Week 25: Blue Mountains, Family Leaving and Return to the Gong

Our week once again started off with a flight. We drove down to Cairns to get our flight back to Sydney. On our way we stopped off at Kurunda for a picnic lunch and then popped into Cairns for a quick look around. Our flight went smoothly once again, the bushfire smoke that we could see from the plane were spectacular and the sunset was also pretty great. On arrival we picked up our third and final hire car and headed up to the Blue Mountains in the dark.

I took the family on a "little" walk around Wentworth Falls, what I was expecting to be a 2.5 hr walk ended up being closer to 4 hours but my family really enjoyed it so it was all good despite our tired legs. 

It was NYE so we went out for a really great Italian meal and watched the firework on TV. We had a late start to 2014 but eventually got going and had a little but hot walk to a little waterfall and back. We then made it to Leura for a little look round which was a nice little place with boutiquey shop, not that we bought anything! By this time it was late afternoon and we headed over for a stop off at the 3 sisters, which were packed so we didn't stay long. In the evening we went out for another great meal, this time it was some great pizza at another Italian place.

Thursday signalled the end of my families visit to Australia and the beginning of their journey back to the UK. From the Blue Mountains we went over to Cronulla to go on a very busy beach before looking round the shops and then heading over to Sutherland to drop me off at my international buddies place. We were greeted with a magnificent spread of nibble for afternoon tea. Before I knew it, it was time to say goodbye to my family again, the next time I will see them will be back in a UK Airport... scary hey! The evening passed watching a few films.

Friday we took a trip out to the shops but I didn't buy anything and watched some more films, the highlight was definitely The Hobbit. Now those of you who know me may or may not know that I just can't get my head around Lord of the Rings but the Hobbit on the other hand was awesome. Because of its awesomeness saturday morning we headed out to go and see the second film in the cinema, once again a brilliant film! We had a burger out for lunch and headed back to cronulla beach for the arvo. In contrast to my previous visit where the ocean was as flat as a pancake this time the waves were pretty impressive! I made my way back to Wollongong and Kooloobong in the evening. It was nice being back in what I classify as my Australian "home" in Kooloobong. I popped over to a fellow poms birthday for a few drinks but decided to have a relatively early night.

The week ended in a trip to my favourite shop ever... the farmers market. I also had the task of fixing my broken laptop. Thank to those who gave me advice on it, so it turns out my hard drive on my laptop had failed so I purchased a new HD in town (pretty cheap aswell) and manually replaced the internal HD and then reinstalled windows and hey presto I saved myself the cost of a new laptop or a $150 per hour professional repair service. Its safe to say I am chuffed to bits! As a treat to me fixing my laptop I decided to book my 4 week trip to New Zealand whoop!