What could be a more epic place than Sydney to spend New Year’s Eve? That’s what we and 1 million others thought as we crammed into the city the last few days of the year. The hotel my mom and I stayed at in September was now going for 10x the price – talk about demand! We ended up getting a place about an hour outside of the city. Not the most convenient location but the other option was blowing our entire budget in 5 days, so I think we chose well.

Sydney

Now that I’ve been to Sydney twice in about 3 months, I can safely say it is one of my favorite cities. John and I did many of the same touristy things that my mom and I did, but this time around there was about 20x the number of people. We couldn’t believe how crowded Manly Beach was, I don’t think there was a spot of sand left for us! We took a quick swim in the ocean to cool off, and then hiked around North Head park for a few hours. We also went to our first cricket game, a very fun activity for two people that know nothing about cricket. We had a great time and left the game feeling like we probably understood about half the rules, so we’re calling it a win! (also Sydney won, so yay!)

Our biggest question was what to do for NYE – as you can imagine the Sydney Harbor fireworks show is a big deal and not an event you can just show up to. Our options were to spend ~$300 per person to be at a NYE party in the city or pay $20 or so for a ticket to one of the parks with a view of the harbor, but we still would have to show up at noon to get a spot. None of it sounded great to us, so instead we went to a 9pm firework show in the surrounding suburb of Parametta. We got home by 10:30pm and then waited to watch the Sydney Harbor fireworks on TV like the rest of the world! This now makes it the second major NYE city we’ve been to where we don’t actually go to the NYE event (we spent New Years 2019 in New York City and stayed as far away from Times Square as we could). 

Our last night in Sydney we put on our nicest clothes and went out to a nice dinner (it was our Christmas present from John’s family, thank you!!) We didn’t expect it to be notable except for the delicious food, but the evening that transpired was drama filled and unforgettable with a timeline something like this – 

• 6:45pm – arrive at restaurant “Dear Saint Eloise” and proceed to wait for a table
• 7:45pm – waitress takes pity on us and seats us at the bar to order cocktails
• 7:55pm – receive cocktails. As the bartender hands me my espresso martini he says “I hope it’s not gross, our coffee machine is broken so we had to use our bad backup coffee”. Spoiler alert – it was gross and I was not offered an alternative (granted I also am too non-confrontational to demand an alternative). John’s Negroni is delicious.
• 8:00pm – get seated at a table. Tell the waitress we want the “set menu” and she says okay
• 8:30pm – double check with the waiter that they put our order in since we have been ignored for 30 minutes. He looks at us and says “….uh we ran out of food a while ago… nobody told you?” No. Nobody had told us. We all stare at each other awkwardly and I ask for the check. Our hearts sink and our stomachs growl.
• 8:45pm – waiter comes back and says he feels bad so he can give us the “limited” set menu. We just want food at this point so we happily accept. Our table neighbors who were put in a similar position are less than pleased that we managed to get food and our camaraderie ices over a bit.
• 9:00pm – we get our first food!!
• 10:00pm – we get moved from our outside table to the inside because the restaurant is closing. We still have one course to go.
• 10:30pm – we finally finish our meal, almost 4 hours after we arrived.

We ended up having a very fun night and the food was really good. Just a roller coaster of emotions! I still can’t believe they ran out of food and just forgot to tell us… after we had already been there almost 2 hours. Oh dear (Saint Eloise).

Silverwater

One of the amazing connections we had in Australia was Eddie, an old college friend of John’s uncle Forrest. Although they haven’t seen each other since around the time they were in college in South Carolina, Eddie and his wife Lili welcomed us into their home in Silverwater near Morisset. It was so fun to hear stories about Forrest and Eddie’s photography excursions in college and even see some of the photos from back then. But even greater was we had a chance to FaceTime Forrest (thankfully his time schedule isn’t too dissimilar from ours, so a chat at 1am his time was no problem! 🙂 ) We did have to get used to calling Forrest by his first name, John, which is how Eddie and Lili know him. Just what we need, another John to add some confusion to stories!

Although our time in the area was short, we had a lovely day walking along the giant Lake Macquarie and viewing some wildlife. We even got to see a bower built by a bowerbird in their neighbor’s yard – sort of like a nest and the male bowerbird collects anything blue he can find to scatter around it. It was full of bottle caps, string, pieces of plastic, anything blue! Very cool.

We also especially enjoyed the company of Brinlee and Roxy, two very well taken care of pups. Plus hearing about Eddie and Lili’s world travel adventures when they were around our age, it was fun swapping stories! We would have loved to spend more time in the area but our time in Australia was coming to a close, and the distances between towns is no joke so we had to keep moving. It’s your turn to visit next, Forrest!

Forster

Next on our list of stops was Sam’s mom Chris’s house near Forster. We only had one night to spend here, as well, but we packed in a lot! We had a nice walk along the beach before a big storm came in, then went into town to the local gin distillery before having a delicious Turkish dinner. The drive home was through the most impressive lightning storm we’ve ever seen! 

The highlight/main activity was even better though – we had to help Sam and Chris finish a jigsaw puzzle (one of my all time favorite activities). We spent most of the night and the next morning finishing it, all while being serenaded by Chris’s pet bird Archie. Archie took a particular liking to John, and would perform his rendition of are you happy and you know it right into his ear. He really wanted John to be happy!

We were so glad we were able to spend more time with Sam’s mom after Christmas, and we’re once again lucky to have such generous offers to host us!

Byron Bay

Adding to the list of generous people opening up their houses to us, Eddie and Lili connected us with their friends John and Judy who live near Byron Bay (yes this now makes three John’s in one blog post). No questions asked, they were happy to let us stay in their guest room for a few days and even cooked dinner for us each night. They live on an old banana farm that they used to run and the property is absolutely beautiful. There aren’t many banana trees on the property anymore, though, since a disease came through several years back and infected the plants. We learned that once the trees are infected you can never grow banana trees on that land ever again. Luckily for them it coincided well with their retirement, but that’s amazing how devastating that would be to a working farm.

While staying there we visited Lamington National Park and hiked to a waterfall. Not far off the trail we discovered a lyrebird going through its repertoire of sounds (Lyrebirds mimic any sounds they hear then perform them all in sequence). This particular one sounded like a robot – it must have been by machinery at some point. We stood there and watched it for nearly 10 minutes, it was amazing!

We also spent a day visiting the beautiful beaches in the area. Several of the beaches are located next to a river mouth, so we spent a few hours swimming in the rivers. It was perfect, just like swimming in the ocean but without the currents or waves! We of course also visited Byron Bay, which is definitely beautiful but much more of a tourist beach town.

This area of Australia is so beautiful and so peaceful, we wish we could have spent more time there as well! John and Judy were so kind and they told us more than once that if we ever know anyone that wants to visit the area they are more than welcome to stay with them – so open invitation!

Our Last Night

After a quick stop over in the cool town of Newcastle on the way back down south, we had one last night in Sydney before our flight out of Australia. Since we had spent time at both his dad and mom’s houses, it only felt right to spend it at Sam’s own apartment! We had a very fun night out in Sydney with Sam and his roommate Louis. While the bars were definitely fun, the highlight was that we convinced Sam to wear the cowboy boots he bought in Seattle 12 years ago and somehow still owns. They didn’t fit him then, they still don’t fit him now, but he agreed to walk around Sydney in them all night since John and I got a real kick out of it. What a guy! 

Our biggest takeaway from our time in Australia is how hospitable everyone was. We are so grateful to all the wonderful people that opened their homes to us, and we hope we can repay the favor some day. 

Our second biggest takeaway – all animals in Australia can kill you.

Christine