Alarm clocks are just not right. But, on the plus side, we were so well-organised that it took under twenty minutes from waking up before we were standing outside the hostel waiting for a shuttle bus. Our bags were ridiculously big and heavy after all this time, but, fortunately, our new sacks had handles on them so Mikey just had to throw them into the back of the bus and we didn't have to carry them that far.

My films, in their freshly-purchased lead-lined bag, didn't even get noticed, so maybe it doesn't work, but somehow I felt as if I'd thwarted something. At 4 in the morning sometimes you have to be able to thwart. Christchurch airport had nothing much going for it, except that they had armchairs in the departure lounge that were actually quite comfortable, and it wasn't that long before we could board. I tried hard to sleep on the three-hour flight, but didn't manage it. I had breakfast though.

I was really paranoid about customs, and the 90-minute wait to get through immigration just made it worse. I was convinced that I had something in my bag that I wasn't supposed to have but that I'd forgotten about. We declared everything, and the lady just glanced at our customs declaration and let us go. Once again I felt thoroughly thwartful.

The very first thing we saw as we left the airport building was this:

That put me in a good mood as I'd not seen anything like that before. Combined with all the thwarting, I was enjoying Australia. The shuttle bus took well over an hour to get to the hostel, and although it was an interesting way to see the city, it wasn't ideal when we'd been up since 3am. The funniest bit was that the last passenger on the bus with us mentioned the roadworks on the road outside our hostel. The bus driver said they were widening the pavement, and the other guy suggested it was so that they could fit more hookers there per square foot. Which was a nice introduction to the notorious King's Cross area of Sydney's red light district.

The hostel was surrounded by sex shops and lap dancing clubs, which were fortunately all closed at 9am. But the roadworks were in full swing and it was like the Krypton Factor assault course to get through the sand and the low barriers and the hidden steps, just to get to the front door of the hostel. At reception I made an excuse and cancelled our second night here. We went all the way up to the top floor, to a room with peeling paint and a tissue pushed into a hole in the ceiling, to sleep for a couple of hours.

I felt a bit more awake after a nap and a nice shower, and we made our way into the town. It was a lovely bright sunny day, and barely midday. Armed with a free map we walked for hours, all the way up to the harbour bridge and the opera house. We tried to get some brunch at about 4pm, but the waitress managed to ignore us for 45 minutes so we gave up. We looked into car hire and cinema times, and then eventually found a pizza. On the way back to the hostel we stopped at a backpacker information place and asked where they'd recommend to stay, and he immediately said, 'Nowhere round here.' We were invited into numerous clubs along the way (apparently lapdancing clubs are ideal for honeymooners like ourselves) and managed to climb into the hostel. Although I slept well, the roadworks started at exactly 7am.