Bonjour Sydney

Our flight to Sydney took around 3 hours from Christchurch and we arrived shortly after 6 O'clock on Monday evening. Even from a warm and sunny afternoon in New Zealand dusk in Australia, at a balmy 26c, felt quite altogether different reminding me of previous holidays to Portugal and Turkey stepping off the plane and greeted with an almost offensive blast of warm air.

We were greeted in the airport by my cousin Lorraine and her husband Bryan. I hadn't seen her in two decades so it was a unique moment in family history. Her mother (my Dad's sister) had another five sisters(!), another two of whom are also in Australia so flinging yourself off to far off destinations seems to be in the genes.

The evening was taken up getting introduced to the rest of the household comprising of my cousins daughter, Natalie, who is our age, her husband Stephen and their 3 offspring, Levi, Henry and George (in order of ascending age). George took great delight in stating quite matter of factly "You're in our house now!" which sounded like a scene in a horror movie where the victim finds themselves up shit creek without a paddle prior to said shit hitting the fan.

They are a fantastic family to live with - very kind and generous - and we owe them much gratitude for putting us up at the start of our new adventure.