We'll be leaving Sydney next Monday and starting Stage Three of the Big Adventure - travelling anticlockwise around Australia from Sydney. (Stage One was Tokyo, Stage Two: living and working in Sydney - keep up at the back!) We'll be giving up what little security we have with our jobs, our cosy little studio flat and the people we know in Sydney. We are quite (as in completely) excited. I've no idea how we'll fill our days.
Once we've left Sydney I won't be in internet cafes so much (indeed, can't afford to be - they're more expensive outside the big cities). This blog will probably change from a place for my rambling thoughts with diary also to a travel diary proper. This will please a number of you.
Australian youth hostels tend to be pretty good, so there's no need to pity us too much. Unless we have to, we won't be staying in dorms - we're in our late twenties, so of course we're above the straight-from-uni travellers who come to Oz for the sole purpose of destroying their livers and we don't fancy sharing a room with them.
I'm a little worried that will mean we're less sociable than other travellers (he says, having just snobbishly put down a majority of the travellers here). There's less motivation to chat to strangers when traveling in a couple. When you're travelling alone you have to talk to others to keep from going mad. It may be that we find that we too have to talk to others if we drive each other mad, of course.
We won't have a TV any more, so less of The Simpsons for us (and fewer movies too - sob). Some youth hostels have a wazzark lantern in the common room, but you have to put up with what other people are watching. (What am I saying? It's more than likely to be The Simpsons - that show is always on, and is internationally loved.)
For the moment though, it's time to start getting things in order here. My job finished today (huzzah!) and Anne's ends on Friday. My mum's coming to Oz to travel around a bit so we're timing it so we meet her in Brisbane. With our recent weekend hikes I may even be able to keep up with her - she usually wears me out when we go walking with her.