If there’s one thing you have to do when you’re in Australia, it’s surfin’!! One of the best places to learn how to surf around Sydney is at Bondi Beach. It’s only 30 minutes by train and bus from the centre of Sydney so on September 18th early morning I headed out the beach for my first lesson! When I got to the beach I started to get Serious doubts if this was a wise choice. The waves on the beach were really massive, some probably about 4-5 meters high! The shame of having to tell my collegues I chickened out finally drew me over the line and into the surf school though.. The guy behind the counter was busy on the phone and sounded apologetic. When he hung up he told me that unfortunately he had to cancel the lesson cause the currents were to strong to go out there surfing. I tried not to show, but I haven’t been so relieved in a long time!
I was at Bondi anyway, now with a lot of spare time on my hands, I decided to take the very popular Bondi to Coogee Coastal Trail. The trail follows the coastline south of Bondi beach past a few nice looking beaches up to Coogee beach. Had some lunch there and then jogged back to Bondi Beach to relax a bit before taking the train to a collegue for a nice BBQ.
Before leaving the beach I took a short stroll through the shallow water to cool off. Unfortunately this turned out to be a bad idea as I was completely surprised by a sudden huge wave, drowing my ipod and camera in the process! I tried to let them dry but when I turned them on the next day they were not showing any signs of recovery. Obviously a bit bummed out, I needed something to cheer me up and the best way to do that is to buy some new gadgets! Went to the apple store in the morning and got myself an Iphone 4 and also bought a new Canon IXUS 1000 HS to replace my drowned camera.

Since I still hadn’t done any surfing I rebooked my lesson to today. Luckily the sea was a lot calmer this week so after jumping in my wetsuit and an excessive amount of suntan lotion we got our boards and headed out to the beach. The two instructors were to real typical surfers, very relaxed with a strange accent. They taught us some things about riptides and currents and then showed us the basics on the board. After a bit of stretching it was time to hit the ocean! Although most of us had serious trouble staying on the board it was real good fun and after getting a bit of a feel for the water we headed back to the beach to learn how to stand up. Doing this stuff on the beach is a lot easier than trying to do it whilst catching a wave but in the end I managed to stand up and surf all the way back to the beach! Maybe I’ll squeeze in another lesson before I head back home…

If there’s one thing the Aussies like apart from surfin’ it’ll be Rugby! There are two main forms of Rugby, the Rugby League and Rugby Union. I have to admit I’m not sure exactly what the differences are but generally the Rugby League is more aimed to spectators and Rugby Union it the toughest of the two.

The objective of the game is to get the ball into the in-goal area within six plays. If the engaging team doesn’t make it within those plays the other team gets possesion of the ball and will try to do the same. The game is played in two 40 minute halves with about a 10 minute break in between. The game goes on pretty much all of the time so no annoying breaks after each tackle like in American Football. The ball always have to be passed sideways or backwards.

The National Rugby League is coming to an end and my manager managed (!!) to score a few tickets for the semi-finals between the Dragon’s and the West Tigers. The game was held in the Olympic Stadium so me and a few guys from work took a cab up there and met up with the rest. The atmosphere there was really great, both teams were from the vicinity of Sydney so the game had a big turnout. Unlike some sports (you know who you are!), there wasn’t any aggression amongst the supporters and you can even bring alcohol into the stadium.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera so had to rely on my phone for pictures. I just bought the phone so didn’t know how to focus the camera yet (Really it was the phone, the amount of beers had no influence whatsoever on the outcome of these pictures!)

According to the locals this year was one of the coldest winter. According to my standards the weather was nice but its really starting to get good now spring has arrived!

Since I had the afternoon off on Friday I thought I’d go up to the Botanic Gardens to test out my new camera and play some guitar. The park is very close to the Opera House and has good views over the water and city.  There were a lot of people about but after a bit of walking around I managed to secure myself a nice spot along the water. I’m still trying to get a handle of the camera but managed to snap a few nice ones.

Went out to the Sydney Dragway track with two collegues today. It might start to seem like I’m really getting into cars and bikes. The truth is that when the guys start to talk about V8 turbo diesel engines with nitrox boosters and whatnot, I just nod my head and smile like I understand what their on about…
I did really enjoy the day though, saw some really absurd cars which were more like engines on wheels and some real nice looking muscle cars which seemed to come straight out of a Starsky and Hutch episode!

At one point we saw a white van coming on the track and we assumed it was there to clean up or something. Turned out it was actually participating in the races and amazingly put down a pretty good time as well. They must have stuffed the back of the van with one big engine or something!