The sun, sand and sea of Australia do not disappoint.
Life Down Under is all I thought it would be - and then some.
I've been here just over a week and, although the legacy of 24+ hours of travelling saw me turn into a zombie for a good few days, I'm now well and truly settled in and know my Tooheys from my VB (that's beers to Poms not in the know) and my freshies from my salties (crocodiles).
After five days spent doing the tourist thing in Sydney (I was so jetlagged I even fell asleep on my feet in front of one of Sydney Aquarium's most impressive tanks with a giant bull shark staring at me), I'm now up on the Sunshine Coast in Noosa, Australia's tri Mecca.
The Noosa Tri is this year celebrating its 25th anniversary and boy is it going to be one helluva race.
The whole town came to a standstill yesterday and normal life won't resume until Monday as the Tri Festival gets fully underway.
The festival is so huge that stars from a myriad of sports, not just tri, come here to race, spectate, commentate and just 'be seen' at what is the country's biggest and best sports festival.
Tonight there's a 1k Ocean Swim which anyone can enter but the likes of Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett and Kieron Perkins (the David Beckham of Aussie swimming - swimming out here is HUGE)are regulars on the start line. I'm going to sign up as it's not every day you get to swim with legends of the pool like those guys.
There's also a 5k bolt, the line-up for which reads like a who's who of Olympic runners, and a cycle crit which attracts some of the biggest riders in the game. But what's really great is that the event everyone is here to see - the blue ribbon race - is Sunday's triathlon. I'll be racing in the women's open race, which was by invite only, and the creme de la creme of Australia's tri chicks will be putting it all on the line for their number one race. Yikes. The heat and humidity out here is unbelieveable - it's like running in a sauna - so it's hard to know how a sun-starved Pom like me will cope, but more than anything I'm just going to go out there and enjoy what will arguably be a blinder of a race.