Couple take holiday to wrong Sydney

One is a thriving international centre of business, culture and nightclubbing, the other is a sleepy industrial town where the nightlife is confined to Ceilidh dancing.

It is difficult, then, to imagine how anyone could confuse Sydney, Australia, with Sydney, Nova Scotia. But that is exactly what happened to Emma Nunn and Raoul Christian.

The young couple told today how a booking mix-up led to them spending their holidays amid the duck ponds and steelworks of the Canadian Sydney, rather than on the sunkissed beaches of its antipodean namesake.

Emma, of Sidcup, Kent, and Raoul, of Charlton, both 19, bought their tickets for " Sydney" over the Internet for £740 each. The pair say they did not realise anything was wrong when they boarded an Air Canada plane at Heathrow even though the airline does fly to Australia.

But they began to get suspicious when the jet touched down in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and passengers were told to board a small 25-seater plane.

Emma, a psychology student at King's College, London, told the Daily Express: "I'm not the best flier in the world and I said I really can't see a small plane like this going all the way to Australia.

"After about 45 minutes the captain announced we would be landing in 20 minutes. We looked at each other as if to say, 'what's going on?' After we landed, the air stewardesses said we looked like we didn't want to get off the plane. There was a sense of disbelief when we finally did. I said we must still be in Canada and Raoul asked: 'Where are we?'

"The Air Canada staff said, 'Sydney, Nova, Scotia.' I had to look on a map to see where we were.

"It's a big disappointment but after it sank in we both said, let's make the most of what we've got around us."

The couple blame the website they used to book their tickets for sending them to the wrong place.

Emma added: "The customs men said it was an unusual route to Sydney but we thought we were going the long way because we'd booked the flights late.

"On the plane they handed out immigration forms asking how long we planned to stay in Canada. I told the stewardess it would surely only be a couple of hours and she said, 'fine, put two hours'."