New Year in Sydney

Monday 29th December 2008 – Saturday 3rd January 2009

We left the campsite pretty handy on Monday 29th December and posted a parcel back to Melbourne before dropping Corinne off at the airport and Wolfie dropped the van off at the hire place. Our road trip was at an end some 8500km (6500miles) later. A short flight later and we arrived in Sydney we procured a vehicle in the form of a taxi to take us to our hostel in downtown Sydney. We soon arrived at the wake up hostel apparently the largest in the southern hemisphere it’s a multi-floored hotel type place that maintains some sort of young traveler feel to it. We checked in exhausted but we headed for the darling harbor and had some tea at the blackbird restaurant/bar with happy hour drinks and $5 pizza all in all we had 2 alcoholic drinks each and a pizza each and it was less than $25 not bad.

On Tuesday 30th December we went to the New’ish Sydney wildlife world in the Harbor which was wicked they have all kinds of funny aussie animals from small insects and reptiles to birds and small marsupials to the large animals that roam the plains and forests. We spent a few hours taking in the biggest ants we’ve ever seen bloody huge the dangerous snakes and spiders. The best section by far was the nocturnal area which had a family of bilby’s and these little mice that rocketed around the enclosure. Again after the wildlife world not to look a gift horse in the mouth headed back to the blackbird restaurant for more cheap eats and drinks! Good times.
New Years Eve in Sydney Wednesday 31st January 2008 started with a mad rush to get to Mrs Macquaries point. We joined a short queue well that’s what we thought lucky enough we had procured a huge umbrella the day before as it was 36-38’c and no shade was fun in the queue though with the Mexican waves and drunken teenagers. So after joining the queue at around 10.30ish we finally got in for around 4.30ish some 5 hours later. They were letting 20’000 people into this one area and had 6 people checking bags s***! We lay our blanket out and had a sleep in the late afternoon sleep, played some cards and read our books. We grabbed some food and $25 bottles of wine and before long it was time for the family fireworks at 9pm which weren’t bad at all. People were still then just getting in from queuing outside shocking. The next 2 ½ hours went fairly quick with the help of another bottle of white wine. Come midnight and the mood went mad you could really feel the anticipation and excitement when the fireworks started the place just erupted it was spectacular fireworks we shooting from everywhere the nine barges along the harbor, the bridge and the buildings in the city. It was the best fire work show we’d ever seen and once they subsided we slowly walked back to the hostel through all the excited people in town we had an ice cream and arrived back at the hostel and fell asleep around 3ish what a night.

We started New Years Day Thursday 1st January with a Thai meal for lunch as that’s when our day started. Sydney was eerily quite the streets almost deserted. We had some games in the arcade on Mario-kart before heading off for a walk around town up to the opera house and bridge before chilling in the botanical gardens. We walked around to see what we could find there was a possum asleep in a Japanese lantern, loads of sulfur crested cockatoos and hordes of sleeping but starting to stir fruit bats was wicked!

Our last night in Sydney we done a little packing and some more sightseeing on Friday 2nd January and went back to the Blackbird yet again for another cheap meal can’t go wrong there. We got some lindt chocolate from their shop and went off to the rocks for the start off our ghost tour. It was pretty good but was mainly more history and macabre tales than any stories of haunting’s. It was still ok though and afterwards we went back and finished the last bits of packing.

On the morning of 3rd January we had an early start and headed over the road to the train station although because of a bit of a surf board problem we had to then arrange a car as the surf board was 2 inch’s too long. Was the car was sorted we picked it up and started the 12 hour trip back to Melbourne! Along the way we stopped at a few places including the town of Ned Kelly’s last stand Glenrowan.