We headed back up to stop off in a Sydney suburb for Gregs 40th birthday party.
Here is a Kookaburra that sat on the back porch of Greg and Kerry’s house checking us out, when you went to tickle it under the chin it would shuffle an inch along the balcony, but no fear at all.
(more…)And on to Kiama by train for more great Aussie hospitality.We stayed in a beach side house with a swimming pool that overlooked the sea. The weather had taken a turn for the worst but it didn’t matter as the company was so good, we just ate and drank a lot.
(more…)After supping on our wine and frollicking with the locals we tied the jungle hammocks to a couple of trees and had a good nights sleep. We woke up at 11am with some shade from the trees, but it was still hot. We then went to the local swimming pool that ovelooks the harbour for a swim. Happy new year.
(more…)Having enjoyed some more famous Aussi hospitality beyond the Blue Mountains we returned to Sydney for the New Year fireworks.
It is difficult to get to the harbour side and more so if you have two bottles of wine in your paws, so we found a great grassy spot where the locals are spread out with picnics and tents in what seems like the best spot in Sydney for the evening.
(more…)We travelled back from Manly beach yesterday on one of the Sydney Ferries. It was the perfect end to a good few days ‘chooking around’ the harbour. Sydney is more complex than I wanted it to be at first, but this has grown into a comfortable warm feeling of being somewhere where the weather, the food and the company is great.
(more…)Australia is a bit more smoke and mirrors than I expected it to be. Maybe this is because over in the UK we think we know about Australia, it crops up in conversation and a good deal of it’s population think of London as a second home, so when I arrived I expected it to be familiar. But no, to be honest Hong Kong feels more like home – not only because I lived there for a year, but because more people seem to speak English than they do in Sydney.
(more…)My darling Donna Maria baff arrived on the 6.30 flight from London via Bangkok. It was so good to see a familiar face after almost 6 weeks on the road. We spent the day in each others pockets, batteries topping up like a bees knees with pollen. She is Australian, she’ll explain the place to me…
I arrived in Sydney drained physically and emotionally. I had been on a ‘memory lane’ trip in Hong Kong that wasn’t healthy, I had spent my time retracing steps and sometimes it’s best to see things afresh but there is a lesson learned, but it did mean that I arrived in Sydney without that wide eyed wonder I normally bring to the party with me.
(more…)I went up to the travellers hostel in the evening to see if any old faces were still around and found ‘George’ still living there. George is a long term tenant of Chung King Mansions who gets very cagey whenever you ask him about his past. He told me that John the Book had died in March of this year.
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