Independent Traveller

Lynsey and Caroline left me yesterday so I’m on my lonesome. But that’s ok, I think I get a different kind of experience now. For example I heard the two Swedish men behind me on the ferry to Manly beach practicing their English. ‘Vere are you going to?’ ‘Da beach’ and one that made me and the girl beside me laugh out loud, ‘Pints...pants...panties?’ but it turns out he was just trying to say ‘My ticket is in my pants’. I'm assuming he was using American English there.

I went back to Manly yesterday afternoon. I think that is now my new answer to the question ‘If you could live anywhere in the world...?’ It’s lovely.

I walked along the beach and then thought I’d get fish and chips and eat them along the front watching all the surfers. This was a good idea til I realised all the seagulls would be there. If you know anything about me you’ll know I hate, hate, HATE birds and winged creatures in general. So I sat there very carefully taking one chip out at a time and cutting a little piece of fish and eating it. It was all going so well. There was only one seagull that realised that I may have something of interest to him and he was easy to get rid of with a wave of my hand.

That was all until I took out the last bite of fish. As my hand moved from my lap to my mouth some cheeky little beast of a seagull swooped across me and grabbed it. I felt his wing on my face! Gross gross gross!

I’m sure you can imagine the scene that followed but if not it involved me screaming and running, chips flying and about a thousand seagulls where I had once been sitting. It took me about an hour to get my heart rate back to normal. So no more al fresco fish and chips for me.

Anyway, here are a few photos for you to enjoy.


We went to one of the cathedrals and there was a navity scene outside. So that would make this woman Jesus' body guard then? Hands up if you thought that would be a cooler job?


Burt Bacharach was in town.


Ok, here's the tourist photo!