Last week of Australia

After finishing a long stint of voluntary work, i had about a week and a half before my visa expired and i had to come home! For the first few days i went to the Blue Mountains about 2 hours inland of Sydney, with 3 other volunteers i'd met in various places. We stayed in Katoomba, the most touristy and probably only town where you can stay at the Blue Mountains. There's not much to do here apart from sight seeing and bush walking, so thats what we did. After finding our hostel, we bought a hop on hop off bus ticket to get us the all the sights we wanted to see. The main places we went were called the 3 sisters, leura cascade, honey moon lookout and Wentworth falls. The scenery and walks around the area was awesome and it was a good start to my final few days.

After our time in the Blue Mountains, we traveled back to Sydney to spend the remainder of of time. We booked a hostel in Kingscross, this is close to the center of Sydney but is probably the cheapest and roughest place to stay. It is also the red light district of Sydney. 

While in Sydney we saw the usual sights, opera house, harbor bridge, sky tower, Bondi and Manly beach and the various parks and gardens. The time we were in Sydney was the best weather we'd seen as it was the beginning of a heat wave. We didn't have a day cooler than 32 degrees and on my second to last day was 45 degrees. When its that hot, there is not really much you can do apart for have a few cold beers and stay in the sea as long as possible. Luckily, i'd already gone through my lobster stage and have a good tan so i didn't get too sunburnt. 

Our days consisted of waking up at 8 am due to the heat, going to the beach, sleeping on the beach for a few hours and then heading back to the hostel for food and drinks. Its probably the most relaxed i've been in a long time.

Another big day for us was Australia, although no one in our hostel was Australian, we decided we'd all be an Aussie for the night, so we all did what Australians do best; Drank lots of extortionately priced beer!

On my last weekend, my 2nd cousin invited me to stay with her and her friends in a beach house an hour and a half  north of Sydney. I snapped up the offer as i only had around 50 dollars left which would cover about 2 nights accommodation and i had 4 days left. The beach house was 5 star compared to the hostel we were staying in and the was free food and beer galore! It was also good to sleep on a new beach and have some food that wasn't macdonals or super noodles. 

After the weekend when i was back in Sydney one of my cousins friends took me surfing for the morning, it was going pretty well, although i was getting pummeled because i'd been thrown in at the deep end and that day the smaller waves were 4ft. The surfing was going pretty well but then some blue bottles drifted inshore and my cousins friend got quite badly stung, so we had to go find some ice for her. For the rest of the day i went for a sleep on Coogee beach until i woke up with a burnt stomach and headed back for the hostel. That night i went our in Sydney with a few people from the hostel; what was going to be a quite night turned into quite a lively one and we didn't end up getting home till around 6 am. So the next day all i could really do was head down to the botanical gardens for a few hours sleep under a tree. 

That next evening (my last night) i met up with my cousin, her mum and dad and a few of her friends to have a few drinks before i had to head off. 

I few home the next morning back to cold cold England. The parents met me at the airport we went for a few drinks with them and my brothers, It was great to have a proper beer but not so great leaving the 36 degree heat of Australia. I'll definatley be heading back there as soon as i can! 

A few details about Australia!

Australia, Last Week of work, Belmont Lagoon

I have just finished my last day of conservation work, i've completed 720 hours of voluntary work and it feels like it. Whilst doing this work i've planted around 4,000 trees (50,000 as a team) pulled up thousands of weeds, put in 35 posts along bush tracks, collected hundreds of seeds, built 12 bridges, built 2 nursaries to grow seedlings, set traps to catch pets in protected rainforrest, and cleared over a tonne of litter off beaches and lagoons. This week was clearing weeds and clearing rubbish at belmont lagoon. I've also been in touch with nature this week; i picked up a poisonous spider thinking it wasn't poisonous (luckily i was wearing thick gardening gloves), caught a baby brown snake (also deadly) and got bitten around 7 times by bull ants (inch long ants with a very painfull bite). I feel like i deserve a rest now before i come home so i'm spending a few days in the blue mountains doing some bush walking and other activities and then spending 9 days on the sydney beaches before flying home.

We had a relaxed day today, finishing at 12 and having a bbq with all the staff. We're going for a few beers with them later to celebrate the end of 18 weeks of volunteering. Dispite all the conservation work i've done, i'm not sure if i've offset my carbon footprint, i like to think i have though.

Australia Week 5, Nobbys Beach

Nobbys beach is one of the 4 main beaches in Newcastle, the streach of beach is covered by sanddunes which in turn are covered by a weed called Bitou, this weed creates mounds in the sanddund (similar to moguls on the ski slopes only bigger), these mounds then channel the wind which increases errosion of the dunes. The beach is also popular at night for partying so there is a fair amount of litter and broken glass throughout the dunes. Our Job for the week was to pickup as much of the litter and glass as possible, clear some of the bitou mounds and plant some native trees that would help to stabalise the sanddunes and in time increase biodiversity along the coast.

It was another hot week and whilst we were working we were not aloud to swimm due to conservation volunteers policies, which was a bit of a bummer. We planted around 500 trees in the week and the local paper and took a photo of us working, its not a good photo because i'm staring out to see whilst everyone else is working. I was caught off guard.

As usual we spent all day saturday and sunday on the beach but on saturday night in the park near our house, there was a free outdoor cinema provided by the local council. Shrek 3 was playing so we all went down to watch it with cold pizza and a few beers. Next week is my last week at work (free accomodation) and i'm running out of money fast. I dont want to have to borrow anymore money so i looked up ways of getting free accomodation and found something called couch surfing, its where random people offer a couch of bed for the night to other travellers. So i'm planning on signing up abd hopefully will get a couple of free night accomodation in sydney. If i havn't posted another blog within the next 3 weeks i think you can safely assume that i have been hacked up and burried in the bush by some wierd hippy type!

Australia, Newcastle work week 3, Belmont Lagoon and NYE!

Last week was a tough week, we spent everyday weeding 3 types of weeds around the Belmont Lagoon (35mins drive out of newcastle) so that the native plants would be able to grow without having competition from the weeds. We had to pull the weeds out by hand in 30 degree heat so it was pretty tiring, on wednesday lunch, the heat got the better of me so i jumped in the lagoon and subsequietly had to spent the afternoon working in my boxer shorts as my trousers were wet and rubbing my legs! I was terrified of getting bitten by a snake or sitting on a thistle but i survived ok.
The lagoon (as they so often are) was by the sea and we were working on the sanddunes. On the thursday our team leader took us for a drive on the sanddunes in the 4x4 which was good fun. The beach we were on was the only beach in the area where anyone could drive on so there were alot of people driving around which was a strange sight to see!

New Years Eve was on the friday and we wanted to spend the night in Sydney so we decided to bunk off work and head down early. We spent the day and most of the following night in a park on the harbour edge facing the harbour bridge and opera house. It was an awesome view. I think we were in the park for the last 14 hours of 2010 and for most of that time the temperature was around 30-35 degrees, we also made a fatal mistake with our cool bag; the zip was broken and after about the first our we were drinking hot beer. We did manage to cool off for a while by going for a swim in the harbour, this was short lived however when someone told us that there are most sharks in the harbour than around the beaches.

Dispite some confusion with the countdown at NYE, it was a great night and the fireworks were amazing, i'd definatly recomend seeing them if you ever get the chance.

On new years day we were a little tired to say the least so we got an open top tour bus around sydney for 2 hours which dropped up off at the one and only Bondi beach (probably the most well known beach in sydney). It was another scorcher and i burnt my belly and thighs but thats all part of the experince i guess. The beach was packed with mainly young backpackers and tourists so the atmosphere was good, one of my highlights was eating a hungry jack (burger king) on the beach in 30 degree heat.

We got the train back saturday night and slept all sunday morning (my birthday) we then once again hit up the beach which my sunburn was not happy about and had a bottle of champaigne on the beach. (i say champaigne but it was really sparkling wine, we can't afford the good stuff). We also had the following monday off which was our day for relaxing and sleep. Thing are all good in OZ, England are looking as though we'll win the last 5 days so i recon 2011 will be a good year!