Sydney Halloween Terror-Fest

Some spooky goings on in Sydney and we managed to capture them all on camera. Amazingly we spotted a host of ghosts in the middle of the day close to Sydneys most famous sights! Click on the photos for larger shots but be warned you may go mad with fright

Outside our house is where the terrifying apparitions began

By the Harbour Bridge. Maybe this fellow died building it. Yeah definitely

Phantom of the Opera

Holy Sheet!

It's all grave-y

Mrs McQuarie still chilling out by her chair

This ghost commited tree-son and was executed

An adventurer got lost in this Jungle and died. He must've missed the path.

Dead spoooky stairs.

We had stacks of fun taking these spooktacular photos. You can view the out-takes in the gallery:

Ghost Picture Out-takes

As a bonus here's a link to an 'entertainer' that Chris helped pay for at work. Be warned it's pretty terrifying so it's not for the feint of heart. http://www.craigiles.com/

The week that was in Oz

Things that happened in Australia this week:

• The biggest passenger plane ever landed in Sydney on its maiden commercial flight. We probably heard it from our house but thought nothing of it if we did.
• More mad weather. Northern New South Wales pelted with golf ball sized hail and tornados ravaged a community. There was some cool thunderstorms in Sydney.
• The pollies (policitians) are still battling away for the upcoming election. Voting is mandatory here so election coverage is everywhere as are Kevin Rudd an John Howards smiling gobs.
• Our neighbour sounded like he was had quite a night on the lash, or drinking on his own in his pants, as he almost fell through our roof at 4am Thursday. An isolated bit of noisiness but still a pain in the ass.
• A quiet week in the Ambulance Service culminated with a graduation of the new class of trainee Ambos many of whom Dave interviewed months back. He was meant to go to the ceremony but the venue got switched so he ended up having a nice walk through the Rozelle Hospital grounds instead. Still got some cake though.
• Bam Margera of Jackass fame was around town. Chris and Dave saw a big sign with his name on it. This was as close as they got.
• Conversely to how the clocks went in the Northern Hemisphere they went forwards here. It means that it's sunny till about 7:30pm now which is good. We're now +11 hours from back home.
  

Purple Sneakers

We went out Friday night with Chris' uni friends; Gillian, Ailsa and Sinead. Had an pretty awesome night, drank far too many $10 jugs of St Arnou lager. Classy stuff. Had fun jumping around to Born Slippy stepping on peoples toes. Aussies don't really get into it that much from our experience. Kings of Leon better be a different story!



Purple Sneakers



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Now playing: Radiohead - House Of Cards
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Dander to Bondi

Few weeks back we walked from Bronte to Bondi. Last Sunday we decided to push things even harder and walked the whole way from Coogee Beach to Bondi to meet some of our mucks who happen to be living there.

We took in some of the nicest beaches in Sydney city and of course have some photos in the gallery. Bondi was packed solid. There was even a art installation on the beach which consisted of some cages erected on the beach. Maybe it was Guantanamo influenced, it wasn't very nice. People were in some of the wee cells sunbathing. Unfortunately we neglected to take any photos of these, you'll just have to take our word for it.

The waves were great fun, we went in for a wee dip and got absolutely wrecked by them. There were loads of surfers but we didn't get in anyones way as we had feared. They were mostly pretty rubbish cause only a few could stand on their boards for any length of time. Wait till we get a go!



Beach Photos



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Now playing: Radiohead - Reckoner
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Boat ride up the river

Not sure what river it is but we took a ride on the ferry as far as it goes to Paramatta. This was based on a tip from our Hunter Valley tour guide - Robert. He also let it slip that the centre of population of Sydney is just west of Paramatta. This means that we're acutally much closer to the beach and the rest of the good stuff than almost everyone in the sprawl of the city.

The ferry ride itself was pleasant enough. The boat had to go very slow as the river narrowed which was a little annoying. They sounded the horn as did all the ships on the harbour at 1pm to mark the anniversary of Fort Dennison being made or something like that. It was less spectaclular because we were the only craft on that part of the river. It might've been quite impressive if we'd been down in Sydney Harbour.

Paramatta was a bit rubbish. Nothing noteable about the place except some punks drinking by the river. So we walked about for half an hour and then headed back on the ferry.




Ferry nice pictures



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Now playing: Interpol - Slow Hands
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Rogue Traders Gig Enmore Theatre

We forgot to put this post in where it belongs; before the boat trip up the river. We went to Rogue Traders at our local live music emporium - The Enmore Theatre last Wednesday. The band features, as lead singer, another former Neighbours star - Natalie Bassingthwaite or Izzy as she's better known, the woman who stole Doctor Karl from Susan. Anyways here's the photos along with a nice snap that a guy from the crowd took of us. Gentleman, we were quite pleased with the results:



Rogue Traders



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Now playing: Radiohead - Weird Fishes Arpeggi
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Wine Tasting Tour Hunter Valley

This blogging is getting exhausting so we'll make this one shortish, check out the photo comments cause we're bound to add stuff in there too.

We toured 3 wineries in the Hunter Valley a beautiful area only 2 hours drive north of Sydney. We were surprised how small some the wineries were particularly the two known back home Lindemans and Rosemount Estate, maybe they stretched back miles but they look compact from the road. The region only produces 3% of Australia's wine so we're thinking that maybe Lindemans has a bigger gaff in South Australia or Victoria. Apparently the valley consists of lots of smaller patches of good wine soil which is different from other Aussie and international wine regions which have large areas of similar dirt.

The three wineries were: Draytons, Golden Grape and Tulloch all family owned. The wine tasting was good craic, we actually preferred the whites cause the reds (Shiraz largely) were very oaky flavoured. They fired port at us and dessert liqueurs too which ranged from disgusting to a little rotten. The strangest stuff we had was Dragon's Breath Schnapps which was made with red chillies.

Our tour consisted of a nice mix of Irish people (us) Germans, Dutch, Chinese, Hong Kongese and a Swiss guy. By the second winery the Asians and actually to be fair to them the Dutch couldn't hack the pace and wandered off during the tasting. The Irish, Germans and the Swiss dug deep and put away everything they threw at us. The tour guide, Robert (good bloke), thought this was pretty funny.

We had a nice, expensive lunch before to heading to the last winery and on to the Smelly Cheese Shop. The last wine joint was a class above the rest having been redeveloped a few years ago probably with the intention of hosting weddings. And it worked! There was a reception just after we were there and the wine fella told us that there have been three proposals on the site too.

All in all we had a lovely day, felt slightly tipsy as we left as you'd expect.


Hunter Valley Piccies

Reptile Park near Sydney

By a lucky mishap we ended up going to the Hunter Valley on Sunday rather than the Saturday that we booked. The Sunday tour included a stop over at The Reptile Park which we didn't feel the need to go for cause we'd been to The Wildlife Park in Darling Harbour and flippin Taronga Zoo too. Little did we know that this was the wildlife experience we had been hopping for since we landed in the country. We got up close and personal with Koalas and Kangaroos and the biggest turtle either of us had ever seen. Check out the videos we think they're our best yet!

Reptile Park Snaps

The Chinese Garden

We've been trying to lie low these past couple of weeks because the months are flying by and we've been looking at what we're gonna do when we quit working and hit the road next year. We did make it out to the Factory Theatre last weekend to see a comedian called Mark Watson. Welsh by accent but apparently he was born in Bristol. Who knows? Anyway he was awesome, incredibly funny and a nice guy too; he chatted to us afterwards about mad Aussies and the England Australia match on that evening.

Back to the almost present. We got up obscenely early for a Saturday morning to be picked up by our tour to the Hunter Valley. We arrived at the YHA by Central Station at 7:40am and hung around for 20 minutes without a sniff of the Kangaroo Bus. We called up the tour company's office and were informed that they had no booking for us for that day. It was a bit of a shock like and not a little disappointing but the nice man bribed us with the promise of a bottle of wine and told us he'd pick us up tomorrow so we took it on the chin and headed off into the city at 8am. Little did we know this would turn out to be a blessing in surprise for a few reasons - chief among them was that we got to go to The Reptile Park which wasn't included in our tour but more on that later.

So what to do in the big city at 8 o'clock on a Sunday? Got a coffee at McCafe (formerly known as McDonalds) cause we heard their coffee's meant to be good. It was ok but they lost points cause it took them 10 minutes of trying to make a cafe latte before they gave up and pawned us off with a flat white.

We mucked around Darling Harbour for a while waiting for The Chinese Garden to open, saw people meditating, got a go on the slide and had a look at some boring cars outside the Australian International Motor Show. It was dead nice because it was relatively peaceful without hordes of children and fat people running around.

On to the Chinese Garden: we thought it would be like Mr Miyagis back yard but there was more to it than that. Waterfalls and big rocks and massive fish and lovely hangy down leaved trees were abundant. We spent an hour just beating about. So quiet and relaxing and pretty, a little bit of some Chinese movie right in the heart of Sydney. We loved it.

We'd achieved more than in most average weekends and it was only 10.30! We wandered round nearby Paddy's Market which is like the indoor market in Derry but huuuuuuuggggge! They sell everything that you don't need but we managed to snag a rather useful backpack for 10 bucks.

That afternoon we got some constructive domestic stuff done, cleaned up a bit, headed to the shopping centre for some meat and stopped in the park to play frisbee on the way. Magic!

That evening was spent eating burritos, drinking wine and watching Withnail and I. Perfect day.


Saturday Bliss at Darling Harbour

Map of where we've been this week

Shows our out of work excursions for the week. We got around. You can drag the map to move around, zoom and click the little blue pointers for more info.


View Larger Map

Coogee Beach

Labour Day in Oz so we have Monday off. We headed off to the beach on the bus from nearby Newtown. Lovely day. 30 degrees 10 more than the average for this time of year and it's supposed to be 32+ next weekend. It's great, pity we have to work. We're both a little fried while we're doing this. Could only get SPF 30 suncream so we passed on that and went out without.

Lovely Coogee Pictures

Centennial Park

First day of the long weekend with Labour Day on Monday. We decided to go to Centennial Park in the middle of Sydney because it was too windy for the beach. Centennial Park is huge, really nice but it was full of mingin' birds (the flying kind)

We finshed to day off with a lovely meal in Burwood. Our thoughts were with what was happening back home.

Centennial Park Gallery

Watsons Bay

We woke up Wednesday morning to some awful news from back home. We both decided to take the day off work and spend a nice chilled out day together. We went to Watsons Bay which was absolutely beautiful. We stumbled across the nudist Lady Beach and it's men only, of course we have pictures!

Watsons Bay Pics

Bon voyage English Chris and more Neighbours stars

Christines workmate Chris left Sydney (Syders) this week for the grim industrial north of England. He's dead pleased to be going home despite having a great time travelling. We shall miss him for sure especially his liberal use of slang words. Cornies?! Plassy bag! Class act. Here's a picture of him at the CWA headquarters with our parting gift of the Aussie Babes Calendar. Check out who popped into the office to say goodbye!


Earlier in the week Chris(tine) went to stalk more of the Neighbours cast at a shopping centre at Miranda. There were so many freaky fans. It was disturbing.

Neighbours Gallery