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	<title>Thom Vincent goes to Australia</title>
	<link>http://www.thomvincent.com</link>
	<description>Ponderings on a transhemispheric jaunt</description>
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		<title>Day 207</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Not only was this to be my first Christmas in Australia, but also my first Christmas without the Vincents. But I busied my mind with the upcoming novelty of sunshine, beaches and prawns. And, deep down, I knew that The Girl&#8217;s family would look after me and make me feel very welcome. It would be fine. I would have a great time. That was until the 23 December &#8211; the day I learnt that the Christmas parcel my family sent had either been lost / sent back to the UK....<br/><a href="http://www.thomvincent.com/day-two-hundred-and-seven/">Read more...</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.thomvincent.com/day-two-hundred-and-seven/</link>
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		<title>Day 160</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last month The Girl and I drove up to Canowindra to visit her paternal grandparents. It was a long drive but easy one along a familiar route &#8211; the same route as our trip to the Blue Mountains. This time though we kept driving through the Blue Mountains and further into New South Wales&#8217; countryside. Regrettably I forgot to bring my camera on this trip so you&#8217;ll just have to imagine it. The area is vast and open; the most vast and open landscape I&#8217;ve experienced in a long time....<br/><a href="http://www.thomvincent.com/day-one-hundred-and-sixty/">Read more...</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.thomvincent.com/day-one-hundred-and-sixty/</link>
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		<title>Day 130</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We have our first new Australian friend. She&#8217;s a lovely young girl from Queensland who&#8217;s half English. We first met her last month on a night out with one of The Girl&#8217;s old Brisbane friends. The old Brisbane friend is the mutual acquaintance. Since that night out we&#8217;ve had the new friend over for a home made fish curry and I&#8217;ve been out looking at sculptures in Bondi with her. On Sunday all three of us went to Taronga Zoo for a grand day out looking at animals. We saw...<br/><a href="http://www.thomvincent.com/day-one-hundred-and-thiry/">Read more...</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.thomvincent.com/day-one-hundred-and-thiry/</link>
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		<title>Day 124</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The other weekend The Girl and I had out first holiday in the Blue Mountains. We&#8217;ve had a rough couple of months, what with relocating and car accidents, so it was a real treat to escape the city and just have fun. Especially when we realised that in the four months we had been in Australia we hadn&#8217;t really left Sydney, apart from a quick trip to Brisbane. We joined up to a car sharing service called GoGet, which works just like Streetcar. There are vehicles all throughout Sydney, but...<br/><a href="http://www.thomvincent.com/one-hundred-and-twenty-four/">Read more...</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.thomvincent.com/one-hundred-and-twenty-four/</link>
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		<title>Day 105</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Ever since I arrived in Australia I&#8217;ve been fascinated by the clothes the locals have been wearing. Not to pick-up some style inspiration &#8211; I typically buy whatever is on the Topman clearance page &#8211; but because of the layers they&#8217;ve been wearing. I&#8217;ve seen people with wooly hats, long scarves and thick coats; all while the sun is beaming and temperature is hovering around the late teens / early twenties. During my first weeks I was constantly tickled by what I saw; sometimes so much that I would make...<br/><a href="http://www.thomvincent.com/one-hundred-and-five/">Read more...</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.thomvincent.com/one-hundred-and-five/</link>
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		<title>Day 82</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Yesterday morning I was on the receiving end of some very mild racism (read: verbal abuse from an angry idiot) while I was waiting to catch the bus to work. As usual, I stood there trying not to sweat as I listened to my music when a smartly dressed man with a large belly, iPad and iPhone approached me. He moved his mouth. I took my headphones off. This is our conversation. Just keep two things in mind &#8211; I was polite to him and he was already a little...<br/><a href="http://www.thomvincent.com/eighty-two/">Read more...</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.thomvincent.com/eighty-two/</link>
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		<title>Day 73</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I wouldn&#8217;t describe myself as a naturalist. Whenever we were in the British countryside The Girl would occasionally ask me for the name of a bird or plant, but unless it was a crow or a willow tree I&#8217;d have no idea. Despite this lack of knowledge I&#8217;ve always been interested in nature and animals. And I&#8217;ve looked at my coming to Australia as a wonderful opportunity to meet exotic new species of birds, marsupials, reptiles and yes… even arachnids. There are several bird species in and around Sydney which...<br/><a href="http://www.thomvincent.com/seventy-three/">Read more...</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.thomvincent.com/seventy-three/</link>
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		<title>Day 61</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Australia has this system where vehicles in certain lanes are still allowed to turn at a junction even when the pedestrian light is green. Obviously the vehicle has to stop if pedestrians are crossing, but drivers are people. People bend the rules. People push their luck. People make mistakes. And this is how The Girl was hit. She was on the phone to her mother when a white car drove around the corner, hit her, then carried on driving. Bystanders leapt into action. One guy quickly explained to The Girl’s...<br/><a href="http://www.thomvincent.com/sixty-one/">Read more...</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.thomvincent.com/sixty-one/</link>
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		<title>Day 56</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A lady with long blonde hair sat down a few rows in front of me on the train to King&#8217;s Cross this evening. Then a few moments later a slightly older lady with short red hair sat next to her. They looked at each other and smiled politely. The red hair lady zoned out while she looked ahead, but something had caught the blonde haired women&#8217;s eye. Very much like the Subbuteo scene in Black Books, she started staring intently at the right-hand side of the red lady&#8217;s hair. In...<br/><a href="http://www.thomvincent.com/fifty-six/">Read more...</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.thomvincent.com/fifty-six/</link>
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		<title>Day 40</title>
		<description><![CDATA[You all know about my plan, right? I was going to spend the first three months doing nothing apart from drink beer and explore Sydney by bicycle. Then offset all that sin with a bit of house husbandry for The Girl &#8211; cooking, cleaning and so on. More importantly though, I wasn&#8217;t going to work. Well it didn&#8217;t go quite as well as planned. Two days after we moved into our new place it was already The Girl&#8217;s first day of work and for the next two weeks I slipped...<br/><a href="http://www.thomvincent.com/forty/">Read more...</a>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.thomvincent.com/forty/</link>
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