11th July.

We fly into Sydney at day break. Out of the plane window is a perfect view of early morning Sydney. The bridge, the Opera house, the tower blocks and the meandering river and its islands. It looks like a perfect model, its difficult to believe people live and work in those tiny little buildings. Of course, my camera is packed in my suitcase in the hold so I cant show you that scene, you'll just have to use your imagination.

We get a minibus ride to our down town hotel. The driver is an aging Edinburgh-arian (a scot) who used to be in Lonny Donegan's backing band. They went on a world tour, and he ended up staying in Sydney. He seemed to think the weather was better than in Scotland. (this is mid winter and I'm comfortable in a tea shirt).

Its David's 16th Birthday, so what do you do on your Birthday? That's right, take a walk over Sydney Harbour bridge - the hard way, over the top. I had booked this months ago so that we would get to the top as sunset and walk down as the lights of Sydney where coming on. Its all terribly well organised. You get kitted up in a special jump suit, you cant carry anything that might fall onto the roadway below, you are supplied a bum bag with waterproofs in case it rains and a bum bag with a fleece in case you get cold. You have a lamp mounted on your forehead for the dark return journey, and radio headphones to hear the guide. All these items are double clasped to prevent anything falling off.

We end up looking like the guys in Ghost busters. To stop us falling off, we are tethered to a continuous cable that runs all over the walk over the bridge. The tethering device is a clever piece of engineering invented to stop single handed yachtsmen going overboard. As I said - all terribly well organised. The view from the top is marvellous. It stopped raining from earlier in the day and the wind had died down just for us. We nearly got our sunset, but still caught a view of the blue mountains far in the distance and Sydney was just switching its nightlights on for us as we walked back down.

Many bats roost in the trees in the many parks of Sydney. They seem to use the bridge as a navigation aid, because hundreds, thousands of bats where flying over and through the bridge, off inland. These are quite large bats, probably a couple of feet wingspan. I would say that they where about the size of seagulls, but then you would just think that what we saw was a flock of sea gulls, so I wont. The guide said they where bats and I believe him.

We're all going to the zoo tomorrow, the zoo tomorrow, the zoo tomorrow.....

12th July

Went to the zoo.

We zoom up to the top of the Skytower. This is the Second tallest building in the southern hemisphere BUT, it does have the highest postbox in the southern hemisphere, so stick that up your lift shaft you New Zealand Bastards with your first tallest building. Hint of rivalry here? Yes. Good view though.

David DESPERATLY , NEEDS to go to a Hard rock Cafe. It was his birthday yesterday, so off we go. David is in Heaven. He wants to get a job here. This is Trendsville, Aus. The walls are lined with enough Rock memorabilia to keep e-bay in business for months. The bar has a convertible car landed on it. Rock videos play on TVs, and the menu has ribs and burgers and some. I blow my cool cover and start snapping pictures around the place - well I am a pommy tourist.

13th July

We've read about this amazing shopping mall. The Queen Victoria Building. It looks a bit like Harrods from the outside, and is amazing inside. For once, the shops are less interesting than the decor. There's two amazing clocks, and even a display of the British crown jewels! I plan how exactly I could dangle from the roof, cut a small hole in the top of the glass cabinet and extract the jewels under cover of darkness - avoiding the crisscrossing infrared beams and the pressure sensitive floor. But hey, gold is not this years colour, and the diamonds are a bit too brash. - so maybe I wont bother.

We make a trip round to the trendy eating area of town. This is all a bit too up market. All modern aluminium and glass - far too sterile. Up one end, we find an Italian restaurant and get bloated on pasta and cakes.

14th July.

We do a 3D Audio-Visual Virtual Tour of Australia. A few models and video screens. Mmm.

Sydney Opera house is impressive, its difficult to work out what shape it is, no matter what angle you look at it from. We also cant get very far inside without watching an Opera. No time for that, things to do places to see...

Outside, someone illegaly parked their car and got subjected to Australia's extreme clamping regulations.

Sue is all sight-sore. She leaves us lads to nip over to the Luna-Park across the bay. This is a really tacky funfair that is situated on probably the most valuable piece of real estate in Sydney - right on the bay with views of the bridge and the Opera house. Bearing in mind that an apartment with harbour views can go for millions of dollars round here, this is very odd. Its here because the local residence want it here. They have a soft spot for it ever since it was built to replace the steel yard that was created to build the Sydney harbour bridge. I think that perhaps the nearby residents realise that if anything else was built here, they wouldn't have such a harbour view and their property investment would plummet. Anyway, its there and we visited it. The ROTA was good. You get spun round in a large drum till you stick to the wall, then the floor drops away. David got very sick.

You have to buy tokens to go on rides. We had some left and so used them up on the side stalls. I 'won' a little red stuffed bear, with 'Washington DC' proudly emblazened on its chest. The word Tacky just doesn't seem to quite sum it up. Sue seemed to be pleased that I thought of her and brought her this memento. Thoughtfull bugger ain't I?!