Day 251 - More excitement than we can handle

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Gemma’s relatives bought us a climb up Sydney Harbour Bridge for a wedding present, so that’s where we headed this morning. It’s an incredibly well-run trip with a lot of attention paid to safety detail - the private company that had the initial idea of running these climbs had quiet a job to convince the authorities that nothing would get dropped down onto the passing cars far below. So we have to put everything except the clothes we’re wearing into lockers, don a grey boiler suit and attach our harness to a safety wire that we don’t leave for the entire climb. They even make sure sunglasses are clipped on and the most surprising of all was a handkerchief everyone was given with a secure wrist attachment. The main gripe - there’s always at least one - was that we couldn’t take cameras up there, although if they’re worried about handerchiefs it’s not really surprising that cameras aren’t allowed. Our group of 20 was led by a very loud guide called Peter and he is allowed to take a camera (securely attached to him of course) and he took a load of pictures of us which were on sale once we reached the bottom.

The climb itself was fantastic, and made all the better by the perfect weather. We walked through one of the towers that everyone thinks support the bridge but which are in fact hollow and purely aesthetic, and then began going up and up and up. Eventually we reach the top, halfway over the bridge and twice the height of the Opera House. It’s an expensive trip but for the chance to see such a good-looking city from such a unique vantage point it’s more than worth it. Thank you to the Hepden’s and extras.

Back on solid ground we wandered the weekend market at The Rocks which was excellent; if we were returning home from Australia we would have bought tonnes here. As it was all we did was try some chilli sauce, both opting for the dish labelled ’10 out of 10’ for hotness. Delicious. Sydney has an art exhibition on at the moment with something called the Archibald Prize, and we visited a much cheaper exhibition parodying the ponciness of that contest. The picture that enticed us was last year’s winner, a picture of the Queen painting a naked Rolf Harris. Unfortunately this year’s ones weren’t anywhere near that standard, at least for 2 people lacking an in-depth understanding of the subtleties of contemporary Australian politics. Probably the best one had Steve Irwin and Germaine Greer, the latter having incurred the artist’s wrath by comments made about the former, apparently.

In the evening we went to see the rugby - our first Super14 game and a pretty good one at that. We were annoyed to have missed our favourite Super14 team, the Stormers from Cape Town, by a day in Canberra. But tonight another South African team, the Bulls, were playing Sydney’s Waratahs. There was plenty of interest in the game, like Lote Tuqiri’s bursts of brilliance in between long periods of looking disinterested (the morning paper said he was going to rugby league now), Victor Matfield looking enormous and a nasty elbowing. Plus the small matter of plenty of scoring. The game was played at the Aussie stadium which gave us the chance to have a look around the Sydney Cricket Ground which is massive. There was also the strange sight, within in stadium’s perimeter, of a swimming pool and loads of people sunbathing. It’s a hard life in Australia - a quick dip, drying off in the sun and then drinking at the rugby. And that’s a significant thing in itself if you’re used to watching football in England - just the simple pleasure of being able to buy a beer and then drink it where you want (ie at your seat).

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