Winter is finally here!

I've not updated for a couple of weeks, mainly because to be honest nothing much has been happening recently. Mostly just work time, home time and weekend time. I guess I'm getting quite settled down in Sydney now. I shouldn't get too used to it, as if I were to settle down here I wouldn't be living where I am now.

This is a picture of the ground floor of my apartment. I've already mentioned that it's a converted church and listed building so they have to keep some original features. God knows how they managed to get away with adding the monstrosity of flats above the church though. The flats don't fit in with the rest of the church at all, but at the same time it does make a unique building and I always like unique.

The church is still functioning as I often see people in the other half of the ground floor of the building attending some service at the church. How very ironic of me of all people to end up living above a church. People who really know me will realise how very religious I am and how much I love religion. I wonder if the church has a crypt and where people were buried below the church. Oh well there's a multi story car park below the building now so they probably sit happily side by side with flash parked cars. Do you remember the film Poltergeist, one of my favourites? :-)

They've recently removed the covers of the lifts and here you can see some of the beautiful original doors that were in the church. The wood finish in the lifts is really fine and always makes me want to touch the walls whenever I'm in the lift on my own.

Jason and John from the UK office recently visited us here for a week of meetings with Sydney Water. We had a really good time going out for some great food and beers. It's not many places where you can go out for Japanese noodles for lunch and then Bavarian beer and food in the evening and all for quite a cheap price too.

I'm sure both of them will go back to Wallingford and report at how tough life is out here and how much hardship we have suffered in putting our lives on hold for a year to come here to work. :-)

Winter has finally arrived in Sydney as it's relatively cold during the day and night here. It almost reaches below 10 degrees C in the morning and ranges up to 18 during the day. Quite cold for Sydneysiders. Some of the locals are wrapped up in gear that I would go snowboarding in, while I just have a shirt and light jacket on.

I was quite chuffed the other day as when I was walking home from work a tourist here asked me for directions to an art gallery. Fortunately I knew where the place was and could give her directions, does this mean I'm a qualified Sydneysider now? I'd like to think so, but probably not as I doubt I'd ever get used to the heat for the rest of the year.

Fu%&wits First should be all sorted now, I've probably said this before though. After speaking to a customer care manager in the Sydney branch they sympathised with my problems and said they would email the Bristol branch to cancel my membership and as a gesture of goodwill they would allow me to have six weeks free membership at the Sydney gym. They recommended that I also send a letter to the Bristol branch to complain, get my money back and cancel my membership too just in case.

I also spoke to someone who was dealing with my case at the Bristol gym and they assured me that my membership had been cancelled there and they have requested a refund for my last month's membership. I'll just have to wait and see if this is true. I doubt I'll be joining them again when I get back to the UK next year. So after only four months I've finally managed to relocate fully to Sydney, I hope it's not as traumatic when going back!

The Art Gallery of NSW and you really can't leave a gym once you've joined!

I went to the Art Gallery of NSW on Sunday afternoon. It's an absolutely fantastic building in the middle of The Domain which is one of the many parks in Sydney.

There is a good collection of Australian artists work on show as well as a good sized far eastern set of works. I particularly liked a set of Japanese paintings that they had on show which was meant to be part of a collection of works showing views of Japan.

There is also a small waxwork of this old woman on show. She wasn't to scale just a shrunken version of what an old woman might look like. She was very realistic though and you could almost believe that she was sleeping in the middle of the gallery.

She did remind me of some works that I once saw in a London gallery. The works were almost identical and were probably by the same artist.

I was also quite pleased because I managed to recognise a Barbara Hepworth piece of work before looking at the label. It's helped by the fact that her work is quite unique and I was only at St Ives last September.

This is a view of the main restaurant of the gallery. It doesn't really show the amount of space and view properly but you get the idea. I'm going to have to have a meal here someday.

Start of a rant and rave now so watch out! I'm still having to pay membership at the Fitness First in Bristol. Despite the branch in Sydney saying that they have transferred my membership details and the Bristol branch saying that they are all ready for my details to be transferred. As a result I'm now paying for membership at both branches. Bloody big grrr! I called them today and they first tried to fob me off by telling me that the Bristol payment was a last one for leaving that branch, but I wouldn't have any of it and complained some more. In the end they just said they would look into it some more and call me back.

It really is true that once you join a gym you really can't leave! I would cancel payments but it's not a direct debit or anything, they just have my bank card details and take money out once a month.

On the plus side, the XE Trade web site has turned out to be a fantastic way to move money from my UK account to my Australian one and it's very cheap to do at only £6 for each transfer. Forget Barclays, I'm going to leave them as soon as I get back to the UK permanently next year.

An afternoon break...

Andrea and Kate were stopping off in Sydney on their way though to Osaka on Wednesday so I took half a day off work to do some more tourist things in Sydney.

Went up the Sydney Tower which is the highest point in the central business district. It was a little expensive at $23.50 each but the views were worth it. It was yet another sunny day in Sydney and the views over Sydney were great.

I totally forgot my camera today, but fortunately Andrea had hers so these photos were all taken by her.

It reminded me quite a lot of the World Trade Centre. It was really good to be able to look over the city and pick out landmarks that I recognised from the last three months living here.

In the second photo here you can see the Queen Victoria Building (the green dome) which is just across from Sydney Water. It's a fantastic old building which also has some really great designer clothes shopping. I walk past it every day to and from work as well.

I read the other day that April's rainfall was very poor, hence all the dry weather we've been having here. The average rainfall for April should be 120mm, but we only had 9mm! Just think that at least the UK doesn't have water shortages as bad as here.


After the tower we went for a walk around the Royal Botanic Gardens. There were all manner of different plants and trees, some indigenous to Australia and others not. There were also a couple of orb spiders which I wasn't so keen on! Thank god we didn't see any funnel web spiders. :-)

There were plenty of fruit bats in the trees as well. Here's a photo of them hanging from the trees. It was getting near sunset so they were starting to get active.

Just as the sun did set though the fruit bats did fly from the trees and it was quite amazing to see them flying around.

As we were walking around the Sydney harbour side we also saw a Possum scavenging for some food by the public bins.

It was really exciting to see a wild possum and it wasn't that worried that we were around it. I could even get up quite close to it to take some photos. Maybe it was a tourist possum placed by the Australian tourist association.

The sun setting behind the Harbour bridge and the side view of the Opera House was very picturesque. We walked around to Mrs. Macquarie's Chair, which apparently has a great view around the harbour, unfortunately it was dark by then, so we couldn't see to much. Never mind!