Sydney Bridge Climb

We had a great first day in Sydney today. This morning we took a bus tour around the city stopping off at a few areas to stroll around - mainly Darling Harbour and the Rocks areas. After that we headed over to Bondi beach where we had a lovely lunch.

Then we headed back to the harbour area for our Bridge Climb. After putting on our sexy grey outfits we headed on up the 1600 steps and 3 hour round trip.

The views from the top were great and the lights of the city were just starting to shine. We all made it back safely and headed for the nearest pub for a swift one. Jack texted us to say that he is having dinner with Shane Watson tonight....not bad for some!

Tomorrow we are taking the Manly Ferry and doing the Opera House tour....more updates then and more photos on our Flickr page as usual..

Our first Christmas down under...

Hi Everyone....Happy Christmas from all of us down under!

We have had a really lovely past couple of days experiencing our first Aussie Christmas. We were hoping for boiling hot weather....which we only got a bit of...but we still managed to have a great time.

On Christmas Eve our friends and neighbours the Pribils (Natalie, Jason, Sascha, Chiara and Sunny the dog) came round for a BBQ. I felt under pressure as this was our 1st BBQ we had provided for some real life locals...but all came good...phew! We had a great time just chatting and drinking some good wine...and evening opening a few presents:

On Christmas day we went round to our English (well, also Aussies too) friends the Gates. They live a couple of miles away so we took the train - which was free on Christmas Day! They had gone to a huge amount of effort and prepared a wonderful fish lunch - prawns, lobster and gorgeous salads etc. After this we were completely stuffed....but at 7pm we then had full roast turkey and all the trimming!!! We won't need to eat for weeks now. Thanks to Jackie, Dave, Jodie, Cara and Josh for a lovely day....Aussie Style.

On Boxing Day we went to watch the cricket at the MCG - an amazing stadium where 85,000 other people joined us. That's an amazing amount of people to watch a cricket match. The atmosphere was brilliant and England performed outstandingly to get Australia out for 98 - incredible! To cap it all we managed 157 for no loss of wickets. Our seats were right next to the Aussie players' entrance so Jack enjoyed providing their players with some helpful comments once they were out and returning to the dressing room. Ricky Ponting below particularly appreciated it I think....

Here is another view but as usual there are more pictures on our Flickr site...

Tomorrow we are off to Sydney for the week so look for more updates soon!!!

Lots of love to all...

Skippy...

Well we finally got to see some real Australian wild life today at a park about a 40 minute drive away. The boys have been stuck inside the last couple of days so we decided to get outside for a bit.

We had a nice walk around a lake and then suddenly we spotted some Wallabies just standing there in the long grass. Although quite shy they just stood there and had a good look at us! We saw about 7 or 8 on our walk along with loads of lovely orange butterflies.

One of the Wallabies had a little Joey sticking out of her pouch - if you look carefully in the picture above you can just see his feet poking out :-)

"We never have weather like this..."

With all the bad weather back in the UK I thought you might like to see what a typical Sydney Summer's day looks like :-)

I was working in Penrith this week which is a suburb of Sydney. Suddenly the skies darkened and the most incredible rain came lashing down. This then quickly turned to hail stones the size of golf balls. Our office became flooded within 10 minutes and we had to put all the computers on the desk to stop them getting damaged! The traffic lights failed and cars were then crashing into each other...it was about 30 minutes of panic for everyone.

Then, just as quickly as it had started the sun came out and all was back to normal....

Everywhere I go in the world I hear the phrase "We never have weather like this...."

Maybe I should go to Africa and license my rain making services....

Everywhere I go I always take the weather with me......someone even wrote a song about me..

Christmas is coming....

Hi Everyone,

Well Christmas is coming and the boys have finished school for the summer - didn't think I would say both of those in one sentence...seems strange! They are now off school until February....what a life eh..!

Caroline bought a lovely real tree this week and had fun putting it up and decorating it yesterday. Lots of houses have decorations up and it is amusing to see all the Father Christmas figures hanging outside especially when the weather is sunny and hot!

Sadly for me (Chris) I still have a couple of weeks work yet. I finish on 23rd and then return on 7th January. I am really looking forward to our Sydney trip aswell as going to see England play at the MCG on Boxing Day. I am hoping that my rib is better by then (I think I have cracked or bruised a rib recently playing football...what an old crock!)

Weather today has been rubbish - showers and quite windy. We went into Melbourne to visit the Immigration Museum, continuing our plan to be tourists at the weekend. It was good...but not excellent. William gave it 4/10, Sam gave it 2/10 and C&C gave it 6/10. Jack didn't come with us as we are too embarrassing...but he is making chocolate brownies for pudding tonight :-)

Last night Sam and Jack went to see the local Melbourne football derby (Heart v Victory). They went separately with their own friends but both enjoyed it - score was 3.1 to Melbourne Victory. The stadium (AAMI Park) is really lovely - the stands are in the shape of big footballs and holds about 30,000. However although there were 23,000 there last night attendances can be as low as 3,000. The World Cup would have made a huge difference to the popularity of football here so people are really disappointed that Australia didn't win the 2022 bid..

OK, must go...Caroline is cooking a beef roast...yummee. Last night we had Kangaroo steaks for tea - they are very nice with a slightly stronger flavour than beef....and cheap too!

Tonight we are going to catch up with 'Strictly'.....and I am already getting excited that it is not long to the BBC Sports Personality of the Year... :-)

Love to all.....CCJS&W x x x x x

December already!

Hi everyone,

Glad the snow has gone now and you can return to normal - for a little while anyway! I actually managed to get my Christmas cards sent last week and also sent a few parcels home. Post over here seems quite pricey - it cost $35 (£22) to send a medium sized parcel home - hope it gets there!

Went to South Melbourne market on Friday with Jackie and her mum, Viv, who is over from the UK at the moment. Our start was a bit delayed, since we discovered Jackie's car had a flat tyre so had to get that sorted first. South Melbourne market was smaller than Vic market in the centre of Melbourne, but had some nice stalls.

Then, Saturday morning, I went to Red Hill market down on the Mornington Peninsula, with Wills friend Robs mum (Emma) and a couple of others. It was an early start - I was picked up at 6.45 am but worth it - a lovely day and a great Christmas market, full of home-made wares - jewellery, arts and crafts, wine etc. We left by 10.30 and were glad we had gone early when we saw the length of the queue to go in at that time!! We stopped off at a winery on the way back - never too early for a glass of wine and great views!

In the evening, Chris, Sam and myself went into Melbourne to see the International Cycling Championships in the velodrome. Quite exciting (for the first couple of hours anyway!) to watch all the races, but need to read up on all the rules for next time - it was quite complicated. Chris Hoi and Victoria Pendalton were there and we cheered on Jason Kenny to victory!

Boys are into their last week of school (did Jack ever get started?!!). Officially, the school term goes on until the 17th, but apparently, in the last week there is no registration and no work is done and hardly anyone goes.Hence, the Boys have interpreted that as they finish on Friday!

Chris played with Jack and Sam in their indoor footie league on Thursday night which they drew 10- all, but unfortunately, took on a couple of injuries! The twist to his old ankle injury seems to have recovered but the elbow in his ribs which we thought was bruising, hasn't. We are now wondering if he has actually cracked a rib since he still seems to be quite a lot of pain. Don't think he'll be playing again in a hurry....!

Arthur and Martha

It's been interesting watching the news about the UK and how cold it has been. Thanks for everyone for sending through all of the lovely pictures of everywhere covered in the snow! It was great to see a picture of the Romsey Market Square covered in snow....seems so far away (...oh yes, it is).

For us it is really strange to see all of the houses now with Christmas decorations as the weather is so warm! Having a warm Christmas will be an unusual experience for us all...but I think we will get used to it :-)

Today it has been very hot and sunny - about 30c - so we decided to head down the coast a little bit to a place called Arthurs Seat.

It is basically a large hill (about 300m high) from which there are wonderful views up and down the Mornington Peninsula. As it was such a lovely day the views were amazing. We have uploaded some photos to our Flickr page

After that we headed back to Martha's Point on the coast where we found a lovely little cafe by the beach. Four full tummies later (Jack wasn't with us..) we went and sat on the beach for a while. With the temperature at 33c we only lasted about 30 min before heading home.

It is a lovely beach but the water is absolutely freezing!! None the less there were plenty of locals prepared to take the plunge..