Merry Christmas & Happy New Year - Sydney Style
Trip Start
Oct 04, 2010
1
12
Trip End
Oct 04, 2011
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
[ria] The day we arrived in Sydney it was absolutely boiling, particularly compared to the crazy storms we had left. We jumped on a bus and headed to our hostel in Bondi. We checked in at got in contact with Leah and Olly who were the 2 lovelies who were giving us their flat and headed over to get the keys and thank them with cookies and tequila. We headed back to the hostel and had some nice grub and a couple of drinks in a fairly swanky restaurant in Bondi to welcome ourselves to Oz. Pretty chilled night at the hostel talking to our roomies, two of which were from Luton, nice couple, chavvy as hell – but very entertaining! Up pretty early for a free brekkie and got a cab (lazy treat) to or new home. It was so lovely to be in our own place and we headed to the supermarket to do 'a big shop' and then chilled in the evening. The flat was in a good location in Bondi opposite a nice park, with a lovely comfy bed and sofa and a nice garden and BBQ – perfect! (I am aware that these sound simple things, but when you have travelled for a bit, a sofa and a good bed are pure luxury). The next day a chap I used to work with was here for Chrimbo with his family, so he picked us up and we headed to the Blue Mountains. It was a lovely drive and the mountains were truly stunning and a lot bigger than I thought they would be, another scorcher of a day, so we sat in the shade and tucked in to my Mothers picnic I had packed us all. After our bellies were full we headed on to Wentworth Falls, where a good walk took us to a lovely fall where a well needed paddle in the water was enjoyed – a really lovely day. That evening we were naughty and even with our fridge laden with food, we treated ourselves to a yummy Thai takeaway – simple things…The next day was Christmas eve, and of course it was roasting again, we meandered around Sydney in the day, taking in the sights at a leisurely pace and as our Chrimbo pressies had not arrived from home Steve and I went out to buy each other a few gifts to open the next day. In the evening we headed to Darling Harbour, there was a Christmas carol concert around a giant Christmas tree with kangaroos on. We all gathered around and listened to Aussie Christmas songs, aka ‘Rolf Harris does Christmas’, very random but very entertaining. As the sun set and it got dark we moved over to the water’s edge to watch the fireworks, they were so close to us, and we were blown away by how good they were and they were set to music (the Aussies know how to do fireworks). We wandered back home feeling all full of Xmas cheer and getting very excited at how impressive the new year fireworks would be…Christmas morning we woke at a reasonable hour and treated ourselves to a good old English breakfast and then put on our Christmas songs (Boney M, The Jacksons and Phil Spector Christmas Album) and opened our pressies in our newly decorated Christmassy home. We had both excelled ourselves with our tight budget and I had a lovely/tacky Christmas tree glass plate, a beach ball, a Japanese fan, shower gel and a craft magazine (I have been keeping on about wanting to be more ‘crafty’) Superb array of summer Chrimbo pressies. I had bought Steve, amongst other delights, a baseball set so once we got dolled up, as best you can, we headed to our park with a cup of JD and coke for a Christmas morning batting practice soaking up the sun. After a bit too much JD we went back in and started preparing the obligatory Bondi BBQ before our adopted family came round. Once all had arrived we finished preparing our mammoth Christmas day meal (homemade burgers, chicken kebabs, prawns, sausages, loads of different salads, rice, and just because I had to roasted carrots and parsnips) and gathered around the BBQ cooling ourselves with beer and cider. We sat around the table and pulled Steve’s giant homemade cracker full of awful jokes and stuffed ourselves silly to then retire to the lounge for the obligatory Christmas day snooze. After our little nap we had more food and mince pies and cream – perfect! After pulling ourselves off the sofa we all headed down to the beach to join the other 50,000 travelers – I have never seen so many Christmas hats, all of us included! We sat drinking and having a giggle, until the sun went down and we all thought it would be fun to have a midnight swim, Steve coming out of the water feeling abused as the waves had pulled his shorts down and spanked him – only after did we think about the sharks who if had any sense would be sitting there waiting for their Christmas dinner…we saw no sharks, but sat on the beach playing with sparklers. We all kipped at our pad and took it in turns to Skype the family and then fell asleep feeling that our Christmas down under had been a special one to remember…Boxing day was a late start and a proper lounging day, watching bad Aussie TV, the Boxing Day Test and tucking into yet another full on BBQ with all of our Christmas day leftovers. We all stayed in the apartment for most of the day and then when we finally got our arse into gear to go to the beach and sunbathe we had missed most of the sun. We spent a few hours at the beach, chilling and attempting to body surf the waves whilst avoiding being smacked by some other fool doing the same. We all then managed yet another BBQ before our temp family bid us farewell and we slept. The next evening we had a few people round for poker and Mexican, it was so lovely to be able to be somewhere where you could have people over…we all had lots of goon, played poker with pegs and once again ate way to much bloody food…it was a really nice night, I played shite again and Steve won AGAIN! (Have I explained goon? If not and for those who don’t know it is god awful cheap wine like stuff that has fish and eggs and all manner of crap in – and it gets you so messily drunk, it is called goon as it comes in a wine box with the silver bag thing and when finished you blow it up for a pillow, goon is apparently aborigine for pillow). On the 30th December we finally got up at a decent hour of the day and headed to the ferry to go to Turqangy zoo, the sun still had his hat on and we had a lovely day around the zoo. We queued up with the other tourists to have our koala encounter which was pretty shit considering I was expecting a hug and didn’t get one, and our picture we got taken is a shocker…but there were lots of cool animals, bloody massive kangaroo, a Tazmanian devil and lots of crocs. The zoo is on the coast so once we were done with the animals we went down a few steps and found ourselves on a 'beaut' of a beach looking over Sydney, all of the boats had begun to rock up for New Year and it was looking pretty busy, we had a nice swim and then caught the ferry back under Harbour Bridge and past the Opera House – not a bad boat ride. A fairly early night in preparation for the mammoth day tomorrow, we made all of our picnic food (once again, way too much) and went to bed very excited about New Year in Sydders.
[steve] We awoke New Year’s morning possibly thinking the same thing as every Brit going to spend the day and evening celebrations at Macquarie’s Point – How would we sneak in our alcohol to this event! In a stroke of rare genius I washed out a BBQ sauce squeezy bottle and filled it with Jack Daniels. Happy with myself, I then packed up a bag of pointless things we wouldn’t need like a mini rugby ball, baseball set etc whilst Ria prepared a picnic feast fit for Kings with goon laying on the bottom of our cool bag, and food on top. We headed off full of bags and joy to catch a train into the City to meet our troops outside Town Hall for the march up to Macquarie. We had heard that you would have to queue for a few hours to get in and if you got there too late you weren’t guaranteed to get through, so we met at 10am and were up queuing to get in at 10:30ish. There was no shade at all in the queue and it was frickin hot already, some of our group took that to get the goon out early to quench thirst, but we both thought that was peaking too early so contented ourselves with vodka jellies! After an hour or so of slowly moving in the queue we took to starting rumours along the line, the best being that Colin Jackson and Sally Gunnell had died in a hurdling accident! Also being those annoying people that start off shouting ‘look there’s a koala in the tree!’…moving on to ‘look there’s Rolf Harris in the tree!’ and slowly getting worse. It’s amazing how many gullible Australians believe anything you say. After about 2 and half hours we were at the Checkpoint where single files were setup for bag searches and such. We picked the guy who least liked his job and wouldn’t care as much and got through with no problems, as did everyone else apart from one chap in our group who was far too polite and I am sure when asked if he had alcohol he politely said ‘Yes sir, in fact I have a 24 pack of strong lager, would you like to see?’. We were through and searching for a spot with a good view and plenty of shade but as it was already very busy we settled for good shade being pasty Brits and would search for the view later. We were in a group of about 15-20 with our adopted UK family who we met on our NZ travels and spent Chrimbo with, other NZ friends and some Aussie friends of theirs who had done New Year at this point before so said they would stay put and watch our bags whilst we enjoyed the fireworks later. Very nice of them. We had 8 hours to kill, before the first lot of fireworks (early ones for the kids at 9pm) so spent the time in the shade eating far too much, playing cards and drinking games, and playing wipeout every now and again going for a wander. Mid afternoon we had a surprise air show overhead which kept us entertained for half hour, although one member of our group was disappointed and proclaimed they were not as good as Bournemouth’s. We were slowly getting mighty drunk, even the chap with no drink as they sold alcohol inside and it was discounted if you brought 5 empty cans up with you, which meant that we were all hunting for cans for him. We had collected a fucking weird New Zealand guy who was clearly on some LSD trip and we used this to our advantage as we told him our names were all Eastenders characters. Come 9pm we were merrily drunk, we collected our valuables and leaving our food and cool bags with the Aussies we headed to find a good spot for the first fireworks. We hustled and bustled through, nine of us plus LSD John and got to a good spot. But we all got split up in the throngs of the crowd and I ended up parted from Ria and the girls for the fireworks which was hilarious as I could hear LSD shouting ‘Peggy, Sonya!!’ Afterwards we went back to our food spot and waited for everyone to show up. We got the goon out and Ria being mum began pouring in everyone’s mouth like feeding little thirsty chicks which made for some good photos. Before the main fireworks we devised a number system to stop ourselves losing each other which just consisted of each person being a number and every few minutes as we fought our way through the crowds we would shout out our numbers in turn 1-9. It worked a treat and we found a nice open spot where we sat down singing songs and drinking heartedly, we attracted attention from lots of TV crews and our numbers seemed to grow where you would turn back to the group and there was some old Indian guy sitting next to number 7 and singing at the top of his voice! Fantastic. We were having great fun. We found probably one of the best spot to view the fireworks but it was rammed full of people and photographers. We found a separate way around to the closed off area but it meant jumping a fence. I got over quick and fled into the mix of people, everyone else jumped over and some of us got into the thick of people before a security guard spotted us and came out with the classic line ‘Oi Santa get back here!’…two of the guys, their Santa hats drooping sulked back over the fence. I followed as I was on my tod on this side and it wouldn’t be much fun on my own. Back passed the guards they only bloody confiscated our goon too, to be fair we did not need any more drink. We had about an hour to find our spot before midnight and were running out of time, in the melee of jumping the fence we had split into two groups and 3 others had gone off elsewhere. We were beginning to get desperate, and it was so rammed, combined with our drunkenness we annoyed a few people who had been staking out their spots all day, whilst we had lounged in the shade. One girl in particular was not impressed when our drunken gabble were stumbling over her pitch, and turned and shouted at us in a very non – happy new year way ‘ You can’t go there you idiots, that space needs to be clear incase anything Bad happens.’ Her mood was not lightened when Ria shouted back in a merry way ‘It’s New year, nothing bad is going to happen.’ And all the people round began laughing at the uptight lady. After a bit more banter, we decided it was best to move on…The rest of us were walking along a boundary fence, when we saw a break in the fence where we could crawl along the cliff edge (nothing scares you when filled with goon) amongst the undergrowth and lay in the perfect spot watching the fireworks. Ria and a guy had sneaked through, and the rest of us were just about to follow when the security guy came back to his post! Darn. We waited for about 15 minutes and he didn’t move, we walked further along the fence and found a bin we could climb on to get over. We were just about to do this when the security guard moved away from his post once more facing the opposite direction getting chatted up by a girl who was also trying to get through the fence! We took our chance and sneaked through and quickly made for the trees! We had the most amazing spot lying on our backs with a clear view of the bridge and Opera House. Down below us maybe 30 feet there was a private party going on which was where Katy Perry was partying hard at. We were smug happy with our position, but getting slightly worried as more people were coming through the fence and we thought we may get caught. Then all of a sudden a security guard from the party below had appeared and told us to move on for our own safety. We pleaded with him that we were here just to enjoy the fireworks and we would move on straight after. Luckily he agreed for us to stay which was handy as it was 5 minutes to midnight. What a guy, he deserves a good year. We were set and comfortable for the fireworks all huddled close, and the fireworks didn’t disappoint. Maybe 20-30 minutes of relentless colours illuminating the sky and water, and noise that shook your insides! It was amazing, and the amount of ‘wows’ that were said, explained it all. Even during one light burst we saw some possums in the trees above us enjoying the view. We made off after that extravaganza extremely warm and fuzzy walking out singing songs one of our guys high fiving everyone he passed whilst wearing his silk night gown!! One of our adoptees got on Japanese TV saying in the campest way how very much she had enjoyed herself! We walked out and headed back to everyone else’s hostel to carry on with the drinking and meet up with the 3 people we had lost before midnight. I believe we were phoning people from home on the way with a chorus of happy new year, but I cannot recall this sorry. Unfortunately some jobs worth chap wouldn’t allow Ria and I into the hostel as we weren’t staying there, so we were forced to leave our lovely buddies and head home ourselves to sleep. The most amazing New Year was had. New Years Day consisted of having a heavy hangover and heading into the City for some food and seeing the Opera House, looking for the Rocks Market but it wasn’t on, walking along the waterfront and happening upon a arty cinema so went to see ‘Somewhere’ which Ria thought was shit, I loved it. We had a chilled evening and an early night. The next day we moved out of our lovely free accommodation for nearly two weeks. Thank you so much Leah & Ollie, good karma in spades for you this year. We moved into a cool new hostel called Bounce, Central Sydney. As it was new they aimed to please so we got free wifi and a few extra freebies, although the girl on reception had the biggest attitude. It had a lovely bar/café joint next door with good food and great atmosphere for the penultimate test in the cricket. We spent the morning booking the greyhound bus for Melbourne in a couple of days. Sydney is lovely, but just missing something. We felt like we had done it all in a couple of weeks so decided Melbourne would be the place we would settle down and work for a few months. In the afternoon we headed on the train to Luna Park, a retro (seen its best days) theme park. It’s no Chessington World Of Adventures but ok to while away a few hours in the sun and free to get in, you just pay for the rides. We only went on the ship that goes upside down. It scared us into not going on any other rides as we both came out of our seats, and rusty screws were falling out as it was doing a 360! That night we headed to the guys hostel for some drinking games yet again involving goon. We headed to a club downstairs, but Ria and I got thrown out the queue for drinking. We went off as everyone went in, and tried our luck 5 minutes later, we got in easy, only to get stopped by the same jobs worth inside who chucked us out again! We went home to bed! The next day was spent watching the first day of the penultimate test in the bar/café doing the blog, drinking tea and such. The following day we had brekkie in the café/bar watching start of the 2nd day of the cricket before heading off out to a museum which had some great photography exhibitions and also a cool 80’s exhibition which included a rave cube and lots of sit down arcade games which meant we kicked the kids off and played free pacman for hours! We eventually got kicked off ourselves as a security guy told us the museum was closing now! That evening we had free tickets to be in the audience of an Aussie Sports Quiz, a bit like They Think It’s All Over more funny than serious! It was a good one as a lot was about the Cricket and in the audience with us were a lot of the original Barmy Army. We learnt a lot of songs, the best being ‘Your next Queen is Camilla Parker Bowles’ to the tune of ‘Yellow Submarine’. The next day we were up bright and early excited as it was the 3rd day of the cricket and we were going! We had looked for a few days for a good fancy dress outfit to no avail. On the walk to the ground we happened upon the equivalent of a £1 Shop. We found two amazing duck hats that had a piece of string you wore under the chin and pulled to make the ducks wings flap. We had found our costume! Flapping our excited wings we continued walking to the ground, about 20 minutes from our hostel. It was an easy day of cricket for England, we absolutely tonked the Aussies and were yawning after yet another English Batsman got a ton or fifty (Any Aussies reading would come out with the predictable ‘they were probably South African quote’ but I can assure you everyone that day was English!) We were in the mix with the Barmy Army and had a lot of fun, flapping our wings at a fifty or 100 scored. The Aussies below us getting extremely bored started heckling their own, but even became tired of that coming out with poor heckles like ‘Shane-o you….shit!’ They had nothing on the English heckles for the Aussies, especially poor old Mitchell Johnson. It was a special atmosphere and there were some great costumes. 4 guys dressed as the Jamaican bobsleigh team complete with bobsleigh were my personal favs. We left the ground happy and burnt, stopping on the way home at a pub serving $4 steak & chips. MMM. That evening we once again went over to our friend’s hostel for some drinking games before retiring at ours. The next day was our last in Sydney. We would be getting a bus at 1pm to Melbourne. Our amazing adopted family came to our bar/café for lunch and to say goodbye. We had said goodbye a few times but kept meeting up again a few weeks later but this time would definitely be our last goodbye until we would have a reunion in the UK. We were sad to leave our lil family but excited to go to Melbourne. We walked to the bus station and boarded on our bus for what would be a horrendous overnight journey which included stopping at Canberra (shit) for a food stop and at some random place overnight waiting ages for a connecting bus which was late due to the flooding in Brisbane. The bus was full of water. We got a good spot at the back and slept. Sydney had been good to us, our friends even better. You worry (Ria) when you are on your own Christmas and New Year, but the company we kept made it extra special. We will never forget that Christmas and New Year.
SONG OF BONDI – Baywatch Theme
SONG OF CHRISTMAS EVE – Rolf Harris - Six White Boomers
SONG OF CHRISTMAS DAY – Various Artists – Its Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
SONG OF NEW YEAR – Auld Lang Syne
SONG OF TEST – The Beatles – Yellow Submarine (Camilla P.B Remix)
SONG OF SYDNEY – Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - Summertime
