Hello Everyone from Australia!!

We are very happy to be here after 4 1/2 months in Asia! As soon as we stepped off the plane in Sydney, it was sooo much colder than we were used to! It was lovely!

On our first day here we went down to Circular Quay to see the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House! They really are amazing to see for real! We walked all around the area, called 'The Rocks' and went to a great market where we drank homemade lemonade! All along the Quay were street performers. The first one we saw was a guy doing all sorts of tricks including balancing on a bicycle suspended 20 feet in the air. He needed volunteers from the audience and guess who got chosen?! Thats right - TOM! How embarassing! He had to hold a rope to keep the bike balanced ontop of the pole and he said that it really hurt his arm after a while - awww! He got off easy though - one of the volunteers chosen had to have the performer jump on his back and stand on his shoulders to get onto the bike!

After Tom had finished his street performance, we walked a bit further along and saw a girl who must have been about 12 playing the guitar in a band with her Dad and Sister. She was absolutely amazing. Seriously.

We had lunch of a seriously MASSIVE sausage roll and one of Sydneys MANY crazy people came and sat next to us on the bench - EVEN THOUGH there were like 20 other free benches. He started going on about how much he hated tourists and swearing and expecting us to agree. We just had to stay silent and nod so that he didnt hear our blatently british accents!

On our second day we went to Centre of Sydney and then went to one of the suburbs, Newtown, to poke around many vinyl shops! That night we ate Pie, mash potato and mushy peas and were very happy to eat some good stodge following months of noodles and rice!

Next day we went to Glebe, which is a nice little neighbourhood and we ate Churros (like long chip like waffles) dipped in hot chocolate sauce!

We have also been to Bondi Beach (which was freezing, empty but we enjoyed smelling the fresh sea air!). We tried to spot some lifeguards (during our time away we have been watching Bondi Rescue on TV and wanted to spot some of the stars!). We saw some lifeguards, but I dont know if any were from the show (Tom thinks they were though!).

We also have been to Luna Park, which is a 1930s fairground on the harbour! At 10 dollars each per ride it wasnt cheap so we just went on the Ferris Wheel and saw magnificent views over sydney.

We have also been enjoying lots of good stodgy food besides pies, including bacon rolls, burritos, pizzas and sickly cheesy garlic bread and more! We expect to gain 10 stone in about as many days.

The only bad thing to report is that the prices in Australia seriously scare us!! In Asia where everything costs about 2p, we hardly spent our budget per day. Here we double it daily!! BUT WE ARE HAVING FUN SO ITS OK!

Today we went to the market at Paddington which was GREAT! We both LOVE markets! Tom bought me a big fluffy jumper (really soft!) which I love because I find it cold here! My joy was doubled when I found out the jumper was reversible! We have also invested in some Ben Harper Vinyl and added to Toms t-shirt collection again! We have also had to spend loads of money on REALLY BORING things like ipod charger leads and a camera charger for the cigarette lighter etc for the campervan!

We are flying tonight to Cairns with Virgin Blue. The flight is 3 1/2 hours long which is unbelievable! We have to drive all that way back!!!! EEK! However, we are really looking forward to it! Cairns is supposedly much hotter than Sydney though, so the fluffy jumper may have to be put away for a little while!

Anyway, we are uploading a couple of our photos today but not all as we forgot to bring one of the memory cards (silly us!).

Oh, also - just a funny thing that happened to us! Yesterday we woke up, packed our bags, strolled up to reception and started to check out of our hotel. We thought we were going to the airport to catch our flight, but the hotel said we had paid for another night that night. We were MOST confused, so looked at our flight booking and sure enough - our flight was not until the next day. We were quite embarassed but we are pretty sure that our flight IS today.

Anyway, got to go! We will call soon and hope you are all well!

Lots of Love

Lucy and Tom

xxxxxx