Farewell to Sydney

It's my last day in Sydney today for a few weeks and typically it's turned out pretty damn fine weather! Last few days have started out fairly cloudy in the morning but then baking in the afternoon. Hopefully oop north in Cairns won't be too tropical !

So, I met my old friend Fiona from Cleeve on Thursday night which was really good - we were trying to remember the last time we saw each other and it must have been not long after finishing uni so about 10 years ago! Luckily neither of us had changed too much so no need for the "I'll be wearing a pink carnation" line!

Friday I just spent pottering around a bit in the morning and then decided to go for a bit of a wander. Made it down to Darling Harbour, got myself a rice paper roll as recommended by Lara and sat looking out at the boats. Then it was so hot I thought the only way to escape was to go and cool myself down with a beer so found the nearest bar and parked myself there for the afternoon with a few light beers and a paper and waited for Adey to finish work. I'm liking this chilled out Aussie feeling - I can do sightseeing any time - am trying just to soak up (quite literally I guess) the culture here ;-)

So we then met up with Lou & Matt who were down for the weekend going to see Robbie in concert on Sunday night and had a good night with them and some of their mates who work in Baia. Was really great to see Lou & Matt too - their mates were saying they've noticed such a change in them - obviously down to the relaxed way of live up in Cairns so am looking forward to that even more now!

Come Saturday, we were on a mission - to get a paddling pool for the balcony!! But first things first it was time for my first proper barby - the guys went to get some fresh fish from across the road so we had marlin, trout, corn on the cob and veg - lush ! All washed down with a nice cold beer - obviously! So we hit the shops to go and find a paddling pool. Checked online first but Australian websites are just rubbish - their idea of an online catalogue is scanning in the pages of their offline brochure and just uploading it - Myer, Toys 'r' us, K-mart - even Amazon doesn't even have an Australian site - just crazy.

So anyway, we got the pool from Toys 'r' us and then quickly went to K-mart to get a hose (although probably shouldn't mention that as we think there's a hosepipe ban in Sydney). There's a massive water shortage around here which is quite odd seeing as the amount of rain we've had over the last week but apparently the water collection points are in the areas where there isn't any rain so the reservoirs aren't getting filled up. Australians are very environmentally aware which is great - I guess a lot of it is to do with this great big hole in the Ozone above us - but hardly any house rubbish goes into general waste. Pretty much everything is recycled, which makes me feel pretty bad cos I know there's some kind of recycling box I had at home but never really used it - I just let my empty bottles rattle around in the boot of my car intending to take them to the bottle bank (I did eventually though !)

K-mart turned into a bigger trip than we thought and we all walked out with some kind of new shorts, t-shirts or shoes! So back to the ranch and had some salady stuff for tea and watched a dvd. However, about 10:30 friends of theirs called and asked if we were going to meet up with them so we decided to sod it and go for it. They were going to this placed called the Imperial Hotel in Erskinville which has a drag show and is also where the film Priscilla, Queen of the Desert started and finished. The shows are every hour on the hour so we managed to get there for the midnight show and then got to see the final Christmas show too. I completel loved it - it was so funny and the costumes and make-up completely over the top as you would expect. I didn't want to use the flash on my camera in the room so the pics below are pretty ropey but give you an idea - then it turned into a club and we had a good ole boogie at the end - just brilliant!

So Sunday morning was a bit of a write-off although surprisingly I was up bright and early and made a couple of calls back home to hear how freezing cold it was when I was just sat in my bikini ready to get in the pool!! So the pool was blown up (after a couple of divvy efforts by me!) and filled and ready for use! I thought the only way to enjoy it was to have an ice cold beer and when I got out of the pool it was straight into the hammock to relax with my puzzle book (!) and then get lovely and burnt - nice!

We drove over to Manly in the evening for dinner at the Pacific Thai which we found in the Rough Guide and although the food was brilliant the service was pretty shoddy but left very stuffed and a nice touch was instead of having the nasty germ-infested mints at the end we had some watermelon and orange pieces! Was my first experience of going over the Harbour Bridge too which was pretty cool - especially on the way back as everything else lit up. You can see the bits on the bridge where the fireworks are going to be too - the theme this year is the "Coathanger" as the bridge is often called it and you could see the outline of the coathanger fireworks on it already.

Anyhow, off to pack up before flying up to Cairns later with Lou & Matt - gonna meet for lunch later when I've got my bag packed which is not going to be an easy task!!

And a final big, big thankyou to Adrian & Lara for putting me up this last week or so - I've had a really brilliant time (and will see you next week for Christmas anyway!!) xxxx