- Esther
- Jan 15, 2020
- 4 min read
I can't believe I haven’t written anything about Sydney since the middle of July! It’s now the beginning of 2020, I’ve turned 24 and I’m just a few days off from my Aussie Visa expiring at the end of January.
After Ben and I finished travelling the East Coast, we moved back to Sydney for a few months, and the second half of my year here has been even better than the first! I’ve felt really settled, have found some of my best friends in Sydney and there’s been so much going on with all the sunny weather in Spring and Summer too.
Since September, I've been living in a flatshare in Surry Hills with Ben and another couple from the UK. It’s actually been the perfect place to stay because there’s loads of really good coffee shops and bars right next to our house, and we’re also right next to Central station, so you can walk to the centre of the city in about half an hour and get to the beach pretty quickly as well.
For work, I've had a couple of longer term office placements down by the Harbour - which I've actually really loved because of the people working there - and I’ve also been helping out by the cruise ships on some weekends and waitressing at a cute little restaurant a few minutes’ walk from our flat.
Since the weather has been heating up so much since I last posted about Sydney, we've also been able to go to the beach lots more (and actually swim without freezing)! I've found a couple of new favourite places to go, like Mona Vale (a really nice, relaxed beach with bright orange sand) and Watson's Bay; one of the posher parts of Sydney which feels a bit like a holiday resort.
I also got to take a trip to Central Coast with my friend Julia, and at Bondi, there was a display called Sculpture by the Sea up for a while, which meant the coastal walk had loads of cool artwork along it. One of our friends also has his own boat, so we got to take that out all the way to Manly Beach, which was great.
We never made it to the Blue Mountains National Park in the end, because of all the bushfires there, but Ben and I did do a day trip to Sydney's National Park. The problem was we didn't realise how enormous the National Park is (you can't really see any of it if you don't have a car!), so we just ended up walking through the bush for a couple of hours before we had to head home!
A few weeks ago, I had my first hot Christmas in the Hunter Valley with one of our friends and his family. We saw kangaroos up close on Christmas Eve, had an Aussie Christmas lunch, did some tasting at some very cute wineries and spent some of Christmas day relaxing by the pool!
After Christmas, we headed back to Sydney for NYE - and the Harbour Party at Luna Park was the perfect way to bring in the new decade! The tickets for it were pretty pricey but I definitely thought it was worth it because you could go on the theme park rides for free all night, and Example and Hot Dub Time Machine were playing in the Big Top between Sydney’s amazing fireworks displays.
Obviously, Australia’s been going through a really sad and difficult time over the last few weeks because of the devastating bushfires that have been happening all over the country. People have died, some have lost their homes and over a billion animals have died as well.
We’ve been lucky to not be very affected by it because we’re living right in central Sydney (where there’s no bush at all), but a couple of weeks ago the air in the city was orange and filled with smoke almost all the time, which meant you couldn't even see most of the buildings in town. It's definitely got much better here now, but sadly huge areas of Australia are still burning. Everyone is desperate for it to rain lots (which I think it will hopefully do later this week) so that the worst will be over soon.
Even though being here in Sydney a year on from when we arrived was never the plan, I’ve loved living in this part of the world so much. Sydney is beautiful, fun, beachy and it feels like a second home to me.
I’ve made friends here who I’m really going to miss when I’m back in England, so I’m sad to be leaving, but I'm also pretty excited to go home and see my family and friends again.
But before our Visas run out and we have to go back, Ben and I are going on a trip to The Outback. We’re actually leaving Sydney tomorrow to head to Uluru, where we're going to join a tour to hike through Kata Tjuta National Park, camp in the desert, walk around Kings’ Canyon and see Uluru's famous red rock at sunrise and sunset.
I’m really excited to finally be going, because so far we haven’t seen anything other than Australia's East Coast, but we'll see how walking around the hottest part of the country in the middle of Summer goes!
