29th January - Palm Beach

We're off again! 

We said goodbye to Deb and Ian for a second and last time for quite some time. Leaving them with a empty house which I am sure they are glad of! We packed a mattress for camping and found our tin opener we left at theirs and promptly set off! We got half way to Sydney singing along to Laura's iPod when Myles asked if she had picked his sandals up. She didn't know they were there then realising herself she left her trainers in the living room!

We are so hopeless.. (Sorry Deb and Ian we will pick them up sometime!)

With that we carried on to the famous Palm Beach, home of the rich and famous but most importantly, home and away is filmed there! 

A good 2 hours and we knew we were in Sydney again! Lots of traffic much to Myles' displeasure. But on a positive note we passed the sign to Palm Beach to be greeted by a Aston Martin Rapide! Myles was excited as he had only ever seen one in England. 

We arrived at the beach to see a very different sight than Jervis Bay. Yellow sand! It looked a little like England. (Only a little mind you)

Because of this there was one issue, the sand was SCORCHING. Mid 30s and we arrived at 12 just in time for the heat of the day! We paid our $3 for parking for an hour and sat ourselves on the Fiji airways blanket which is now the beach seat. We made use of the beach umbrella Deb lent to us and were very grateful for the shade! It was boiling. Laura had her legs in the sun for a bit of sun and occasionally the right arm. (This has later led to half body tan and a slight red hue)

We had a lovely relax on the beach taking in the enormity of our trip ahead of us. 

A good hour went by relaxing and chatting at which point Laura got itchy feet and wanted to see what looked like sand dunes on the other side of the beach.. Sadly it was fenced off when we arrived, but there was good news! WE SAW HOME AND AWAY BEING FILMED! 

Laura was very excited to see her second Ozzie programme being filmed and now wants to find neighbours to complete the set! Excitement over, and satnav programmed we made the decent down the hill from Palm Beach to our hostel for the next 2 nights. The best part about this road was all of the signs, here are a few we saw. 

(We assume the people of Palm Beach have a sign fettish because they were EVERYWHERE. Happy birthdays, congratulations, save our roads. The list is endless)

We easily found our hostel and our best purchase of the trip (satnav) took us right to the door as usual! (Go Garmin) all the campsites around were too far out and cost the same per night so we treated ourselves to another night in beds!) Today is the Sydney Beach YHA which overlooks Collaroy Beach just nicely. We checked in and got our room cards which gave us free secure parking which is a nice change. Car parked the rucksacks came out to play and we found our room. In a six bed dorm there's one Finnish girl and us which is nice! She was very jet lagged and went for a sleep on the beach! Fair play to her. 

We loaded our stuff into lockers and checked out the facility's (i.e. the pool!) which had a lovely out of order sign on it. Just our luck! Thank goodness the beach is so close..

Hard life out here you know? 

All is nice and clean here and it has very good showers and all important things like that except plates and cutlery. You have to leave a $10 deposit to get them we found out half way through cooking dinner. Laura made a speedy dash to the car for our camping supplies and was back just in time for Myles the kitchen goddess to serve up curry! We had 'Chicken Tonight' butter chicken. Which you would expect to be a mild curry? So so wrong.. Spicy spicy curry eaten we went on a hunt for foxtel (sky television)

Which turns out not to work! Not a great start. But 'the block' was on which is a pretty cool Ozzie TV DIY reality competition show thing followed by the Big Bang theory which Myles is now rather find of. We enjoyed that followed by showers which brings us to now really! We've had a pretty chilled first day away and tomorrow shall be a little more adventurous because our hostel has free surfboard boogie board and snorkel hire/use. We are going to make full use of this and have a day at the beach by our front door!

More on that tomorrow...

Love to you all! xxx

Thursday 23rd and Friday 24th

The past 2 days have been busy with cleaning tidying and packing! Myles has even put washing on the line AND hoovered! Grandma you should feel proud. 

We discovered how to put our tent together, 

It's big enough to do a jump in and spin with our arms stretched as wide as we can! It's a 6 man tent so we will have PLENTY of room! 

Thanks deb and Ian :D

Along with this we have borrowed a camp stove chairs and a plug in car fridge! So were all set for camping! 

After this came the very boring job of packing. Being unpacked for 3 months has been a luxury and a pain to repack! Laura has more clothes than she started with and Myles less. But he is up one Volvo and determined it will come with us! 

Here's where we are upto, were still waiting for some clothes to finish drying. Typically the weather is very English, overcast and not warm with no wind so the washing is just sat. No good at all! So packing has been put on hold until tomorrow morning we think. 

Were all ready to go now and we are headed south for the Australia Day weekend, we're going to Kiama and Jervis bay in Shoalhaven. This area is famous for having the whitest sand in the world ( we will be the judges of that! ) 

Hopefully the weather will pick up for us!

Wish us luck :)

Just a side note blogs will obviously pick up from here on but wifi will be very scatty so usual contact will be less frequent :( 

Hope things are good back in the land of rain and snow! 

Lots of love from us both x

A very sad day...

For the past few weeks Tara the dog has been getting a little frail. Her legs were getting a little wobbly and unstable.

 The vets Tried many forms of medicine and physiotherapy which improved her temporarily but alas old age got the better of her. 

Today at lunchtime Ian made the call to have her put down. She will be dearly missed by all of us here. She was a marvellous dog and a companion to the family. 

Tara Blackah 1998-2014

Day 235, Venturing out...

Hello all.

We start today with a car packed and ready to go! Thanks to Ian and Deb they had given us a loan of all their camping equipment! We now had acquired a 6 person tent, a camping stove, 2 fold up camping chairs, and all the little bits you need to do camping. We packed and tidied our room leaving it ready for the next guests said our goodbyes and headed out! The GPS was programmed for Nowra with a detour via BCF to pick up some gas for the stove. We had a perfect trip down with the sun shining. We arrived at BCF bought a tin of gas and headed for our campsite. Myles spotted a Kmart and an IGA store where we bought a frying pan. they also had an offer on Heinz beans and Heinz spaghetti so we filled our basket. That was food sorted for the next month. Leaving IGA down the road we turned onto a road and the satnav said arrive in 19km (11.8miles) we drove down this mountain pass which was an amazing road it was corner after corner. Myles was in his element! We arrived at our campsite and checked in. We drove 

around to our spot and threw the tent up in a matter of minutes as we had practised at home. The people next door introduced themselves and as it turned out were from Picton (where Myles works) massive country and yet we meet people from down the road!! Anyway we had a walk around to see what was what.

This was the view from our tent.

As we were there pretty late it wasn't long before dinner. For tonight's feast we tucked into some pizza which we had left over from the night before. Myles took Deb and Ian out to the local Italian as a thank you it looking after us. 

The chap from next door came up and said he was about to light a fire and we were welcome to join him if we wished. We graciously accepted and sat around talking and playing with sparks the dog who seemed to have infinite energy!

We wrapped up our conversation and went to bed. After about 20 minutes we agreed that the mattress we had left at home was a good idea and it would have made the outback ground much softer...

Morning arrived and what a lovely morning it was. So it should be for Australia day! We thought it perfect to have a drive around to see what there was to see. Deb had recommended a beach which supposedly had the wightest sand in the world. We got there, opened the car door and thought it was a little chilly. We sat on the beach as it began to rain. Wall.E ran inside his bag before he got rusty. We wrapped up and went back to the car. We stopped via Coles to grab some sausages and eggs for tonight's consumption and headed back to the campsite. Arriving at the campsite it was glorious sunshine so we elected to go for a swim in the river. We got out and were knackered so went for a sleep in the tent. 
A couple of hours later we awoke and had a walk down to the boat ramp where there were some rather exotic boats being dropped in the water. These were all toys rather than cruisers.
A fast boat is an understatement. some rather spoilt kids then climbed aboard and went water skiing up and down the river. This made us rather sick so we left and retired to our tent. We decided it was time for dinner so cooked up some sausages and had a sausage sandwich. We went to bed rather early and tried to get a good nights sleep on the ground. We had prepared a little for tonight by laying towels and clothes on the floor to dampen the floor a little. We awoke to a beautiful morning with the mist rising off the river and fish eating the flies skimming across the water. We cooked up some eggs and tucked in. 20 mins later the friendly man from next door came around and asked would we like some bacon and eggs if he cooked it? Rather surprised we accepted and we had a second feast of bacon and eggs, I had 2 eggs as did Laura, and I had 5 rashers of bacon while Laura had 3. There were 5 eggs left on the stove and a pile of bacon, sparks the dig did well out of that along with the kookaburras! As it turns out they are quite fond of bacon too! We packed up our tent and hit the road. today we were planing on going back up the country as we are starting our journey to cairns. We started a drive to see a geyser! Turning the corner we hit solid traffic. This was rather unusual for australia! We sat in it for half an hour before we got bored and Laura cracked out the map. We decided to skip that and head through Kangaroo Valley. As it turned out this was a good call. It was one of the most beautiful drives we have ever done along a piece of draped tarmac spaghetti along the side of a Mountain. According to the satnav we were nearly at 800meters so were relatively high. The view was spectacular. We saw a lookout point and decided we couldent not see it. The cheeky people at the Australian Natural park society wanted $3 for me to park my car!! We decided not to so we dumped the car and ran away. My logic is that my car is registered in Western Australia so any fines I get will go to a PO BOX many thousands of miles away. Good luck getting my money hahahahaha!

This is what we didn't pay to see. It was Rather beautiful.

Scenery admired we jumped back in my car with no evidence of a ticket and ran from the scene of the crime. We took the most scenic route back that we could as the highway is just so boring. It may take 20 mins more but its just a nicer drive. We arrived back home and stayed the night in a very comfy bed and had a brilliant nights sleep, ready for the days of planning tomorrow!

January 22nd

Today bought good news that the car is fixed with a new starter motor! An expense we didn't expect too much but it wasn't a huge hit to the bank. 

Today was pretty uneventful but this is a notice to say we are leaving our Ozzie home this Friday! Very exciting stuff, this meant preparing and finding deb and Ian's tent etc to take with us as they have kindly offered to lend it to us. Also the car got new shoes so is road legal, which is pretty important! 

Tomorrow will be packing and planning a route, also a tent reccy! 

Very exciting stuff and we shall update you as to where we are going when we decide ourselves! 

Lots going on but not a lot to report!

Love from us both x

Kate blog

This is a special kind of a blog because it's just for Kate! She's pretty dedicated and has been stealing wifi just to read our blog! We got a lovely message from Kate after months of thinking she was dead or stalking us to Australia.. 

 

"heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey guyyyyssss omg!!!  Firstly I wanna apologize for my long absence.  We lost our internet, fell out with sky, didnt bother trying to get internet back. I  went to the library  in a bid to scavenge some free net but forgot my google account password which I cant post here without, apparently. But I've been keeping up to date with all your doings much as I can (work internet rules) and i wonder how you both are everyday, I cant forget because theres a window I see every morning on my way to work with a kangaroo in it, and an Australian man who comes into work, even if he is terrifying  , But we now have our net back and ive sorted my gooooooogle. Those fireworks look bloody inrcedible.. but I must say..  THAT DUCK!!!!!!!!!!!! Its been a long term joke in my house that everytime my dad leaves the room when his computer is on, I put a photo on his screen of that very duck during his voyage in france. Probably more jealous that youve seen him than you would ever believe.

Sorry for my terrible typing, im sat with a grumpy hedgehog on my lap. Yeah, I have a hedgehog now. His names Wilf and hes pretty damn kool.

Miss you both lots and i cant wait for your return home. Please dont think i had forgotten you both coz i havent at all xx

Sam also keeps asking after you and sends his love

Love to you both  xxxxxxxx"

Wasn't that lovely :)

Here's a reply for you Kate! 

HIIIIIIIII Kate & Sam! It's good to hear from you as we thought you were dead from not being on Facebook. Hard life eh? How did you lose the internet? Have you moved out with Sam? :) 

It's very sweet of you to be keeping up with us and stealing wifi for us! (McDonald's wifi is pretty good too!) 

And you have a hedghog!? How and why!? Sounds pretty cool and I need a photo :D (how's Lexie doing?) 

Shame about the scary Ozzie there pretty friendly out here :) 

And yes the duck was amazing! So worth the drive it was huge and happy! You can put my photo as the background now ;D

You should google when it comes to London! We can't wait to catch up with you both when we get back :) 

It's so sweet that you have kept up with us and we really appreciate it.

Oh and Sam... Cabbage 

Big announcement, the good & the bad!

For all you iphone iPad iface people there is hope on the horizon! Our blog platform has heard our cries and you can now post comments from your idevices! Hurrah!

I now expect 100% more comments and no excuses from you all! 

On to the sad news of today's blog our car is at woollies car park. Now you may be thinking there could be worse places for it to be but it has been there since yesterday afternoon. This is due to something called Sod's law. We had decided our car was ready to go just needed new tyres and we're off! Yesterday afternoon it decided we needed to stay with Deb and Ian longer. Myles has spent the day tinkering in woollies car park and it turns out it's the starter motor that has packed up the sod. So new motor to arrive tomorrow then, then hopefully we can get on the move!

This means more blogs for you all to read you lucky things! 

Love from us both! X

P.S I found this Wall-e and loved it so I thought you all needed to see it as we haven't had a lot of Wall-e recently ):

Saturday 18th January! Giant Rubber Duck!

Today was a bit of a sad day as Tara is in doggy hospital :( as of today (Sunday) she is much better and coming home tomorrow!

Because we weren't sure of her condition plans to go to sydney were put on hault so Myles and I took the morning looking at our car and preparing it for the journey ahead. It has a bit of work needing doing to it before we leave so that's holding us up. Once it's done were off!

We got back from the workshop where Ian's race cars are worked on to hear that Tara was improving but not home just yet. With this Deb decided it was okay to do a bit of our day plan with what was left of the day. We had to order her some new glasses and then we headed to Paramatta to see the giant yellow duck that travels the world. 

Here's a few duck facts:

-The Rubber Duck knows no frontiers, it doesn't discriminate people and doesn't have a political connotation. The friendly, floating Rubber Duck has healing properties: it can relieve mondial tensions as well as define them. The rubber duck is soft, friendly and suitable for all ages!

- The Duck was built in various sizes, including one created in 2007 that is the largest rubber duck in the world, measuring 26×20×32 metres (85×66×105 ft) and weighing over 600 kg (1,300 lb)

These facts were very true that it was very cute and very happy. There were a billion Asian tourists who we assumed were following it around the world. There was also an ice cream truck that Laura was eyeing up. Turns out he wanted 7 dollars for a flake99 and he could stuff it! Taking advantage of the duck for sure! 

So we had a walk over the bridge to check out the duck from the other side. And went to see the old government house. It was old and currently held weddings. That's about all I have to say about it. 

Back to the duck,

We passed a park on the way back to the car and Myles just couldn't help himself and then I joined him.. 

(Thanks deb it's nice having a photographer for the day!) 

We wondered around and said goodbye to the duck into a very hot car! Ice cream in need it was maccas to the rescuer! We eventually found one and did a drive thru for ice creams. (And chips for Laura) a very good 80c each and we were very happy! With this we headed home for our pool! As Tara was better it was a champagne day! Very lovely end to a lovely day! Cheers Deb for taking us to see the duck! We loved it 8D 

Top 13 things of 2013

2013 has been one hell of a year for us! We decided to leave home to travel the world in a very short 7 months. A lot has happened and changed since then and this is a little blog about the best things for us in 2013

1.Firing Sydney's New Year Fireworks

2.Experiencing a sandstorm in Monument Valley 

3.Snorkeling in the Blue Lagoon in Fiji

4.Watching the first sunrise of the year from the top of the sydney harbour bridge

5.Doing a blind walk to the edge of the Grand Canyon and opening our eyes

6.Laura finally leaving work 

7.Meeting & staying with Deb and Ian

8.Going rallying in bush

9.Myles' first Motorsport incident 

10.Walking behind Niagra falls 

11.Spending a week in Canada with Natasha 

12.Getting on the plane in Heathrow Airport 

13. Is a secret ;) 

So those are our top 13 things that we did in 2013 :) 

New Year's Eve (Laura's events) 31st December 2013!

First things first happy new year to you all! Second blog( as Myles beat me to it) of the year! This is the same blog as Myles' just from my perspective as I didn't realise he had written one too! So here goes; 

A wake up call from a nervous Myles started my day at 7am. Stupidly I hadn't put my phone on to charge last night so that was first on my agenda this morning, shortly followed by breakfast. That done and lunch made I watched a bit of the news and then Skyped the family with the poorest internet going. A short time after deb called it was my time to leave for the train. Tara the dog had to go to the vets today so I had to be at the train station very early! Once I got my ticket I sat down and started chatting with 2 American girls who were lovely but had no idea what they were doing for the new year so I chatted to them about general new year and Australia things until we got to Sydney. We parted ways in the circular quay where I went for a wonder about to kill some time before I had to meet Myles at 3. I'd had a good look around and was really surprised at how quiet it was, but it was only lunch time. By this point on the IFR the quay was packed! 

Sightseeing done I headed back to Central station for some lunch and hungry jacks was the choice of the afternoon as dinner was going to be a sandwich. Cheese and onion burger which was standard consumed I started to look for the tram line to get me to White Bay where Myles was working. I found this quicker than I thought and was on a couple of trams earlier than I had planned. Next stop was the fishmarkets and on the way met someone who worked for channel 10 news who was fairly interesting & helped me to find my stop because it was the same as his. This was followed by a bus over the Anzac bridge as I couldn't see the walk way and it was rather hot too for my liking by this point. A helpful lady on the bus also helped me to find the street where I would be meeting Myles. I had a walk down the street checking out a prestige car market and not a lot else and was an hour too early still! 

I let Myles know that I was early and we planned to meet at the time arranged an hour later. I sat outside in the shade nearby until it was time to be picked up. This came and went, turns out they had an issue with the fireworks time code for the evening which caused a delay. Another half hour and Myles had arrived. I was greeted by Tim who I had met with Myles when we first arrived in Sydney and thanked him for arranging for me to be there for the night. He explained a few rules and that was it until 6 when we would set off on our barge. The next few hours consisted of meeting Ian who took me on the roof for the IFR and most of the crew who we're playing cricket whilst waiting to go on the barge. This was fine and followed by lots of cricket jokes at our expense, all good banter. Once it was coming up for 6 I got our jumpers out of the car and met Myles on the barge. Our barge was relatively small compared to the others and the biggest shells that were on it were 6" shells. Bigger than I had been in close proximity to being fired anyways!

Slowey we were being tugged out into the harbour and gradually the harbour bridge came into view. Our firing position had our container facing the bridge which would provide a fantastic view! 

The first show that we would be firing was a manual fire for the 'Smoke Show' this is a part of the aboriginal tradition for starting the New Year. It was lots of pretty coloured smoke fireworks all up the harbour and a few fireworks came off our barge. We were stood 2-3 metres from the first lot that was leaving which was pretty exciting! I loved the feeling of the shells leaving the tubes and informed Myles it was my new favourite fireworks thing. He said I should come do more shows then.

 The next show started at 8:50 which was a family show, not much to get too excited about either. Once this was done with we had an hour to wait until the design show. Being that it's dark and cold all you seem to be able to think about is food and being hungry. So this filled a bit of time but John, who was chief firer of our barge bought his laptop full of music and films to keep us entertained which was lovely. We watched snowboarding videos, Swedish house mafia concerts and his own footage of the tomorrow land festival which was all interesting. This bought us up to the design show, which was based on this painting by Reg Mombasa. (PHOTO) It was a short show and not a lot to talk about, they should have cut him and just thrown it all into the midnight show! It wasn't very long and left you feeling like "was that it" Good but not spectacular.

 Once again the waiting game started and john put on anchor man to watch which Myles and I had never seen. Whilst this was happening I suggested that the boys do a final test early just incase. Well I jinxed it, pressed the test buttons and the system said ALL of the fireworks were wrong! Big problem..

The boys ran into action stations immediately getting books and cables checking each point and retesting to find out where the problem was. With just 7 minutes to go and the time code sounding away like dial up internet the pressure was on and john was shaking like a leaf. He was giving up and did one final test and it was all there! He shouted lots and armed it as quick as he could throwing his torch in the process. This was followed by a can of red bull, like he needed it! 

Headphones at the ready we had the countdown and could see it on the bridge, even if it was backwards. 3, 2,1 followed by lots of loud thuds. All was going well and I was stupidly jumping at the 6" shells more often than not but loving the feeling of being so close to the fireworks. Bit of a hairy moment and I ran into the container because a shell had flopped out of the tube and exploded on the barge which we later saw on Johns footage of the barge. It was all so beautiful and over so quick but it was amazing truly amazing. We took our headphones off and could hear cheering throughout the harbour which was lovely even for me to hear knowing it was for all of their had work. This was shortly followed by a late shell leaving. Shame but it meant we watched the footage before the boys checked the tubes just incase, and that's how we found out about what happened with the low shell. Because of this it meant lots didn't go and were still sat in the tubes. This was the boys next job whilst I pulled all the wires out of the grey boxes pictured in Myles' NYE blog. After this it was the same story as Myles' really about the chap falling between the barge. This was Myles' cue to go and hide me in the car. Sleep soon followed for me, only a couple of hours until the sun rose then I was awake and saw the boys come blaring into the bay. I was greeted by a VERY overtired Myles giggling like a school girl because they left 3 guys up on the harbour bridge. It was time for him to go say goodbye and sign out for the day. This took longer than I expected and went to investigate and thank Tim and Forche for the experience. I thanked Forche and he said to go in into the marquee to find Myles. Big mistake I ended up being centre of attention for being new and 'random' also butt of the jokes for having a sleep! oh well. We said our goodbyes and set off for the train station where I had arrived by 6:45 and was on a train home by 7:24. It was a great journey until I changed trains where there were 4 Pakistani blokes who we're shouting in Pakistani throwing nuts at each other and shelling them onto the floor. Totally disgusting but thought better of saying anything as I was the only other person there and was feeling a little worse for ware.

The train put me back where I started in good old tahmoor by 9:30. I called deb and she asked how it all went and what time I would be home. "I'm in tahmoor" I said, she laughed in disbelief and said she would come and fetch me. With this lots of explaining and chatting about both of our New Years shortly to be followed by bed as I was shattered! Within seconds I was asleep and that brings me to now where finally I have had a shower and feel a bit cleaner! 

So a big happy new year to you all, hope you had a good one we certainly did. 

Was very strange not to have spent it with you Rob and Sadie and hope you had a lovely time without us!

Hope you all have a good new year and we will speak to you soon!! X