I made it to Sydney on Dec, 31st and headed to the botanic gardens somewhen between 7 and 8 pm. The park was filled with people, who were having picnics there since 10 am, the queue in front of the toilets was as long as the chinese wall, and the people were cheering whenever someone came out again. I kept on walking to the head of the park, there was a path which they tried to keep open as long as possible by telling the people to move on...soon after I arrived they gave up , so I stand in second row for the 9 pm fireworks and in first row for the midnight fireworks, with the Harbour Bridge and the opera house right in front of me ( I was standing next to a girl who has been there since noon! ). The fireworks were awesome ( 75 th birthday of the bridge as well), I loved how the reflections of the fireworks illuminated the water of the harbour with all those sailing ships on it, and they had this parade of ships between the 2 fireworks. I explored the different quarters of Sydney during the next days: "The Rocks" with bars and the "Lowenbrau"-Biergarten, I walked across the Harbour Bridge, joined a tour through the opera house, walked through the botanic gardens several times, passed the chinese garden, walked through Chinatown and Kings Cross. I took a ferry to Manly ( Beach ) and hiked along the coastline of the Sydney Harbour Natural Reserve back to the Spit Bridge, where I took a bus back to downtown. After getting tired of walking around in a city I took the train into the Blue Mountains, where I stayed till sunday morning, doing several hikes, seeing the "3 Sisters", the Grand Canyon in Blackheath, and the Ruined Castle- a rock formation which was a little scaring to climb up on, but offered an amazing view over the surrounding landscapes once you made it to the top. Lots of stairs there as well to get down into and up out of the valley, every of them more then 900 steps. I headed back to Sydney and catched the bus down to Canberra, where I stayed for a night before heading to Melbourne, where I arrived some minutes ago. I'm happy I finally made it to the hostel, which took me a while as I had to figure out where this street is and which train I should take, in the end I asked my way through as I just wanted to go to bed...... after spending the whole afternoon and evening in the bus and after a bloke picked up my backpack from the bus and thought it to be his (as we have the same backpack), but he came back after a while, I guess he finally realised that this backpack was much to heavy for him, way more heavier than his half-filled backpack should be anyway...guys!!!