Festive season Aussie Style!
2nd January 2007
Happy New Year! We survived (just) the carnage of the festive season down under, and I can happily report our livers are still functioning, and more importantly, we are still engaged!
After the fun and games in Melbourne we headed north for Christmas to the small seaside town of Yamba, in north New South Wales. We had been kindly invited to spend Christmas with Nathan and Emma, an Aussie couple who have previously spent a couple of years in Newcastle, where I had met them through our mutual friend Donnie. Nathan, Emma and family made us feel really welcome throughout our stay, and our first southern hemisphere Christmas was great fun. With Donnie and Jen also in town, we managed to celebrate in style, including a Christmas day game of beach cricket (despite looking forward to this for several weeks, I was harshly adjudged out first ball, ok, I was clean bowled, but pitch was dubious at best!), followed by a customary dip in the sea, and finally an al fresco Christmas dinner overlooking the ocean, including the largest king prawns I have ever seen (and quite possibly the highest ever ratio of wine consumed per person at any party in the history of mankind!).
Next on the agenda was a trip back down to Melbourne, and the eagerly awaited boxing day test! We had tickets (thanks very much Karen, a great Xmas present!) for the 3rd day, and although the result was unsurprisingly disappointing, we got to see Shane Warne take 2 wickets on what was his last ever game at the MCG! The MCG itself is an amazing stadium, with a capacity of 95,000. It wasn’t quite full whilst we were there, but the Barmy Army below us did there best to do England proud and create some atmosphere with unrelenting singing all day, a great effort! In the evening we hooked up with a couple of lads we had met on our outback trip for a couple of pints (yep, we were drinking in the ‘official’ barmy army pub, therefore schooners had been replaced by pints to make the beer bellied English supporters feel at home!). This trip to Melbourne also saw us say goodbye to Donnie and Jen, who were returning for New Years back in England!
The final leg of the party went back ‘home’ to Sydney. We enjoyed a day of R&R back in Coogee, meeting up with Dan again, who had some of his friends from Stratford over. It was nice to be back in Sydney, a place we both really enjoyed living in, with the beach and surf only a stones throw away from the hustle and bustle of a major city. The R&R was definitely needed as the New Years celebrations were about to commence!
We checked out of our hotel on the morning of New Years eve, and with not a bed left in the city, we were now officially of no fixed abode, until we were scheduled to check into our hostel on New Years day, in Byron Bay! We headed down to the rocks area, by the harbour, early doors and began to soak up the atmosphere. The place was alive with crowds of party people from 10.30am, and the vibe was excellent, the anticipation of the day ahead meant that everyone was in good spirits and with the sun just managing to poke through the clouds things were definitely hotting up (how cheesy, i should get a job in local radio!). The celebrations officially kicked off at 1pm with the firing of the cannon on Fort Dennison in the harbour, and there was a scheduled event every hour there after until the big one at midnight!
We had booked ourselves onto a harbour cruise for the evening, justifying the expense as a once in a lifetime opportunity! We were clearly still in backpacker mode though, turning up to board our boat at 6.30pm wearing shorts, t-shirts and flip flops, only to realise that everyone else had got dressed up for the occasion, with best evening apparel! Our boat was called Supercat and for the next 7 hours we cruised around the harbour, plied with free drink and all you can eat food! After the initial embarrassment of being underdressed had worn off, we quickly got into the party spirit, and we had the best seats in the house (slap bang in the middle of the harbour!) for the fireworks at both 9pm (the kiddies show) and midnight itself! The theme of the night was ‘a diamond night in the emerald city’ and the show certainly justified the grandeur billing, culminating in a huge diamond shape being lit up in the centre of the bridge (aka the coat hanger!).
After disembarking our boat at roughly 2am, we strolled around the city with the million or so other people trying to get home (taxi anyone?). We knew that the first train to the airport left at 5am, so managed to pass the time with a couple of pies, a quick boogie in an impromptu party in a shopping mall, and a kip in the park, with about 5,000 other people! Needless to say, by the time we actually checked into our hostel at 3pm on New Years day, following our flight up to Byron, we were quite happy to get our heads down, not emerging from our room until this morning!
Tags: Australia
Chris and Charl
Whoa up there – this is all going way too fast for me! ENGAGED?!! Wow! Congratulations you both!! And still engaged after a night on the tiles in Sydney!! To think that some folk say young(er) people have no staying power nowadays – well you two are really puitting paid to that old nonsense!! Fab to hear – and love and best wishes for 2007 to BOTH of you. You may have seen on CNN (hey – 5* hotel!!) that Pete and Kate got hitched on a Thai beach this week…. aren’t you scheduled to be there in due course? Well don’t do it! It ain’t legally binding – and besides your mum(s) would shoot me for even suggesting it!! The time here is 3 hours to whitewash! P & M
Cheers P&M,
Thanks for your message! I’m not commenting on my staying power, but we had a great day/night/day out in Sydney for New Year!
The Thai beach option sounds great, although you’re right, I wouldn’t be able to put up with Mum’s dissapointment for the rest of my life, that said, it didn’t stop you 2 did it! 🙂
Time here is now 2 hours past whitewash, we are in Brisbane, due to meet up with your cousin * Linda in a couple of hours for fish and chips! (* I still can’t work out what if any relation that makes me to Linda????? Answers on a postcard please!)