Neil and Bindya Around the World: Christmas with the Harris Family

Ok so we haven't written for a while and so in order for the few readers we have left (yes we know you are bored with us) we will tell you about our Christmas and New Year.

Just to get you up to speed on the final part of our North Coast tour we were heading back down to Sydney and stopped off at a place called Nimbin. It was famous in the 60s for hosting the Age of Aquarius Festival. It has a chilled back lifestyle with tie dye, organic, and indian jossticks on sale. We spent the night here and spent it in the pool at our very cheap caravan park, sampling the local beer (lovely) listening to music at the local pub, seeing weird and psychadellic painting with 3D glasses. We had a great time chilling out and enjoying the atmosphere. Thank you to Ben Akande who's wedding gift went to our time there. Postcard should be at your mum's house Ben hope you like it!!!!

Nimbin - bit hippy...

We drove down and went to Port Macquaire for our final evening, soaking up the beach atmosphere and heading out for dinner and enjoying the last day with our friend...the caravan who made it through our month with very little problems.

We headed back to Sydney to be greeted by Rach (now off for the summer) and Broph who we were now staying with. They took us to the memebrs only club overlooking Bondi for dinner, where there was a great small live band and a great view. However we saw from afar a cluster of dark grey clouds come closer and closer to Bondi and then the heavens opened and it poured and poured down. Not bad for us as we decided to go back and catch up on the sleep however Rach and Broph went to see Bon Jovi – in open aired seating!!!! The next few days in Sydney were spent with Rach and Broph, Rach showing us a 6km walk along the coast from Bondi to Coogee. Great for the legs and some amazing views...we were rewarded with a great pub and beers.

On Xmas eve Rach drove us up to her folks place in Terrigal, North of Sydney, stopping only to get her waxing done while we wandered around a shopping centre full of things we couldn't buy. We met Eve and Jimmy, who were very welcoming, and spent the night having a few drinks and eating lots of food. Highights of the evening were moving the pine dresser downstairs, seing photos of a young Rach at school and listening to Jimmy relentlessly mock Rachael for her lack of sense of direction. As Rach's sister, Sarrah, had recently married, there was loads of champagne left over as well as wine and the utilities room was well stocked with beer so we knew we were in for a good few days. Our room downstairs was lovely (due to being built down the side of a very steep hill, the house was upside down so you entered on the top floor with the kitchen, living room, master bedroom, massive verandah and went downstairs for the bathroom, spare bedrooms etc) and was better than most hotels we've stayed in.

Jimmy on the barbie

Next morning we were up bright and early (about 10) and as I was downstairs I heard Bindya being offered a glass of champers – I thought, 'It's going to be one of those days then...' Jimmy was preparing the charcoal barbecue for the enormous turkey and Eve was pottering around the kitchen getting stuff together for dinner. Bindya was immediately roped in to prepare the vegetables and I did important things outside. OK – actually, I sat out on the balcony drinking beer and talking to Rach's brother, Andrew. At the time it felt as though I was helping. I did have to help Rach peel some vegetables though because she was having difficulty with the peeler. And I shelled some prawns, even though I've never done it before. We started out by eating a tonne of oysters and prawns – not my favorites but I gave it a go. I have never seen people eat so many prawns in my life – they'd bought 3 kilos in the first instance and went out to get more the next day. Then, after a few more bevvies, we tucked into the main event.

Beer and oysters

The whole thing was very nice, mainly due to Bindya's overseeing of the preparation. Her reputation as a good chef had obviously made an impression. During an argument between Jimmy and Andrew about whether the turkey was ready to come off the barbecue or not, Andrew dealt a decisive blow by saying, 'Bindya said it was ready to come off'.' Jimmy then let him do it.

Dinner - thanks Bindya!

Rach and Andrew

I ate a couple of plates then had one more for good measure before joining Rach and Eve on their chocolate eating marathon. Her mam is as bad as Rach in terms of chocolate eating and we heard a few stories about furtive nighttime chocolate foraging. Jimmy told us that he once replaced the drinking chocolate powder in the tin with gravy granules for a laugh and was woken by surprised screaming in the middle of the night. We tidied up and Eve brought out a little sports trivia game. Bindya and me both thought we'd be shown up by the sports mad Aussies but we actually beat them (like in Ashes). There was only about 50 questions or so and we decided that when Broph came over from his family, we'd play it again but not tell him that we'd already found out the answers. We were all excited by this and couldn't wait to start. Broph had had a dry Xmas with his lot so was ready for a beer or two when he got here. Immediately after he'd had his dinner, Eve brought out the game. We practised our 'buzzer' sounds and started with the first question. It was something about sumo wrestling or something. Everyone except Broph buzzed in - then sat there looking at each other as we realised we couldn't remember the answer. We started to do slightly better after that. Everytime someone got an answer correct, they nominated someone else – i.e. Broph – to have a drink. It was not long before he was quite drunk – luckily for us as Andrew would buzz in with the correct answer when Eve had only got as far as saying, 'How many...?' At the end, Eve brought out some prizes. Broph got an old toilet roll tube and Bindya got a champagne glass and a bus timetable (because she won).

Broph gets beaten on another question

The winners prizes!

Jimmy had gone to bed by this point and it was getting lateish – about 9 or 10. We 'hooked into' some of our presents to each other such as a bottle of Bundaberg rum from Rach to us (she also got us a speedboat ride around Sydney harbour) and a bottle of Jim Bean from us to Broph. Then we went to Skype our families. We did Bindya's Mum and Dad first – just speaking briefly to say we'd call again when they were round at Kiran and Manesha's so we could see the boys as well. Then we Skyped my lot who were already all together – you'll understand now if we seemed a little drunk... Everyone over in the UK seemed to have a cold or 'flu but it was good to see everyone as we are always thinking about them, especially at Christmas. Elliot, my latest nephew, looked a bit bigger but the rest of the kids were a bit busier with the important business of opening presents. Everyone in Essex was also doing well – sorry if I mocked Arsenal too much Jish!

Boxing Day was spent watching the Ashes and eating ham. We were all rather hungover. I'd never been that bothered with cricket but I enjoyed watching it today even though it was slightly uncomfortable seeing our Aussie hosts so utterly gutted by watching their team go all out for less than 100. We went to the pub for lunch then came home and chilled out for the rest of the evening.

Later the next day we met Grandpa Neil Harris - this had been confusing over the last few days as everyone calls him 'Neil' and not 'Grandpa' as he felt he was too young to be a Granddad – and his young wife before heading back to Bondi.

We took a day to visit the North Beaches (somewhere that we bothed liked and could see ourselves living if we went baclk to Australia) and check out where we had planned to get married. We also looked at a couple of restaurants and chose one which looked a little bit quirky and interesting. The beach was nice and small but quite busy. We stopped off at some headland on the way back which had spectacular views across Sydney Harbour. This is where we hoped to have a spot for NYE.

Shelly Beach - we want our wedding on this spot...

Sydney harbour - we want New Year on this spot...

NYE arrived and we spent the day getting up late, heading for a spot of shopping before getting ready and heading out to grab a good spot for the Sydney fireworks (as we had seen on the TV people camping last night for a spot) we gathered it wasn't like Britain where you can show up at 11.30pm and get a good spot on the Thames for the fireworks. We also had to get in before 4pm with the booze before they did bag checks...as it was a booze free zone.....but there was no way we were having a sober new year. So Broph dropped us off and me, Neil and Rach grabbed a great spot of the Harbour and Bridge. As we were not as organised as we could have been we didn't have the booze we bought as it was in Rach's car in another part of Sydney so Me and Neil kept the space while Rach and Broph got the booze, food, mixer and cooler boxes. It began to get busy and full of families who would say to their kids “You can't drink that orange juice, it's for adults only” meaning they were bringing in booze as well. Once we were all together Me and Neil went for a walk to see what else was going on in the area and it was carnage as teenagers were around the top area obviously drunk from I'm guessing cramming in lots of booze before they got in or smuggling in some booze but starting way too early to reach midnight. There were girls on the floor throwing up and then boys trying to kiss them after this event...it was only 6pm at this time. They're young and I'm sure will learn so enough. I felt a little sorry for a group of adults in this area who thought they had a great spot but now were surrounded by 10 – 17 year olds getting pissed. Police were on control and luckily were not bothered by the adults but keeping an eye on the “youngsters” Me and Rach spent some time looking at the girls who dressed like they were working a street corner or off to some famous night club with very little on. This was especially funny as they would wear short dresses and skirts with not much on underneath and a very large wind coming off the harbour...we had to cover up the boys eyes a number of times. The boys however dressed in the most casual gear they could find as they knew they would still pull due to the amount of drunk girls with little on. This amused us and kept us entertained for a number of hours as we began to drink.

Our view

"Gen Ys"

Our camp

By 9pm were the family fireworks which I would say are a lot better then London's fireworks. At this point a lot of families with small kids left leaving the adults and teenagers to have a little more space. At this point we cracked on with some serious drinking, we had 3 different spirit bottles to get through between the 4 of us and so began to play numerious drinking games.

By the time we got to midnight we were pretty well into it and the main fireworks were spectacular – lots of oohing and aahing. We watched that, finished off the booze, had our photos taken with the police while trying to pretend to be sober and headed up to the nearby block of flats where a friend of Broph's sister had a flat. He had got 3 wristbands to get in as it was cordoned off. Rach, Bindya and Broph went in then broph took off his wristband and passes it to me through the fence. I tried to put it on but as I passed the security it fell off. I just picked it up, apologised and kept walking. We went up to the flat and had a drink and chatted to the people there (probably...). Afterwards we walked around for a while looking for a bar but couldn't really get in anywhere but Bindya miraculously managed to flag down a taxi. We hopped in and chatted to the Indian driver for a bit about where to find a good curry etc. and got home pretty quickly.