'To pick one apple you must use two hands.' Frances O'connell 1988 - 2010

I’m writing this on a rainy Wednesday afternoon from a little town called Stanthorpe two to three hours south west of Brisbane. I’ve been here for just over three weeks now, although it feels like about three years! I’ve been wanting to blog about Stanthorpe since I arrived as it has been such a bizarre experience, but we have been working so hard, that every night when we get home from work I barely have the energy to shower and eat never mind anything else. Days off have been fairly non-existent too, we just did thirteen days straight without any days off; it nearly killed us. We are only off this afternoon as it has been pouring with rain and apples bruise more easily when they are wet so we can’t pick, thankfully!

So I met up with Frances in Sydney and the day after Mardi Gras we were chatting on the phone about where we were going to go or what we were going to do, and being the organised people that we are we booked a flight up to the Gold Coast for the following afternoon, that was about as far as our planning went! When we arrived at the Gold Coast, having successfully managed to find a bus to the tourist mecca of Surfers Paradise, despite my having written down the bus numbers in the wrong order; we set about finding a place to rest our heads that night. We were actually really lucky in finding an extremely nice hostel that was a bit further off of the beaten track and a bit smaller than most, but that actually gave it a really nice alternative vibe.

We were at the Gold Coast for four days and I had intended on taking Frances to one of the four theme parks, to see the fantastic beach at Surfers and do lots of fun touristy things; but unfortunately the weather forecast wasn’t in on my plan and didn’t co-operate and it rained pretty much constantly from the moment we arrived. The four days pretty much passed us by in a haze of wine, a bit more wine, and some more wine interspersed with occasional dancing, eating, badly played pool and making lots of new friends.

Given that I was extremely hesitant about my first hostel experience due mostly to the films Hostel part one and two, I was pleasantly surprised. We met some fantastic people, had lots of fun and I generally didn’t have one bad thing to say about the experience. Except that maybe my bed could have been a little comfier, but for $25 a night (about £14) you can’t complain!

On the day we were suffering from the least severe of our collection of hangovers we started making some enquiries about fruit picking; having brought lots of wine, we thought that it would probably be a good idea to replenish our bank accounts. We spent several hours making phone calls and sending emails with no joy; Frances did seem to think that my preference for phoning the places with the heated pools was hindering our success somewhat. But even after I was forced in to being less fussy, everywhere was either already fully staffed, had had their season delayed due to the excessive rain or were only offering Banana picking, and Frances has this theory about spiders in Banana’s and was keen to avoid anything to do with Banana’s (this theory even extends to Banana’s in supermarkets…odd girl she is.)

We got the train back up to Brisbane the following weekend where some of my extra lovely super generous friends were kind enough to put Frances and I up for a couple of nights. Kat picked us up from train station despite being sick, which we were super appreciative of as the weather had still not decided to show Frances its usual sunny self. We settled ourselves down at Kat’s with the internet and several phones ready for a full day of job hunting, and the very first phone call I made brought us success; a job! We were to pick apples for $36 a bin in a place called Stanthorpe starting Tuesday. It seemed absolutely ideal, as it was easy for us to travel to from Brisbane, and $36 for a bin of apples, we thought we would be raking in the cash, as surely it would be really easy to fill up a bin of apples, after all, how big could a bin possibly be? Oh how wrong we were. The only other slight issue we were informed was that the local working hostel was full, so as the farmer really needed workers he had been kind enough to say that we could live in his cottage on the farm until a space came up at the hostel. Rent was only going to be $30 a week for the cottage; we were even happier thinking we had had a right result!

So we spent a lovely night with Kat eating take away and watching a film, the perfect remedy to our insane week at the Gold Coast and headed to the Salvation Army the next morning to bag ourselves some bargain fruit picking clothes! Frances got her first look at Brisbane city as Kat gave us a lift over to Kathryn’s house. (Kat and Kathryn gets confusing I know!)

It was nice to be back at Kathryn’s house, albeit briefly, I’ve gotten pretty fond of living there. We headed out to help Sarah celebrate her birthday, which involved free drinks on the house from the bar we were in; although sadly Frances and I were still feeling a little too worse for wear after the Gold Cost to take advantage of this to the full extent that we usually would have!

So on Tuesday morning Kathryn was kind enough to give us a lift to the Transit Centre so we could catch our coach out to Stanthorpe; and this is where Frances and I began to discover than when left to fend for ourselves we generally fail on epic proportions.

Our first task was to find a locker in which to leave our stuff whilst we went and did some last minute shopping, and after ten minutes of struggling to lift our extremely heavy cases in to the very top row of lockers we spoke to the very amused man at the coach desk who told us we could have just left our luggage with him, free of charge. Mistake one of many yet to come.

I was pretty confident of the way down to the shopping centre near the transit centre having been lost in the general area several times before, but Frances wanted to be sure about where we could buy some gardening gloves as we thought they might be a handy thing to have for apple picking. Frances being Frances walked straight up to the first passer by she saw, who happened to be a middle aged builder, and said and I quote

‘Excuse me; do you know where I can buy some gardening gloves?’

I’ve never seen somebody look so bewildered (and slightly frightened) in my life!

Heading down to the shopping centre I managed to equal up our tally of ridiculousness by walking in to a spiders

web, complete with nasty looking spider right in front of a group of workmen; who were most amused at my spider dance (you know the spider dance you do when there’s a spider on you and you’re trying to get it off?) whilst Frances did an Oscar winning performance of pretending she wasn’t with me. My situation was exacerbated by my pull along hand luggage case (I’m my fathers daughter and wasn’t willing to leave my laptop in a locker!) deciding it no longer wanted to be a pull along case and I therefore had to carry the extremely heavy awkward shaped case in my arms for the rest of our walk. We should have realised by this point that our trip was only going to get more ridiculous with every step we took.

So after a very pretty coach ride through the Queensland countryside which included one of the best sunsets I have ever seen and a very eerie experience of driving through the clouds at dusk we arrived at our destination. Although my paranoia about everyone being out to steal the organs of backpackers was kicked back in to life when the coach driver told us it was our stop, took our bags off the coach and drove off leaving us most bewildered looking around the pitch black country lane surrounded by nothing but trees and darkness. Eventually as our eyes adjusted we spotted lights through the trees, which thankfully, belonged to that of the local hostel, who we had arranged would give us a lift to our cottage.

We met Fabian, one of the brothers who run the hostel, who was kind enough to give us a lift to Woolworths so we could get some food (we were STARVING) and we bled him for information about the picking on the way; he warned us that it was hard work and that the supervisors could be a bit mean, but he did so in such a cheerful way we were feeling pretty positive about the experience!

Then we arrived at the ‘Cottage’ which shall be hereafter referred to as THE SHACK. So we have arrived in the pitch dark, after driving along a bumpy dirt track for quite some time, and as utterly kind and lovely as Fabian is they have since admitted to us that they hate taking people to the shack so he took off pretty much as soon as we had unloaded our bags. Before we had even found a light the first thing to hit us upon opening the door was the smell. Its pretty indescribable but it was some sort of mix of rat faeces, rot, decay, damp, urine and death all mixed in to the kind of stench that catches you at the back of the throat and makes your eyes water. Turning the light on was no real help at all and in hindsight candle light may have been better so we didn’t have to see the details of our surroundings.

The Guided Tour of the Shack

Turning right from the front door you enter the kitchen, which was our favourite room of the house, and also Roger the Rat’s favourite room as he chose to live under the fridge and left us droppings in the sink and on the table. We had a rickety little table, which bless the guys that run our hostel they had tried to make it look homely with the addition of a red checked table cloth. We had a fridge, which was the rustiest thing I’ve ever seen, and still had tape marks around it where someone had clearly dumped it and then it had been rescued and put in the shack. We had a sink, albeit we had been warned about the possibility of mosquito larvae in the tank water so we boiled all water that we used. We also tried to spend as little time as possible standing anywhere near the sink, as there was a smell so bad coming up from the drain that one whiff of it was enough to make you dizzy and nauseous, I would still rather not know the source of the smell. We had one plug point shared between a kettle, a toaster, and one hob ring, which took half an hour to boil a pan of water (and that’s after it had been boiled in the kettle first!) but as far as modern amenities go in a shack we were pretty appreciative of them.

The next ‘room’ along from the kitchen was the so called bathroom. This room had its own particularly unique smell, and I’m pretty sure that more than ten minutes in there with the door closed would result in death. Apparently the maggots that we regularly had to dispose of from the bathroom floor were not bothered by the smell.

We had a bath with a shower, but the bath had a layer so thick of what can only be described as ‘skank’ and rust that once again it posed a risk of death or at best serious disease. The shower initially worked for the first two days, but then it gave up and decided to stop working. Over the next four days we began to smell so bad that I am absolutely telling the truth no exaggeration we literally had a permanent cloud of flies following us around; it was that bad! Eventually the farmer offered to take us for a shower at the home farm, which did literally consist of a shower head inside a tin shack, but it honestly was the best shower I’ve ever had in my entire life, and probably ever will have!

The next room was the lounge which consisted of several sofas again the hostel people had done their best to help us out and had covered them over with blankets, we opted for the ignorance is bliss tactic and had no desire to know what lay beneath the blankets! The lounge was home to the majority of the spiders webs of the shack, with each corner thick with webs, thankfully their owners decided not to make our acquaintance.

Attached to the lounge room was the bedroom; which consisted of two bunk beds, a single bed, and a stack of random furniture including sofa’s, beds and wardrobes piled up high taking up the majority of the space in the room. One of our shack mates, Katja, 28 from Finland, had arrived first and bagged the best bed, the one in the middle of the room which relieved her of the draft from the window that did not shut and safe distance away from the door to outside which did not lock. I decided that the next best option was to find the comfiest bed, I succeeded in my mission but this landed me the top bunk next to the window that did not shut, so I was permanently freezing cold, as Stanthorpe is not a warm place! Frances opted for the bed below me, I’m pretty sure just so that she got to thump me in the back to wake me up each morning.

Our other shack mate, Nova, 24, from Canada, who has become a very good friend of ours, opted for the bed closest to the door, possibly so that if it all got to much she could make a prompt escape.

But where is the toilet I hear you cry? Well it did exist, but it existed outside on the other side of the shack, so on our first night we didn’t even know it was there, and after that we still had the problem of the fact it was pitch dark outside, and none of us were willing to walk outside in the pitch dark in the middle of the nowhere in Australia. All I will say is none of us will ever look at a red bucket in quite the same way again!

I know this blog is possibly one of my longest so far, but there has just been so much that I want to share with you guys back home. I’ll try to make the next week of our lives in the shack as brief as possible.

The apple picking there isn’t too much to say about it, we hate it, its horrible in every way you can imagine, but its dollars in the bank and days ticked off for my visa extension. The so called ‘bins’ of apples turned out to be crates, crates which hold around 2000 apples and take between two and a half to three and a half hours to fill. We wear picking bags on our front which when full way around 20kg and leave us with permanent neck, shoulder and back ache, and probably permanent damage too! We regularly come across spiders hiding in the trees, unfortunately for me my first spider happened to be an oversized huntsman. Upon realising I was holding an apple with a big fat hairy obscenity on it (Frances and I have decided the only fitting way to refer to Australian Spider is as an obscenity) my first instinct was to of course drop said apple, which resulted in said apple and spider now being in my picking bag, which is of course attached to me. I then committed the girliest act of my life in flinging off my hat, throwing the picking bag over my head, screaming and running away. Frances mocked me until she found her own spider ten minutes later, and promptly sat down on the trailer and refused to pick for the rest of the day.

Now being week three we are sort of starting to get used to seeing them, but we still struggle, especially as they have jumping spiders here (yes they actually JUMP) , and we have seen red backs and white tips both of which are poisonous.

Walking home from work one day we spotted a red belly black snake, which in my opinion is a stunning creature and I was absolutely fascinated, Frances thought I was far too over excited, but I was happy. Walking home from work was always an interesting experience, including one evening when we spotted a turtle shell at the side of the road, naturally we went to investigate, and felt pretty sad for the poor little dead dried up turtle, as Frances said he looked like he had died in pain! We also saw the biggest, fattest, ugliest most evil looking ants crawling on the shell, so we decided to leave fairly rapidly, although as I was to discover, not rapidly enough!

When we got home I sat down and took off my shoes and began to take off my sock and immediately felt a searing pain in my lower leg, which then shot electric shock type pains to the tips of my toes and towards my hip, whilst I was reeling from the shock of the pain the whole thing repeated itself just above my knee. I threw my sock across the room and half hopped half ran in to the kitchen where Frances was to inform her I was in agony and needed a doctor, laugh at my overreaction if you will, but you have no idea how much pain I was in!

As I lifted my trouser leg up we watched my leg redden and start to swell, and the pain did not ease at all it stayed intensely painful for at least ten to fifteen minutes but for what felt like hours. Frances did her very best lets be calm about this act and I agreed to go change in to my pyjama’s and lay down and see if the pain eased at all.

We searched the floor and my shoes and socks but could not find the offending creature, so we had no idea what it was that had bitten me. I have to admit the amount of pain I was in I didn’t feel that my shack mates were taking what could be my imminent death from the venom of some sort of Australian creature coursing round my body seriously enough; so whilst awaiting help from the texts I sent to Kathryn and Lynelle asking for advice too, I phoned Jesse the other brother who runs the hostel. He was very good and got me to explain the type of pain and what the bites looked like and went to make some phone calls about what it could be. He got back to me and said that from the description of the pain it sounded like the bite of a bull ant, but that he was happy to take me to hospital to be sure, to be honest I really did want to go to hospital, but I was so tired that I couldn’t face going back out again so I said I would let him know in the morning how I was, if I was still alive by then!

So the next morning I woke up, and the pains had eased and I appeared to still be alive so I went for a walk outside to the outside toilet to get changed in to my work clothes. Whilst pulling my trousers up I could not believe my bad luck that I felt that same awful pain, again! Somehow I managed to resist the urge to run screaming out of the toilet with my trousers round my ankles. Upon going back in the shack and telling Katja and Nova (Frances was in the bathroom of death) that I’d been bitten again we began to turn my trousers inside out. When I caught my first glimpse of the leg of a creature I was too terrified to look and had to cover my eyes. In hindsight I wish I had been braver as I had to listen to Nova shout;

‘Oh my god guys it’s a MASSIVE spider.’

Shortly followed by Katja’s addition of;

‘No its not it’s a Scorpion, look at its massive pincers!’

At which point I was slowly but surely falling in to a state of utter panic and was ready to retire to my death bed when Frances came and joined in with;

‘Look at the size of its head!’

Thankfully Frances then noticing my gradual descent in to hysteria resumed some sort of calm and order to the situation and took a closer look and decided it actually was the biggest, ugliest, fattest, meanest most evil looking ant in the world, commonly known as a bull ant. It was only at this point that I plucked up the bravery to take a look, and I have to admit I almost wish I hadn’t it was the ugliest looking thing I had ever seen, and it felt so horrible to know that it had been that thing that had bitten me. But the knowledge that it wasn’t a spider was the biggest relief. It still really really hurt, and I had big swollen welts where the bites were for several days, but it was good to know that I wasn’t going to drop dead any second.

There’s still so much more I want to tell you, but having hit 3000 words I feel I really should stop writing now, so I will write again soon to tell you more about the apples, the hostel we are now staying in (Which I LOVE) and all of our other Stanthorpe adventures.

So until the next rainy afternoon, I hope you enjoyed reading this, if any of you actually succeeded in making in to the end! Next time you bite in to an apple think of the poor abused over worked tired sore backpacker who probably picked it for you, blood, sweat and tears goes in to every apple picked I can assure you!

Lots of Love

Liza xXx <3>

(I’d say and Frances too, but I’m waiting for her to come home from the pub sloshed any minute now.)

Better Late Than Never?

So I know it’s been forever since I last blogged, but I decided that I’d better get back on it before I head off in to the middle of nowhere just in case of Hostel / Wolf Creek type scenario’s!
So the last time I blogged was way back in November, and I’ve done so much since then it would be impossible to include everything in one post. I promise to try and be better at blogging from now on! But in the mean time I’ll try and catch up on some of the things I have done…

So early December Kathryn and I went up to Cairns… I don’t think I can find words to do it justice; it has to be one of the most stunning places on earth. We went snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef; unfortunately we both had colds at the time so diving was out of the question. But to be honest the snorkeling was actually perfect because it meant Kathryn and I could swim off away from everyone else and just bob around in the quiet watching the reef go about its daily business. Strange as this may sound I felt very privileged to be sort of looking through the window as it were at this underwater world. It really was magical, the colours, the array of creatures from jelly fish to parrot fish (Kathryn’s favourite; she was swimming around stalking them for ages!) to the reef itself, it was an incredible experience. We were told that we may well see reef sharks but we didn’t, much to Kathryn’s disappointment, myself I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not! We packed so much in our short trip to Cairns; we also went up the Daintree rainforest, and Cape Tribulation which is a very well known spot. We kept an eye out for Crocodiles but sadly we didn’t see any, just several floating logs that looked incredibly lifelike when we were swimming in a freshwater hole in the rainforest! It was called Blue Hole… and they weren’t lying the water really was bright blue! I thought it was a beautiful temperature, so refreshing after the humidity of Cairns, but the two Aussie girls, Kathryn, and Lizzie who was so kind to let us stay with her and play tour guide, thought it was freezing. Think my kayaking back home has given me a good resistance to cold water!!! Cairns really is a beautiful spot, I’m hoping to go back there and spent a bit more time exploring and taking it all in.

Whilst I was still back in London Lynelle had told me about the sunrise views from Mount Tambourine, so she promised me a sunrise trip so we fitted it in my last couple of days in Brissy. The adventure had to commence at 0200 hours due to it being Summer and the sun getting up early! It was still dark after we arrived and found a good spot so we indulged in some Chai and Krispy Kremes whilst we waited. I don’t think I’ve ever made a conscious effort to go and watch the sun rise before, and it was absolutely stunning. The sky changed from blues and purples to reds and oranges and pinks, it was absolutely beautiful and well worth the lack of sleep! We had an awesome few days whilst Kathryn and Lynelle had a bit of time off of work, we had a bowling adventure followed by Pancake Manor; an old church converted in to a 24/7 pancake restaurant I kid you not! The seats are pews! The following day we had a Noosa trip (still my favourite place on earth!) where we lost track of time and swam for hours and hours. This was followed by Sizzlers; my favourite place to eat out here. All my favourite things in one day it was a pretty perfect day and a great way to bid Queensland farewell for a little while!

Over Christmas I went over to Western Australia, it was such a long journey to get down to Margaret River, but two planes, a bus and two coaches later my brother had a cold beer waiting for me and it was good to see the family again. I was just a little proud of myself too for having navigated my way to the other side of the country! Margaret River was pretty, but very windy! It was a shock to the system to be cold again after the Brisbane temperatures! Went with the family on a ‘Bush tucker tour’ which was being filmed for a Korean TV show, so somewhere out there there’s a Korean TV programme that we star in! My brother ate a witchety grub’s bum and seemed to think it wasn’t too bad…I stuck to the bush turkey and the assortments of berries and plants, some of which were actually really yummy! Margaret River is a big wine region so we went to lots of wineries, and I learnt how to pretend to know what I’m talking about with wine albeit I still don’t actually have a clue!

We headed back up to my brothers in Fremantle for Christmas… it was very strange putting the Christmas decorations up with the air con going full blast! Even stranger spending Christmas morning on the beach… but awesome. We had a full traditional Christmas dinner complete with Christmas pudding, most Aussie’s stick with salads which is a lot more sensible in the heat, but, my brother insisted we were traditional! We did lots of cool stuff over in W.A , wave rock was cool it’s basically a giant rock in the shape of a wave which has taken thousands of years to form that way, and made for some great cheesy photographs.
The Pinnacles are a sight to see, hundreds of vertical rocks scattered all around a big patch of desert; the aboriginals say it’s the fingers of teenagers, who were told not to go near the desert, trying to claw their way out of the sand. Scientists don’t really have a clue why they are there so I’m sticking with the aboriginal explanation! It’s a bit of a surreal and creepy kind of place so it seems fitting!

For our Christmas present my brother and sister-in-law took us on a dolphin watching trip which was spectacular, there was so many dolphins and they were not at all shy about coming close to the boat! It was fantastic to see a whole school of dolphins jumping and playing so close to us, ands what’s more the water was so clear we could even see them swimming under the water! After the dolphin trip we spent the rest of the day on Penguin Island, where we fed the wild King Skinks (big lizards) and saw lots of Penguins…yes they have Penguins in Australia! We also went on another boat trip to another close by Island to see Sea Lions!
There’s so much to include its hard putting it all in to one blog entry! We went to a wildlife park where I got to feed KANGAROO’S! I was so excited, they were super friendly and quite happy to be stroked, and they would even hold your hand whilst they were feeding out of your other hand! I would have been happy to stay there for days on end but unfortunately the keeper chucked me out, I was the last person to leave at the end of the day! We also got to get up close and personal with Koala’s and a Hairy Nosed Wombat. I love Australian wildlife!!!

One of my favourite days over in W.A was our trip to Rottnest Island which was absolutely stunning. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such white sand or such blue water. We cycled around the Island, 24km if I remember rightly? It was hard work, such hard work as there were so many hills and I’m sure each one got increasingly steeper!! But every time you made it to the top of a hill you would have these fantastic views spread out in front of you and it would spur you on to keep going. Other than a few facilities on one side of the island and the cycle track the island is mostly undeveloped, which means there is nothing to spoil the natural beauty, and I so hope they always keep it that way as it really was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. The island is also home to ‘Quokka’s’ a small marsupial creature and they are so friendly and inquisitive they will come on over to say hello and see what you are up to! The island is also home to two kinds of snake… and I saw one!!! I was so excited that I did everything you should not do if you want to avoid being bitten, so instead of standing still and being quiet I jumped up and down and made a lot of noise…oops. Especially considering it turned out to be a ‘dugite’ which although a timid species they have one of the most poisonous venom's of all snakes!!! Lucky he decided not to bite the silly over excited English tourist. I think that he had a sense of humour as the spot he chose to sit at was right behind a ‘Warning, Venomous Snakes’ sign.
The last week I was in W.A they were having a heat wave with the temperatures hitting up to 43c and even 45c on one afternoon! The sun was so strong that it was genuinely uncomfortable to be in direct sunlight for very long at all. My folks and I spent the week in a villa with a pool, and we didn’t stray far from the pool at all, in fact only really as far as the BBQ!

After saying my farewells to the family I flew over to Sydney, having a fantastic flight as I flew overnight and had the entire emergency exit row to myself, so heaps of leg room PLUS room to lay down across all three seats. All flights should be that way! I was then adopted by the Veale family for a week, and had an absolutely lovely time with them. On the morning I arrived Jen took me to SUMMER BAY! They were filming at the time, so we were extra’s in the back of the shot! So look out for me!

Jen’s family took me out to show me Sydney city, which was a fantastic day. We caught a ferry in to the city, and as the ferry turns the corner in to Sydney harbour the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge suddenly appear in front of you…and it’s BREATHTAKING. It’s so strange to see something so iconic with your own eyes. I was pretty lost for words! We went for a walk up to the Opera House, and I didn’t know you can walk right up to the top and touch the sails. We had a quick look inside, we would have taken the tour but we had so much to do that will have to be on the list for next time! We took a mini train ride around their Botanical Gardens, where they had HUNDREDS of bats hanging from the trees, very random! From the Botanical Gardens you get the picture postcard perfect view of the Opera House in front of the Harbour Bridge, again breathtaking to see. Again I’m condensing such a packed day as this blog is getting pretty long, it’s kind of cool writing this all down actually and realising how much I’ve actually done! After the Opera House I was treated to lunch overlooking the harbour and then taken for a guided walk around the city by my adopted Sydney family. I swear Aussies are SO lovely. We then went up their version of centrepoint which is very different to ours! It’s almost like a big long pole with a bit stuck on the top, where you get fantastic 360o views of the city. It was a great way to see all the things we couldn’t fit in to one day, like their Hyde Park! Which is a lot smaller than our one!

The next day Rich took Jen and I on a walk up to the Home and Away lighthouse, check out the beginning of Home and Away and you will spot it. It was quite a walk, especially as were tight on time so we had to practically run up this giant hill/mini mountain. There were some fantastic views to be had though, and I was lucky enough that Rich shared some secret spots with me, where the views were incredible. It’s hard to describe check out my pictures but there is like this spit of land which has beaches on either side but is then surrounded by ocean…great views. I now call Rich monkey boy though as we did heaps of climbing up, down, over, in and round rocks and caves, I feared death on numerous occasions but thankfully Rich knew what he was doing and kept us alive, and I was proud of my war wounds so I didn’t mind! (I’ve actually ended up with a wicked scar on my shin, awesome souvenir!) We had dinner that night to celebrate Jen’s birthday at a wonderful restaurant right next to the summer bay surf club!!! I’m a geek I know…

We had a good night out in Sydney for Jen’s birthday celebrations the following day, where many pancakes were eaten, lots of new friends were made, much tequila was consumed and lots of Salsa was attempted!!! Rich took me for a tipsy late night full moon walk (whilst Jen and co were boring and got a taxi home!) and there was something very peaceful about the northern beaches of Sydney lit up by the moon and totally deserted as all the sane people were tucked up in beds at 4am. Rich took me to a look out where someone, definitely an Aussie, has carved two seats in the rock face complete with drinks holders! I had a slight disaster in that my favourite necklace decided to fall off and down a mini cliff, somehow, I’ve no idea how, Rich managed to find it! I’m indebted to him forever for that!

My last night in Sydney I met up with Rod from the stadium who happened to be in town, we had drinks at the Opera bar which is right next to the opera house and offers fantastic night time views of the harbour all lit up. Which blew my mind; I really did not want to leave! Sydney is a stunning city at night, on par with London I think, and that’s saying something!!! It was really really nice to catch up with a familiar face and accent too.

I was spoilt rotten by Jen’s family all week and I really cannot thank them enough for it, and if they’re not careful they will never get rid of their adopted English person!!!

Well this blog has gotten ridiculously long again…So I better stop now, and get to bed, as I planned to be asleep several hours ago! But I’ve covered nearly everything over the last few months, and I’ll blog again soon with all my updated Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sydney adventures!

Much love to all of you back home in the U.K I hope you haven’t frozen to death just yet. You can take some satisfaction from the fact that we are in Autumn now and you are in Spring! If any of my tame Australians are reading this… I hope you know how much I appreciate all of you guys, I have been so lucky to meet so very many wonderful people out here and I love you all dearly!

G’night! xXx