WE MADE IT.....!

We arrived in Sydney in the morning and had two hours to get through Immigration and Customs and get to our connecting flight to Canberra. There was a big long queue at Immigration, but that went without a hitch. You must declare food, wooden items and jewellery over a certain value, so we headed for the "Something to Declare" lane, which was very very long. On our last day in Gosport we had a few items left over i.e. wooden spoon, oven glove, tin of dog food etc. and Steph chucked them into a suitcase. She had to pay duty on her jewellery (as she was planning to sell it) that she was carrying and she was being dealt with at another counter. The Customs officer was happy with the food items we had brought with us, but he wanted to see the dog food. I asked her which bag it was in - she said "one of those 16!!!!". We got the keys, and started opening, thankfully the tin was in the first bag we opened! They had to confiscate it with a snide remark along the lines of "you can buy dog food here you know!!!". Anyway, that behind us, we made it to our connecting flight and, as it was only a small propeller plane, it didn't fly very high so we had beautiful views of the hills, valleys, towns etc.

We were met by Craig, Nadine and Kel who shared our bags between them and took us to The Griffin Hotel in Canberra. Craig later took us on a drive to the look out point where you can see the entire city (see above). It was a beautiful view. We are very impressed with the layout of Canberra, the roads are great and the traffic is very quiet, even in rush hour. It is hard to believe this is the Capital City.

One down side we have come across here is the flies. When we came out of the airport they were flying all round your face, in your ears etc. Paul thought maybe we'd landed in Africa!!!

The next day we were made very welcome at Craig and Nadine's house. They held a barbeque for us (our first Aussie one!!!) and we met a lot of people who Paul will be working with. We all had a great time, and we made it to 10 p.m. before feeling the jet lag set in.

Many thanks to Craig, Nadine and Kel for the warm welcome we received and for all their assistance in helping us to settle in and get all the necessities/administration sorted out.