Antartic Australia

We're going to turn over a new leaf and update the blog quicker than it takes to complete a menstral cycle, we'll see how it go's.

Well a new country, a new language (sort of) and definately a new climate, crikey! I think the cerimonial 'shrimp throwing on the barbie' will have to wait, its brass monkeys out here. You'd think coming from Wales we'd be hardened and used to cold weather, but it seems not. Arriving at Sydney airport 6am in flip-flops (sorry thongs, using the local talk) a t-shirt and shorts probably wasn't the wisest decsision but it was a bit of a shock to the system and we're slowly but surely acclimatising.

We spent out first 3 days in Sydney, it felt like a cleaner, friendlier and generally nicer Britain (maybe the weather helped us reach that comparison?!) we had a great few days, did the usual sight-seeing bit, Opera house, Harbour bridge, Bondi etc... but as with lots of capital cities it was pretty expensive, not quite as pricey as home but having got used to staying at hotels for 3/4quid a night and both eating and drinking for a fiver it was back to the 'real world'.

We've hired a camper van to travel up to Cairns in, its a bit of a shed and covered in some very distastefull graffiti but its got (almost) everything we need, bed, table, cooler, sink, oven etc... no toilet or shower though, we're hoping that our Glastonbury experiences can see us through the hardest of times in 'Charlie' we've not travelled far from Sydney as yet, just a couple of hours West to the Blue Mountains, its a beatiful area there are a few national parks here, caves, lakes and (youve guessed it Mountains, although we've yet to see a Blue one yet!) we spent our first couple of days here camping (in our van) in one of the national parks. Within 20 minutes of geting into the park we realised we didnt have any drinking water then proceeded to get our van stuck in the mud, CLASSIC! we had to get help via some Indian tourists who passed on our S.O.S call to the Rangers who turned up an hour later and rescued our "sorry Pomme arses" (they didnt say that, but they didnt need to). We also thought we'd make use of the skills we had picked up from the Ray Mears 'bushcraft' show and collect and boil our own drinking water from a local source, great idea but it tasted like vomit and our tum's seemed to almost instantly repel it, ah well we did try.

The park was great, we were the only campers there, not unsuprising as the night temprature hovered around freezing! but we had Kangaroos nearby as well as dozens of different brirds including some lovley white parotts who let us hand feed them.

We're now in Katoomba going to spend the night here before making our way back to the coast up toward Newcastle and hopefully to sunnier climbs!

Take care all, Anthony and Tania xx