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G'day Goodbye

Well that's it for the Aussies, loved you and leaving you. Overall it's been a great slice of home with the all day breakfasts and the Sunday roasts. You can get all the things here that you can get back home. The folk of Oz are a really friendly bunch although somewhat work-shy as things tend to close really early here (Sydney a little better for this but not much). Otherwise I would say it's certainly on the "We want to move here" list. Even in winter the weather beats back home.

Royal Botanical Gardens

Yup I'm a bit of a sucker for the old garden places. This one was mid way through renovation and saying that it was also winter so was not that well maintained. It was still quite pretty though and creative in parts. My favourite part as always was the wildlife. The cockatoos were really tame, at some points coming close enough to you that you had to watch your feet.

Australia Museum

Well we had to go to at least one museum. This one had exhibitions on aboriginal culture, animals bones, as well as a special exhibit of pearls. The pearl exhibit looked like a bunch of old ladies had pooled together their jewellery boxes. The aboriginal exhibit was interesting in parts, showing their farming tools and craft work. The animal bones area was pretty cool, showing elephant, turtle, whale and giraffe skeletons as well as many more. All in all it was pretty ok although we have seen exhibits of this kind back in London.

Hyde Park

Another pleasant walk surrounded with weird looking Australian birds. There was a large statue of Captain Cook in the middle. Every good park needs a good statue in the middle.

Channel 7

Walking through the city centre we went past the Channel 7 building. They shoot the news on the ground floor where everyone walking past can see in through the large glass windows. The presenter was a right poser. He was sitting fiddling with his tie and preening himself like he was on a date. Also the background of the office workers that you always see on the news is totally fake. It was just a screen behind him. Guess it prevents any angry employees from mooning at the camera during peak hours. Later in the evening they change the screen to a night scene. Sorry if I've spoilt the illusion for anyone out there.

Minus Five Degrees

Along the harbour we popped into the novelty bar Minus Five Degrees. It was a bar made pretty much entirely of ice. The chairs, chandeliers, statues, the bar its self, and even the glasses we drunk out of.
They gave you a coat, gloves and even boots if you needed them to keep you warm during your visit. Needless to say it was freezing but we had a great time.

They have one due to open in London in November.

Martin's Place Mall

There was some really great architecture around this area, the buildings were really grand. There was also I bit of a modern touch to it with all the designer stores resident there. There was also an old style arcade area on Queen Victoria Square nearby.

We met some folk from Greenpeace there who tried to offer us a free trip back to China, heh heh. - not even if he paid us!

Sydney Harbour

The view of the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House did not disappoint. The Opera house was even more impressive in real life. The Bridge was enormous, much larger than the one they built back home in Newcastle upon Tyne (built first as the test model so I'm told).
You can walk the upper arch of the bridge right at the top which takes about 3 hours to complete. So far we haven't got to doing that yet, hmmm we'll see.
The area around the bridge and opera house had such atmosphere with its bars and cafes. It was a lovely place to spend the evening.

Cockington Green Gardens

This was a garden of miniature buildings. They were little models of loads of castles, temples and parliament buildings from around the world.

Each of the displays were quite pretty and well done but we did think that they could have included some more tourist pleasing sights such as the Eiffel Tower or the Egyptian Pyramids. I don't think I recognized a single building from real life. Still, a pleasant enough experience.

My Sweethearts b-day

We were stuck in dead city Canberra for my darling's b-day - although we enjoyed a great meal and my darling had happy b-day sung to him in a restuarant full of people. We decided to make it Pau's b-day week, which would spill into Sydney where I could give him a b-day to remember.

Australian War Memorial

There was a long strait leading up to the main memorial site. There were many sculptures on either side all the way up. They were all really impressive. As we walked up there were loads of cockatoos flying around. They were really noisy.

The main site had a pond in the middle with a flame lit. There were names calved in the walls of all the people who had died.Canberra for the capital city of Australia, was pretty dull, just the only sights to see were official government building.. Although the War Memorial wasnt bad, but there are only so many you can visit.

Rosella's

This was a pretty rare sight seeing Rosella's flying around in the wild.

Canberra - Crowne Plaza

We checked in at the Plaza and headed up to our room. As we inserted the key card in the door some naked Chinese guy answered looking pretty surprised. We thought this was pretty funny and went back down to get another room number.

As we got settled in our new room they brought us a bottle of wine and some chockies to say sorry. Yay!

The Lagoon

The beach at Cairns was pretty poor so they decided to build a mini fake beach alongside. It had sand, and water and a bunch of palm trees. It was quite pretty although on the account that we had seen a child in tears at a local pharmacy, complaining that he couldn't open his eyes due to chlorine burning, we decided not to make much use out of the lagoon.

Scuba Diving Adventures

We had to prove we could breathe ok underwater, clear our masks if they were full of water, clear our air tube if it got any water in and then practicing retrieving our air replicator if it fell out of our mouths. The equipment was soooo heavy, especially when you came back out of the water.


One of the things we have been waiting to do for I don't know how long. On the way out on the boat Paul was ill and ended up feeding the fish with carrot and sweet corn surprise. After instruction from the guides we were ready to jump in the water. As we got into our wet suits we were ready to perform a few tests to see if we were ok diving.

We had to prove we could breathe ok underwater, clear our masks if they were full of water, clear our air tube if it got any water in and then practicing retrieving our air replicator if it fell out of our mouths. The equipment was soooo heavy, especially when you came back out of the water.

Each of these tests were pretty difficult to do first time. The overwhelming panic you have just by being under water on the air is completely crazy, it feels like you are asthmatic. When we finally got used to the breathing we ventured further down into the unknown. The coral was beautiful, there were loads of odd looking fish down there. Paul even found Nemo!

At one point we seen this huge nasty looking fish with big teeth. It was hiding under a rock and it was staring at us. We could hear this really odd noise coming from it (this is under water where you can't hear a thing normally). We couldn't believe the noise was coming from this fish. Anyways needless to say we didn't get too much closer as it was already quite angry.

We seen another fish which was real big and a lot more friendly than the last one (was the kind a little like the one from the film 'Big Fish'). He swam right by us. We also seen a big stingray floating around. As we got deeper we had to equalise our ears so our heads didn't explode. On occasion I had a little breathing panic underwater but after relaxing for a while I managed to wind down (Paul).

Bobbi was taking loads of photographs with our underwater camera, apparently lots of good ones. However we will never know for sure us at one point she passed the camera to me (only I wasn't there) and it floated off. She claims that it felt like someone took it from her. I guess one of the fish must have taken it so he can take a bunch of photos of his fishy friends.

When we came back up we were pretty tired. We decided to spend a little time snorkelling (also a good opportunity to find our lost camera). Overall a fantastic experience which we would love to do again. We even got a certificate to show we had done our first dive.

Beers Best Friend

People really like their beer here, you see them carrying crates of the stuff everywhere. We have seen people sitting in a café with a crate, walking by in the street, heck the only thing left is seeing someone walking along with a crate on a leash. I hear that the Aussies tend to like to enjoy time at home with friends rather than going out partying as much. Probably because pretty much everything closes at a real work-shy time over here. Shops are open til 5pm if you're lucky, kebab shops and pizza places are usually closed before 9pm. Oh and if it's a Sunday, knock off an hour on these stingy opening times.

Seaside Slouching

Sitting eating our fish and chips we found ourselves bird watching. The place was surrounded by pelicans. One pelican alone was a mammoth big fat thing. They had such big beaks, well at least it becomes very apparent when your so close to them. At one point they all flew into one area to be fed scraps from one of the restaurants. The area was supposed to be good for sea lion watching but we see lyin' as we didn't see any.

Paul's attention was later taken by a crow in a tree who was going round attacking all the other local birds and chasing them all out the tree it claimed.(quite funny to watch).

One word of warning - if your driving.. in Brisbane.. dont ever following the signs for the Tourist Drive... it will take you round in one big circle.

Wallaby watch

As we left the indoor enclosure it was a little warmer so we decided to take one last look around. As we walked through the park we could see wallabies all over the place. You could get really close to them. By the end of our visit we had seen enough nature and decided to head off for more fish and chips.

Daisy Hill Koala Centre

We chose to visit this park as it was said to be the best for spotting wildlife in a natural environment. At first the day looked a little bit too wet to spot anything but we had a look around all the same. As expected, all the koalas were hidden away nice and warm. Luckily as we decided to head into the indoor part of the park we met with a couple of little koalas, sitting in a tree eating their eucalyptus leaves. One of the wardens even called one of the koalas down so we could pet and stroke it. It was sooooo cute, we wanted to take one home with us. Apparently they sleep for 20 hours a day (much like Bobbi), and they also love being hugged.

Nemo

Cant come to Oz and not get a photie of Nemo.. this one is for you Nikita!

Gold Coast-Q1

This was said to be the California of Australia, it was a real tourist town. There were loads of tourist shops selling the same cack koala toys and boomerang souvenirs (we bought one of these). There were also loads of little bars and cafes. The beach was pretty nice, good sand etc.

We ventured over to the Q1 building which was another of the worlds tallest. This was the WORLDS TALLEST (residential building, actually only the 20th largest building in the world only this was in very small writing). The view was impressive as always with a grand view of the beach. There was a slight feeling of heck we've seen this a few times before (maybe the magic has been spoiled a little after seeing so many of these).But must admit for us - This was the tallest building with the best view in the world - The view of the the entire length of the Gold Coast & we could even see Brisbane.

Here is Paul looking like he should be in a straitjacket ......cheesecake has that effect on him

Brisbane By Night.

A really nice view to be found of Brisbane South Bank. We parked up and had a stroll around the bridge under the moonlight.