After a few days in the Blue Mountains, we made the steep descent to Sydney, just in time for Andy's birthday. We stayed in a hostel in Newtown, a lively suburb just west of the city centre, where we splashed out on a celebratory Thai meal that was utterly divine. 
The weather turned out beautifully too and we did all the standard sight-seeing in crisp autumn sunshine. This of course is the famous Sydney harbour bridge.
We took a ferry ride across the harbour to the zoo, which gave us some great views of the opera house, which juts out into the harbour on Bennelong Point. Bennelong was an aboriginal man who befriended the first governor of New South Wales, Arthur Phillip, after he landed in Port Jackson (now Sydney Harbour) in 1788 to found a penal colony. Bennelong lived in the governor's house for some time, but also resided at the spot where the opera house now stands.
The zoo sits opposite the fabulous city skyline (the opera house is on the far right).
At the zoo we got to see some of the Aussie critters that we've missed on our travels (echidnas, skinks, tasmanian devils) and some more exotic beasties too. Andy found himself most at home with the gorillas – spot the difference!
From Sydney we headed south to Botany Bay, where Captain Cook first landed on the Australian continent in 1770, as commemerated by this monument. It was here that the ship's scientist, Joseph Banks, recommended Arthur Phillip found the penal colony eight years later. When Phillip landed at Botany Bay however, he found the soil sandy and therefore unsuitable for cultivation, so moved his fleet 20km north to Port Jackson and settled there.
We cycled around the bay, keeping an eye out for whales, as this is their migration season, but without any sightings.
At this unassuming camp spot in Kangaroo Valley, some 160km south of Sydney, we unwittingly stumbled across a pod of militant wombats. We were just drifting off to sleep in the back of Edna, when the van began to shake quite violently. In our sleepy confusion, we thought that someone might be stealing the bikes from the rack on the back or that we were the subject of some prank. When the shaking stopped after half a minute and we were unable to see or hear anyone, we ventured out of the van to take a look around. We could see no signs of human life, but our attention was drawn to a sinister munching sound nearby. The beam of the torch picked out a big wombat about 5 metres away. He stared at us coldly as he chewed his grass. Twice more that night we were shaken awake, each time with increased vigour. In the morning we were able to see what we had failed to notice when we parked up: that we were camped in wombat city – dozens of wombat holes surrounded us. We had clearly impinged on wombat turf and perhaps were lucky to escape so lightly!
Now we are heading down the south coast of NSW towards Victoria. It's still just about warm enough to be surfing (without wetsuits), so we're putting in some time on yet more fabulous beaches.
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