WEEK FORTY TWO, NEW YEARS, NEW TYRES, NEW PLACE
Trip Start
Mar 14, 2007
1
42
44
Trip End
Jan 16, 2008
Sydney,
New South Wales,
Australia
Thursday, January 3, 2008
I finished my week in Melbourne by heading down to the Casino and the Little Italy areas of town. Walking around these places has made me bump up Las Vegas and Italy to nearer the top of my 'MUST DO SOON" list, after Cuba and Alaska!
I had made plans to travel up to Sydney for New Year's so was picked up by a guy called Richard, who I met over the Internet, and he gave me a lift from Melbourne to Sydney, along with a Finnish couple. So we started the 900km drive at 6.30am! By 10am we were dying with the heat, it was the hottest day of the year, or something equally as stupid! 40+ Degrees!!! We were in a van with no radio or air conditioning!!! So we had to keep stopping at rivers for swims, well the others did, I've seen the size of the spiders and snakes and crocodiles over here, I am not swimming in anything that isn't crystal clear and fast flowing!!
By 1pm the road were so hot that it blew out one of our tyres whilst I was driving and we had to change the tyre in the heat, with no shade around and covered in flies! It was harrowing! In fact it was like a road kill movie, Wolf Creek or something, complete with scary old man in beat up Ute asking us if we needed any help! An hour later and a few kilos of sweat lighter we were on the road again, and we stayed on the road for 14 hours!! It was the road trip from hell! But after all that Richard was too tired to drop us off in the city so he let us stay in his flat right on the beach in South Sydney, a place called Muruba! It was amazing, the surf was pounding the beach and all you could see was surfers waiting for the waves to carry them in, it was like something off a proper 60's surf movie! All the kids running home for their dinner in their wetsuits with their boards under their arms, old beat up cars with the windows down and Beach Boys blasting from the radio, classic!
The next day I meet up with my friend John from home and we headed to Luna Park, a theme park right beside Sydney Harbour Bridge with great views of the Opera House! This is where we were spending New Year's Eve, in a whirl of go faster rides, street parades, candy floss, hot dogs, flashing lights and circus music! Plus two rooms of DJ's, bands and various other acts. At 11.30pm we took our places along side the harbour walls and waited for the worlds most spectacular and biggest New Year's Eve fireworks displays, and boy was it worth it! The theme for this years celebrations was "the time of our lives' and we were certainly having it there and then, in fact I have been having the time of my life over the last 9 months since I started this mad adventure, and my new years resolution is to continue in the same way and have even more fun in 2008!
