Being Sydneysiders

We were sat on the plane on the runway for about two hours before our flight took off towards Sydney and it was during this time that I think it really hit us that we were about to embark on a life changing journey. On our last day in the states we arrived at San Fran airport hours early for our flight and were lucky enough to be bumped to an earlier plane to Los Angeles. The journey took us just under two hours and was on one of those bumpy little planes with just two seats on each side. The person across the aisle from us was even offered a complimentary drink to move to the back in order to ‘balance the plane’ and the seat back pocket advised us to rip up our chair and use it as a floatation device if we landed on water… Even so, it was a smooth flight and we even got to see the Hollywood sign in the distance just before we landed at Los Angeles International. Due to the earlier arrival in LA we also got quite tiddly at the gate bar whilst waiting for our next flight which made the two hours sat on the runway much easier.

It took us 15 hours to get to Sydney and as we flew over the beautiful city in the morning sunshine (having skipped an entire day!) I instantly fell in love and fairly quickly settled into being a “Sydneysider”. We lived in Paddington for two calendar months and I’m going to attempt to fit that into two blog posts, so I’ve decided to divide this post into sub-headings rather than going through it chronologically.

Life in Sydney

I absolutely loved living in Sydney and it is truly one of my favourite places in the entire world. I am not deluded enough, however, to say it is one of the best places to live as it has plenty of flaws. I will TRY to maintain a balanced view as we go through (although this will be a struggle for me because I may as well be sat here wearing an ‘I Heart Sydney’ t-shirt.)

We lived in a suburb called Paddington, which is in Sydney’s east and almost perfectly located between the city and Bondi beach. “Paddo” is a wealthy suburb and it cost us an absolute fortune to live there, but we adored our teeny tiny studio flat that we booked on Airbnb before we arrived (I intend on writing a post about the pros and cons of Airbnb at a later date).

There can be no denying that life in Australia is very expensive and is often a huge shock to backpackers that spend months and months travelling round South East Asia, only to find that the same amount of money lasts them about 4 weeks in Aus. It can be easier to eat more cheaply on a vegetarian diet as the cost of a lot of fruit and vegetables can be much cheaper than back in the UK due to the vast array of produce that are home grown. Being the snobs that we are, however, we decided to try and live to the same standards that we had back home and ended up spending tonnes. Food in Sydney for us mostly came in the form of Marley Spoon boxes. We originally signed up with Hello Fresh, having had a great experience with them back home, only to find that the same level of service was not provided over here. Though slightly more expensive, Marley Spoon boxes gave us a great range of nutritional meals to eat and encouraged us to eat at home as it would be incredibly easy to go out for dinner every night of the week in Paddo. We ate food from the boxes three nights a week and when we weren’t wasting money on them, we shopped mostly at Coles and Aldi. The other main shop here is Woolworths, but is more your Waitrose level of quality and we’re not rich enough to shop there frequently – although we do love to splash out on their smoked cheese slices which are amazing (although probably just processed garbage). Drinking alcohol in Australia is also very expensive (unless you’re used to regularly drinking in London, which we weren’t) so we quickly learned it was easier to buy in bulk and drink at home. We never succumbed (and fortunately have still not given in) to the backpackers favourite of buying “goon” bags, which are 4 or so litres of wine in a box – rapidly discarded and carried around just in the bag – and may contain traces of fish, eggs and milk?!?!? We do have lots of friends who swear by them though as they are cheap cheap cheap. The final thing to note about the cost of living is that toiletries, even the supermarket own brands, can be exceptionally expensive. If you’re coming to Aus straight from the UK I would recommend bringing your own as stocking up on essentials seems to add lots of money to our weekly shopping bill.

One caveat to this is sunscreen, buy it here and buy factor 50, don’t kid yourself that your dainty European skin can cope with the UV in Australia – it can’t. We arrived in Sydney at the very end of spring and spent two months of summer there, meaning we both got horribly burnt at least twice. Rich did probable lasting damage to himself sunbathing on the beach on Boxing Day and spent two days pretty much unable to move as it was so painful. WEAR FACTOR 50. The Aussies live by “slip, slap, slop” and now so do we.

Finally, my beauty regime basically went out of the window in Sydney. I love getting my hair and nails done, but once again it is ridiculously expensive in Australia. Rich got a haircut in Sydney that cost him $40 and one in Melbourne that cost $50. Fortunately, they like to serve alcohol with haircuts, something I feel should definitely become more mainstream at home.

Working in Sydney

We were very cocky when we left the UK, sure that we would be able to find jobs instantly given that we were older and had lots of experience in our field. Although we were both working within two weeks of arriving (and we spent most of the first week touristing very hard),it was a very testing time for us and made us question whether moving to Australia had been the right move.

You have to play a bit of a game over here. Very few jobs that are advertised online are advertised directly by the employer and mostly involve having to meet with a recruitment company (consultants are usually British or Irish and generally don’t have too much of a clue) and then they find you a job. We both found it incredibly frustrating in both Sydney and Melbourne and finding work was the lowlight of our time in both cities.

Our working lives in Sydney once we gained employment, however, more than made up for the rigmarole of finding jobs. Pay rates in Australia are very good and between us we were earning almost $2000 per week for very little work, although I must admit that I definitely got the better deal out of the two of us. I worked for a very chilled online company making outbound calls (I will forever be a little kinder to annoying call centre people who phone me after that experience), whilst Rich got stuck working in accounts payable for a logistics company. I had a desk on the 18th floor of a building overlooking the harbour bridge and the opera house, Rich had an office on top of a warehouse. I had complimentary tea, coffee, any kind of breads and spreads you can think of, healthy and naughty snacks, a ping-pong table and giant Jenga in my staff room whilst Rich had an empty room overlooking the warehouse (he did enjoy the coffee though). Also, it took me less than 20 minutes to get from my front door to work in the CBD, whereas Rich spent an hour on a bus, a train and then walked 10 minutes to get to his office in Mascot which he described as the ‘Milton Keynes of Sydney’.

Oh, and I got to finish work at 3pm every Friday and get drunk in the office.

Touristing in Sydney

There is SO much to do in Sydney and one of the best things about living there is we got to take our time with it. It would be impossible to list all of the amazing places we got to go so I will just talk about a few of our favourites.

Opera Bar: One of the most iconic sights of Australia, and probably the image that people think of first when they think of Sydney, is the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. We were unaware, however, that underneath the Opera House is a bar that is a complete sun trap and a great place to have a few drinks watching the beautiful people. Not the cheapest of places, but one of our favourite places to spend time in the sunshine. The Searock Grill is about 200m away and served the most beautiful white chocolate desert I think I’ve ever had.

Darling Harbour: Just a short ferry ride away from the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, lies the beautiful Darling Harbour. Here you’ll find an array of awesome restaurants and bars, as well as the Sydney Maritime Museum and HMS Endeavour – which Rich used to be a pirate on! Darling Harbour is a tourist haven and fairly pricey, but just a short walk away is our “local” (because we went there more than three times) ‘El Loco’, which has loads of cheap drinks and really yummy food.

Taronga Zoo: Potentially my favourite place in Sydney, this is so much more than your stereotypical zoo. The bird show alone is worth the entry fee, with sensational views across the harbour onto the city. The nocturnal house is one of the best I’ve ever been in, with great views of native Aussie animals that you would struggle to see even if you lived here for years, and Rich particularly enjoyed ordering a ‘Dirty Granny’ cider at ‘The View’ restaurant.

I could honestly talk for hours about how much I loved Sydney and how it was a great start to our Australian adventure, but deep down I know the best thing about being a Sydneysider was that I got to experience it all with my best friend and the love of my life. I would highly recommend it to anyone who ever gets the chance.

#Love #RTW #Sydney #Australia #Adventure #Zoo