G'day from down under..

Another original post title, but necessary. Being British, let’s first discuss the weather. It’s bloody freezing here, although our pictures show lovely blue skies and sunshine. Like those cold winter mornings during the Christmas holidays, when it hasn’t been raining and everything is dry, with the sun out, but still cold.

We've been here for nearly a week, and to be honest we haven’t really done a lot of sightseeing yet, more exploring. We've kinda come up trumps with our apartment, which, whilst it’s pretty basic inside and possibly in the noisiest block in the world, the location is amazing. Our first few Sydney pictures are taken from the bottom of our road. The harbours edge is no more than a hundred metres from our front door, and we're situated in Elizabeth Bay, which is on the western edge of the central part of Sydney. Lucky for us though, we're also 5 minutes the right way away from Kings Cross (or the Cross as it's "lovingly" referred to) which is very similar to Kings Cross at home, being not the most salubrious area in town. Libby Bay (the Aussies shorten EVERYTHING) is quiet and peaceful, and from what we've seen so far of Sydney centre, it's one of the nicest places you could hope to visit, and it also seems to be really affordable.

There is a slight American sense to everything, in the cars, the road signs and the styles of buildings, plus everyone is so much friendlier than you would think for a big city - why the hell do so many people from here go to London? Madness.

Disappointingly all those documentaries (or docos as they are listed in the TV guides) we used to watch as kids, such as Neighbours and Home & Away, have mislead us brits on the local lingo. Not once have we heard "you flamin' great galaa", "cobber" or anyone mention cooking all their food on a "barbie". However, "ute" is in common use and they're even allowed to use bloody in their advertising, such as "You can't beat our bloody great prices". Keef has been developing his accent to become a token Australian - every now and then, we get a "guide to the lingo", which has so far taught the words of "Sheila" - woman, "Tinny" - beverage and his favourite phrase of "The dingo’s got my baby". Strewth! No hats with corks on yet, either, but I’m still looking.

The only complaint we (or Tash) has is that Neighbours is so far ahead - we've lost 6 months - it’s mad. The normal TV over here is pretty good though, apart from Big Brother - it’s shockingly bad!

So, not really much to report -we're going to get ourselves sorted out with some plans of what we want to do whilst we're here, so hopefully next time we blog, we'll have more to tell!