Hello Sydney, what's your favourite scary movie?

Excuse the title. For those of you who don't know it's a poor pun based on the film Scream. The reason that I chose it was because we've just spent the past weekend in Sydney.

I have to say that the weekend was really nice - except for the driving. At the risk of insulting my host country I must say that I think that drivers in Sydney are the worst drivers I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve been to France, Italy and Greece. Apart from standard obscenities such as speeding, honking horns and aggressive driving we’ve seen some rarer sights such as random veering across the road, undercutting by using closed lanes and someone ‘chucking a yooie’ at about 100 km an hour (in a 70km zone) without even bothering to indicate or slow down first. Shocking. Now that I’ve got that out of my system…

The first day we spent with Ruth’s sister Naomi. She was over from New Zealand for a music conference so we took the time to meet up with her. We spent most of the day in Ikea, but still managed to have a really nice time. I ate a few Swedish meatballs and Ruth bought some stuff, none of which will enrich my life. The boys really, really enjoyed the play area and it made up a bit for us temporarily ‘misplacing’ Calvin earlier in the day. Xanthe had a great time too; despite the fact that she is too young to go in any play area or spend any money. One of Ruth's purchases was a new high chair though and Xanthe seems to appreciate it.

On the second day we travelled into the city. It was so much like London that it scared me. We were staying with the lovely Dave and Roz in the improbably-named Lindfield and the walk down the street to the train station really reminded me of my Spurgeon’s days walking through south London. If it wasn’t for the fact that the guy at the ticket desk had an Australian accent we could have been at Norwood Junction. The only real difference was that the trains have two storeys. So they would understand the concept of a ‘double decker’ and therefore there is no good reason for them not to have Double Decker chocolate bars here. The city of Sydney was also very similar to the city of London except – of course – for the fact that Sydney is on the coast. It was uncanny.


While in Sydney we had a lot of fun, though the boys got very tired with all the walking. We saw the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House (the boys were very excited about that as they had seen it on Finding Nemo) and other things. We went on a train, bus, ferry and monorail and Reid said that he even saw someone’s pants on a chair at one of the stations. Xanthe, as always, had a great time sleeping, eating and joyously screaming her head off at random moments during the day. She really gets spoiled by her bigger brothers – well, by Calvin anyway. Reid head butted her arm on the way home so in retaliation she pulled his hair. I think that she’s going to be able to hold her own against the boys when she’s a bit older.

Today we travelled home via the Blue Mountains. We stopped there on the way to Dubbo when we arrived in February but we were too jet-lagged and ill to fully appreciate it. It was much better this time round - some quite amazing views. Australia is truly a beautiful country. However, the question that all locals want me to answer is...has this visit redeemed New South Wales or is Queensland still my favourite state? The answer is simple...it's still Queensland I'm afraid.

Until next time - goodbye.