Sydney-bound - 13th Jan

Last night we booked today's flight and accommodation for Sydney on the advice from Mike that we should be able to get to Brisbane Airport despite the increased widespread flooding of the South East of Queensland and the CBD of Brisbane.

The scale of the floods in Australia is absolutely huge. In Queensland alone an area the size of France and Germany combined has been affected.

The predominant focus of the country's media is on providing information on what to do, where to go and more importantly what not to do and where not to go. As non-locals we continued to be baffled by the long list of roads read over the radio that are cut by floodwater. The news is also filled with numerous stories of solidarity and goodwill displayed by the Australian population as a whole.

It is obvious that the foreign media, such as the BBC,do generalise the areas affected, as well as focus on the sensational elements of devastation so that it can fit in a 30 second news segment or a couple of pages on the internet. But having seen both news streams I can vouch for it being a near accurate representation of the catastrophe.

We awoke early, had a quick breakfast with Mike and Lyn and then headed straight for the Bruce Highway and the 115 or so kilometres to Brisbane Airport. As we left Noosa there was a partial blue skies as if the Sunshine Coast was demonstrating that it's name may have some merit after all.

The 2 hour drive to the airport went without any hitches. Intermittently, we did see flooded land and dark clouds but we got to the car rental drop off on time and sailed straight through check in and on to the gate for the plane. Once we had taken off the impact of the flooding was a lot clearer and shocking to see.

Arriving in Sydney we jumped straight onto the train shuttle to the city centre, alighting 15mins later at 'Museum' stop to make our way to the salubrious surroundings of the IBIS on Pitt Street. We did want to stop at the YHA in The Rocks, but they did not have room today. We did however manage to book in for the following two days.

Sydney has an eclectic mix of public transport (ferries, buses, monorail, train, light rail etc) and you can buy good value week long passes for all of these but given we were there for only 3 days we decided that we would use shanks' pony and save ourselves some Aussie dollars in the process.

We dropped off our bag in the room, which coincidently was very nice and better than expected, and headed straight out to explore the city (and of course send a couple of emails from the Golden Arches that is McDonalds).

We ended up doing one big loop that took in Hyde Park, The Domain, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Royal Botanical Gardens before ending up at Mrs Macquire's Point (google it if you want the reason it is called this). The Point revealed great views of both Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Hyde Park: The Archiblad Fountain, and St Mary's Cathedral

Andrew "Boy" Charlton Pool in the
Royal Botanical Gardens

"What... showing off, me, no, never!!"

We then continued to the Opera House where we had a drink in one of the many bars on the waterfront and bought tickets for a 'Le Cirque' show in the Opera House tomorrow evening.

A bottle of James Squire as recommended by Mike

We finished the day with a walk back to our hotel through the city, a quick change of clothes and a meal in Chinatown.

We went to bed undecided whether we were going to pay AUD$400 for the both of us to climb the Harbour Bridge.