Well folks, we got back home on Monday afternoon after a gruelling 31 hour trip and the most uncomfortable airplane seats we've ever sat in!!

This will be our last blog entry as our Australian Adventure is officially over. No more parties in the park, moonlight cinemas, BBQ's, no more festivals, fairs and no more 30 degrees on a regular basis.. We have discovered Goon, stroked and ate a kangaroo (not the same one I might add).. and there will definatley not be as much alcohol consumed as we have in the past 4 and months.....

We went to a party city and God did we party!!

We met and made some fantastic friends, laughed harder and longer than we ever have and we basically had a ball!!! We saw some fantastic sights, the Harbour Bridge, Opera House, the Hunter Valley, the Gold Coast and the Great Barrier Reef.... It was simply the best 4 months we have ever had!!

Having said that we are home and can't wait to see all our family and friends and show them all of the 1,701 photos that we have taken, we are putting them into a slide show as we speak.... only joking, or are we?????

Helen Keller once said...

'Life is either a daring adventure or nothing'.

And we have just had the biggest and best adventure of our lives and we have been so lucky.....

That's it!! We're done, so in the words of a couple of old guys that also wear glasses.....

'It's goodbye from me and goodbye from him!!!'

The adventure's nearly over.....

Well then guys, we have had our last full day in Sydney and God have we had a laugh!! We went to another festival, guess where, yes another park, sitting with shorts, thongs (Flip Flops) and sun cream, that's not happening when we get back home now is it? There war 3 stages playing different music, stalls selling all sorts of weird and wonderful things and there were thousands of people there. As we left we did a quick check on the stalls and we ended up making a few impulse buys....God knows how it's going to fit in the case!!!

We met some mates at the park and said farewell to them, drank a few beers and then went back out again for some more....... we went to the Pink Peppercorn and had a fab Thai meal, can't pronounce what we had, we just know it was beautiful then met some more mates and par-took of some more alcoholic beverages. A perfect end to our last full day...

Today we are packing our suitcases and are heading out for a quiet lunch before we head off to the airport and start our journey home!!

So in about 27 hours we'll be back in good old Blighty!!!

1 day to go!

So, yesterday, the furniture went, so you guessed it...we're back on the inflatable bed! Oh the joy! To be honest, it's not too bad, but I forgot how graceless it was getting out of bed in the morning!

Today we have the apartment inspection, so with a bit of luck and a following wind, we'll get all of the bond money back; saying that, you know us - this place is cleaner than when we arrived!

It's just after 9 am on a beautiful sunny morning (am going to miss those!); this afternoon, we're off to our final Sydney festival (sniff) - Surry Hills, a local suburb is having some kind of local fayre, so we'll go and have a look-see with a couple of mates; check it out by clicking here.

4 days to go!!!!

It's Thursday, the sky is blue and there isn't a cloud in the sky, it's about 28 degrees (I haven't got many days left to tell you how sunny it is...) and guess what, we are stuck indoors packing and bloody cleaning... the joy!!!

Anyway we said we were going to party till we left and we certainly are!!!

You may recall that when we went to the Hunter Valley on Saturday we purchased a number of bottles of wine (12 to be exact), well we have managed to put a big hole in our cellar and they are steadily going down.... We went to a BBQ on Sunday at a mates house and basically carried on what we started on Saturday.....DRINKING!! I would like to say that we used the recently acquired wine tasting skills gained at the vineyards but we weren't!! I think the term 'necking it' would have been more appropriate.

Last night we went with some of Simon's work mates (Simon's leaving do) to the very exclusive 'Shangri-La' hotel for cocktails, the Shangri-La has panoramic views of the harbour and you can have a very civilised evening drinking posh cocktails....or you can just get bladdered... of course we did the civilised thing................ I have to say that after a number of cocktails I had to keep an eye on Simon to make sure he didn't order the $10,000 dollar Martini... they really do have one, it has a Diamond in the bottom.....!!!

After packing and cleaning today we are going to crack open another bottle of vino and have a quiet night... We need to conserve our energy as we have a busy weekend of partying to get done before we leave... Hey life begins at 38!!!!!

I also have a photo update for you all!! We now have 1701 photos.... You might have thought that the movie Australia was an epic..... wait till you sit through our slide show presentation!!!!

Easter and the Hunter Valley

What can I say about our Easter so far....

I know that Easter is a time for reflection, solitude and prayer, not for us... we went on a wine tour - woo hoo!!

We thought that as the chocolate eggs over here are, how can I put it, well, shitty, really, we would spend Easter Saturday drinking. We thought wine tasting would be a little more sedate than your usual go to the pub on a Bank Holiday and drink till you can't walk...

We went with a few mates on a mini bus with a few other people that had also booked the same trip!! The others on the mini bus with us were a couple from Taiwan, 3 from Norway, another English couple and a couple of Americans!! It looked like a great group of people... until Simon overheard the American talking about Electron Microscopes.... they were a fun couple, can you believe it, they actually spit the wine out after tasting it??? The Norwegians were very quiet and kept applying Neutragenia hand cream all day...luckily they had left their hats with horns on at home!!!

We visited the Hunter Valley, it's the wine region in New South Wales. So after an early start, it took 2 hours to get there, the wine started to flow at about 10:30. We were to visit about 4 wineries and sample the fruits of their labour!! At each place we were given between 6 and 8 samples of wine and talked through how to enjoy the bouquet, colour and how it felt and tasted over our pallets.... Yeah right, we necked ours as quickly as possible so we could move onto the next one!!!

After the second vineyard we had a gourmet lunch, obviously after about 12-16 samples of wine I was game to try anything on the menu... Big Mistake!! I ordered Octopus for my starter, I thought I love Calamari so it would be similar to that. How wrong could I be??? My starter came out and it was basically a bowl of salad with these whole, baby octopus mixed in. Well I had ordered it so was going to eat it.... Now Octopus has no real taste, is chewy and the tentacles stick in your teeth... Nice!!

After lunch we had a cheese tasting and 2 more vineyards to check out... let me tell you blue cheese and baby octopus don't mix!!!!

Anyway, we carried on and visited the last two vineyards and by the time we left we realised that we had bought 12 bottles of wine.... we only have 7 days left and 12 bottles of wine.... thank god we are out at a BBQ today so we have an excuse to partake of another tipple or two!

We have a date!!!!

Well folks, we have a date to return home!!!! We'll land on the 20th April...

It's not that bad really only 247 days early or 8 months, 3 days or 35 weeks or 5928 hours or 355,680 minutes or, finally, 21,340,800 seconds.... can you tell that we wanted to stay a little longer!!!

We have just about everything sorted, our tenants are leaving our house at home, our apartment here is already taken (see we told you we had a good spot, have we mentioned we can see the Opera House? ;-))...... our furniture is being packed on the 17th of April, our fridge freezer goes back the same day and thank God so does our washing machine.... It's an old fashioned top loader.... when it got delivered I asked where the mangle was!!!

We walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday (it has a fantastic view of the Opera House), it's immense and it vibrates with all the traffic, they don't tell you that in the guide books. Yes you guessed it, more pictures of the bloody Opera House.... but these are from a different angle!!!

We have a few other things to sort out and a few things left to see!!

We are off to the Hunter Valley on Saturday with some mates, it's a local wine region for some vigorous wine tasting... hopefully it will get messy....;-)