g'day, it's greg.
4am and i've just finished watching united beat reading 3-2. and with chelsea only managing a draw against fulham it's happy days.
well i best get to bed soon as we're off to melbourne for new years eve tomorrow, that means there will be some new photos for you all to look forward to.
just wanted to share my delight with the blog!
hope everyone is okay
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
boxing day test
after a much enjoyed christmas day and a lack of sleep we set off for the boxing day test at the mcg. despite the lack of sleep everyone was in joyous mood ahead of the day, even cricket's biggest fan amy ward.
when we arrived at the ground we were greeted by typical australian summer weather...... cold, wet and windy! we made our way into the ground and began our climb to the very top row of the mcg. after an exhausting search for our seats we were suprisingly pleased by the good view, and protection from the elements.
the atmosphere in the ground was great and the mcg itself was an amazing sight. there was a crowd of over 89,000 in the ground.
not sure if you can see the rain in this picture but at one point it was so heavy it felt like we were at home in manchester.
marra, his friend jad and geo sat in the block next to us, a few rows down.
due to a mixture of rain delays and under performing, england didn't fare too well. but it seemed like every person there, aussie and english were stood up cheering when warne got his 700th wicket.
we all had a great day at the test, it was an experience that will stay with us for a long time.
after the cricket we made our way to the crown casino... we've never seen phil so excited. we got a couple of good pictures of melbourne city, which is quite an impressive sight.
your not meant to take any pictures inside the casino but i got one, though it doesn't show much. the crown complex is massive, it has two hotels, loads of posh shops, restaurants and of course the casino. a few of us had never been in a casino before and it was like something out of a film, really dark but with lots of flashing lights, lots of gold everywhere and definitely some odd characters in there!
after a while of wandering round, getting lost and losing people we decided it was time to eat. we chose a place called 'georges pasta pizza and grill' which looked really nice. the food took ages but it was nice in the end.
by the time we left it was dark and the city lights looked amazing.
after the hour long train journey and a rather interesting cab ride, we finally got back to marra's about 12.15am... 16 hours after we had set off that morning.
it was a long day to say the least but we all had an amazing time and it was good to be able to spend it with our friends.
when we arrived at the ground we were greeted by typical australian summer weather...... cold, wet and windy! we made our way into the ground and began our climb to the very top row of the mcg. after an exhausting search for our seats we were suprisingly pleased by the good view, and protection from the elements.
the atmosphere in the ground was great and the mcg itself was an amazing sight. there was a crowd of over 89,000 in the ground.
not sure if you can see the rain in this picture but at one point it was so heavy it felt like we were at home in manchester.
marra, his friend jad and geo sat in the block next to us, a few rows down.
due to a mixture of rain delays and under performing, england didn't fare too well. but it seemed like every person there, aussie and english were stood up cheering when warne got his 700th wicket.
we all had a great day at the test, it was an experience that will stay with us for a long time.
after the cricket we made our way to the crown casino... we've never seen phil so excited. we got a couple of good pictures of melbourne city, which is quite an impressive sight.
your not meant to take any pictures inside the casino but i got one, though it doesn't show much. the crown complex is massive, it has two hotels, loads of posh shops, restaurants and of course the casino. a few of us had never been in a casino before and it was like something out of a film, really dark but with lots of flashing lights, lots of gold everywhere and definitely some odd characters in there!
after a while of wandering round, getting lost and losing people we decided it was time to eat. we chose a place called 'georges pasta pizza and grill' which looked really nice. the food took ages but it was nice in the end.
by the time we left it was dark and the city lights looked amazing.
after the hour long train journey and a rather interesting cab ride, we finally got back to marra's about 12.15am... 16 hours after we had set off that morning.
it was a long day to say the least but we all had an amazing time and it was good to be able to spend it with our friends.
christmas day
first of all, merry christmas to everyone and we hope you all had a great day.
father christmas (christine marsland) found where we were staying in geelong and sent some presents to open on christmas day.
thanks mrs christmas! :) we were really glad that we had some presents to open.
we spent most of christmas day at marra's dad, tony's house with george, george, phil, james (who had arrived that morning), marra, his dad and some of his family.
we were hoping for a nice hot day so we could sit outside in our shorts having a bbq and play some garden cricket.... but it rained and was cold. we had the bbq set up in the garage and played some wet garden cricket in jumpers and jeans.
the food was good, no turkey or crackers, though there was roast potatoes and christmas pudding with brandy sauce (which amy couldn't get enough of). nonna (marra's italian grandma) made lasagne and marra was in charge of the bbq.
greg, george, george and phil spent most of the day trying to polish off the crates we bought while playing on tony's pinball machines. amy had a few goes too. between us we must have watched about 3 series of friends and the simpsons too!
throughout the day we had various phone calls from home. percy called at 2am (english time) on his was back from the navi and roland called and said amy had an aussie accent. dave, amy's mum and dad, grandad ces, jes and jack all wished us a happy christmas too. thanks for the calls everyone.
have a fun week love us x x x
father christmas (christine marsland) found where we were staying in geelong and sent some presents to open on christmas day.
thanks mrs christmas! :) we were really glad that we had some presents to open.
we spent most of christmas day at marra's dad, tony's house with george, george, phil, james (who had arrived that morning), marra, his dad and some of his family.
we were hoping for a nice hot day so we could sit outside in our shorts having a bbq and play some garden cricket.... but it rained and was cold. we had the bbq set up in the garage and played some wet garden cricket in jumpers and jeans.
the food was good, no turkey or crackers, though there was roast potatoes and christmas pudding with brandy sauce (which amy couldn't get enough of). nonna (marra's italian grandma) made lasagne and marra was in charge of the bbq.
greg, george, george and phil spent most of the day trying to polish off the crates we bought while playing on tony's pinball machines. amy had a few goes too. between us we must have watched about 3 series of friends and the simpsons too!
throughout the day we had various phone calls from home. percy called at 2am (english time) on his was back from the navi and roland called and said amy had an aussie accent. dave, amy's mum and dad, grandad ces, jes and jack all wished us a happy christmas too. thanks for the calls everyone.
have a fun week love us x x x
Sunday, December 24, 2006
they have arrived
george, george and phil arrived on thursday night and we've spent the last couple of days showing them the sights of geelong (in between drinks).
friday we met up in the bended elbow and went for a few drinks around town.
we later got a taxi up to the barking dog, where marra works. after a couple of drinks we went for something to eat then back to the dog to finish the night off.
a highlight of the night was gc making friends with a german lad with whom he sang "god save the queen" and "99 luftballons"
the long day took it's toll on geo...
but he soon perked up when he found a lady friend to chat up, unfortunately there's no photos available.
gc was very pleased with himself after selecting a few songs on the jukebox. six oasis tracks in a row.
on saturday we met up in the bended elbow (again) to take advantage of the 8 dollar lunch. from there marra gave the boys a bit of a tour round geelong before calling at the bottle shop to stock up on some christmas booze. phil's eyes lit up when he entered the 'booze supermarket'.
saturday night we had a bbq at marra's dad's house, where the lads are staying.
a few of us stayed up for the 2am united kick off. well worth watching for paul scholes' goal of the season.
well that's all for this update. today is christmas eve and it still doesn't feel at all like christmas. very strange. hope everyone is okay.
merry christmas all x
friday we met up in the bended elbow and went for a few drinks around town.
we later got a taxi up to the barking dog, where marra works. after a couple of drinks we went for something to eat then back to the dog to finish the night off.
a highlight of the night was gc making friends with a german lad with whom he sang "god save the queen" and "99 luftballons"
the long day took it's toll on geo...
but he soon perked up when he found a lady friend to chat up, unfortunately there's no photos available.
gc was very pleased with himself after selecting a few songs on the jukebox. six oasis tracks in a row.
on saturday we met up in the bended elbow (again) to take advantage of the 8 dollar lunch. from there marra gave the boys a bit of a tour round geelong before calling at the bottle shop to stock up on some christmas booze. phil's eyes lit up when he entered the 'booze supermarket'.
saturday night we had a bbq at marra's dad's house, where the lads are staying.
a few of us stayed up for the 2am united kick off. well worth watching for paul scholes' goal of the season.
well that's all for this update. today is christmas eve and it still doesn't feel at all like christmas. very strange. hope everyone is okay.
merry christmas all x
Thursday, December 21, 2006
back in geelong
we arrived back at marra's house last night after a long day yesterday! it's good to be back in a place that we know fairly well and we're looking forward to seeing george, geo and phil tonight.
now that we are back at marra's and don't have to pay for every ten minutes we spend on the computer, we have posted a couple of blogs, showing what we've been doing the past week in a bit more detail.
we have just changed our flight to sydney so that we have an extra week here in geelong. we now fly on the 10th jan rather than the 3rd.
also, because of the whole mess up with fiji and the fact that we are wanting to pay a little more to stay in the better accommodation, we have made the decision that we are flying back a few weeks early. we'll be back on the 23rd march rather than mid april.
IMPORTANT - it is jack ward's 8th birthday on the 24th march, the day after we arrive home, and i plan to suprise him on his birthday. so he doesn't know anything about our early return and i would appreciate it if he wasn't to find out! thanks.
hope everyone is well, we are all blogged out for now. x x x
now that we are back at marra's and don't have to pay for every ten minutes we spend on the computer, we have posted a couple of blogs, showing what we've been doing the past week in a bit more detail.
we have just changed our flight to sydney so that we have an extra week here in geelong. we now fly on the 10th jan rather than the 3rd.
also, because of the whole mess up with fiji and the fact that we are wanting to pay a little more to stay in the better accommodation, we have made the decision that we are flying back a few weeks early. we'll be back on the 23rd march rather than mid april.
IMPORTANT - it is jack ward's 8th birthday on the 24th march, the day after we arrive home, and i plan to suprise him on his birthday. so he doesn't know anything about our early return and i would appreciate it if he wasn't to find out! thanks.
hope everyone is well, we are all blogged out for now. x x x
airlie beach
after daydream, our last 4 nights were spent in airlie beach, we stayed at bush village backpackers. our first couple of hours were quite stressful, amy's bag was broken in transit between our room at daydream and abel point marina. the company we travelled with have refused to accept responsibility.
then when we arrived at bush village an error had been made on our booking, apparently we'd been booked in for the night before (an error between the travel agent and hostel) so when we didn't turn up our room was sold. the people at bush village managed to find us a twin room for the first night then a double for the others. the resort was again a massive improvement on magnums (anything would have been an improvement but this was a particularly nice place).
the following pictures show the difference between the two backpacker's resorts. magnums and bush village.
following the stressful events we went out for a beer and something to eat. then after some confusion we met up with dib.
our time in airlie was often spent relaxing by the lagoon (a swimming pool made because you can't swim in the sea due to the jellyfish). we met up with dib at the lagoon and had a meal and drinks with her one night. it was really nice to see a face from home. and talk about our experiences with someone like us.
somewhere between that night and the following day greg lost his debit card which again proved quite stressful. things like this effect you more than they would at home. though hopefully it's all sorted out now thanks to mother.
for the last two nights we discovered a mexican restaraunt and on tuesday had all you can eat chilli for 8 dollars.
dad (ray), i saw this and thought of you... it was a piggy bank.
all in all in between some stressfull times we had an amazing time up in queensland. hopefully our future travels will run a touch more smoothly!
then when we arrived at bush village an error had been made on our booking, apparently we'd been booked in for the night before (an error between the travel agent and hostel) so when we didn't turn up our room was sold. the people at bush village managed to find us a twin room for the first night then a double for the others. the resort was again a massive improvement on magnums (anything would have been an improvement but this was a particularly nice place).
the following pictures show the difference between the two backpacker's resorts. magnums and bush village.
following the stressful events we went out for a beer and something to eat. then after some confusion we met up with dib.
our time in airlie was often spent relaxing by the lagoon (a swimming pool made because you can't swim in the sea due to the jellyfish). we met up with dib at the lagoon and had a meal and drinks with her one night. it was really nice to see a face from home. and talk about our experiences with someone like us.
somewhere between that night and the following day greg lost his debit card which again proved quite stressful. things like this effect you more than they would at home. though hopefully it's all sorted out now thanks to mother.
for the last two nights we discovered a mexican restaraunt and on tuesday had all you can eat chilli for 8 dollars.
dad (ray), i saw this and thought of you... it was a piggy bank.
all in all in between some stressfull times we had an amazing time up in queensland. hopefully our future travels will run a touch more smoothly!
Daydream Island
last week we spent two nights on daydream island, one of the smaller of the whitsunday islands.
when we arrived we were greeted by the island's resident band 'the bali boys' and given sea shell necklaces, which was a nice change from the cockroaches that greeted us at magnums!
we were taken into the hotel and given complimentary drinks and shown to our amazing room!
this is the view of the main foyer of the hotel from the top floor.
we spent most of our time at mermaid beach, with this as our view!
one of the locals from the island would show his face at least once a day, which was amazing as he came so close and would sneak up on unsuspecting holidaymakers giving them quite a shock!
the island is really small and it only takes about 10 minutes to walk from the north end (where our room, our pool and mermaid beach are) to the south end, which has a few shops, a bakery, another smaller pool and beach.
we had lunch at the bakery and if you sit outside you can sit right by the side of the man made lagoon style aquarium.
we tried and tried to get a good picture of this fish but it always shot past us, then we'd put the camera away and it would swim slowly by taunting us. we finally got a good'un though.
here's a few pictures from the south end of the island. the "mocktail" we are drinking was called an 'is it nemo' and was fantastic, we drank quite a few.
these are the three brothers. local legend says that the captain of the ship they worked on buried treasure on the island which the three brothers went back to find. once on the island they saw medusa who turned them to stone. it is said that if you can undo this curse they will show you where the treasure is buried.
ooo, another weird little story we found out while on daydream was that in the 1930's "knockabout adventurer" leslie thompson sailed his scooner through the whitsunday's on his way to the gold fields of new guinea. he drove onto rocks in a storm one night and the story and pictures made the papers in sydney. a sydney film director saw the picture of the swashbuckling sailor and offered him the lead role in his new film 'the wake of the bounty'. it was the beginning of the hollywood career of errol flynn. (we had a book about the history of daydream island in our room, which had loads of little facts and storys in)
anyway, back to our time at daydream...
on our first night on daydream we got dressed and went to see what there was to eat. we soon found out that there was only two restaraunts open and both required pre booking... luckily we still had some weet-bix (not to be confused with the far better english weetabix) left over from our stay in yorkeys knob. so we went back to the room and had weet-bix with tiny hotel portion milk and sugar (from the "tea and coffee making facilities!") ... which was a lot of fun!
the second night we ate at 'mermaids' a really nice restaraunt, which funnily enough is just off mermaids beach. we had some amazing soup there... rivalling that
of 'the hunters inn' (dad can you book me, you, greg and grandad in for another meal when we're back? mmm). anyway, after the meal we went for a walk along the beach and saw some wallabies! we were really close to them...
at the north end of the island the aquarium was far better than the one at the south end. this one was far bigger and had lots of sting rays, sharks and fish in and there was a lot more coral.
we found nemo hiding in the coral but his dad wouldn't come out for a picture.
and that's just about it... oh apart from greg running off with some girl... he soon got bored and came back though.
when we arrived we were greeted by the island's resident band 'the bali boys' and given sea shell necklaces, which was a nice change from the cockroaches that greeted us at magnums!
we were taken into the hotel and given complimentary drinks and shown to our amazing room!
this is the view of the main foyer of the hotel from the top floor.
we spent most of our time at mermaid beach, with this as our view!
one of the locals from the island would show his face at least once a day, which was amazing as he came so close and would sneak up on unsuspecting holidaymakers giving them quite a shock!
the island is really small and it only takes about 10 minutes to walk from the north end (where our room, our pool and mermaid beach are) to the south end, which has a few shops, a bakery, another smaller pool and beach.
we had lunch at the bakery and if you sit outside you can sit right by the side of the man made lagoon style aquarium.
we tried and tried to get a good picture of this fish but it always shot past us, then we'd put the camera away and it would swim slowly by taunting us. we finally got a good'un though.
here's a few pictures from the south end of the island. the "mocktail" we are drinking was called an 'is it nemo' and was fantastic, we drank quite a few.
these are the three brothers. local legend says that the captain of the ship they worked on buried treasure on the island which the three brothers went back to find. once on the island they saw medusa who turned them to stone. it is said that if you can undo this curse they will show you where the treasure is buried.
ooo, another weird little story we found out while on daydream was that in the 1930's "knockabout adventurer" leslie thompson sailed his scooner through the whitsunday's on his way to the gold fields of new guinea. he drove onto rocks in a storm one night and the story and pictures made the papers in sydney. a sydney film director saw the picture of the swashbuckling sailor and offered him the lead role in his new film 'the wake of the bounty'. it was the beginning of the hollywood career of errol flynn. (we had a book about the history of daydream island in our room, which had loads of little facts and storys in)
anyway, back to our time at daydream...
on our first night on daydream we got dressed and went to see what there was to eat. we soon found out that there was only two restaraunts open and both required pre booking... luckily we still had some weet-bix (not to be confused with the far better english weetabix) left over from our stay in yorkeys knob. so we went back to the room and had weet-bix with tiny hotel portion milk and sugar (from the "tea and coffee making facilities!") ... which was a lot of fun!
the second night we ate at 'mermaids' a really nice restaraunt, which funnily enough is just off mermaids beach. we had some amazing soup there... rivalling that
of 'the hunters inn' (dad can you book me, you, greg and grandad in for another meal when we're back? mmm). anyway, after the meal we went for a walk along the beach and saw some wallabies! we were really close to them...
at the north end of the island the aquarium was far better than the one at the south end. this one was far bigger and had lots of sting rays, sharks and fish in and there was a lot more coral.
we found nemo hiding in the coral but his dad wouldn't come out for a picture.
and that's just about it... oh apart from greg running off with some girl... he soon got bored and came back though.
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