I woke a couple of times through the morning on hearing bottle banks being collected and such but generally slept well. We got up at 09:00 and chatted some more about Australia and Ian enjoyed a freshly made latte. A telephone call to a nearby car auction centre has prompted an in depth conversation about our potential mode of transport for touring Australia.
We went down to Bondi junction to get some state maps and an accommodation guide then we caught a bus back again to take a train to Kings Cross. There we walked passed some brilliant big birds which had white bodies, long black legs and big webbed feet and an excellent long curved black beak. At first I thought they were statues but then they moved. In Kings Cross we went to a car park which had a permanent car market on an underground floor. When the lift doors opened we found ourselves in the strangest situation. It was dingy. There were tons of station wagons parked up, plenty of campervans and a few four wheel drive vehicles. We wandered around, me feeling like we were in an African curio market, totally uncomfortable, and soon realised that the cars in the car market were in a poor condition and we couldn't trust a single one of them. Some of them were pretty expensive too considering their state. Obviously the owners were backpackers themselves who were desperately hoping to recover the money they spent buying the car in the first place and were hoping to extend their backpacking days by squeezing undue money from some other suckers. We soon left, adamant that we wouldn't be buying a vehicle. It was obviously an appropriate choice for travellers who had an indefinate period of time in Australia and who didn't really have a care whether the vehicle broke down whilst travelling, suitable for people travelling with friends who maybe had a bit of an idea about cars. We made our way to nearby Williams Street and must have gone in a dozen car rental companies to obtain quotes for six week periods. Eventually we opted for Hertz, surprisingly, who seemed to be quoting the most reasonable price and which also had a very good feel about it. It cost an amazing AUD 1,900 which is slightly over our budgeted figure, surprisingly...
Satisfied with our arrangement we wandered into the City to take in a bit of Sydney. There are wonderful buildings around the City and I saw my first glimpse of the harbour bridge on the way in. We strolled aimlessly around for a couple of hours and then ate some cake and drank some iced chocolate in a coffee house, the iced chocolate tasting like a very cold milkshake, before making our way back to Mark's flat in Bronte. Before we got on the train in the City I had the symptoms of a migraine, diminishing eyesight, throbbing headache and by the time we had transferred to a bus and began to walk up the last stretch of road to the flat I had developed pins and needles and loss of coherance again, not being able to think of the correct words, speechless and not recognising words or place names, even New Zealand was unrecognisable. It was reminiscent of my worrying experience in Silver Sands campsite in Dar Es Salaam.
Back at Mark's flat I was put straight to rest having taken some good pills and remained in darkness for 5 hours, during which time I made a slow improvement but still had the headache 6 hours later although several hours after that I had managed to regain some speech control and recognised what or who Ian was...
I shared a slice of pizza with Ian and rested for the evening. I took a couple more pills before going to bed and plodded through our Australia wide accommodation guide feeling rather deterred by the inflated prices.
We were lucky to be introduced to our first Hunters spider running across the window pane. He was trying to get inside the flat but was stopped by Breedy who eagerly spotted the large fella from a distance. He was a big lad with furry legs and Ian and I were glad he remained on the outside of the flat and we could watch him move swiftly across the glass.