Believe it or not, travelling around, visiting attractions, seeing the sights and generally sustaining a living costs money. I’ve been doing a few sums over the last couple of days with sobering results. In my first week in Sydney, I spent an average of over £50 a day. Now to put into perspective, that means I spent the same in one week in Australia as I did in one month in Thailand. Of course, I expected and budgeted to spend more in Oz - prices are dearer and for my purposes there is more available to do. But even so I should be able to economise to a little better than £50 a day.
I’ve looked at my outgoings to see where the money is ending up:-
There’s not much I can do about the first two, it’s going to cost me at least £25 a day to live. I could probably spend less on food, but I’m just so hungry all the time out here. To be fair, in that first week over here I did go everywhere and do everything - I’ve pretty much covered everything Sydney has to offer, and from now on there should be less attractions and city prices as I move up the east coast. Today I decided to see how little I could spend in a day, and here’s how I got on:-
Which gives a total of £22.30, or $55AUSD. So today I’ve spent less than half my daily average for last week. Now I know it’s possible to get by fairly cheaply I can plan my weeks to be a bit more cost efficient.
That out the way, I can tell you what I’ve been up to. Thursday, Kirsty came over to the city and we got a ferry to Taronga Zoo, which was a good day out. We watched a bird show (the winged variety, unfortunately) that was interesting: eagles, owls, peregrine falcons (here, Kes!) and the like. I stayed in at the hostel at night and watched Fear Factor and Celebrity Poker on Fox. Yesterday I caught the 10am ferry to Manly, Kirsty and I spent the day chilling on Manly and Shelley beach. Got a Subway at lunchtime (footlong, for sure) and went out for a meal with her friend Dawn and boyfriend Ryan at night. The first restaurant we went we waited an hour and fifteen minutes so we walked out and didn’t have to pay for our drinks!
Today I was back at Bondi, and took the coastal walk to Tamarama beach where there were 3m waves crashing down. Tonight I’m staying in my dorm room - the entire room is full of Brazilians as of yesterday and they’ve asked me to join them for a drink. I don’t think it will be long before the conversation turns to football.
Tomorrow I leave Sydney, flying up to Byron Bay to meet up with Foley, another Brackley-boy-abroad.