First proper day in Oz - The Great Escape Festival - Sunday

Our first proper day in sydney and it's Rach's birthday. We booked tickets some months before to go to the Great Escape Festival. A 40 minute ferry ride took us to the Olympic Park where the festival was at. It was a lovely hot day. So hot we had to make some hat purchases to keep our heads from burning.

Of course you can trust Dave and Kev to buy matching Wurzel hats.

Kev has a brand new combine harvester, and he is giving Dave the key.

It was a lovely day, drinking by the riverside, watching Evan Dando.

Evan - looking like he did all those years ago.

Does the man not age?

The bar had a strict policy of only serving 2 drinks per person, making rounds of drinks difficult. But of course it just meant we all just bought 2 drinks each, instead of one, everytime we went the bar, which was of course frequently. Not sure the Aussies have really thought this responsible drinking policy through.

Great beer can. Sadly spazzys isn't the name of the beer, it's advertising a girl band. Still it was fun to try and order spazzys at the bar and get funny looks from the barman.

The final band that we saw was Gomez over on the main stage. A good set by them, the crowd seemed to enjoy it, showing their enthusiasm with some straw throwing, as you do.

They played the Gomez song that the soon-to-weds have chosen for their first dance, so they were able to get a bit of practice in.

The evening was ended by some heavy drinking and go on the dodgems. I lost my Hennes sunglasses and gained a rather large fetching bruise on my knee from the steering wheel of my dodgem car. Still I needed something black to help accessorise my wedding outfit...

After The Flight and the those few hours of tiredness

Me, Dave, Caz and Adam all arrived in Oz within an hour of each other, having all taken different flights from London. It was some horrible hour like 7 in the morning when I landed. Having circled for an hour in North Sydney waiting for the bad weather to pass. What can I say, welcome to Sydney. We brought the weather with us. ;-)

We weren't able to book into the apartment we had until 2pm. So with a few hours to kill, and feeling and possibly smelling like the undead, we descended on the soon-to-be-weds. I can safely say there is nothing better after a 24+ flight than having a full english breakfast, a glass of bucks fizz, and seeing your friend dressed up as a hula girl.

A present from Dave, he picked it up on his way back from his visit to Sydney at New Year, on a stopover in Haiwaii. We don't think this should have made it into Sydney, what with it being made of real grass, and Australia having the whole no "food, plant material and animal products " thing.

We got to the apartment to check in at 2.

As you can see the sun came out for our arrival.

Our apartment was at the Meriton Rialto serviced apartments on Pitt Street. So we were within walking distances of most places, Darling Harbour, the Opera House, Circular Quay, Royal Botanical Gardens, and of course the bridge, which we could actually see from the balcony. We got an apartment right up on the 49th Floor, (they only went up to 51 and they were for permanent residents.) We did have some great views, with floor to ceiling windows all the way round the apartment, as well as the balcony. It was spacious, with one bedroom and en suite, and 2 more bedrooms and a bathroom, kitchen and living room with a large dining table.

After a little catnap, which I think we all deserved, we headed out to meet up with Rach and Kev. Our first call The Australian. A pub listed in the guide book as being usually full of English people. There's no real surprise there. It's a good pub, serving great gourmet pizzas. I had my first taste of Kangaroo, Emu, Salt Water Crocodile, proper aussie seafood, and duck (ok not so aussie but nice all the same) all on pizzas. They were fantastic.

After we had our fill we headed for the Lord Nelson, the pub and brewery supplying the beer for the wedding, so that we could try out the chosen beers for ourselves.

As you can see, for people who've spent a large majority of the past 36 hours in some sort of zombie like state crossing time zones, we're looking surprisingly perky.

You maybe able to just pick out on the table there the Terry Jumper. Yes it's still alive and being worn by Kev, though it is starting to fray. I think we should all club together and get him a new one made, and maybe a matching on for his bride-to-be.

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Terry - A live but ill

On my way to Australia - 5th April

I'm half way round. The plane took off an hour late, so I had an extra hour on the plane. Not something you need when you're already on there for 22 hours. How does this happen? We got as far as being 5 minutes to take off before the crew notice 2 passengers aren't on board, but their bags are. Cue calling the baggage handlers back to sift through all the bags and suitcases to pull off their luggage.

It does beg the question, would it not have been quicker to get the passengers on the plane? They'd checked in and were at the airport, hence their luggage being on the plane!

So this is Singapore Airport. We had less than an hour here. By the time I'd freshened up it was time to go back through security and on to the plane. So no souvenir shopping. Hey-ho.