Blue Mountains - Wentworth Pass

We went on a trip up to the Blue Mountains - about 1 1/2 hours from Sydney in the car.

They are called mountains but they'remore like canyons and gorges, from the bottom of which the top does seem quite high! It's called the Blue Mountains since the pines make a kind of blue-ish haze, very dense jungle type areas and lots of really beautiful waterfalls.

We went to an area called Wentworth falls and walked along the Wentworth pass to Empress falls. The first part of the walk is quite touristy by the falls, then you start to go down some extremely steep stairs and ladders to get to the bottom of the canyon. They're the reason for the 'hard' grading in the walk book I think, the rest of the walk is not too bad and only about 6k. It takes about 3 hours though with all the ladders and having a paddle in the pools and the bottom of the falls!

A map of where we went is here, but bewarned the stairs are quite tough!

Boxing day walk

We went for a walk from Mosman along the coast past Taronga. Stopped off at a small beach near our house called Athol Cove I think, it was a really hot day but the water is still pretty cold so didn't manage much of a swim.

Xmas day in Bondi

We had a lovely christmas day with Adam's brother Matt and over in Bondi with some friends, Ryan cooked an amazing roast dinner!

4wd

Cars a pretty expensive out here, I think it must be to do with importing them and all the tax.

We set out to get a small honda jazz or something, but ended up with a Nissan Xtrail 4x4!

I do feel a bit of environmental guilt but it will be great to go out to the mountains with and to get over to Manly with surfboards (have to learn to surf now!)

I'm finding it easier to drive than I thought, although parking is still a bit of a problem. It has already proved it's worth though after a massive trip to ikea showed we could fit so much in it - a bit more practical than the honda 2000 was!

Can't wait to do a trip up to the blue mountains now.!

Mosman sunsets

We've finally got broadband at home so will have to make up for lack of posts.

We had a great sunset from the balcony the other day! Really beautiful. We're finding Mosman to be a little bit too quiet for us (might move to Bondi or somewhere after our lease is up) but this kind of thing makes up for it!

I love sitting out on the balcony, so peaceful :-)

Our place!

We moved into our place in Mosman yesterday! Really pleased to get in and i'm happy that Adam likes it as it was only me who saw the place! We ordered beds and a mattress to arrive yesterday, but the shop we ordered from, Harvey Norman, managed to mess it all up. Eventually, after numerous irate phonecalls to them, the warehouse manager brought us round half of the delivery at about 9pm. At least we had something to sleep on!

Got woken up around 5am by the cockatoos and other loud birds, but I don't mind too much yet! I went to a local yoga class which was hard work, but relaxing at the same time.

Today was really sunny, but we had to do more shopping for furniture. Managed to get a patio set, but still no fridge freezer which is going to make food shopping a bit annoying. Doesn't really matter though, as we've just put the patio set together and had the first beer out on the balcony! Watching the birds and the boats in the habour is really lovely. Here's a pic of a kookaburra sitting in next door's garden.Looking forward to heading off for a dinner in our local pub in a bit, it's about 20 minutes walk to get to the main area but not a bad evening for it :-)

Manly fish and chips

It was a pretty sunny day so we went back to Manly. Sat on the beach for a bit and watched
the surfers on the massive waves!

Then we went to the pub across the road for fish and chips. The best fish and chips I've
ever had I think. The fish was john dory, yum!