretty much did the same job as the one we'd wanted to stay in and we saved a few dollars! We dumped our bags in the room and headed straight out to see the sights of Sydney. We were about a half an hour walk away from the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. We arrived on a really nice day, so the views were very impressive. We took a million pics of the Opera House like every other tourist there, and then sat and had a drink in the sun. I felt like I really was in Australia for the first time as it's such an iconic site!

The next day I headed out on my own to do some shopping as hannah was a little worse for wear. The wather was getting colder and our clothes from Asia just ween't doing the job anymore unfortunately. I really just wanted to walk round the street and see a Primark, but Australia just hasn't discovered the joys of Primark yet. They don't know what they're missing. But I found a relatively cheap shop and got myself a couple of jumpers and some shoes. The best bit was taking them to show hannah as she was extremely jealous!

Other highlights of Sydney included a day trip to the Blue Mountains and a day on Bondi Beach. The Blue Mountains were absolutely stunning. We spent the day stopping off at view points to see sights such as the three sisters and just generally walking around and exploring. We also got to ride the steepest train in the world. Its at an angle of 52 degrees. Pretty scary - especially as the seats wer emade of slippery plastic. They could have done with some rubber grips on them! The day was made 10 times more interesting also as we had a crazy girl from new york on our bus. She was drinking champagne and red wine at 8am and was just generally making a fool out of herself. She then dived into a waterfall fully clothed, complained she was cold for about an hour and then passed out on the bus, much to the relief of everyone.

Our final destination down the east coast of Australia was Melbourne. We'd heard really good things about this city throughout our trip so we were pretty excited to get there. The first day we did a bit of sightseeing down at Federation Square. There was an ABBA exibition going on and also a Tim Burton exibiton. I resisted my desire to go to the ABBA exibition and we went along to the Tim Burton one. It showed all his drwings from an early age which became his inspiration for films such as Edward Scissor Hands, Nightmare Before Christmas etc. It was kind of interesting but I probably should have just gone for the ABBA one. Never mind.

Through the powers of facebook we'd seen that someone we'd met further up the coast was now living in Melbourne so we met up with him and his friends that night. We had plans to drive the Great Ocean Rd the next day and he hadn't done it yet so decided to come along with us. Me and Hannah picked up the rented car early the next morning and went to pick him up. He said he could tell it was us from a mile off as we were driving sooo slowly! Melbourne's a confusing city to drive in. There's trams everywhere!!! Through lack of research we didn't realise just how long the Great Ocean Rd actually is, and also how long it takes to get there from Melbourne. An hour and a half later we arrived at the start of the rd. All we managed to see in a day was a coffee shop, a sandwich shop and a very small section of the rd. All the good stuff is way at the other end of the rd and we just didn't have time to get there. We still had a good day though and laughed about how stupid we were to think we could see the whole thing. It was my birthday the next day so we all went out for a few drinks with the people we were with the previous night and saw in my 23rd birthday with some glasses of $3 wine. Yum!

The next day (my birthday) we flew to New Zealand!! At every passport control I was hoping someone would notice it was my birthday, but no one did! We did end up with extra leg room though, which was purely by chance. The flight went by with no problems and we got chatting to a couple of lads who had just come from our hostel and were heading to Christchurch too (obviously as they were on our flight!) So we landed in Earthquake damaged Christchurch on the night of my birthday ready to start our Stray bus tour.

I'll update about New Zealand very soon! x x x