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Sydney Opera House..
from the top of Sydney Harbour BridgeOur first day in Sydney started pretty well, we managed to naivagate our way around to drop the car back at Darling Harbour and then went for a bit of culture at the Maritime Museum, we decided against the aquarium due to ridiculous overpricing so instead we headed over to meet Chewy (another mate from the Asia trip) briefly before he left Sydney. Following this we decided to go on a wander through the city before heading back to rest our weary feet-and i managed to get a $10 hair cut from an English girl at the hostel. Nice couple actually we may be meeting up with them in Christchurch in a couple of days.
Day two dawned bright and early and we managed to sucessfully navigate our way to the 'bridgeclimb' centre on the bus and after some serious map and roadsign contradtictions! We went through our 'prep' and donned our sexy suits along with Jo, Kat and Alana plus another 9 people from various countries and of various ages, and clipped on all our accessories after meeting our guide Alec. (very enthusiastic guy who sounded like he was from South Africa and had a great talent remembering
all 14 names of the group) EVERYTHING has to be taken off apart from your clothes and shoes (as long as they are practical) even jewellery. Glasses had to be secured to a string, then regulation beanies, fleece jackets gloves and even HANKIES had to be clipped onto some part of your body to avoid droppages onto unsuspecting cars,buses and pedestrians below us! We had a little practice-run using our security ropes etc and then kitted up with our headsets and soon were off.
I will enlighten you a little about the bridge; stuff picked up from the climb that Alec told us plus a few bits collected from leaflets and books i've mooched through!
The bridge is a two hinged single span bridge and is 134 metres above sea level, 252.5 metres in horizontal distance and 1149 metres long including the approach spans either side.Although it looks curved it is made up of 52,800 tonnes of entirely straight pieces of steel -manufactured in Middlesborough UK!! It has around 6 million rivets holding it together!The length span of the arch is 503 metres.
On a hot day the arch can grow up to 180mm as the steel expands.
800 houses in the surrounding area were demolished to make way for the bridge which took 7 years and 356 days to build starting in 1924 and finishing in 1932. It was named the 'iron lung' because it gave so many jobs whilst the economy was weak. It is also now often referred to as the coathanger!
An area of 485,000 square metres of steel was painted with 272,000 litres of paint.
16 men died while the bridge was being built, only 6 fallings the rest were in other areas such as the quarry. There used to be a cattery in one of the four granite pylons around the bridge, which is a museum and lookout.
There are 1337 stairs...
ANYWAY, so the first part of the climb was along the approach span which is all flat and goes under the road deck and then past the pylons to the ladders. You have to go up about 5 ladders with only one person on each ladder at a time and as we were at the back it took a while to get up there and once we did we were a little out of puff it has
The end of the climb
ruined it with my sunnies..DAMN! to be said!
We took a few moments to hear some info about the bridge before we climbed along the arch about a half the way to the top where we stopped to look at the breathtaking views- it was an amazing day weather-wise beautiful sunshine no clouds but cool enough to have very little haze and not too windy! Once we reached almost the top we stopped for some photographs in our little groups and then continued to the top for a few more. We managed to see all the way to the blue mountains which we were told is very rare so we were pretty excited about that. We didn't see signs of any sharks in the harbour though- can't decide if im relieved about that or not (although matt did point out it would be better to see them from 134 metres up than from the water!!) (oh and another interesting fact..apparently numbers of sharks are INCREASING in the harbour because it is so clean!eeek!)
Anyway on the way down the wind was beginning to pick-up a fair bit..even the gloves came out for me! So we were pretty glad we'd gone up at the time we
had.
After de-equpmenting and collecting our climb certificates and photos we headed off with the 3 girls for a well-earned beverage at the pub and then we headed over to the botanical gardens to have a sit down and then off the the Opera House for some more tourist photo-calls!
Nothing much of interest after this so we headed home to rest our weaary feet in preparation for another busy day..
Day 3 started early on the bus again for a trip to the tax office..the outcome worked in our favour let's just say and we then walked accross the harbour bridge the 'normal' way stopping to go around the Pylon lookout and mini-museum on the way. Managed to get a few more snaps of similar views to on the bridge-though not quite as special!
Following this we jumped on a ferry over to Manly beach after having it recommended by several people. On the way to the ferry we saw an awesome collection of buskers and musicians, especially some aboriginal people playing traditional instruments (yes a digeridoo too!). The ferry was nice and calm, a little windy at times but we had some lovely views of the Bridge
and Opera House. Manly itself is very pretty and as its now coming into off-season it wasn't too busy either so we had some time to just relax on the beach although i didn't get beyond dipping my feet in the sea this time!
On the way back from Manly we managed to get some beautiful pictures of sunset over the city, and once again the bridge and Opera House (yes a little repetitive but still!) Following that we headed up to the Opera House to see if we could grab some tickets to something..just to say we had been there and actually been inside to see something not just on the steps!
Well as you can imagine i was totally chuffed when there were some tickets to see the Nutcracker ballet- perfect for me!! (it wasn't the original nutcracker its actually an adaptation called 'the story of clara' but it was still very good) and i was very proud of Matt for sitting through it AND staying awake! A totally memorable experience for sure.. (plus some night shots of...you guessed it the Harbour bridge and Opera House!! :-) )
Day 4 was a bit slower paced getting all
our bits and bobs together and doing some washing. At lunchtime we headed into town once again to exchange some money and then jumped on a train to the famous Bondi Beach, again not as busy as expected so had a nice relax on the beach (but no swimming once again) and looked out for the famous lifeguards from Bondi rescue (an Aussie programme we got into whilst we have been here-didn't see any though!)
back to the city and then to the hostel to pack up and then write this as a final roundoff for Australia as we fly to Christchurch tomorrow morning!!
So Best bits: we LOVED byron bay, and Melbourne with Kev was absolutely awesome, especially the AFL games,OCean Road and Surfing lesson!
We have enjoyed some aspects of work and have gained some great experiences and some even greater mates but towards the end it became a little monotonus and we are glad to have had some time to move about freely again. We enjoyed Sydney as a whole too but think it's a little over-rated in terms of what people say..once you have done the bridge, opera house and stuff you don't have that
much left really!
Worst bits: The flooding we experienced in both Brisbane when we arrived and Townsville later on with work was pretty miserable as it really restricted what we could do!
Personally my sea-sickness on the boat to the reef in Cairns was also a low point, as was working a week in a mining town with no telephone contact!
So thats Oz... 6 months down.. over and out!
Next time: if and when we do come back to Australia, we are hoping to do WA, Uluru and Adelaide along with Tasmania and another trip to Melbourne but probably not likely to do any of the East Coast again... so we shall see..!
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Chris
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Top pics!
Can't believe they let Matt on to "Manly beach" :)