A hectic week in Sydney, with too much booze and rain

Well the drive up from Canberra was relatively short and it was great to arrive at Suzy’s house and see our nephews. They are so cute now and Sam is walking and getting into even more mischief, he seems to particularly like the dog bowl and dropping his milk bottle in the loo (putting the lid down now is a must!).

After a bit of time with the kids we headed off with Jo (my mate from school), Mark (her fiancée), together with some of their friends (all English) to go sailing in Pittwater (about an hour North of Sydney) where we had hired a catamaran for the weekend. It was a really beautiful spot but unfortunately the weather was just dismal – we haven’t had this much rain since we left England middle of 2008! Despite the weather, we think we want to sail/keep GHOST in such a gorgeous place.

As sunbathing was out of the question we consoled ourselves with an extraordinary amount of food and drink and spent a hilarious weekend playing various games and generally laughing until our sides hurt. It was great to meet some more English ex-pats and we really felt we had met some new friends. Sydney appears to have nosed in front of Melbourne again in the battle for our future residency!

After the sailing weekend it was time to help Lee & Sal with the wedding preparations and it was a very hectic week organising the various events. The first challenge was creating and running the treasure hunt stag do with Lee dressed as a gnome, but it seemed to go well even if he got lost with one of the clues and wandered the city centre in his outfit, effectively the same result!



Next was sailing the day before the wedding in Sydney harbour, with Sal’s family and lots of wedding guests, luckily with gorgeous weather this time! Though due to the recent shark attacks the swimming was fairly brief!



And the final challenge was with Brad as MC trying to help co-ordinate the wedding as there was a tight schedule to keep to and worse than usual Friday afternoon traffic out of Sydney didn’t set us off to the best start! The wedding was out on the Hawkesbury river north of Sydney, at a fantastic venue called Pete’s Bite which was only accessible by boat, with the most gorgeous views across the river. The weather cleared in time and the final approach to the venue was interesting/exciting with the boat load of guests racing the seaplane with the bride on board! The timing worked out OK, we got the guests ashore just in time to take seats as Sal flew in on a sea plane, looking absolutely gorgeous of course! The food and the band were great and all of the guests (including grandmas and a cardboard cut-out of Lee’s youngest brother Sam who couldn’t make the wedding) were dancing around enjoying themselves.



Since then we’ve been recovering and spending some more time with Brad’s family, taking Sammy for a swim on Sunday which was good fun. Soon it will be time to head back South where we plan to do some camping and biking on the way back to Melbourne.