Sydney: Day Fifty-Five (13 December)

Another early start today. Our friends kindly took us to Coffs Harbour airport for our flight to Sydney, the capital of New South Wales. Sydney airport is built near Botany Bay where Captain Cook first landed in 1770.

We took the AirportLink to Town Hall station and joined a tourist train past the entrance to the Chinese Gardens and Paddy’s Markets before arriving at our hotel in Darling Harbour.

After lunch in one of Darling Harbour’s many sandwich places (and a chocolate milkshake :-)), we walked across Pyrmont Bridge and round to Circular Quay where the Opera House is. We returned to Darling Harbour via the Queen Victoria Building (QVB), which was looking very festive. This tree was decorated with diamonds!

Barnaby

Coffs Harbour: Day Fifty-One (9 December)

We had to get up at 5 o'clock this morning to catch the train from Brisbane to Coffs Harbour. The journey took six hours but it was worth it because the countryside on the way is very pretty.

Once we crossed the border from Queensland to New South Wales we had to change our watches: Queensland does not have daylight saving time and is always ten hours ahead of the U.K. Because it was summertime in New South Wales we were now eleven hours ahead.

The friends we were staying with (they live half the year in Tunbridge Wells and half the year in Australia) met us and took us for a nice lunch.

This is the view from the house they rent, complete with wild kangaroos in the garden :-)

Barnaby