Hailey Goes To Oz

Sunday, April 12, 2009

So You Think You Can Dance Australia

So You Think You Can Dance is a television show that was started in the US; it's sort of the American Idol for dancers. Australia is on its second season of the show and they have narrowed the contestants down to the top 4.

Rob and I occassionally attend a dance class at our gym V-Club called Ballroom Dance and the instructor Amy is in the top four! We thought it would be cool to go to a taping of the show and give our support to Amy so we applied online and got free tickets. We weren't able to take our cameras, so I didn't get any pictures but we were standing in the front row right by the stage which was pretty cool. We were surrounded by screaming 12-year old girls which was not cool.

Here are the top 20 dancers. Amy is the 5th from the left on the top row

Amy and BJ dancing (I found this pic online-I didn't take it)

Friday, April 3, 2009

Newcastle/Port Stephens

We took a 2 hour train to Newcastle, NSW for the day just to get out of Sydney. Newcastle is mostly known for the great surfing and many surfing competitions are held here (i.e. Surfest). We weren't overly impressed with the town itself so we looked around quickly and then hopped on a bus for an hour to Port Stephens.

Bus to Port Stephens

Port Stephens

Some fishing festival or something going on at Port Stephens

Lunch at Hogs Breath Cafe

After a bit of self-touring and shopping around Port Stephens, we booked a trip to go sand-boarding down the sand dunes. These sand dunes are the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and the trip we booked drives you to the top of them and lets you slide down like you're sledding down a snowy hill! It was a little rainy that day so they let us go up by ourselves and we didn't have to pay for it at all which was nice.

The van that took us to the top

Getting ready to slide down!

WEEE!!!

WEEE!!

Rob's turn

Getting a little daring

Back to Newcastle

Newcastle Customs House

And then we hopped back on the train for the 2 hour trip back to good ol' Sydney.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Socceroos Game in Sydney

The Socceroos are Australia's Soccer (Footy) team. Rob and I got tickets to see one of the home games that was the 2010 World Cup qualifying match against Uzbekistan. Australia won!!! 2-0 It wasn't the most exciting game ever and it was pouring rain for part of the game, but it was cool to see.

Stadium

Sunday, March 29, 2009

V-Festival

My gift to Rob for his birthday this year was tickets to V-Festival. V-Fest is the Virgin Music Festival that is held each year at Centennial Olympic Park in Sydney (and also held in other locations throughout Australia). It's an all-day music event and this year it ran from 1pm to 10pm on March 28th with performances on each of the four stages by bands such as Snow Patrol, Kaiser Chiefs, The Kills, Duffy, and the headliner: The Killers. The park itself is 543 acres so the event was pretty spread out with plenty of food stalls and bars set up all around. It ended up being a GORGEOUS sunny day! Here are some of the pictures:

Waiting for the opening of the entry gates

Still waiting

Got some drinks and sat around for a few minutes until Duffy started playing

Relaxing on the grass

Front row for Duffy

Rob, me and Duffy

Duffy

Video of Duffy singing "Stepping Stone"

Some of the other concert-goers

Crazy Dawn flew in from Melbourne and came straight to V-fest and met up with us

Dawn and Rob

The Kills...this girl was crazy!

The Kills

The sun starting to set

Snow Patrol! Their performance overlapped with The Killers so we only got to stick around for a couple of songs before dashing across the park to try to get a good spot for The Killers