Wednesday, 21st June 2006. Singapore to Sydney.

Singapore airport has to be one of the best airports in the world, and our flight was bang on time. It took just over 7 hours to get to Sydney and when we landed it was dark, cold and raining...welcome to Australia...We caught a cab into town and booked ourselves into our Hostel. Bit of a shock to find out that there was no heating in the room, but a cool place to spend a few days. We celebrated our arrival with far too many G&Ts and some very nice Romeo and Julietta cigars, all courtesy of the duty free!

Welcome to sunny Australia!

Thursday, 22nd June 2006 to Tuesday 28th June 2006. Sydney

Busy week this. After spending a couple of days walking around Sydney looking at the sights we started house hunting. We spent a day on the train checking out some of the suburbs and then walked over Sydney Harbour Bridge to North Sydney and had a look at a couple of places over there. We really like the atmosphere over here and thought that it would be cool to be able to walk to work over the bridge every day, so we decided to stay. We found a flat advertised in the window of a local estate agents which looked OK ( and which most importantly has parking), went to have a look and took it. Next step was to open up a bank account which was no bother, and we arranged to move in tomorrow - exactly a week after we arrived in Australia and a year after we left the UK! Now all we have to do is get the Landy back and find jobs and we'll be sorted!

ah, that's more like it!

Sydney harbour in the lovely sunshine and us on Bondi Beach...

Wednesday, 29th June 2006. Kirribilli

Moving day today and as we don't have much stuff with us (1 holdall and a small back-pack) it was pretty easy going. We're about 10 seconds walk to the water at Careening Cove and 5 minutes to Milsons Point train station, the offices of North Sydney and the Harbour Bridge. We think that we'll really enjoy living here.

Thursday, 30th June 2006 to 9th July 2006.

Spent these days getting Hector back, which was both nerve-wracking and expensive. We got a call from Malaysia to say that our documents had arrived at the agents in Sydney along with our keys, so we gave them a call and then went to see them. We had to pay for the local shipping charges before hector could be released from the port, and once this had been done we hired a clearing agent - Francisco Guttierez of ANL Logistics - to handle the clearing, the customs and the Australian Quarantine and Immigration Service (AQIS) inspection. This took him a few days to sort out but he was very helpful and kept us informed of what was going on. Eventually we got the call to say that Hector was ready for collection from their warehouse - he'd passed the AQIS inspection with no bother, much to our relief! So down we went to pick him up. 

We had a bit of shock when we saw him as he was standing on almost flat tyres - the guys in Malaysia having let almost all of the air out. We also noticed that the handle of one of the rear wheel carriers was now bent...we think that maybe the carrier hadn't been secured properly after the fumigation in Malaysia and had been banging against the side of the container. Still, it was nothing too serious and he started first time - good old boy. We used our compressor to re-inflate the tyres and then we were off, driving through the middle of Sydney, past the Opera House and across the Bridge to our home for the next year- Mark, Amy and Hector reunited at last!

10th July onwards

We're not going to carry on with a day by day account of our lives in Australia - we think that it would be fairly dull reading! We've both got jobs now and we're settling down to enjoy being in one place for more than a couple of days. We've unpacked Hector and had a mini-Christmas opening all of the souvenirs that we've bought on the way - we hadn't seen the carpets since we bought them in Karimabad and seeing them again really brought back a load of good memories. We've bought some Compulsory Third Party Insurance so we can drive legally here, and are arranging some trips out to the surrounding area so that we can have a bit of an explore. We'll add more entries when we do something interesting so keep checking up on us. Oh, and we've started to think about the drive back to the UK through Africa...

8th January 2007

We have been living in Sydney for just over 6 months now, and have luckily been able to work pretty much the whole time.  I (Amy) had worked in the workers compensation department of an insurance company, before my folks and sister came over for 3 weeks in October 2006.  This was a fantastic time as we had good weather, enabling us to take them to the beaches like Bondi, Manly.  we tried to see as much of Sydney and the surrounds as possible before they had to leave - I think we managed to do most of the things on my Mum's list!

Since my folks left I have been working as an accounts clerk for a large construction company in the outskirts of Sydney. 

Mark and I are hoping to set off for 2 weeks exploring New Zealand in May, and in June we start exploring Australia with the still distant hope of driving back through Africa...

Mark has worked for UBS Investment bank since the beginning of August.

Nothing much else has happened here since the last update, we are still working on the end of travels update, but probably won't get this together until we leave in June...

As we haven't been using Hector much to travel, life has become quite normal, but things will start to move again soon.

Us at a jazz concert in our back garden!        This will be the new look Hector without roof tent.

We had a great New Years watching the fireworks in Sydney - a fantastic show!

The Jacaranda in blossom on our road.                   Fireworks from the North Shore.

Thursday 18th January 2007.

Right then, here's the latest - Mark has a new Job working at Mercers Consulting. 

We are flying out to New Zealand (Christchurch) on 4th May 2007 for a 3 week campervan adventure, traveling all over NZ and flying out of Auckland on 25th May 2007.

The above you may or may not had already heard through the grapevine, so let me tell you something new...

Mark and I have been in contact with the immigration department of Australia as we need to renew/convert our working holiday visas into 6 month tourist visa's.  Unfortunately for us we were told that we CANNOT have any other type of Visa and must leave Australia on or before 20th June 2007.  What I hear you say, well so did we.  Apparently the working visa basically means that you spend the year working for half and traveling for half, but as we didn't  have much cash when we arrived we had to work for the full 12 months and then hope to get a tourist visa for 6 months to go and see Australia.  We honestly hadn't thought about what we would do if we couldn't get another visa, but now we have so here's the prelim plan of escape.

We go to New Zealand for 3 weeks then fly back to Sydney where we will travel across the South to Perth in 3 weeks.  This is where we will probably ship Hector home from (fremantle to Southampton) and we ourselves will fly to South Africa for a little backpacking holiday whilst we wait for Hector to get to England. 

As you may have guessed this means that we will be back in England anytime from September 2007  :o(  boo hoo