Great for when you need to type out some of those long emails on the move or heated Facebook chats! What a good idea!

This Sunday Damien, dad, Sanna and me went for a 2 hour drive from Sydney to the North West area of the Blue Mountains to visit the Glow worm tunnel I’ve always heard of. The final 30 km’s is on VERY rough unsealed road so I really don’t recommended taking a car you care about getting damaged possibly. From the car park at the end of the unsealed road it is only a very easy 1km walk to the tunnel. The tunnel used to be a old 400m long railway tunnel abandoned in the early 1900’s. Now glow worms have taken up residence.

At the entrance to the tunnel, it looks like Jurassic park

Due to incredibility wet month we’ve had, there was a lot of water in the tunnel. Remember to takes torches of course as its pitch black in the middle. When you do get the the middle, turn your touch off and look around and you will see the hundreds, possible thousands of glow worms all glowing a greeny bluey colour, they look like stars.

Its pitch black in the tunnel and the glow worms glow so faintly we couldn’t take any good photos of them.

Looking out to daylight after venturing through

Me and Damien walking to the tunnel

Naughty Terry eating scones on his diet

We went on an hour and a half guided tour of all the old ship building yard and buildings and bomb shelters and tunnels under the island, it was fascinating, would well recommend it.

Thanks for all that came to the Mardi Gras party and parade this year. Here is the video of the parade from the party, it took 3 hours to put together and 3 days to upload to YouTube as we run out of internet quota from watching too many HD movies off the net nooooooooo.

Videos 14 minutes long. Last year’s video was even longer! It’s hard to get over 30 minutes of footage down to just over 10, whichever float you cut out, they send me YouTube comments or messages complaining I cut them out, it happened last year!

Hope to see you next year, get your names in on the guest list early to avoid disappointment.

> Watch in HD here <

Quick photo update, here’s a photo of Oskar, Damien and Troy on the balcony before the parade.

Sanna and I on Sunday hired 2 single sea kayaks each and paddled out to Shark Island in the middle of Sydney harbour from Rose Bay.

It took us 15 mins to paddle there. It was a bit choppy when some of the bigger boats and speed boats went past, you just have point into the bow wave and ride over them. I was more thinking of sharks and seeing the jellyfish in the water, Sanna called me a sissy.

On the island there is a small shelter with some tales in it, there is a public toilet and some small picnic tables scattered around that’s it. The view back to the city and the harbour was very nice.

The public toilet was opened sided and had arguably the world’s best most beautiful view from a public toilet, check it out:

OK I borrowed this photo, I didnt really take it

With all my direct family here visiting us in Sydney we celebrated NYE for 2012 together, Alex and Doris Mosburger from Austria also joined us.

I arranged tickets to the private party area called ‘Lawn with a view’ run by the Sydney Botanical Gardens which is right behind the Sydney Opera house, an excellent view and no queuing up.

You get a food and drink hamper, some live acoustic music while your waiting for the fireworks and a excellent view. I have been twice now and I would recommend it for your next Sydney NYE.

Here are some photos from our NYE.

Here is our view with the Sydney harbour bridge just to the left of the photo. Here Alex is on the phone probably to family back in Austria.

Here is our picnic to watch the fireworks

Here are Alex, Doris, Nicki and Michael enjoying the food hamper that you get for dinner. The food was good but the alcohol was expensive, but everywhere is on NYE.

I couldn’t take any photos of the fireworks with my iPhone as they wouldn’t come out very well, but they were very good as always, especially he ones off the bridge.

Here is a video of the area we watched the fireworks from.

The first timers seeing the fireworks Alex, Doris and Michael thought they were excellent. This time dad didn’t get his dinner stolen by a possum that came down the tree.

On new years day we invited everyone to ours for a cooked breakfast, cooked on our new Webber barbie. Everything came out well and the cracked eggs cooked in capsicum (peppers) an idea we stole, was a good one.

Everyone enjoying their cooked breakfast on new years day 2012 at ours watching Jack Johnson videos on the TV.

Here we are with all of Sannas family together for Christmas lunch in her mums back garden, we had Turkey, Ham roasted vegetables and of course lots of desert.

Sanna and I looking stupid at the table with our Christmas cracker hats on. Do you like Sannas moustache, she’s  areal Arab girl

Sannas amazing Christmas pudding she makes every year is always a highlight for desert. It is a normal Christmas pudding but with added apricots and chocolate chips, it’s amazing with Bandy and Vanilla custard. It was very popular with everyone as always.

After Christmas lunch we all went to Suzie and Daniels and went in their swimming pool as it was quite a warm day at 27 degree’s.

I got to play with all the kids new Transformers they got for Christmas. They are a lot bigger and more complicated to transform than the Transformers I had when I was a child..

I’m looking forwards to my family arriving in 2 days now and for spending some good times with them and for NYE celebration at Sydney harbour.

Here is also a short video of the Christmas Eve carols at Martin place hosted by the Salvation Army.