David And Mark Down Under

Melbourne

For Easter we decided that we should go to Melbourne. We'd been told by lots of people we should see it before we leave Australia so we got up early on Good Friday to pack our bags. It was lovely steamy sunrise over the city.

Our mate Noom gave us a lift to the airport. We bumped into another mate Brendan on the plane and shared a taxi from Melbourne Airport in to the city. We dumped our bags at the Metro Apartment Hotel and explored the fairly deserted city streets. We passed by the Victoria Parliament, Treasury Gardens, Fitzroy Gardens in which the cottage of Captain Cook's parents had been relocated, Brunswick Street, Carlton Gardens with the Melbourne Museum and Royal Exhibition Building, and back to the hotel to check-in.

After a short nap we decided that given everything was closed we would go to the day-time party we'd heard about. It wasn't really our kind of music but we had a good time and were home for 8pm. We relaxed for a few hours and later in the evening went out for a drink at another bar/club we'd had recommended. 

Saturday
We had a lie-in and then went for brunch at Red Tongue on Brunswick Street north of the centre and caught the tram to the sea-side at St Kilda south of the centre. It was a shock to our systems when we stepped out into a bracing sea breeze but we braved it to the end of the pier and had a drink in the cosy bar.

In the evening we met our friend Jeremy for some food in Chinatown.

Sunday
We had a good full day of exploring the city making a loop down to the South Bank for breakfast and back up across to the Docklands on the free circle tram.

Monday
We picked up our hire car at 10am and drove to Williamstown, the first settlement in Victoria and down through Geelong to the so-called Surf Coast. We followed the coastline to Bells Beach which was hosting the Australian leg of the Surfing World Championship Tour although the waves had dropped so there wasn't any surfing happening as the picture below shows. Beyond that began the Great Ocean Road which we followed to Lorne where we turned in land and for the 150km back towards Melbourne.

We were in plenty of time for our flight and made it home at 11pm, exhausted but happy.

Blue Mountains

It's just over six weeks until Mark leaves Sydney and 10 until Dave expects to be going, so we thought we should get round to doing some of the things we haven't done yet.

This weekend we hired a car and drove 100km up into the Blue Mountains. They are more a craggy tableland than an alpine style mountain area, but up in Katoomba it was noticeably cooler than down at the coast. Both days felt like warm early autumn days back home. The few imported European trees had leaves that were turning golden.

Katoomba was our first stop. We went to join all the thousands of tourists at Echo Point Look-out. It's a grand view across a tree filled canyon with the famous Three Sisters rock formation to the left.

Our next stop was the Scenicworld attraction. Normally we'd avoid these kind of places but we'd been told that the near vertical mine cart ride down the side of the valley was worth doing and the cable car views on the way back up worth seeing.

The final stop of the day was Govetts Leap Look-out. It gave an equally spectacular view over the hills and cliffs but unlike Echo Point had only 20 or so people quietly looking at the view. It would be a great area to hike and camp in.

After checking into our hotel we had a brief rest and in the dark drove in to town for a meal at Avalon. The restaurant was housed upstairs in an old art deco cinema. The food was nice but not outstanding. We think Sydney has spoilt us with its affordable, high quality restaurants.

We woke to a perfectly quiet sunny Sunday morning and had an extra hour in bed because of the clocks changing (delayed a week due to the Commonwealth Games so we are now 9 hours ahead of the UK). A chilly fry up in Katoomba set us up for the 100km drive to the Jenolan Caves. The drive had some lovely views and ended in a narrow valley that the road steeply descended into. To our surprise the road disappeared into a cave beneath a huge rock arch. It emerged at the other side to a view of Jenolan Caves House.

We booked in to see two of the caves but the first guide over ran and we felt we'd seen enough stalactites for one day so we had our lunch by a small lake under the rock arch.

We drove 200km home via a small town called Oberon. Our route took us back through Katoomba and down in to the outskirts of Sydney in time for the early sunset at 6pm.

Birthday Ice Zoo

It was David's birthday this past Thursday and although we had to work we had a few cocktails at Slide in the evening to make an occasion of it.

Our weekend got us back on the road to productive spare-time after several weeks of partying. Saturday evening we went to Circular Quay with Milton and Natalie, who is currently visiting us from London. We had booked ourselves in for a 30 minute slot in Minus 5. The bar is just like a normal one downstairs but upstairs you are given two layers of gloves and a woolly parker to wear. You're then led in to a bar that has been been refrigerated to minus 5 Celsius and where everything, including the glasses is made of ice.  We understand that these conditions can be found for free in Halifax at the moment, but after nearly a full year of summer temperatures it was quite a novelty for us. Milton hasn't even seen snow since he was 2 years old. So we enjoyed it more than we had expected to!

Taronga Zoo is a short ferry ride from Circular Quay and on Sunday morning we embarked on a expedition to see it. It's the best zoo we've been to and had lots of weird and wonderful animals.

 

To celebrate David's birthday took the bus to Bondi in the evening. We had a drink on the balcony of Bondi Icebergs while the the sun went down across the bay. Later we were seated inside by a big picture window for a fantastic meal by our verbose waiter. He didn't say anything with five words when he could say it with 20! We were looked after really well and the whole experience was a pleasure.

Mardi Gras Season

It's been a really busy few weeks for us. Dave was on holiday for two weeks and Mark took a few extra days to make long weekends off work. We had our mate Simon visiting from Bournemouth for the three weeks which made it feel even more like a proper holiday.

Weekend One - Fair Day

The beginning of the three week Mardi Gras season seems a long time ago now. It began on Saturday at Home nightclub in Darling Harbour. The water-side venue was transformed by our production designer friend David. He had installed mirrors and huge chandeliers that were progressively unveiled by people costumed in white suits like doozer/oompa loompa. It was a fun night!

Sunday was Fair Day, on which more-or-less everyone descended on Victoria Park for a day of picnics, drinking and entertainment. We spent most of the afternoon relaxing in the shade of the trees with our friends.

In the evening we went for sunset drinks at the Opera House Bar.

 

Weekend Two - Harbour Party

The middle weekend was the Azure Harbour Party. It was held outdoors in the Botanical Gardens where we had our Christmas Day picnic with great views.

It was great until 9.30pm when a torrential storm soaked us through. But we squelched home and had a cup of tea before going out to an indoor club up the road at Arq. They had a night of DJs from Crash in London which is one of Mark's favourites back home.

We went out during that week as well. On Thursday our mate Tim launched a series of live dance music nights at Slide with a Dj set/live vocal session from Kosheen. It was a busy night and we had to call up Tim to skip the huge queue just before they started. Sian was a good live singer and got people moving.

Weekend Three - Mardis Gras

The final weekend was the Mardi Gras parade itself on Saturday. We watched the parade with our mates at the end of our street. We stood on our cheap Ikea dining chairs to get a better view!

After the parade we had a party at our flat for our mates. At 11pm-ish we walked up to a party for 20,000 people at Fox Studios. The party wasn't exactly our kind of thing and we left earlyish at 5am (the party goes through 'til 10am).

Sunday in the day was a party at the harbour side theme park Luna Park

In the evening we went to our favourite club DTPM. The music was fantastic. The crowd were a good international mix and the projected visuals were great. They had a guy improvising live trumpet over tracks that worked really well.

All in all it was an amazing few of weeks that fulfilled all our expectations of what Mardi Gras in Sydney would be like. It's brought home to us how difficult it's going to be to leave.

Sliding

The weekend was mostly uneventful with Mark working on Saturday. But Saturday evening was lots of fun. Milton brought a couple of his girlfriends over to ours for drinks and we were joined by Mark and Jo. Later in the evening we headed out on to Oxford Street to our favourite bar Slide. It's our favourite because most of the others are pretty bad. Yoko and Sachie kept us moving and we had a great time, as shown below.

Chinese New Year

Saturday was spent relaxing in the park by the beach at Bronte. The last time we were here Dave had just swum from 2km from Bondi. This time we were there for a family barbecue arranged by our friends Matt and Lucy from London. They're actually both Australian but have just bought a place in London. On a sunny summers day by the sea in Bronte where they grew up we found it hard to believe they'd give this up for anything! They cooked up a great feast including squid and octopus. Later a few of us went for a swim despite reports of blue-bottle jelly fish being washed in by North-westerly winds. We didn't get stung but a couple of people we know did. It sounds likes plenty of people were stung this weekend.

On Sunday we walked the 10 minutes down to Chinatown to see what was going on to celebrate the Year of the Dog. It was extremely colourful and busy. We watched a dragon visiting shop fronts to take the dangled offering of a lettuce/cabbage, and passed through the market on the main street.

In the evening we went round to Dave's university and work mate's place. Mark and Jo cooked us a tasty spaghetti bolognese for dinner with plenty of wine.

Working Hard

So far it's been a quiet start to 2006. Dave has spent a couple of weeks working lots of extra hours but the big news is that today Mark started a job. He'll be working in a suburb of Sydney called Paramatta for GE Money. It's just an 8 week position but will help top up savings for our return to London in June/July. He has a nice easy first week though, as Thursday is the Australia Day holiday.

In news not about us, we were really pleased to hear about the birth in Hong Kong of Dave's brother's first son, William Pham Fish.

New Year

We had a nice start to the new year with a small party for about 15 friends at our place. We took our drinks upstairs to the building's roof terrace and watched the 9pm 'family' firework display over the harbour from there.

30 minutes before midnight we walked across Darlinghurst to Kings Cross for a front on view of the bridge for the main fireworks. They were extremely spectacular.

Harbour Bridge at Midnight

Tasmania

We got back late last night from a three day visit to Tasmania. We had a great time with Dave's Aunties, Uncles and Cousins.

It was a busy few days. We flew in to Hobart from Sydney on Tuesday morning and were taken on a hike up Mount Wellington. The mountain towers over Hobart and the weather was warm and humid. We got a good overview of the area; from Brunie Island in the south to the Tasman peninsula in the east, and Hobart spread along the river estuary below.

View from Mount Wellington

Rachel [front] and Sarah [back]
On Wednesday we were up early for the 2.5 hour drive up the east coast to the Freycinet Peninsula. We stopped in for scones with jam and cream at a berry farm en route with a view across to the peninsula.

Freycinet Peninsula from Kate's Berry Farm

Once in the Freycinet National Park we hiked up over a pass between two of the mountains to look down over the other side to Wineglass Bay and more mountains beyond.

Barbara and Mark at Wineglass Bay look-out

We descended to the beach which has crystal clear but cold waters and lovely white sand. Dave had a cooling swim before we walked the return leg. Auntie Barbara's partner Stephen barbecued salmon steaks for us when we got back to Hobart and we called over to see Uncle Finian in the evening.

Barbara after a paddle

Our last day started with a walk to the beach at the end of the street to spot some of the stragglers from the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. They left Sydney on Boxing Day and had just made it in. Later we went to the Royal Botanical Gardens. There were a nice range of gardens in a relatively compact area. We particularly liked the Subs-Antarctic House which sprayed rain and periodically blasted with icy cold wind.

Sub-Antarctic House

For lunch we headed to the docks and sampled some great local food from the Taste festival. After a short afternoon nap we paid final visit to the docks to see the moored racing yachts before Stephen, Barbara and Maire took us out to the airport.

Huge racing yachts

We hope to be able to see more of Tasmania soon, but perhaps at more relaxed pace. It's the kind of place which needs to be explored with hiking boots and a tent over a week or two. I'm sure we'll be back.

Christmas Day

We got our Christmas wish and woke to a beautiful sunny day. We had a breakfast of scrambled egg, smoked salmon and champagne. After we opened our cards and presents. Thanks for all the things we were sent!

At lunch time we packed our picnic and caught a taxi to the Botanic Gardens down by the harbour. We laid out our blanket in the shade of a tree by the water with a view across to the bridge and Opera House. We drank a couple of bottles of wine and relaxed.

A very relaxed picnic

Back home we had a late afternoon nap and then at the sun-set, sandwiches on the roof. In the evening we made our calls back to the UK and after watched a Muppet Christmas movie.