Nick’s world tour

After a welcome night away from any sociable establishments, the coach pulled into Sydney remarkably early, disturbing my nice sleep. As with last time I was here, it was grey and pretty chilly. The main reason for being here is for New Year’s eve, though the reason I’m here so long is because of the ridiculous minimum stays every where has this time of year. And don’t get me started on the prices!

Anyway, I’m here for 5 nights and I had a few people to catch up with. Most of the major sights in the city done last time, I headed out to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, about 2 hours by train from the city. A day of tramping around the hills and forests here must have done something good for my health. Though it was very touristy, particularly the viewpoint of the 3 Sisters, three famous chuncks of rock next to Echo Point.

New Years Eve required a lot of planning. Pretty much everyone from our Chirstmas day mates was in the city for New Year, but spread throughout the districts. Most of us managed to be in the same place at the same time, eventually, and after queueing for over 2 hours to get into Macquaries Point overlooking the harbour (our best bet, as they let 25,000 people in here) we just had the 10 hours of sitting on the grass until the main event! The day went fairly quickly, and the childrens fireworks at 9pm were a taste of things to come. It’s the Bridge’s (dubbed the coathanger) diamond anniversary this year, which may explain why some 2 million people came to the city to see the show. Come midnight, 7 barges of millions of dollars of gunpowder filled the sky with colour for 15 minutes, whilst the bridge at one point looked like it might explode. So was it worth it? Yes, it was pretty spectacular, and now I can say I’ve done New Year in probably THE place to be. Though they could have done with chopping down a few trees to improve our view! After wandering throught the city wishing nearly everyone in sight “Happy New Year” we jumped on the train to Bondi Beach. The idea was to see in the first dawn of the year, but I was an early casualty, by 4am I was more than a little cold in the wind and made an early exit. (I’ve not got any of my photos back from the night, but I’m sure you all saw the pictures)

It hardly feels like I’ve been here for more than 5 minutes, and tomorrow morning I’m off again. I might have done it quickly, but I’ve seen everything on my list- this time. I’m not sure what has been my highlight, probably sunrise at the Rock, the Whitsundays, Kangaroo Island, and the 4WD adventure top the list. Australia does seem to have the happiest people in the world (even the bus drivers!), which makes a huge difference. You can see why so many people want to live here. Biggest disappointment? You might have guessed: the weather. It’s a common misconception that it’s always nice here, at least this year!

Just one final thing… this is a little song I’ve heard a few times and is a spoof tourism advert for Australia:

Redback, Funnel-Web, Blue-ringed octopus
Taipan, Tigersnake and a Box jellyfish
Stonefish and the poison thing that lives in a shell
That spikes you when you pick it up

(by the Scared Weird Little Guys; listen to it here http://www.abc.net.au/canberra/stories/m1003875.ram )

So until next time, when it’ll be Kia Ora from New Zealand,

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 4:52 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.