South We Go
5Jan/11Off

Week 18 Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011

This post in Francais

The last week of 2010, we spent it visiting the Blue Mountains, enjoying feeding kangaroos at Featherdale Wildlife Park and looking for the perfect spot to what the fireworks. We listen to the music that played in time with the fire works as we wished Sydney and the rest of the world a Happy New year. We watched surfers have fun in the waves at Manly and said goodbye to Fred’s family at the airport.

Day 119 (29/12/10) The Blue Mountains

Today we headed out of the biggest city in Australia to visit its ‘backyard’ The Blue Mountains. Less then 100KMs out of Sydney you find yourself in one of the biggest mountain ranges of Australia. Our first stop was Katoomba, home to the famous 3 sisters. It always amazes me in Australia to see how close nature is to everyone and everything. We took the tourist photos had a picnic and then continued on our journey to Wentworth, where we parked the car and head of on the hiking trail to see the waterfalls. This national park, especially this site is stunning. The path leads you down into the heart of the forest and then opens up to this great waterfall which is right in front of you, and you are so close that you can touch part of it. We took more stunning photos, before I had to return to the car to rest, somehow I managed to catch a cold and it is quite hard to hike when you can breathe very well. The rest of the family continued on another walking path that offered them more stunning views. If you like nature, come to Australia, wherever you go in this country the nature will take your breath away and make the 24 hour trip to get here worth it.

Day 120 (30/12/10) Featherdale Wildlife Park

Today is a day that Fred’s family won’t forget soon, it is the day they handfed Kangaroo’s for the first time. We took them to Featherdale national park, which is 45 minutes outside of Sydney and lets you get up close and personal with Australia’s best loved animals. The park is good, and they are many animals to see, and if you have not seen Kangaroo’s or Koala’s before this is a good place to see them for the first time. Sadly though once you see animals in the wild, your heart is always saddened to see them in places like this. The Kangaroo’s are overfed because everyone can feed them and the Koala’s are placed on branches next to people so that they can take there picture with them. I do realise that this is a dream come true for most people, but I can’t help thinking of how unfair it is for the poor animals. It was a nice day out though and we did enjoy it.

In the evening we went to a very nice seafood restaurant called the Flying Fish that was down on the old shipping pier, which is now one of the most chic places in Sydney. The restaurant was very elegant and the food was very good.

Day 121 (31/12/10) Goodbye 2010

Today is the last day of year. This in Sydney means only one thing, tonight we are going to watch the most famous fireworks in the world, the ones that everyone else watches on TV while waiting for Midnight to come in there countries. We have already chosen our stop for tonight and have sent apart of the family down to the park that overlooks the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera house to sunbath and keep the spot for us. This years theme is Make your X. I will write more tomorrow and tell you how it went.

So it is now 2011 in most places in the world. The fireworks were better than expected and were well worth the time we spent, sunbathing and enjoying the weather outside to see them. The best part of the fireworks was that they had a radio station that you could listen to while the fireworks were exploding. To all I wish you a Happy New Year!!

Day 122 (01/01/2011) Manly

2011 has officially started in most parts of the world as we head off to one of Sydney’s most famous beaches, Manly. As it is New Years day it seems that half of Sydney had the same idea as us and also decided to go to Manly, the ferry was more crowded then I have even seen it, but we still managed to get stunning pictures of Sydney from the water. We enjoyed a seafood lunch of fish and chips before heading to the beach and sunbathing for a few hours. The water was cold so we only spent about 30min jumping the waves. We visited Manly Ocean World which was a very relaxing smaller version of the Sydney Aquarium. We did some shopping for Fred this time before trying to get back to Sydney on the ferry, there were so many people that wanted to go back at the same time as us we had to wait in line for an hour before being able to squeeze onto an over crowed ferry. We had New Years Eve’s dinner as we were out last night, so we over ate, dining on Fois Gras, smoked salmon and Champagne.

Day 123 (02/01/2011) Relaxing day at home

It was time to take a day off from visiting Sydney, and stay at home and relax. Fred’s family went out to enjoy there last day here and do the things they wanted to do before leaving. We stayed home and cleaned up our Baby Hippo as it is time for us to put him on sale. Once he was all shiny and clean we took some pictures of him and wrote an add selling that he was for sale and posted it on Gumtree. Gumtree is a site that is mostly used by travellers or locals to buy and sell things or to find part time jobs or cheaper accommodation. We found our baby hippo on this site, so it seems like the right place to sell him. Wish us luck with finding good adoptive parents for our baby. We are very sad to have to sell him.

Day 124 (03/01/2011) Sad Goodbyes

Today was a day that was a bit sad, when we woke up it was raining and the sky was grey. The weather in Sydney likes to change from being very hot one day to rainy the next. It has been 2 weeks that Fred’s family has been with us here in Sydney and sadly it is time for them to go back home. We drove them to the airport and said our goodbyes.

In the evening we had our first couple come and see our baby, they were from Holland. They seemed very interested in our van and said that they would be in touch to make us an offer.

We enjoyed having a home for the last night, before we move back to a campsite, where we will stay, while we sell our baby. We watched TV and lay on the couch a luxury that we are going to miss and don’t know when we will be able to do it again.

Day 125 (04/01/2011) Moving

Today we had to move out of the apartment we have rented for the last 2 weeks and back to a campsite. We found a campsite not too far from the centre of Sydney as we will need to close enough to Sydney for the people interested in our van to come and see it. We spent the morning packing everything back into our van. In the afternoon we moved to the campsite where we will be staying for the next few days, we don’t know how long yet as we don’t know when we will sell our van. We got a message from the Dutch couple saying that they were interested in buying our van and would like to meet tomorrow to give us a deposit. We also showed our van to a couple of older Germans who said they would be in touch. Considering that our van has been on sale for only 2 days things are looking very good.

In the evening we return to the campsite and make ourselves comfortable in our van once again, he is really very comfortable. We will really miss him.

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