At long last here is my blog about my holiday to Australia
After a bit of a mishap with Kat, Jake and Amelia forgetting the minor purchase of a visa, they managed to get a visa last minute and still make their flight downunder – phew! After a lovely sunny spell, Wellington’s skies decided to open so I left a very wet NZ and arrived in a sunny Australia. Taking the tube from the airport to meet everyone, I always think it weird that they have double decker tubes like in Europe.
After lots of hugs and woop woops Kat, Jake, Amelia and I set off for Bondi Beach while Zoe and Tom slaved it out at work. There was a lot of oooh it is so clean – while I enjoyed the fact that NZ water was a bit warmer (as Sydney had been experiencing storms and we had a long hot spell). Obviously there is no rivalry at all between Zoe, Tom and I in our passion about NZ and OZ! So we walked along the track to Coogie beach which was a 2 hr track to a quieter beach. It was the same walk I took to see the sculptures last time I was in Oz but unfortunately the sculpture installation had finished. After the hot walk we enjoyed a brief dip in the sea before returning to Sydney for dinner with Zoe and Tom at the outdoor Sydney Opera House restaurant. The views were stunning of the harbour which we continued to enjoy on our ferry ride home.
Early starts were a theme of the holiday (I’m not complaining – important to make the most of it) and we set off early on our tour of the Blue Mountains. The tour guide was a typical Aussie though he was a bit obsessed with Australian hip-hop and kept calling us gangsters. In Aussie-style the Blue Mountains are not mountains (hmm NZ has lots of mountains!!!) but it is a high and vast plateau with deep gorges carved into the sandstone. Nothing has been built there because it is sandstone so it remains a vast national park. The tour guide showed us the ‘lesser known’ sites of the park which was much more fun than the tourist trap around the Three Sisters. We saw a vast canyon and had lunch there before a visit to a waterfall. Didn’t see any snakes which I will say is a good thing though we did see a baby huntsman spider.
On Thursday we headed north through the Hunter Valley which is famous for its vineyards. Yet I was kept occupied by a cheese shop, nicking grapes during a wine tasting and a chocolate shop. The others tasted some lovely wines (apparently) in one posh winery then a nicer quirky organic winery with a very passionate barman. It felt strange with us all being together and tasting wines, cheeses and chocolate in Aus and not Europe. After having their fill of wine tasting we stopped at a brewery for lunch before making a detour to the house where Tom grew up. It was the quietest Tom was for the whole trip as we drove down a gravel track to the house his dad built as well as the bus stop which sheltered the ickle tom from the hot sun! After a trip down memory lane for Tom, we continued on to Port Stephans.
We rented a house for 2 nights and it was a lovely place with loads of room (no hot tub unlike in NZ!). After a long day we popped over to the beech then ate cheese and had a BBQ. Friday was our dolphin watching and sand boarding day. We set off to the harbour to catch the dolphin watching boat. As we arrived early we all suddenly wanted to buy a hat and I got persuaded to get one too! So then the hat-gang hopped on board the boat. The bay has a resident pod of dolphins so we were 99% guaranteed of seeing them and we weren’t disappointed. After the excitement of seeing the pod of dolphins we hopped down the slide onto a netting which was dragged behind the boat which was a lot of fun. Then we had barramundi fish and chips for lunch followed by the visit to the dunes. In true Aussie climate, the sun was hot and the dunes made it even hotter. But we all had a lot of fun climbing up the dunes then boarding down. Well once Jake and Kat started believing me that it was easier to run or walk fast up the dune they also enjoyed that bit too! When we had melted enough we then ran back to the sea for swimming and icecream where Amelia got to try the famous Golden Gaytime icecream. Then another BBQ and sleeeeep!
On my last day, Zoe and I woke up early to see the sunrise on the beech which was worth it. Then we headed back to Sydney via a lake so I could catch my flight back to the ‘Eastern Isles’ as Tom calls it!
Kat and Jake headed to Melbourne then went to the barrier reef with Amelia. One day I will head to the barrier reef and I look forward to that holiday. It is great having Australia 3hrs away. Though it was sad to say goodbye to my awesome friends but one thing is clear – we will all have lots of international adventures and this is not the end of our adventures together.
