11:17
Hi everyone. I hope that you are well. My name is Christian and welcome to my channel, Backpacking Bananas. So, I arrived in Sydney actually about a month ago now, but I haven't really filmed anything because it's been a little chaotic. So, in this video, I want to get you up to speed. If you haven't watched the channel recently, over the past month, my boyfriend Ben and I have been driving across Australia. We've actually been relocating our whole lives from Perth in Western Australia to Sydney in New South Wales. and we did the whole thing on a big budget driving in his Mazda 6. We did a mixture of camping in our swag, glamping, Airbnbs, host. We drove all along the southern
coast, so it was over 5,000 km. We revisited a lot of places that we'd already been to, but we also visited a lot of new places for the first time. It was a really cool experience, but I got to be honest because we didn't have a plan. We didn't have a big budget. We didn't have a proper setup for that. I'm really glad that it's over. And I'm so pleased that we finally arrived in our new home, Sydney. We actually drove to Sydney from Melbourne all in one day, which was not the original plan. We did want to take the coastal route and spend a few days doing it, but because we ended up spending more time in Melbourne than we had initially planned, we were just like, you know what? Let's just get
this road trip over and done with now. So, we bombed it to Sydney in one day. Got a pie and chips along the way. Ben had a real highlight seeing the Doug on a Tucker box. If you're doing a big drive between Melbourne and Sydney, make sure you call past Gunder guy and see the dog on a box. Holy [__] IT'S A DOG ON A TACO BOX. I'd never seen this viral meme before, but he was very excited. He even bought a t-shirt. I initially thought I might have a bit of FOMO not driving along the coast because I know that there's loads of beautiful places to see along the way. But then I thought, you know what? Well, since Sydney is going to be our new base, we can just do weekend trips to all of those places in between
Melbourne and Sydney and actually take our time to see these places. And it's nice having the realization of, oh, I'm not in a rush. I live here now. But that evening that we did arrive in Sydney, oh my gosh, I think it was the most torrential rain I've ever seen. And yet, I did still feel a little bit like Mia in The Princess Diaries, like, "Look at the window, princess. Welcome to Govia," just because it felt really special and surreal arriving in the city that I'm now going to be calling my home. It felt very cinematic. And I love when life and travel feels like you're in a movie. And I think that we should romanticize those moments a little bit more. But despite that, I was feeling so worn out when
arriving in Sydney. And I didn't film any of it. And actually, like I said, I've now been here for almost a month. So, in this video, I just wanted to have an honest chat with you about how I'm feeling, what this first month has been like in Sydney and what the plan is going forward. And if you're from the UK watching this, do you know what has started this week? I'm a celebrity. Get me out of here. And Ben, who is from New Zealand, has never watched it, but I love it. So, I'm getting him to watch it with me. If you don't know, you cannot watch anything that's on ITVX without a VPN. See, look, it's blocked due to our broadcast and contact lens says you can only watch ITVX in the UK, which feels weird
considering it's filmed here, but anyway. So, I'm using Surf Shark, who are kindly the sponsors of today's video. I will be switching my location to the UK. And once I've done that, I can go back to I'm Celebrity and it is available. How good is that? And you can use Surf Shark to change the virtual location on any of your devices to pretty much anywhere in the world, wherever you need to be, depending on what service or media that you want access to. What Surf Shark also does is it turns your public Wi-Fi connection into a private one. Why is that useful? Well, when you are connected to a free public Wi-Fi network, let's say in the airport or a cafe or a hotel, for example, your device is actually at risk
of being hacked via that connection. However, when you switch your Surf Shark on, it acts like a virtual shield on that connection so that none of those evil hackers can get into your device. Surf Shark is one of the only VPNs which you can get access to on an unlimited number of your devices with just the one account. So, right now I'm using it on my laptop, but I can also use it on my iPad, on my phone. And you guys can get an extra four months of Surf Shark when you use my code backpacking, or you can head straight to surfshock.com/backpacking. And the link for that will be in the description as well. What a lot of people don't know is that sometimes when
you are using a VPN to stream something, aircasting to your TV may not work. So, it's definitely worth investing in something which allows you to connect an HDMI cable to your laptop. So, I've got this thing here. I will link this in the description. It's from Amazon. I can plug the HDMI cable straight into the laptop. Anyway, back to now being in Sydney. We are so lucky that we both have several friends who live here in the city because not only have we had places to stay, but just knowing people around and having that network really helps you find your feet in the city, which I'm just so grateful for because, you know, I've done this working holiday visa thing, arriving by myself in the city when I know no one. And it's
completely doable and it's exciting, but there's just that level of comfort and home and community when you already know people. Also, the first friends that we stayed with was one of my best friends, Diana and her partner, Matt. They're both doctors and they live in Bondi. And if you've seen the end of the previous episode in St Kilda, I like split my toe open whilst back flipping off St Kilda Pier. And it was not a pretty injury, but as soon as I arrived in Sydney, I had Dr. Diana working on my toe, so it didn't get infected thankfully. But oh my god, I love the Bondi lifestyle. I've said before and I'll say it again. I will never be a Bondi's Pilates girl cuz I'm just not the biggest Pilates fan.
But the beach walks are just so nice. You're not too far from Centennial Park, which is a great spot to run around. Actually, I did a long run that went all the way around Centennial Park and then down to the coast and then from Bronty to Bondi. It was brilliant. I find the vibe of the eastern suburbs to be really good. And actually, I discovered a new walk and it's a coastal walk from Dover Heights to Camp Cove Beach. They've actually built a brand new boardwalk which kind of goes along the cliff side and it's incredible. Arguably better than the Coogi to Bondi Walk which is very famous and like everyone knows about it. I feel like not everyone knows about that other walk. It was much less
busy and we even took a detour like down the cliff into this gorge. It felt like we were really exploring and yet we were like 10 minutes from Bondi. And whilst in the Bondai area, we also went to Randwick a few times, actually specifically because they have a cinema called Rit Cinema where if you get a free membership every Tuesday, it is just $8 to go watch any movie. How good is that? So, yeah, you could probably tell from my enthusiasm that I am loving the Eastern suburbs. I love the vibe. I could definitely see myself living there. The cons are the public transport like around the eastern suburbs is not very good. There's not like loads of buses or trains to get around. Also, the
parking can be a little bit chaotic. So, what I'm thinking if we move to the eastern suburbs that I might invest in a moped and a motorcycle license because I think on my car license, I can legally only drive a moped up to 50cc and it can go a maximum of like 50 km/h, which is okay. But I feel like if I'm committing to getting a moped, there are going to be times where I'm probably going to want to travel further and faster occasionally. And in that instance, I'm going to need a motorcycle license. If anyone has any experience getting a moped, getting a motorcycle license in New South Wales, please let me know. I'm very interested. And our other friends who live in the city live in Kuraba Point, which is
another incredible area, but so different. So the commute if you're working in the CBD, it was literally a 10-minute ferry which goes past the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House and you're in the middle of Circular Key in literally 10 minutes. So when we were there, I decided that I was going to work in Weiwork every single day just so I could do that commute and feel the vibes of being a Sydney ferry commuter. It was wonderful. The downsides to living there, apart from the ferry commute, I felt a little bit isolated. You're not super walkable to anything.
There was one cafe, but there wasn't any other shops that were really close by. It also wasn't really vibey, so perhaps a good spot like years into the future, but is it somewhere that I would want to live over the next few years? Not so sure. But how is Sydney feeling so far? Honestly, it does just feel right to be here. This was the original plan like over a year ago when I decided I wanted to move to Australia. I said I wanted to move to Sydney. I feel very happy here. I've always felt happy in Sydney and I feel like the lifestyle here really suits me, but I know that settling properly here will take time. It's hard to build a routine when we're bouncing between homes at the moment, but I know
a routine that will come once we have our own place. And even though I am absolutely thrilled to be here and we are so lucky, it still hasn't been completely roses and daisies. I feel like a broken record where I keep saying to myself and other people, I want to be settled. I want to stop moving. And yet we're here and I feel like we're still really nomadic and unsettled because we don't have a permanent place yet. We are technically still living out of our car. But we have been able to offload a lot of our [__] that was in the car. For example, our swag, our kitchen box, a bunch of extra clothes that I'm just not really wearing at the moment, like winter stuff because it's actually nice
and warm in Sydney now. So, we're not traveling quite so heavy. We were able to offload a lot of this into Diana's garage. Thank you very much, Diana. I know that this is a necessary chapter. It's just temporary chaos and it will all be worth it in the end. Actually, currently, like right now, we are in the Central Coast, which is about an hour and a half north of Sydney, and we are housesitting for a few families up here. We decided that we were going to sign up for a site called Trusted Houses, and I am completely obsessed. It's been a complete game changer and amazing for our situation. Now, I'm going to talk more about this whole housesitting thing
in another video. I'm not going to go super in-depth into it right now, but the reason we wanted to get into it is because one, it saves money, and two, it allows us to test out all of these different suburbs in New South Wales without committing, and we can kind of test out different lifestyles and see what we really want before deciding exactly where we want to live. Now, in the central coast, we were staying in this town called Terry Gal for a few days, and I loved it. Oh my goodness, I can totally see myself living somewhere like here. I really want to be living ideally like less than a 5minute walk from the beach and I feel like for me that is a core reason for being in
Australia. I'm a beach girl and that is what I really want. But Central Coast realistically is just a bit too far from the city for us. Ben is occasionally going to be working in the CBD and I think commuting from the Central Coast is just a bit too far. So now I'm like, okay, where closer to Sydney can we get those Terra Gal vibes but still be able to commute to the CBD in under 45 minutes? And since I mentioned this on my stories, a few people mentioned the northern beaches. So Manley, Curl, Dy. Now, I've been to Manley before, which is wonderful, but I haven't spent an extended period of time there. So, I'm really keen to explore that area deeper. And it'll be really interesting to see if I end up preferring the
northern beaches to the eastern suburbs cuz I really do already really like the feeling of the eastern suburbs. And I have several friends who live in the eastern suburbs and that's a big draw for me. We've got a lot to think about. We've got a lot of things to weigh up. So, what's coming next on the channel? A whole lot more of exploring suburbs. I am excited to take you along with me in this quest to find the perfect place for us living in Sydney, wherever that may be. Obviously, we're going to have to take the cost of things and budgeting into consideration as well because Sydney is a very expensive city and the places which I am leaning towards are obviously the most expensive places in
the city. So, that's definitely going to be something that's going to hold us back. But we are going to be doing the housesitting for a fair bit longer. So I'm going to be talking so much more about that and how much money we're saving. I want to make more videos just about the lifestyle here and routine. And at some point I will be searching for a job here as well. I know I was going to do that in Perth. Obviously we left Perth. I now have brand new ideas for what I want to do in Sydney. If there's any content in particular that you would like to see from me being in Sydney, please let me know in the comments. I'm very open to sharing everything about this experience of being on my second working holiday visa,
wanting to settle in Australia. I'm very excited for what's to come because Sydney already feels right, even if it feels just like incredibly messy at the moment. I hope you guys enjoyed this video and I will see you in the next one. Bye-bye.
