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| Other countries sue_and_nathan visited in Living_Down_Under |
| Australia (7) |
| Japan (1) |
| Vanuatu (1) |
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| It’s been ages – we know! But, since we’ve been in Sydney we’ve been just too busy settling in to write a yearaway entry. Let’s start from the beginning. As some of you may recall our last entry mentioned the fact that our itchy feet were nowhere near cured. Well, we’d been back in London just seven weeks and could see the British Winter coming on, so it didn’t take too much convincing to hop on a plane to warmer climes when Nathan was offered a job down under! We left one Sunday night in late October. In fact, we almost didn’t leave at all as we got stuck in gridlock on the M25 for three hours, but by the time we got to Heathrow we were even more assured that we were making the right decision. When we arrived in Sydney the spring flowers were out and we wandered along the foreshore at Lavender Bay and decided that this is where we’d like to find a place to live. Three weeks later we were moving in to a pre-Federation style apartment with the Sydney Harbour Bridge looking in at all of our windows. The reason we decided on this place is because it’s got a huge rooftop terrace and from up there we get a lovely breeze off of the bay below, which, I can tell you, has been much-needed on some days! Since we’ve been here many a happy hour have been spent up there sipping Aussie plonk, testing out our bar-b skills and enjoying the views. On New Year’s Eve we’re both convinced that we had the best position in the city from which to view the fireworks from. We’re both back in the land of the working now and this has been a rather unpleasant shock to our systems, as you may imagine. In fact, at first it was damn-right awful and both of us thought that we’d never be able to get back into the swing of things. Four months on and we are getting back into it, but because we’re living in a new city it still feels like we’re on holiday anyway! People keep asking, “But, it surely must feel like you’ve never been away?” On the contrary, our yearaway is the reason why we’re trying-out this new place. And, from time-to-time, after a few tinnies of the old amber nectar we still manage to bore folk to sleep with our tales of barking lizards, salty tea with monks and canoeing trips in paradise. What is Sydney like? Well, the thing that always gets Sue excited is that our weekly travelcard allows us to travel not only on buses and trains, but also on ferries. And so, when we’ve been out for an evening in town we often take the ferry back, past the illuminated Opera House and under the Harbour Bridge. It feels like we’re taking a cruise, which feels extremely ostentatious on a travelcard!! What else? The food is something to comment on. You wouldn’t believe how much people here eat and what a fantastic selection of places there is to choose from. Anything you want you can find here in Sydney and, chances are, it won’t take long to get there and won’t cost you the earth. And, you’ll always find a decent bottle of plonk to wash it all down with. The two of us usually have to share a main course and, even then, we rarely finish it. Look over to the next table though and chances are there are a group of 4 slim-jims tucking into 6 main courses between them! Then there’s the weather. My, it’s pretty different from back home! Summer is drawing in now, which means blue skies and sunshine by day and fresh breezes by night. I’ve only put a jumper on twice since we’ve been here! We’ve got all sorts of thoughts about where we’d like to visit from here. First stop is Tassie in a few weeks, but there’s Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti and, of course, so much more of Australia to explore. So, I reckon we’ll have plenty of adventures to come and plenty to write to you lot about! | ||||||||||||
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| 1 Jun 2003 : Tasmania - Australia | ||||||||||||
| Van Diemen's Land | ||||||||||||