Our Journey Continued:

The airport was a bit of disappointment scruffy and disorganised but we managed to get through quite quickly somehow managing to avoid the trauma of quarantine.


The day wearrived was a lovely hot day so we dumped our bags at the hotel had a quick shower and decided the best way to see the city was to jump on their hop on hop off bus which gave 1 ½ hour tour of the city. It was great and over view of the sights - such as the sky tower, woolllommoo harbour, museums, darling harbour the mono rail the QVB shopping building etc.

After being on the bus for well over an hour we jumped off at the monorail so we could have a ride – 15 minutes later we’d gone round and decide to jump off at the QVB for some lunch. What a gorgeous shopping centre – bit like the Victoria quarter in Leeds a restored old building with some beautiful shops.

Our next stop was the sky tower with amazing views over Sydney.

Showered and changed we had a lovely meal at the hotel. That’s when I noticed we had visitors of the insect kind – there on the wooden pier were the cockroaches – urgh – now that’s what I wasn’t used to seeing!!!

We had a great night’s sleep making up for our disturbed nights in Singapore where we couldn’t get our body clocks sorted.

Today we decided to go to Watsons bay on the Captain Cook explorer ticket. We had a great Ozey lady who gave brilliant commentary about what we were seeing – although we did take a slight detour to view the nudist beach.

On landing at Watsons bay we made out way to Doyles for their famous fish and chips over looking the beach. I had something called flathead and Darren had Barramundi – great tasting local fish in batter with chips.

After a few days in Sydney we headed out to the Blue Mountains but it was clouded in mist so we couln't see a thing we were glad to be staying at the beautiful Lilianfels Hotel at Katacoomba and so weathered the storm in the gorgeous lounge with afternoon tea.

We got up early this morning as the sun was shinning so we wandered to Echo Point to see the most incredible views of the 3 sisters – the mist was just rising off the tops of the trees in the valley set against the sun on the far hills – breathtaking!

Back at the hotel over breakfast we were looking forward to our journey on the Indian Pacific later that day to Adelaide.

Sitting in our own cabin on the train we started our journey through the mountains moving slowly towards the outback - the scenery is unbelievable - mile after mile of wilderness which is totally mesmorising – you just can’t take in the vastness.

We had a great nights sleep the beds turned out to be really comfortable the train rocking you to sleep – totally brilliant!!

We’d booked a tour of Broken Hill - a real outback a mining town. So washed and showered at 6am we were ready for a quick breakfast – our cabin attendant Daniel announced that there had been a problem the driver had hit a herd of cattle which had smashed the windscreen and so had to send for a replacement locomotive. At this point we were about 4 – 5 hours behind schedule so they had to cancel the tour. However, we still had the chance to stretch our legs at Broken Hill whilst the train took on water and new passengers.

Finally at 11.30 am we left Broken Hill and it took another 7 hours before we reached Adelaide. So over 24 hours later we had reached our destination.

The next morning we left early to catch a 20 minute flight to Kangaroo Island.