09.01.10 Sydney's Northern Beaches

Tristan's very kindly offered her dad as a chaffeur to take us on a tour of Sydney's northern beaches and show us some of the beautiful places outside the city! We meet up with her at the Sydney Uni swimming pool where she teaches classes, after her morning shift finishes and get picked up by her dad in his flashy white Holden yute. We're extremely grateful to him for taking time out to show us round but he's also very keen for us to see it all and only wishes we were here for longer so he could take us for a longer trip into the outback! The air conditioned car is very welcome to us Brits, not used to the soaring temperatures.

Tristan loves it though- she doesn't seem phased at all by the sweltering heat. We drive out of the city north over the Spit Bridge, past Manly and on to the prettier northern beaches and up to the top of the peninsula to Palm Beach, where Home and Away beach and surf club scenes are filmed!

Palm Beach with Tristan and Mike

There's no film crew there- they do it all during the quiet winter months, but there's plenty of entertainment from the kitesurfers kicking up over the waves and jumping clear into the air. We spot a few blue bottle jellyfish washed up on shore, which can cause a nasty welt if you get stung. It's 4pm and the heat is still hanging around. Tristan's dad takes us round the coastal road to a lookout point with views across the waters of the bays and out to the ocean

and we take a short bush walk through the national park. The sekadas in the trees are starting to make their daily clicking which crescendos into a very loud racket as we negotiate our path watching out for big spiders and snakes. We come across historical Aboriginal cave art in the form of silhouetted hand prints made with red ochre and the pretty twisting branches of the Aussie eucalypts. A goana, large lizard, is being fed by a stupid family of picnickers but it gives us a chance to catch him on camera. Tristan's dad wants to show us kangaroo, often spotted on the way out of the national park at this time of evening when the temperature is starting to drop but, as always, when deliberately searching for wildlife it never shows it's face!