Sydney

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Sydney
I’ve just said goodbye to my brother, Antony at Kings Cross station and I’m feeling very sad to say goodbye to him. We always feel sad when we leave each other but this one feels especially poignant to me because we’ve spent so much time together over the last five weeks, and it’s going to be quite a while until we see each other again. That’s the problem with being spread out all over the World, and while you don’t worry about it during the normal course of regular communications, when we have this extended close contact, it makes you realize what you’re missing by not having your brother close by, and what you’ve already missed without even realizing it was missing. I almost feel ashamed to have not really known my own brother’s story in detail, while I go around collecting other people’s stories with such carefree abandon.
It’s been great this visit, probably the most important time I’ve spent with Antony since we were little kids - and neither of us can even really remember that! Well, we’re going to remember this because I’m going to write about it!
This phase of our time began with the stereo late arrival of the planes from Adelaide (with me aboard) and Brisbane (with Antony). It was eleven pm before the carousel finally bulged with Antony’s bag and we were able to join the horrendous queue for the Fifty dollar taxi ride to Potts Point and our hotel, the Challis Lodge right in the heart of the grooviest part of Sydney. We dumped our bags into our pretty neat, en-suite, and cheap rooms and set off around seedy, glamorous, wicked Kings Cross for a midnight walk, where the primary colors were: black; incredibly short black mini-skirts, brown; incredibly slimy voiced males trying to entice us into their seedy clubs, and rainbow-colored; slippery vomit-stained streets and bright neon lights. The main place in King’s Cross is a short street filled with throbbing, noisy clubs and swirling drunken party people, culminating in a Coca Cola sign, which, apparently, is the most famous area landmark of all. I was tired and it was late, but I still felt guilty about not wanting to go into these clubs and bars to gently sup at the foul decadent teat of it all, but after the night on the Ghan and the hanging around at the airport, I really didn’t fancy anything other than absorbing the vibe through the vomit haze then returning to the hotel to crash out. This we did.
I slept like the dead, and awoke rested and ready for our mega-tourist couple of days. And what an excellent couple of mega-tourist days we had. Rarely can two lowly tourists have achieved and absorbed so much in so little time. We are the Lance Armstrong’s of tourist Sydney, I’m telling you.
First thing we had to do was find and pick up a rental car from the rental place we had scoped out during our walk the previous night. We got a lovely white car from Bayswater rental with the rather odd and cryptic message, ‘No Birds…com’ stenciled on the side of our vehicle. Ensconced in our little white bubble, we set off. We were heading out of Sydney to a beach place called Terrigal about two hours North of the City. Here we were meeting with one of Antony’s oldest friends, Maureen, and his Goddaughters, Allira and Renee, along with Renee’s partner Paul, and their little baby Xander. We were going to meet at Mo’s house then go for lunch at this seaside resort place, then visit the house that Antony owns over here to take a look at the state of play with the place. The drive took us over the famous Harbor bridge then along a fairly typical sort of highway before fairly quickly getting into steep and wooded hills and a National Park area that was very pretty without being massively spectacular. We used the drive to catch up: the goings on at United Utilities and Crystal Creek; my adventures on the Ghan, In Kakadu, etc. It’s funny, but I think we were both aware even from the start that this was our last weekend together, and without it staining events, it certainly added a slight, almost invisible melancholy tinge to the whole weekend. We were both able to bat it away like an irritating fly whenever it threatened to land, but it buzzed there throughout the weekend at the back of things. Certainly the weather was helping in keeping the melancholy away, with glorious weather emerging and evolving throughout Saturday. In fact, Sunday too was destined to be an utterly perfect crisp, blue-sky day.
We met Maureen, and I immediately felt comfortable and relaxed with her and twenty-one year old Allira (actually, she turns twenty-one in a couple of weeks and Antony is returning to Sydney for the huge Vegas-themed fancy dress party they’ve got planned). I’ve been aware of Maureen for thirty years and Allira for most of her twenty, but this is the first time we’ve ever met. I immediately like both of them and enjoy our time together immensely. We drive down to the fancy beach area where we nest on a beachfront restaurant for the afternoon after a brief stroll along the esplanade. Renee, Paul, and Xander show up fashionably late and everyone fauns over the baby, like people do. For a baldy, he is quite cute, I must say. Antony gets to pries him away from Maureen for a spell and walks him around the crowded outdoor restaurant. The water is glistening blue, holiday crowds are milling around. The sun is warm, but not hot. Not exactly my vision of winter. Interestingly, there are two groups of people wandering around: those with at least three layers on looking cold, and others including me, in shorts and T-shirts, sucking up the UV rays. Bloody stupid tourists. Don’t even realize it’s winter in Sydney! Anyhow, there’s a very clever acoustic guitar player playing overloud but well-selected cover versions across the way who is an absolute doppelganger for Kevin Bacon, except when he looks like Tim Robbins. Wish he wouldn’t do that howling refrain of the fifteen minute long medley again, though! As well as howling Kevin, the food is not that great. Not as good as the company, that’s for sure. We sit there for quite some time before Renee and Paul take off with the baby and we retire back to the car, take a tourist drive to the local headland, another out to where Allira pays for her upcoming wild, twenty-first birthday celebrations, then on into the oddly named town, ‘The Entrance’, where the party will be held, and where we took a lovely beach/lakeside walk past a spot swooning with pelicans who collect here because they are fed here daily. Our lovely walk eventually collapses into a lovely sunset, a cool breeze kicking in , a tree filled with cormorants, another filled with parrots, and a decision to stay the night, eat take-out Indian and watch bad horror movies with Maureen, Allira and her fantastic dog Pepper.
We return to the house as darkness blooms and enjoy drinking a few beers, watching as the comprehension factor is unwound as I get tired and Maureen and Antony play another episode of their thirty-year game of teasing each other, while poor groin-strained Allira, stretches and ices, and avoids watching the movie that had so terrified her the night before that even the dog couldn’t stop shivering. I found that fact rather odd because the movie seemed a particularly tame affair - but then there’s no accounting for what scares people. Some people could sit through the opening phase of the apocalypse yawning about the quality of the special effects while other people find Popeye the Sailor Man terrifying (especially the Robin Williams portrayal). I started getting tired about eleven so excused myself for a spectacularly awesome night’s sleep.
Maureen cooks us a fabulous breakfast with all the food she has in her pantry. Allira awakes with a terrible ear-ache that sends her scurrying to the doctors. Ryan, Maureen’s oldest child shows up with his four-month old son Eli, much to Maureen’s delight. I natter with Ryan’s friend who shares my obsession with the band ‘Porcupine Tree’. It’s been a few months now since my obsession with this particular band waned, but this conversation ends up revealing to me how my powers of mental acuity are deteriorating with age. Once I would have remembered every detail from such a powerful obsession as I had had with this music. Now I can barely remember a damn thing until prompted by this twenty-something. I’ve gone from being able to play about ten of their songs including the majority of an eighteen minute long epic, to being barely able to remember the names of the records - all in about six months flat. Appalling! Getting older sucks!
Anyway, we pack up, find the keys eventually and head off to the fabulous little resort of Manley where we take a lovely esplanade stroll along with the teeming hordes and then we take the utterly, fantastic Ferry ride through Sydney Harbor and back again to Manly. We walked around the Opera House and along the Circular Wharf. The views are amazing, the weather is perfect. We have the best seats on the boat due to our wolfish snapping up of the opportunity, and the journey is just lovely. As usual, no photographs or TV shows I have seen have successfully captured this scene in a way that lines up with actually being here. Amusingly enough, as the ferry approaches the Opera House, a huge oil tanker threatens to obscure the view, just as we are passing the photo-spot, but it all works out - though I do believe my tanker-plus-opera-house photo is far rarer than the normal Opera House one!
Back in Manley, we drive up to the North Head, one of the steep cliff entrances to the harbor. After this we make our way back into Sydney, where, after a shower break, we walk across the town through the dizzying center of the City to the pub area called The Rocks, a splendid walk of about an hour after having a nice fish meal near the hotel (where Antony flirted with the Spanish waitress, I thought quite successfully). Everything was rather quiet in The Rocks, so after sitting through a few songs from a competent three-piece rock band at a lively pub, while Japanese and other white tourists danced like broken puppets, proving once again that some people really should reserve their dancing for the bedroom, and in an unconnected event, having a sudden and amusingly unexpected diarrhea moment, we decided to get a taxi back to the hotel.
Neither of us slept as well on Sunday night, it turned out, but for different reasons. For me, I just stayed up late watching ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ and fretting about my newly dumb and untenable job and my teeth. Should I come back to Boston early to see the dentist and search for a new job? We awake at 5:30am with the plan of driving out to the World Heritage Blue Mountains due west of the city. It’s a two hour drive out there, then we could walk a couple of hours then spin back to the City, return the car, all in time for three, when Antony needed to be heading for the airport and his return to Townsville and work. That’s exactly what we did. We drove out through the Western Suburbs to where the highway eventually allows the traffic to breathe and we climbed through a sequence of villages to increasingly spectacular vistas. At the first place we stopped: Echo point at Katoomba, we were utterly shocked by the howling, freezing cold wind that savagely ripped through our feeble protective outfits. The views were spectacular when we clambered down to ‘the three sisters’ then found a more sheltered six or seven kilometer walk that was quite pretty, although still much colder than either of us had experienced for some time. We drove on to a few more spectacular lookouts, stopped at the highest point for a meal in a log-fire warmed restaurant then turned around and whisked back down into the warmer and blue-skied city.
The moment we had both been dreading arrived at the station and the circle turns back to me, still melancholy listening to the unearthly screeches from the birds, as darkness falls, MASH playing on the TV, my washing spinning in the laundry, and my time in Australia starting to draw inexorably to a close. I am flying to Brisbane in the morning for three days before leaving for South East Asia on Thursday - dental and work issues notwithstanding!
It’s been great for me to be in this country; what a great trip - but the best thing has been hanging out with my brother: meeting his old friends, understanding and appreciating more about his life, just simply being together, together with someone who I truly understand and who really understands me. It’s been a fantastic trip!
Thanks for this time Antony, and for funding so much of the whole thing. It’s so generous of you! I’ll always appreciate it.
I know that you enjoyed the time as much as I did! I’ll miss you.
Next time we need to get Peter here too, eh?
The three brothers: nothing can stop them now!
See you on the flypaper!

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