Hope all has been well with everyone back home. We've had a busy few weeks here, having been looking forward to spending the summer in the pad in queenscliff we were pretty disappointed to find out landlady, out of the blue ,gave us our months notice as she wanted to move back in for the summer ! How dare she!
You had to feel sorry for our friends Steve and Alex as one day they found out their tennants in England had stopped paying rent and the next day we were all being kicked out of theirs.!So into the dogfight that is the Sydney rental market we went. I'll resist the temptation to launch into a bitter diatribe about looking for rental properties in Sydney but in summary it sucks - it's far too buoyant, leading landlords to take no care with their properties as they know some Brazilian backpacker'll rent it off them, 80's style avocado kitchens and all.
Anyway we eventually sorted a new pad in Harbord just north of Manly. Sweet flat about 3 minutes walk from the beach. In between though we took the opportunity to house sit for one of Charlotte's workmates in an area called Glebe for a couple of weeks. Glebe is totally different to everything we've experienced about Sydney so far, the houses are victorian-esque rather than angular, glass walled types, there's more organic food shops than surfwear stores and more people in Led Zepplin t-shirts than suits - you get the picture. To be honest it made a pleasant change for a couple of weeks. We enjoyed being able to walk to work and have an extra twenty minutes in bed each morning.
The anzac bridge on the way to glebe -harbour bridge & the city in the background
(Charl's birthday night on 26th october)
view from our new balcony - harbord village
October & November have been a funny time weather wise - we've seen 10 degree temperature changes within the course of two hours and a bizarre two-week long infestation of moths in the city. It was really quite freaky walking out to a client meeting through a cloud of moths.
the moths - like some sort of horror movie!
Next in early November came a moment of madness when I paid for the privilidge of jumping out a plane at 14'000 feet. I won't go on about it as the pictures say it all really. Long wait whilst trying to exude confidence and relaxation in order to cover your growing apprehension, one group of very nervous people squeezed into the smallest plane i've ever been in then one hell of a rush once you're out the plane and you realise there's nothing you can do about it. As soon as I work out how to do it i'll get the DVD posted on youtube or something and post the link here.
The dude with dreads is my tandem instructor aptly named "douggs" and is some sort of local basejumping champion. We jumped over a city called wollongong right by some beautiful beaches (photo's above) with an outfit called skydive the beach -highly recommend this as a sydney based skydive.
(these little white dot's are us in freefall - freefall lasted about 45 seconds, believe me it seems like a long time when you're up there)
Coming in for a smooth landing
I only found out at bottom our guy was having some trouble getting our parachute to untwist - good job i didn't see this when Ii was up there
Wollongong beach
On the ground, relieved
Anyway since the dive we haven't been up to anything more extreme then a trip out to palm beach (aka summerbay of home & away). I've also been growing a big fat Merv Hughes style moustache for a charity event called Mo-vember and still trying to stand up on my surfboard
(charl outside what avid home & away fans will recognise as the summer bay surf life saving club)
(palm beach left - pittwater bay on the right)
Stay tuned next time for pictures of moustaches, a link to me Skydive vid & our new 4x4 beast !!
Cheers
Si & Charl
