Oct 2007

Children cooling off in a fountain in Sydney's Darling Harbour

Oh my word we have been hit by a plague of Bogong Moths!

It's made the news here as it has been such a problem. At one point we must have had 20 in our apartment alone. There were thousands upon thousands of them in Sydney itself. They migrate through South East Australia during the spring but this year Sydney was hit with massive numbers of them. Some buildings were literally covered in a complete wall of moths. Sitting in the park or even just walking down the street was a traumatic experience let me tell you.

Gavin "I aint scared of no moths fool" Curley came to my rescue on numerous occasions with his cat like ability to catch the little blighters mid flight. Not surprising given that his only alternative would have been to listen to three girls in the apartment squealing and running around like lunatics every time we were confronted with one.

Apparently they are delicious, there have been loads of recipes doing the rounds. You have to remove their wings and fur though......(vom).

Talking of insects, is it just me or are flies in hot countries a bit, well, 'harder' than flies in the UK? In the UK if a fly finds it's way into your home all its looking for is left over food. It will then relentlessly fly against a window pane (regardless of whether said window is open or not) until it dies. Here, forget food, they want to take you on! They repeatedly try to fly into your mouth, your ears or your eyes. They don't care that you are feverishly batting them way and doing that crazy dance that we tend to do when something is flying at us - you know sort of 'spinning around on the spot whilst swinging your arms around your head' dance? Nope, these flies are saying "C'MON, HIT ME. IS THAT THE BEST YOU'VE GOT!" (for some reason in my head that's a Cockney accent when of course it couldn't be because these are Aussie flies, but go with me on this).

They are ASBO flies. They want to fly into your eye and then steal your car.

I don't like Bogong Moths or ASBO Flies.

Moving on......

Sydney has completely come alive now that the sun has arrived. Every weekend seems to have a free festival or event taking place. Here's what we have been up to for the last few weeks.

Wallabies v England, Rugby World Cup - Saturday 6th

Later that evening.......

Those of you in Birmingham think 'Flares' and that will give you an idea of what The Retro Hotel was like which was the venue for our PwC Retro night out. Full on cheesy, I don’t care that I'm dancing to ABBA, kinda place. I managed to get lost on my way home even though the club is on the same street as our apartment. You'll be pleased to know I found my way back eventually!

PwC Retro Night Out - Friday 12th October

The Surry Hills Festival included stalls selling clothes, jewellery, arts & crafts, food and beer, three stages with live bands and performances and a dance tent. Not bad for a free event! Fortunately the dance tent stopped playing at 6pm as had it of carried on we would not have made it to the fancy dress party that evening.

Surry Hills Festival - Saturday 13th October

Vicky invited us along to a fancy dress party where everyone had to dress up as something beginning with the letter P. Gav and I decided against dressing up but those that did really put a lot of effort into their costumes and looked great.

Patrick's ‘P’ Party - Saturday 13th October

I attended a drinks evening with the agency that placed me at PwC on Thursday 18th. Copious amounts of 'bubbles' (as in not really champers but it'll do anyway, especially as it's free) was drunk. I came away very merry with a lots of new friends.

On Friday 19th I attended a charity lunch at PwC to raise money for The National Breast Cancer Foundation. The team at PwC put on truly excellent events. The room was beautifully decorated - it was obvious that a lot of time and effort had been put into making sure it was a successful event. Around 150 people attended and lots of money was raised for the charity. Again the champers flowed....and I drank it.

A couple of the girls that I had met on Thursday evening invited Gavin and I out to a works drinks evening on Friday night and so after my long boozy lunch I left the office to rush home, get changed, pick up the Hubby, and start all over again. We had a great night but I have to say it all caught up with us by Saturday. DVDs and a Thai takeaway was all we could manage. Little Miss Sunshine, have you seen it? It's worth watching just for the dance routine at the end, hilarious!

Another day another festival. Dank Street festival is part of The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Month. There were numerous stalls selling all kinds of food and wine along with two stages with DJs and live performances. Well here's the thing, we started off very civilised, tasting wine, eating freshly cooked seafood whilst listening to the music. However, once we had 'done' the festival we decided to move on to a nearby pub where we met with a group of guys who had been out since 4am (watching South Africa beat England in the Rugby World Cup but enough said about that). Sambuca shots and Irish dancing followed.

Dank Street Festival – Sunday 21st

Hungry?

Oh dear, here we go again...

On Wednesday 24th the team I work for at PwC took Gav and I to a restaurant called Wildfire in Circular Quay for a farewell dinner. It was a lovely evening, Gav got to meet the people I have been working with for the last three months and we all got to meet each others's partners. We received our third invitation to Christmas dinner that evening too. I think for someone to invite two people that they hardly know into their homes for Christmas is an exceptionally kind thing to do.

Also part of The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Month was the Sydney Food and Wine Fair held in Hyde Park with all proceeds donated to the AIDS Trust. It was an extremely popular event with lots of queues for the various food and wine stalls. After we'd had a good feed we sat in the sun for an hour or two just watching the world go by.

Sydney Food & Wine Fair – Saturday 27th

More drink, I actually need to detox now I think. Well let me just explain, we didn't set out to go to the Drink Pink Rosé Festival at The Argyle. We spent the first part of our day, as planned, visiting Paddys Market and then the Rocks Market looking for little gifts to send home. We had heard that the Argle was a good bar so when we spotted near to the Rocks Market area we decided to pop in for a spot of lunch. It was then that we realised there was a Rosé tasting day. For $20 you could have unlimited tastings of over 50 wines and three full glasses of your favorites. When it was coming to the end of the day the gentlemen serving were more than generous with the amounts they were pouring.

Drink Pink Rosé Festival at The Argyle, The Rocks - Sunday 28th

Wednesday 31st. Our last day at work! We've both been so lucky with the jobs we found and are fortunate enough to have really enjoyed working for the last three months. Having said that, we are both very excited about donning our backpacks and hitting the road again and having no more work until at least April 2008! We have two months of travelling around Oz ahead of us and it's just over four weeks until my Sister, Sylvia, joins us in Melbourne. We also get to see our friends Roger and Tracey when we are in Perth.

Cardie's leaving lunch with some of the PwC support team

Ladies and gentlemen, he is bringing sexy back! Oh yeah, I dragged Gavin along to see JT at the Acer Arena on 1st November and it was absolutely brilliant!

Justin Timberlake Concert

We arranged to have farewell drinks on our last night in Sydney. I honestly do not remember a thing past the second Sambuca, however, judging by the photographs I had a great time!

Leaving Drinks, Cargo Bar - Friday 2nd November

You can guess that I felt less than well getting up at 6am for our flight to Uluru but more on that in our next installment.

Ta-ta for now xxx