"baby you're a fireworrrrk!!!"

Our last day in Melbs was spent with Alain in the glorious sunshine with a lovely luncheon overlooking Brighton beach and then some explorations around the city in the car to see a few places we'd missed off the list - like driving along the Formula 1 track!! Sweeeet! Then in the evening we met his lovely fiance (now wife) Kerry for drinks and the most anxious and rushed dinner as all of a sudden we realised that we actually had very little time to catch our very important overnight bus. Once we had inhaled our food, and sent Kerry to go pick up the car that we'd left all our worldy belongings in, we headed there separately so that we could at least make sure we were checked in in-time and stop the bus from leaving without us. Whilst waiting for a tram, the reality actually sunk in and Coops' words "are we getting to the stage where we should really be thinking about getting a taxi??" were followed by an incredibly speedy agreement from Alain as he threw himself in front of the nearest taxshi-keb! Our panic was not over, when we then arrived at the bus station (the bus was still there thank god!) but Kerry and our bags were nowhere to be seen! We all stood in complete silence on the street corner, before Alain started running up and down the street trying to call her and flagging down any car that could possibly resemble theirs! With minutes to spare she did a swerving u-turn up to the kerb and we grabbed everything ("make sure you don't forget the cookies!!!!!!") and ran (more like hobbled!) inside blowing kisses and thank yous as we went! Only to find out we had been given a seat number that didn't actual exist - clearly they employ very intelligent bus drivers - luckily this meant that we did have a seat, but it was the ones that don't recline and are next to the stinky toilet - great. Adding to this, at about midnight Coops discovered cockroaches down the side of her seat and definitely couldn't get comfortable after that!!

Paula was super lovely and for the first few days we actually didn't see that much of her so kept communicating by a series of notes left out on the kitchen table. After we had bonded, she kindly offered to take us on a day trip up through the Northern Beaches...finishing in the most famous beach of all.....SUMMER BAY!!!!

Sadly they were not filming that day, so we will have to wait and see if we meet our future husbands later on.... But we had all the necessary photo opportunities in front of the surfclub and the lifesavers buggy (and slightly unfortunately picked up a parking ticket whilst we were doing so....Sorry Paula!) All of the beaches are really lush with really golden sand and there are some pretty swanky houses up there, looking out over the sea. Manly itself is really lovely and Bets remembered lots of happy memories from being here before. (Even though she took quite a while to work out why the beach looked so different - turns out theres a beach on both sides!!)

So the end of 2010 was nigh and we awoke on New Years Eve to a beautiful, hot day and obviously had to stock up on all the necessary picnic delights to take down to the harbour to watch the fireworks. Our initial plans were to meet up with Gemma and her friends, (yes Gems is now in Sydney too!) in a spot they had bagsied near Luna Park on the north shore! However, after the nightmares of public transport, NYE road closures and the threat of having our alcohol taken off us, we got sidetracked and found our own little spot.

We settled down with our picnic in a very cute little bay, with lots of other families and young peeps and tucked in to our goodies and poured ourselves some goon goodness from its very subtle hiding spot inside the cold bag!! Every time a policeman walked past we pooed ourselves slightly and tried unsuccessfully to 'play it cool!' After drinking games for two and getting rid of some of the weight in the food bag, we ventured around the bay to try and meet Gems. We then got side-tracked again by some Swedish guys and girls we had met earlier on in our bus adventures and were lured into their party pack. This was the beginning of the end as we managed to finish a 5 litre box of wine and nearly a whole bottle of vodka - eek! Whilst mingling, we managed to lose each other on more than one occasion, but had a great time anyway and met lots of fun people! And luckily we managed to re-convene with only minutes to spare before the countdown!

All of a sudden the sky was lit up and we turned to each other with huge grins on our faces, squealing "oh my god....we're actually here!!" The next fifteen minutes was spent, faces upwards, necks aching, but completely mesmerised by all the different types of fireworks and the typical ooohhs and ahhhhs that accompanied them! It was awesome. The night continued into the small hours with lots of joviality. We did meet up with Gems eventually - turns out she had only been about 10 metres away from us the whole time - after we found a ridiculous number of missed calls and drunken voicemails on our phones, oops! There was a very long bus journey back to Manly and you could say we were a little inebriated when we got off the bus and walked in completely the wrong direction home!!!

2011 was definitely off to a good start - we couldn't believe we were actually living in Australia - WOOOOOOO!!! Lots of exciting adventures ahead.....

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written by  coopsandbets on May 14, 2011 from Sydney, Australia
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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