Country: Australia.
City: Sydney.
Currency: 1Euro = 1.79 Aus dollars.
Arrival Date: Tuesday the 16th of September.

Date: Thursday the 25th of Sept, 5pm

Well I finally made it back to OZ!! woo hooo!! I'm travelling up the East coast at the moment but here's a quick run down on the last week and a bit that I've spent in Sydney and up the coast!

Tuesday 16th

Well I arrived in from Auckland and was picked up at the airport by Emer Dunne ( a great friend from Dublin salsa scene who is also travelling the world and has stopped in Sydney to work for a few months!) Fantastic!! We just took a quick trip back to her place and had enough time to drop off my bag and eat dinner before we went out and started salsa dancing!! waste no time eh!! It's great that she knows all the places to dance already as she's been there a few months! So I managed to organise to meet an old friend from Dublin waterpolo scene who is also living in Sydney... Dave Roche!! I hadn't seen him in years but we met up again and he's also a great salsa dancer!! So we had some great dances and left there about 11.30pm to head for the train home...HA I don't think so!!

We skipped the train home and headed for the nearest Irish bar!! hehehe so after chatting to the bar tenders there and having a drink we headed off to only other place open that we could dance at, Cheers pub across the road!! heheee what a great night! We ended up leaving there at 5am or something and having to get a cab home!! But it was a great night and we had such a laugh meeting loads a people and dancing all night!! Poor Emer had to get up early and go to work!! heheee while i had a nice sleep in on Wednesday! I just managed to pluck up the energy to organise my stuff, my plans for the coast, wash my clothes and dry them in the warm Sydney sun!! yeay!! it's great to be back in the warm weather again!! woo hooo!! We just had an easy day from there on, Emer came home and i cooked her lunch with yummy sausages, rashers, eggs, toast and tea!! Just what you need after a night out til 5am!! That night we just chilled at home and watched a vid with some chocolate!! ahhh yes it's a hard life eh!! heheheee

Thursday 18th

I got up early today after a great nights sleep! I took the bus down to Bondi Junction with Emer to the place where she works. Luckily there were a load of shops and internet places and travel centres that I needed to organise my trip up the coast! So I bought my bus ticket for the coast, organised my flight from Brisbane to Cairns (i decided to fly and take my time getting to Brisbane rather then rushing up the entire coast in 2 weeks and spending all the time in the bus!!) I had enough time to do all that, check my emails and have a quick look in the shops there before meeting Emer for some lunch and then heading back to get my first ever Floating Treatment! "Floating Treatment??!?!" I hear you say! Well it's this big dark tank that has warm VERY salty water in it! So salty that you float when you lie in it! and so dark that you just relax and drift away for a hour! MAD!! I'd never done that before but it was very relaxing and very nice! Thanks Emer!

Later when they eventually got me outta the tank (an hour and a half later) apparently they DIDN'T forget about me!! yeah right! hehehee so we headed home and met up with Emer's flatmates and all went out for dinner!! We had some yummy food and wine and company for the evening before myself and Emer headed off to a free salsa club in the Cleveland hotel or club or something! We had lots of great dances there!! the Sydney salsa scene is pretty good and i even learned to dance Salsa on 2 as well!! Thanks Victor!! yes I met a great dancer from London actually!! Mr. Jones, who taught me to dance on 2 and myself and Emer had a great night dancing with a lovely dancer! We met loads a great people that night though and had a great nights dancing!! Fantastic!

Friday 19th

Today was another sightseeing day for Emer and I!! well for me really ...i just dragged Emer along for the hell of it!! hehehee she loved it really!! We went out to see the Sydney Opera house and had a great view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the bright sunshine!! What a great day! We picked up a load of booklets and info from the tourist info centre before having lunch and heading back to Bondi Junction where Emer had to work and I headed back for some needed sleep!! hehehee Later in teh evening i took teh bus back to meet Emer after work when we headed out to another salsa club called Havana!! We danced all night again before heading home to bed!! I think that was all the salsa we could take for one week!! hehehe Saturday I was heading off on my bus up the coast and saying goodbye to Emer and everyone for a few weeks before flying back for my birthday in October! But for now it's East coast here I come!!

Saturday 19th, Newcastle

This morning I packed up my stuff and headed out to the Central Bus Station with Emer in order to get to the town of Newcastle. I spent a few hours on the bus before arriving at Newcastle and heading around to the YHA there! I met some nice French guys, Cedric and Florien as I was eating dinner in the kitchen and also a cool band from Sydney called SWOOP! Three funny guys ...Mick, Cyrus and Byron. That evening I just chilled out and watched a video on TV before heading back to my room to sleep! Well that was the plan anyway but I ended up chatting to my roommate Rhoda for hours instead!! A lovely girl from Kenya who was studying in Newcastle university! It was really fascinating talking to her and so we had a great chat before finally going to sleep at 1.30am!!

Sunday 20th

Today just fixed up paying for my room, booking my bus for Monday and my hostel for Port MacQuaire. Things are soooo easy in the YHA's...you can just ask them at reception to book for the next hostel and they call up and it's all sorted!! They even pick you up from the hostels aswell!! That's service for you eh!! or maybe I'm just getting lazy on my travels eh!! hehehee anyway after that I attempted to go surfing with the free boards at the hostel!! No Joy! The waves were too big and I was too crap to catch anything!! I tried some boogie boarding then for a while instead which was slightly better!! hehee Then I ran back to the hostel in the cold sea breeze and had a lovely hot shower!! I may be in OZ on the east coast but the water is still pretty cold at first and when there's a wind blowing it's pretty chilly getting back to the hostel! hehe but i survived!!

Later in the afternoon I took a nice walk about the town. I went up on the hill near the beach and watched the surfers try to catch some nice waves! I could watch surfers for hours!! Just the way the ocean moves and different sets of waves come in and trying to figure out how I can get myself to the standard these guys are at!! or any standard at all would suffice really!! That may well take a while though!! heheee Then as I was watching the surfers catch some great waves I see this fin come up through the water beside a few of them!! So I'm thinking, ok this is Australia and I dont know if that's a shark or a dolphin!??!! Then another few fins come up out of the water!! The next second a great set of waves come in and all I see is this whole group of dolphins racing their way to shore inside this huge wave!! I could count about 4 or 5 swimming in with the sun shining through the waves at the same time.... it was soooo beautiful!! Then they did a jump back over the wave and swam back out to sea!! But what an amazing sight to see these wild dolphins playing in the waves like that!! WOW!! What amazing creatures they are!!

Later i headed back to the hostel and met up with a crowd of people who had all signed their names down for a free dinner in the Irish pub McFinnigans that night. We all headed down together and spent the evening there with a few drinks, sum free dinner and free entertainment by a guy called Damien with his guitar up on stage!! He was really good!! Unfortunately for him there weren't many people in the pub but fortunately for us we got all his attention and he played almost every song we requested!! He added his own style to them all though and was very entertaining indeed!! Quality night out really!! We chatted to him during his breaks and after he'd finished and he was a really nice chap too!! So myself, Dave (from Canada) and Linda (from Germany) headed back to the hostel at the end of the night and chatted in reception to a few guys in the hostel before heading to bed! I was tired that night so I slept really well!! yeay!

Monday 21st, Port MacQuaire

Myself and Linda ended up on the same bus to Port MacQuaire totally by coincidence so that was funny! We got up there and booked into the same hostel too! So we decided to head out to the Koala hospital together too seeing as we were in the same place at the same time!! We had a nice walk about and chatted to the nice ladies and guys looking after the different sick and injured koalas!! awww they were soo cute and cuddly looking!! but we weren't allowed any closer and had to just peer through the fences at them! booo!! Ah well back to the hostel with us! We had a yummy chicken salad dinner together and watched Monday night TV with everyone else in the hostel, all 8 of them!! hehehe yep it's a pretty small hostel with some pretty BIG spiders!! it was all good after I captured the fecker and threw him out into the yard! hehehe no bother to me at this stage!! so it was a pretty chilled night...just what I needed anyway!

Then Tuesday we got up early and caught the bus to the Billabong Koala Park about 25mins drive from the town. It was about $6 return to get there and about $9.50 in but there were koalas up close and personnal!! yeay!! I touched it and cuddled it and got my pickture taken with one!! woo hooo!! there were also kangaroo's, wallaby's, parrots, cockatoo's , wombats and all sorts there that we got to see as well!! Definitely worth a visit I think! Later we headed back to town and after a yummy lunch we caught the 2pm bus up to Coffs Harbour! My travel mate then headed further north and I booked myself into the YHA there for three nights!! Great, I get to stay in one place for three nights!! Fantastic! So I made myself more friends there...as you do...and met Ian(English), Phil(Sydney), Sadque (India), Ricky Krystal (Canada and the best non fiction name I've ever heard!!) RICKY KRYSTAL with a K!! how fantastic is that name!! hehehe and also Daniela (Swiss)...we all met and chatted and hung out that night before I headed off to bed.

Wednesday 24th, Coffs Harbour

I got up and took the 10am bus to the beach with a good few others in the hostel. Myself Sadque, Ricky and Ian ended up on a local boat chatting with the guys who fished for Tuna there. Why were you on this boats with these men who fished Tuna you ask?? Well, Ricky was planning on joining them and making his way to Brisbane with them and working as he went!! so we chatted about fishing for a while before myself Sadque and Ian walked around to the main jetty to try a bit of fishing for ourselves! So Ian promised us great things and ended up catching nothing!! I was very disappointed!! hehehe... the best he could do was drop his line in the sea only for me to jump in and swim out and rescue it!! hehehee ah well... it was a fun anyway. After that Ian and I walked back the beautiful Creek Walk past the Botanic Gardens which we also explored and then continued the walk back to the hostel with the sun shining all day!! Later we all sat down (Ricky, Ian, Daniela, Phil and Sadque) and everyone had their own creation for dinner! We all tasted everyone else's food and took notes on what was good and how it was made!

Isn't it great that even sitting down to dinner with different people from all sides of the world you can learn so much!! fancy new recipes and all!! Then of course you've got to have a few drinks from the bottle-O (which is an Off-licence apparently!) Everyone had a few drinks and great chats at the hostel before we all headed to the local Shamrock Bar. Isn't it amazing that no matter what country or city you're in that there's gonna be an Irish pub to party in!! Fantastic!! Anyone would think us Irish have a reputation for drinking or something!??! hehehee we all had a great night partying there before I headed back to the hostel with Phil in tow, relatively early (at 2am!) as I had my surf lessons at 8am so needed to be ready for them!! Phil was just a bit worse for wear so figured that he was better struggling home with someone rather then on his own! hehehe that was too funny! Sorry Phil! hehehee but you were very entertaining!!

Thursday 25th

I got myself outta bed a few hours later at 7.15am and got myself ready for my first ever proper surf lesson!! woo hooo!! I ended up with about 4 kids half my age but I wasn't put off at all! We all got our lesson on the beach and when we had paddled through the sand and caught several make believe waves it was time for the real deal!! I got out there and caught several waves and stood up relatively soon after my first few tries!! HA!! that'll teach them kids a thing or two!! heheee not that I was competing or anything!! But I won hands down!! hhehehee So we surfed for an hour then had a break for some unexpected but yummy breakfast and then back in the sea again for another hour of surfing!! fantastic!! I loved every minute of it! So we finished up and I was dropped back to the hostel about 12.30 where I quickly passed out on my bed!! man i was tired after all that partying, surfing and sun!! great fun!

In the afternoon I met up with Phil and he dropped my to the town where I took a walk down to the Jetty Shopping centre to just check my mail before having a nice walk back to the hostel for dinner. It was a chilled evening, then we found out it was Daniela's 21st birthday that night at midnight so we had to stay up and celebrate that with her without a doubt!! I made her a crappy handmade card and Phil got her some lovely presents and a proper card and cake from the town. We had a great night though and I think Daniela had a nice birthday as we surprised her with all the presents as soon as it turned midnight!! yeay!!! hehehe that was great! Then it was bed time! Friday morning I got a lift with Phil to Byron Bay as he was going the same way, I had changed my mind about staying in Ballina as there wasn't much there and I was too lazy to get up at 5am to catch the bus there!! It was nice to have some good company and music for a change too!

Friday 26th, Byron Bay

I settled into J's hostel in the Bay and got myself sorted with food and that in the evening. Just as I was cooking in the kitchen I met a load of American students from Bond Uni in Surfers Paradise. There was Megan, Landon, Mike, Henry, Elaine, Luce, Stef to name a few!!! anyway they invited me out to Cheecky Monkey's for a few drinks. I went out with them and then came back to the hostel to hang out after. We all chatted and partied at the hostel that night before I went to bed as I had my day trip to a town called Nimbin the next morning. This is a town that time forgot and is full of hippies and all sorts very suspect people and things!! I wont go into details because it has to be experienced to be believed. So Saturday morning I went off on my trip to Nimbin which took us and hour and a bit to get to. We did stop at some old Aboriginal rocks and cliffs along the way and heard the stories behind what used to happen there too! Really interesting stuff!!

After that we got to the town and took a stroll down the main street where every single person without fail wanted to seel us some sort of illegal substance!! It was very weird and bizarre for me to be in that environment as I'd never experienced that before, nope I've haven't been to Amsterdam yet! I imagine it's something similar except the amount of hippies in this place was unbelievable! After getting hassled up and down the street we left there for the BBQ area and lunch!! Yum yum!! We hopped back in the bus and headed to the waterfall, unfortunately even after the short trek through the rainforest, due to the drought there was not a drop of water flowing over the waterfall!! Well that was a first!! the first ever 600ft waterfall I'd seen with no water!! hehehee It was a pretty amazing view from the top over the edge though I have to say! Then back in the bus for some koala, gallah, wallaby and all sorts of other animal spotting on the way back to the Bay.

Later we arrived back at the hostel after 5pm adn just as I walked in I met Kim, Lus, Mike, Henry, Landon and Megen and all the american gang who were having dinner and was forced into joining them!! We had a yummy dinner and then took a stroll down to the beach where Mike was almost eaten by a huge spider on his cap just infornt of his right eye!! The girls ended up a bit worse for wear so we all made it back to the hostel later after much deliberation as to where the hostel actually was!! You know when you walk somewhere while talking and not really take note of where your coming from...then try to walk back the opposite way!! it's really hard to decifer the actual right way home!! but we did it in the end!! heheee When we got back I bought a bottle of sambuca and proceded to teach them all how to drink flaming Sambuca's.... in your mouth!! A great trick of mine! We continued on into the night until the staff kicked us out of the living area as you can't stay there after 11pm apparently!! Which was a bit crap! But we weren't finished partying just yet!! hehehee

So off we went to one of the local clubs called Cornicopia or something like that cos we were given a free drink voucher for that place, after that we headed on over to the Beach Front Hotel where a huge amount of people were partying like crazy!! We had lots of fun there with even a live band to entertain us!! Later we got back to the hostel at some mad hour in the morning and crawled into bed while trying not to wake anyone in my room! I dont think I was very successful!! hehehee

Sunday 28th, Byron Bay

I slept til very late and pretty much did nothing for the day just trying to recover from that crazy night! But it wasn't a complete waste of a day, I did get some stuff done like getting my washing done, which is something important that needs to be done while your travelling too!! occasionally!! hehehe I also booked my Uluru tour and diving trip in Cairns which was great to get organised!! Later after heading back to the hostel I met up with Joe (Canadian) and a dutch guy working at the hostel who both brought me down to the beach to go Body Boarding!! I finally caught some great waves and had a brill time hanging out there for a while with the guys!! So after some tanning on the beach i went back to the hostel picked up my clean clothes and got showered before I bumped into Bruce, Pete and Corin. Pete (an Ozzy from the outback) and I hadn't eaten, so after a quick trip to the supermarket and stocking up on more food to combine with the stuff i had already we had a deliciously yummy beef stir fry that I threw together for us both!! We had a chilled out night cos i just couldn't face any more partying! So Bruce from Zimbabwe, Corin from Germany and Pete and I all chatted for a while before I went to bed early!

Monday 29th, Byron Bay

I got up quite early this morning and checked out of the hostel before deciding to take a bike for a ride to the Most Easterly Point in Australia! I met up with Bruce and Corin who decided to come along for the ride as such!! eheheee So we all set off on a beautifully sunny day in search of the lighthouse and this Easterly Point! We had a great cycle up there in the sun, locked up our bikes and took a stroll down the very windy path on the cliff face to stand at the most Easterly piece of land in the whole of OZ!! We took our pictures and treated ourselves to some yummy ice cream before taking the much easier cycle... All downhill.. back to the hostel!! We got back in time to have some yummy lunch of roast chicken with greek salad!! Yum Yum! It was great! and just sitting there eating this delicious lunch on the balcony with the sun shining down and with these lovely people I just thought...yeah life really is great!! If you can just sit here with nice people, great food and beautiful weather and just enjoy life!! That was a great afternoon, not doing anything spectacular, but just having lunch in the sun, just then, was perfect and I just felt really happy! :) Fantastic!

After that i hopped on the bus and headed for Surfers Paradise! The Americans that I'd met in the hostel had invited me to come see them again and given me their address at Bond Uni. So I decided to take them up on their kind offer! I got off the bus surrounded by the high rise buildings of Surfers Paradise. Hugely different from the small town life and buildings of Byron Bay. Then i took the number 2 bus to Bond Uni where I met Mike on teh road as I was heading out to call in at his apartment. We went to the campus cafeteria and had dinner there (which was quite yummy too) before heading to the local campus pub for a quiet drink before heading back to Mikes place where he so kindly let me stay while I was visiting!

Wednesday 1st of October, Surfers Paradise

I slept laet the next morning as I was pretty tired and all the guys had class so when they came back to the apartment we went for lunch before hitting the cmapus swimming pool!! I did my first swim session in months and Mike along too!! We did about 2200m which wasn't too bad for my first session back! After that hard workout we were pretty hungry so we grabbed dinner before taking a bus with some other students going on a field trip rock climbing!! hehehe What a cool idea! So we got there and I learned how to set up all the climbing equipment, how to be a bilayer (if that's how you spell it) basically the person that holds the rope while the other one climbs!! I started off pretty slowly only climbing a few meters at first but then the more I practiced I got into it and ended up climbing a few different high walls without falling!! It was great fun and hard work and I'd definitely do it again!! What a fun day that was! Thanks Mike!

I slept so well that night cos I was pretty much exhausted and after saying bye to Mike and the guys I caught the bus to Brisbane the Thursday morning. I made my way to Liz Whittaker's place (an old friend and flatmate from Dublin who's now living there) got settled there for the afternoon while she slept after working the night shift at the hospital there! I watched "Catch me if you Can" on DVD with Leonardo diCaprio and Tom Hanks which was really good actually before heading out to dinner with Liz, Anhar and Barbara (liz's flatmates). We had some great food and coffee and cakes before I went to bed!! yeay!! and they went to work!! heheheee It was their last nights on call so that was good at least!

So after I had a great sleep and the girls had a hard night at work!! hehehe we all went to the Shotgun or shotover, or some gun place I can't remember what it's called, for the most fantastic breakfast!! I ended up having these delicious sausages and bacon and french toast smothered in sour cream and mixed berry syrup!!! WOW!! what a fantastic breakfast that was!! just yummy!! after leaving there we headed back to the apartment to rest our bellies and organise to leave Brisbane! Yep we headed north to Noosa!!

After I finally got my fleece sent on to me by courier from Byron Bay where I had forgotten it...for only $9 I might add!! We finally made it to Noosa and met up with friends of the girls, Ian and his girlfriend Nicky and their flatmate Fergal. As soon as we got there we packed up the boards and headed straight for the beach to start surfing!! Woo hoo!! I'm starting to really get the hang of it now...I think... hehehe Later we stopped off at the bottle-O while still in our bikinis and dripping wet and trying to get away from teh biting fly thingies that had followed us into the car! They were painful little buggers! I think they were sandflies myself after I met a few of them in South America! So well stocked up with drink we headed for the house and everyone got showered and dressed and helped cook dinner while downing a few glasses of wine in the process.

It was a beautiful night to stand out on the porch and listen to the waves at the beach house but I was fairly tired after everything that I got sleepy after a few drinks and decided to cut my losses and go to bed. Everyone was quick to follow though so it was a mellow but very relaxed and enjoyable night!

Saturday October 4th, Noosa

After a great sleep I woke up when I woke up on Saturday morning! I love those mornings, you don't wake up early or sleep really late but just wake up when you've had enough sleep and are in great form. Anyway we had breakfast on the porch overlooking the sea while the sun beamed down and threatened us with skin cancer so we thought it'd be a great idea to travel to the Glasshouse Mountains and climb one of them! We drove for over an hour and there was two cars carrying myself, Liz, Barbara, Ian, Nicky, Fergal and Suzanne. So we got there and with our limited water supply and extreme lack of climbing experience we all proceeded to climb 10, 20 and 30ft sheer rock faces without any safety equipment or training! It was sooo much fun though!! I loved it! I think we climbed for about an hour and a half and finally made it to the top of Mt. Beerwah in the searing heat to see the most spectacular panoramic views of Noosa and could even see all the way back to Brisbane!! It was beautiful!

Then it started!! the mad rush to the bottom again!! Well you see I had to get to Brisbane airport for a 6.30pm flight to Cairns as I was going aboard a boat to go diving at 7am the next morning. So, we slid all the way down these sheer rock faces on our asses not very lady like but we had to get back down and fast, in order to make it back to the beach house by 3pm so that I could catch the bus I had booked to Brisbane airport to catch the flight to Cairns to go on the live aboard!! Confused yet!!! heheee yeah so am I! Anyway after crushing hundreds of poor unsuspecting insects with my ass on the rocks on the way down myself Fergal and Suzanne ran to one of the cars and drove like the Dukes of Hazard back to the beach house!

Now get this, I was tired, dusty, dirty, hungry, hot and very very sweaty after the tough climb up the mountain and race back down and mental driving but I managed to get into the house, have a shower, get dressed, pack my backpack and get on the bus to the airport in 12 minutes flat!! In the mean time Suzanne and Fergal so kindly made me some yummy sandwiches and a gave me a can of coke for my journey!! awww!! that was so nice of them! hehheee I had a lovely time there guys and with all the rushing I didn't manage to see the others before I left to go diving but I'll see them again soon!! Cos I have a plan! :-) Right I made it to the airport with loads a time to spare, hopped on my flight and arrived in Cairns where I grabbed a taxi with two unsuspecting german kids! hehehe I was dropped at my destination, the Bohemia Resort that I was staying at for free cos I made a deal with the dude in Byron Bay who gave me tow free nights there. Great! So I chatted to my two Irish room mates and went to sleep there for one night before leaving for the liveaboard the next morning.

Sunday October 5th, Cairns, 20 miles out to sea!

I got collected in the morning by the guys at the dive shop and headed for the pier. I got on board the dive boat with lots of other divers who were mostly out for the day only. I on the other hand was going to be staying aboard the 'hotel' at sea that night! hehehe I was sooo excited! Anyway after an hour and a half or so drive out to the boats that were anchored at a specific dive site called the Three Sisters I was transferred to the liveaboard and settled into my room. It was a small room with a bunk bed and pretty much nothing else as there wasn't any room for anything else. But it was very cosy and I liked it! I got the full tour of the boat and the fire drills etc etc before sitting down to lunch with everyone. After lunch it was straight to it!! I got myself kitted out with all my gear that I'd be using for the next 6 dives and off we went.

I did a dive at 1pm at 4pm and then a night dive at 7pm which was fantastic!! It was teh first time I had done a dive without an instructor leading the way! There were four of us and I was the most experienced because I had done my Rescue course and the other three were only Advanced divers! ha can you imagine that eh!! Me being the most qualified!! hehehee so off we went, the four of us, hopped into the sea in the pitch black and went off on our own dive together! It was great fun and we managed to see a giant Maori Wrasse and a shark too! We made it back without any mishaps and had a light supper before chilling out with a bit of a chat and then heading to bed! Three dives in a row after a two hour boat trip is pretty tiring stuff you know!

Monday October 6th, still 20 miles out to sea!

Well it was my first night staying on a liveaboard overnight and it was very relaxing and comfortable I must say. I slept very well but didn't appreciate the 5.30am start the next morning! But it had to be done as I had to be finished my last three dives before the other dive boat picked me up to bring me back to Cairns that afternoon. I had my first dive and all went well excpt for the fack that my buddy was awful with his air and used it all up after about 15-20mins on a 40minute dive. So the instructor that was with us brought him back to the surface while I swam about amusing myself and waited for him to join me again. It wasn't dangerous being down there alone as the vis was so good you could almost see for miles! well, slight exaggeration but I could see them above me the whole time.

We got a bit carried away down their and used our air so conservatively that we ended up down there for 57 minutes! oops!! The boat staff weren't too happy with that as they thought something had happened to us! well we wont do it again, I promise! Until my next dive that is hehehe... yeah i did it again, but I was only a few minutes over my dive time this time around and other people were still in the water too so it was ok! I don't know I just seem to use so little air down there that I could stay under for ages. Anyway we had lunch and I did my third dive of the day before packing up my gear and saying goodbye to all the lads and being collected by the other dive boat. I was talking to the three Germans on the way back that I had met day before cos they were staying at the Bohemia as well.

We all were dropped back to the resort and arranged to meet up after I had some rest cos I was knackered!! Later we all had dinner and a few drinks in the courtyard and chatted until very late in teh night before I went off to bed and got ready for my next flight!! Yeah I was off to the outback now!! yeay!! and off to see Ian again, a guy I had met up with while travelling along the coast! We had arranged to meet and do the safari together and so that's what we did!

Tuesday October 7th, Yulara, The Red Centre!

Wednesday October 15th,

Well Sydney was great fun!! I had the most fun ever last weekend when I arrived with Ian, the English guy I met while travelling up the East Coast and then met up with again in Uluru and did a three day tour together! He's a really great guy and when he heard it was my birthday on the 11th he changed his flight and got on the same plane with me back to Sydney on the 10th. We dropped our gear off at my mate Emer's place and went out to a local pub for a few drinks just until it was midnight and my birthday officially! Cos you have to have a few drinks on your birthday morning and birthday night I decided! After that we went home and slept as we were all pretty tired.

Saturday morning, My Birthday!! 26 at last!! heheee I got breakfast in bed from Ian and Emer which was really great and after some yummy french toast and after a bit of organising and showering (alone) we headed off out and had some yummy lunch. I checked my mail before heading to the Irish pub PJ O'Briens on King Street to start some early birthday celebration and make sure we got a seat for the Irish rugby game against Romania. Go on Ireland!! hehee We had great seats and a great time partying there for my birthday and to top it all off Ireland won the Rugby game!! Fantastic!! A few hours later we met up with a few other friends and were invited along to another birthday party where our friend Tipu was DJ'ing!! (a guy we met in a fast food place one night) Well I do make friends easily you know!! maybe a bit too easily!! So we got chauffeured off out for some dinner and then headed to the Glasgow Arms to crash this party!! heheheee It turned out to be really quiet and not many people there but we partied our asses off and made it lots of fun anyway!!

I think we got home at about 3am or something like that and totally crashed out after 12hrs out partying!! hehehee what a great day! Sunday morning we all went and got a greasy breakfast before heading to the city where Ian went off on his way again and myself and Emer took the famous Ferry out to Manly for the day. We met up with an old friend of mine that I used to play waterpolo with in Dublin (He's now living there the lucky bugger) But coincidentally Emer also knows him through salsa dancing here in Sydney!! So we met up with Dave and a few of his mates for this Sunday afternoon live Reggae band!!! They were fantastic and we all danced the afternoon away and I even got happy birthday sung for me! Reggae style!! Even though it technically wasn't my birthday, no-one had to know! hell, it was my birthday weekend!! hehee

That finished up at about 6.30pm so from there we all went and had a yummy dinner in a Thai Restaurant before checking out the live jazz in the Barking Frog pub. It was this tiny little pub in Manly with the most amazing live Jazz ever!! There was a DJ and some bongo's and a guy singing and rapping live along with the most fantastic Sax player ever!! It was something you had to experience to believe. Yet again we danced for hours in there until Emer and I got the ferry back to the city a 10pm and had a beautiful view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge all lit up at night along with the Sydney Opera house!! The whole city looked amazing!! We hopped off the ferry and went to the top of the Shangria-La hotel where a few more of my friends from Dublin were having drinks and waiting to wish me a happy birthday as they weren't able to make it out the previous night! yeay!! So that was great to hang out in there til after midnight. At that stage I was well exhausted so myself and Emer went home to bed and slept for hours after a long few days partying!

Monday I couldn't do any other sightseeing or partying after being on the go for weeks without a day off so I stayed in bed til the afternoon and just sorted out my bags for travelling again, sending my clothes in to be washed and having a walk about in Bondi! I stayed in that night and had a yummy dinner and watched TV, a well deserved break as far as I was concerned!! Tuesday I took a walk down to Bondi beach where I just relaxed and sunbathed for a few hours. It's so beautiful there and all the surfers catching the most amazing waves was just mesmerising to watch!! ahh it's a hard life eh!!

Tuesday night well it was my last night in Sydney before I got up early for my 12 hour flight to Joberg and then on to Capetown! So I did the sensible thing and went to bed early and got a good nights sleep! WHAT!! not on your life!! I met up with Liz, Anhar, Barbar and Sarha for dinner and drinks, adn more drinks and some partying adn more drinks and some dancing and more drinks! Did I metion the partying and drinks all night until about 5am and at that point I had enough time to get back to Emers place and pack my backpack, try to sober up and get to the airport for my 7am 12 hour flight to South Africa!! uurrrgghh

(Back to my Itinerary.)