I've made it to Brisbane and have spent most of the afternoon giggling with Hayley, just like when she visited in Nottingham. Sydney was cool but busy busy busy (i'm so tired!), but i'm glad to say that by the time i was done everyone agreed that i had seen pretty much everything. Highlights include a mini-reunion with 3 friends at Bondi, getting a salt water shower at the front of the Manly ferry in VERY big swells, nearly falling into Darling Harbour whilst clutching a Golden Gaytime (ice cream), the view of the bridge and city from Luna Park eating fish and chips (with Baramundi - so much tastier than cod), drinks at The Rocks on ANZAC day, city views from the Centrepoint tower for a 10th of the price of a harbour bridge climb with twice the altitude (i'm so cheap), but I mostly loved seeing friends and catching up.

Sydney seems to be a work hard play hard kind of city. The city centre seems to be pretty much geared towards business business business but then you have plenty of harbourside bars and stuff to enjoy once everything (and i mean pretty much everything) shuts at 5. I had a rather distressingly difficult search for bookshops, but was more than fruitfully provided with gorgeous views - i pretty much spent a whole day walking a ridiculous number of miles around every stretch of water i could get to to take photos. Outside the city the beaches become the highlights with Manly being particularly gorgeous - i spent a good hour just watching people surfing at an incredibly long beach. The Blue Mountains surpised me in their scale and beauty. After days of dodgy weather i got the most perfect day for my tour and enjoyed time soaking up some completely different scenery and taking in some cable car rides (very brave for me!) The weather was perfect from then on, and my big reunion day with 3 UBC friends was gorgeously sunny and spent at the Glebe Markets and Bondi Beach.

Brisbane is, of course, sunny and noticably warmer - a good 10 degrees warmer than Melbourne. I'm gonna make this a bit of a Florida-style holiday tomorrow and go to a theme park and hopefully a ride down the gold coast tomorrow. Brisbane strikes me as a very young city. Everything looks new and glassy, i'll be intrigued to go downtown and see what it has to offer. So far i've caused a bit of a furore in preferring Melbourne to Sydney as a place to live. Maybe i could cause a complete shock in citing a themepark as my favourite place in Australia? How cultured of me!