Wollongong

A cold front has hit the Sydney and the surrounding area, which gives us some respite from the scorching heat. Unfortunately the front also brought a load of fog and rain with it. It’s not so bad though as we are driving down to Wollongong, the third biggest city in New South Wales. It is around the same size as Canberra and sits on the coast 80km south of Sydney. It has the royal national park bordering it to the north and miles of beaches on its eastern side. We are staying in Keiraleigh Hostel, which on first impressions is one of the better hostels we have stayed in. The room is an excellent size and the hostel seems reasonably quiet. Little touches like free sweets in the dining area probably sway our decision considerably.

On arriving the weather was hideous so we only did a bit of food shopping and a walk around the town centre - which is a 5min walk from the hostel. After dinner we headed to the cinema for our second film of the trip - James Camerons epic return to the big screen, Avatar. The film was very beautiful with bright colours and incredible special effects. To attempt summing up the film: it is about an alien race of skilful warriors Na’avi who are twice the size of humans and inhabit the hostile planet of Pandora. The native people are under siege for the valuable stone ‘Unobtainium’ by Americans (who else?). The Americans have created ‘Avatars’ which allow some of their members to mentally bond with dummy Na’avi bodies (grown in labs - run with it!!) so that they may appear as Na’avi people. The first half of the film is a love story between one of the humans and a Na’avi princess while the second half errupts into some spectacular action scenes as the humans get impatient and decide to force the Na’avi people from their land to obatin the ‘Unobtainium’. Overall the story wasn’t the best but the film is still worth a look. The merging of computer effects and real-life seems to improve all the time and this film is another rung up the ladder to the inevitable situation of where we won’t be able to tell what is real and not real anymore.

Tomorrow Andrea has two sessions to do and we will have a look around the city a bit more. If it is nice we may even hit the beach to work on our tans...