Ben & Hannah got engaged!!

The last few days have been torture, I've been desperate to tell the whole world that 'MY SISTER GOT ENGAGED'!!!!! So today I got to shout it off the harbour bridge! I'm soooo happy for Ben and Hannah and so excited for the wedding planning.

It's been hard being here when I desperately want to share with them their excitement. We've been calling and messaging but with the time difference I have to wait all day before I can talk to them. So now I spend half my time exploring the city whilst the other half thinking about weddings and hen dos!
Today we did a three hour walking tour with a fantastic guide, Edd reckons one of the best we've ever had. He walked us through the city explaining sections of their relatively short history. I actually enjoyed it being so recent, it's easier to imagine things from the 1800's. A few bits we learnt were:

The Sydney council spent $20million on fireworks every year for nye! They easily recoop this through parking tickets!

In the city the roads that run east to west are descriptive names such as market street or park road. The ones that run north to south are after important figures of Australian society.

Captain cook never came to 'Sydney', when he arrived he explored Botany Bay and then left. The reason the city was built where it is was because when the British arrived they realised there was no fresh water and the land was infertile in Botany Bay and they had to travel up to find somewhere they could live. Sydney had a small fresh water river and so they settled here. The harbour was naturally created during the ice age and is deepest in the world, full of fish which made it perfect for starting a community.

Early settlers bought camels over to Australia as they rightly assumed they would enjoy the climate in the outback. Once they were finished with the animals they released five camels into the desert to die. They didn't, and there are more camels in Australia than is Saudi Arabia.

Australia's coat of arms has a kangaroo and emu on it, these animals are chosen because they can't walk backwards and it represents Oz always moving forward. Advance Australia Fair. Australians seem proud to be able to say they eat both their animals on their coat of arms, the only country who can claim to do this!

There are about 50 million kangaroos in Australia, almost double the population of humans.

The Opera house was designed as part of a global competition and the architect became one of only two architects to have his work listed as a world heritage site in his lifetime. He was given a budget of $70million and of course it went way over that. They raised the rest of the money and more with a lottery set up to fund the construction. It ended up costing $102million.

In 2003 two protestors climbed the opera house in protest against the war in Iraq and painted NO WAR on the top in red. They were caught and fined $150,000, the amount it cost to clean the building. They raised the money by selling souvenir opera houses with 'no war' outside the building to tourists.

The bridge began construction in 1923 and the design was chosen because it needed less steel than the traditional suspension bridge design and would therefore be cheaper to build. The steel all came from Newcastle upon Tyne in England. It was paid for by British business men who only got paid back in 1988. The archway was considered a very strong structure once made but is difficult to maintain during the construction. They used big cables running back to the mainland to hold the arch until it was joined together in 1929. It was finally completed in 1932 and is sometimes referred to as the iron lung of Sydney because it was considered a life support, providing jobs to people during the Great Depression.

We also saw a number interesting statues, monuments and buildings along the way. Our guide Josh told us about the history of his family and where they had come from and about the First World War when they sent 200,000 men to France to fight. He also gave us in depth detail around the history of Australia and its native ancestors. The Australian history is not one they are completely proud of and despite being so short is very interesting!

We visited a street full of bird cages which is called the forgotten songs art memorial. There were recordings of birds chirping. The artist had been to the rainforest and recorded the sound of birds through the day and they are played in the street at the corresponding time to remind people of the species that would have been then when it was still forest.

We finished the tour with a spot of lunch at a sandwich bar which was highly recommended and didn't disappoint. We then walked the length of the harbour bridge which I loved but Edd got a bit jittery being so high up and above shark infested waters!! I got to shout about Hannah and Ben's engagement too which was fun!!

We tried to continue our explorations but after 7 hours of walking was decided we needed a rest. As it started to spit we made it back to our apartment for some rest, a shower and a sort out.

After a nap we headed back out to find a bar and a bite to eat but the bar we planned to go looked dead! After lots of walking around our local area (red light district) we found a cool pizza place and sat at the bar to share a pizza and add a few beers to the 'untapped' app.

We fly off to Brisbane tomorrow, we're very excited!