Sydney

With Forresters Beach just a short hour and a half trip on the train I headed into the city. I popped straight out to catch up with my old school friend Roisin before she headed to Melbourne. Roisin and I haven't seen each other in 4 years so it was great to have a quick catchup and it was like 4 years hadn't passed! I've had 9 days in Sydney which is the longest that I've not moved since I left the UK. Sydney's a great city and there is so much to do. I could happily fill another few days here. I been around the Rocks which is 'old' Sydney, Darling Harbour, the Botanic gardens, walked around the opera house in sunshine and cloud (it looks much better in the sun. In cloud it's a stack of dirty white tiles), china town, and walked around every free museum and art gallery there is going. A definite highlight is seeing an exhibition of the first emperor of China's terracotta warriors. I queued forever to buy a ticket and then forever again to see the warriors but they were fantastic. The exhibition displayed 8 men and 2 horses and it was great to see the size and detail of the statues which were much taller than I thought they were going to be. The warriors are supposed to be life size but they were over 2m tall so maybe the Chinese were bigger back then! The photo of me is with a replica warrior which they sold in the gift shop. Would make a great ornament for the front garden but sadly it was $2000.

Sydney is only 2 hours by train from Katoomba, the largest town in the Blue Mountains National Park. I spent the whole day in the park wandering around the walking tracks which features many 1000 steps up and down the valley and getting lots of different views of the main attraction, the rock formation 'The 3 Sisters'. The mountains were stunning especially as the morning mist started to rise and they really are blue! The blue haze is created as the oily vapour released by the eucalyptus trees mixes with water vapour and dust in the air. I also went on the steepest funicular in the world at 56 degrees which was a little scary as you head backwards into the unknown with your bum sliding off the seat! The funicular was first created in the 19th century coal mining days and as a result there are bits of old mining equipment dotted about the forest which was quite interesting to look at. I had a great day trudging through mud and looking at waterfalls and it was nice not to have to wait for a coach load of other people!

Another 'must do' from Sydney is a 30 minute trip on the ferry to Manly. I walked 20km of the Manly Scenic Walkway which gave me some fantastic views over the harbour and into some very nice swimming beaches which I didn't have time to take advantage of. It seems that you can do every watersport imaginable here and Manly is a lot more than just the Bondi rival I thought it was! I would love to come back for a few nights stay and a hunt for work.

Tomorrow I'm flying to New Zealand on a last minute decision. I was originally going to head to New Zealand after Australia, but seeing that Queensland is flooded I wouldn't be able to get any north of Brisbane so I thought I'd go now whilst Australia dries out! So next stop will be Auckland.