We left Surf Camp early, for our very long drive to Sydney. It took about eight hours to get to Sydney and everyone was very tired and achey (after surfing).

Squirtal (our much loved bus driver) dropped us off at x Base hostel on Kent Street. We checked into a nice room, but unfortunately we didn't stay in that room for very long as we had been double booked with a girl who was claiming Zoe's bed, so we had to move. We were moved into another all girls room, but this was an absolute tip! We couldn't even move our bags next to our beds as the floor was covered in their stuff. They had been living in Sydney for a couple of months and had certainly made this room their home!

That night we went out with Squirtal and some of the people from our bus. We went to Mansions where they had $10 steaks and $8 jugs of beer (we were told it was going to be $7 steaks but it seems the price went up!). We had a very nice night but I (Michelle) wasn't very well so I went home quite early. Zoe came home later to find that her pillow had gone missing and that a strange boy was trying to get in the room. After a while the guy started having sex with one of the girls in the room...talk about dignity! Anyway the next morning we moved rooms - again! It must have been third time lucky this time as we had a nice room with nice people this time.

We spent the first couple of days with Ben and Melissa from our bus. Seeing as it was Easter we popped into Woolworths and brought ourselves an Easter egg each. They obviously came out with us for the day! On the first day we went on a river cruise around Sydney harbour. We caught the ferry from Circular Quay and saw both the bridge and opera house from the ferry as well as many other sights that are on the harbour. We stopped off at Watsons Bay where there is a quaint little beach and a lovely park full of family's spending time together in the nice weather. We nearly missed the ferry back to Circular Quay as Zoe decided she would climb a tree, unfortunately she couldn't get down from the tree meaning she simply just hung there for a while until Ben offered her a lift down! After that we went back home and actually cooked dinner for ourselves (that doesn't happen very often as most of the time we eat out, I think it's known as 'flashpacking' and not backpacking!).

The next day was ben and melissa's last day in Sydney so we let them decide where to go. We ended up going to Manly Beach as Benw anted to go surfing again. This was a nice beach, but sadly it was very cold and quite overcast so we didn't get a very good suntan! That night Zoe, Melissa and i decided to get a bit inventive with ice-cream. We bought some vanilla ice-cream, caramel slices and buttersnap biscuits and mixed them altogether - it was very nice, but we couldn't eat it all so we gave it to the receptionist!

The next day Zoe and I had to get up early to leave for our trip to the Blue Mountains. We said a quick goodbye to Melissa (Ben was still in bed!) and headed to the Oz Experience office to catch our tour bus.

Our tour guide was called Bill, he was really good at what he did and had lots of experience and knowledge. At our first stop we saw wild kangeroos and spiders! We didn't stay long here as it was time for breakfast and was probably just a warm up for things to come!

After breakfast we started our mountainous climb up the Blue Mountains! We started at the top and had a long walk down. The steps were extremely steep and big so it was quite daunting going down. We saw some beautiful waterfalls though and the scenery was amzing. The unfortuante bit was that once we got to the bottom Bill told us that we had to go back the same way. Most of us nearly passed out by the time we got to the top! we did take a slightly different route back once we'd climbed all the steps as we encounted some rocks, which I have now developed a fear of! We also went through a small rainforest area. When we finally got to the top of the mountain we ate lunch which was supplied by Oz Experience and had an ice-cream (not supplied by Oz!).
Seeing as we were only half way through the day we knew there was more walking to go, luckily it was a bad walk as we all chose the easy walk rather than the hard one (Bill was quite disappointed!). We saw the three sisters, which are three giant rocks that sit on the edge of the cliff and have an aboriginal dreamtime story attached to them. Apparently the girls went out hunting with their father who could do magic and a rock monster tried to eat the girls. The father then turned the girls to rock so that the monster could not eat them, he then ran away with the monster chasing him and it is believed that he is still running from it.

This later walk led us to the train we were meant to be catching back up the mountain. Thankfully it was currently out of order due to maintenance work. The so called 'train' was basically a wooden cart that is dragged up the side of the mountain! Instead we got the much safer and newer skyrail back to the other side of another mountain, which took us back to the bus. We did pass some statues of the modern day three sisters and their father on the way back.

That night we made dinner for ourselves again! Seeing as we were so knackered it wasn't long before we went to bed!

The next day we attemtped to go to Palm Beach where they film Home and Away. We went to the place the guy from our hostel told us to go, however when we tried to get on a bus none of them said Palm Beach but Bondi or Coogee Beach so we went to Bondi Beach instead! It was quite a long bus journey but it was a beautiful beach and it was nice just laying there after the tiring day before. We did do a spot of shopping too hehe!

That night we were invited to go out with Squirtal again. He was with another bus driver who only had three people on his bus so we went to make up the numbers. We went to the same $10 steak place. It was a good night, we ate, talked, played a shooting game and some pool.

During the night when we were both asleep we had some posh English girls come into the room. They were all drunk and very noisy. I think they woke everyone up and one girl in particular couldn't handle her drink and was sick outside the room in the bin and to make matters worse she was naked! This didn't seem to phase her and she soon got back into bed, probably a bit too soon however as the next time she didn't even make it to the bin and was instead sick in her bed - nice!!!!!

Zoe's Skydive

For some mad reason the whole way down the east coast I kept saying that I wanted to do a skydive, so when I got to Sydney it was kind of my last chance so I booked it!

The night before the skydive I was pretty scared and didnt sleep to well! Michelle told me to get her up in the morning but I didnt as I couldnt talk to anyone! I left at about half 6 to get the free bus to the dive centre. I was the first one waiting for the bus but soon after the rest of the crazy people doing the skydive arrived as well. Me and Jayne (a girl from Canada) got chatting and she was as scared as I was so we didnt really help each other!

When we arrived at the skydive centre we knew they would split us into groups so I asked when I was going to go up, they then told me in about 10mins!!!!!! I filled in a few forms just incase and then my tandem man called my name out. He was really nice and made me feel at ease. As they were filming my skydive for my highly embarrassing dvd I had to say a few words before I went up, at this time I getting even more scared. I don't tend to get scared that often but when you see the dvd you will see how petrified I actually was! He hooked me up in all the funky gear I had to wear and then we got on a bus to the airstrip.

The plane was like a baked bean can and it was sooooo small! We all wedged in the plane connected to the instructor. My instructor had done 1000's of dives so he was very experienced. After a few mins we seemed pretty high up so I asked how high we were...2000ft only another 12,000 to go then!!!!!!! They then had a problem with air traffic control so we were sat in the air for at least 15 min waiting to go and we ended up jumping a little lower.

When we were ready to jump the first guy undone the door and just went...I was second so I didnt really have much time to think except when I looked down the guy that had just jumped was a little dot in the sky! We sat on the edge of the plane and it was so noisy and windy and then we went. I was falling through the sky, it was actually like flying and the free fall was so amazing. I couldnt get over how cold it was though. The freefall went really quickly and then the chute opened it was so nice and I had a great view over all the coastline. At one point we were in a cloud so I couldnt see a thing. The guy pointed to where we were landing and then we landed, he put his legs down first and it felt so smooth.

My skydive was the best thing I have done ever and I can't believe I actually did it!!!

Zoe did her skydive in the morning, it did take up most of the day so it wasn't until the afternoon that we met Squirtal at the aquarium. Sydney aquarium is a nice place lots of cool and weird looking fish, got to see more sharks and sealions! After the aquarium we all went to IMax cinmeas, where you see short films in 3D. We saw Deep Sea which was about the fish in the ocean and how they survive side by side each other without one species overtaking the whole ocean. It was ok but a bit boring, we did wear the 'cool' glasses though! After the cinema we went back to the hostel and had a couple of drinks, we then had to say our farewell to Squirtal as it would be the last time we saw him as he was travelling back up the east coast.

The next day we caught the train and the ferry to Taronga zoo. When we arrived we had to get a skyrail up to the zoo, which was good as it gave us a birdseye few of some of the animals. Taronga zoo is really good as it doesn't just have Australian animals and it is very big so we had a days worth at the zoo.

We were told we had to change the clocks back one hour for daylight saving so we all chaed our clocks the night before, only to find on Sunday morning we were woken by an announcement saying that the hostel had got it wrong and in fact the clocks hadn't changed this week but were changing next week! Me and Zoe were very confused!

On the last day of Sydney we went to Powerhouse Museum. This was quite a big museum with some good stuff but it wasn't that interesting! After the museum we went to Darling Harbour to have a look round the shops, Zoe had lost her belly bar so we were on the hunt for a new one. When we asked in the jewellery shops they said they didn't sell them in stores any more, it was as though it was a common thing to have in a jewellery shop so we had to go to Paddy's market, which is a popular market on on certain days of the week. We were lucky to find a bar but we made sure it was cleaned well before she put it in.

Seeing as it was quite late in the afternoon we caught the bus to the Botanic gardens and laid on the grass untill the sun went down. We got the bus back and that night we had to pack our stuff as we were leaving early the next day.

When we went to bed everyone in the room also went to bed at the same time. We all ended up chatting and thats how we met English James, Oz James and Simon - we have stalked them ever since hehe!

The next day we got up very early and went to check out. As we were checking out the guy at the hostel told us that one of us hadn't paid. Seeing as the hostel was booked under Zoe's name they didn't have my name so even though I was standing there too the guy kept saying 'one of the Zoe's hasn't paid the full price'. Obvioulsy we didn't know which one of the 'Zoes' he was talking about seeing as we had both paid in full! He did eventually find that he didn't know what he was talking about and had actually got it wrong! Anyway we did finally leave the hostel and we met our new bus driver Luke and set off for our next adventure!