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Published: January 9th 2007
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New Year's Eve
Midnight at our balcony on NYE and time for my annual cigar as the fireworks commence. I left Perth in a disappointed state of mind following England's capitulation in the cricket, but was happy that my personal suffering was over and I could forget about the Melbourne and Sydney tests and instead concentrate on having a good Christmas and New Year in Sydney.
Of course that was before I arrived in Sydney's Kings Cross area to meet up with Matt Richards. I had been to Sydney before in 2002 and recalled Kings Cross as a dump and if anything it's now even worse.
Our "hotel", which I will name and shame as The HAH on Darlinghurst Road opposite the train station, is next door to a needle exchange and situated on the moodiest street in Sydney, which given the nature of the rest of the city is no mean feat.
Matt had arrived before me and described the place as akin to one of Rigsby's least impressive rooms in Rising Damp. As you can see from the pics I had to clamber over his bed to get to mine, the air conditioner leaked water onto an electric wire and there were suspicious blood spatters on the lampshade. One can only imagine some of the
The HAH
Our room in The HAH. Note the hole cutout of the curtain to allow a steady flow of air and of water onto the mains electricity. goings on that have taken place in The HAH over the years. The manager proudly mentioned (after randomly pointing out that he was gay...big surprise in Sydney, a town that makes Brighton look predominately heterosexual) that the place has improved in the last couple of years from being a home for hookers and junkies. Nice.
Outside the hotel the norm was to be offered various sexual services and drugs by emaciated crack whores and have the pleasure of watching drunks and junkies stagger around begging for dollars.
We decided that the best way to deal with this had to be to embrace the Christmas spirit and get solidly drunk for a week, something which we achieved with ease. Arriving back at the HAH before 5 am was considered an early night and several incidents with amongst others homosexual Fijian rugby players and Swedish strip club hostesses took place.
We spent Christmas Day in a hostel in Central Sydney with some random people who had managed to obtain a large room and had made a good effort to decorate and cook the traditional Christmas microwaved roast chicken with mashed potato and rocket salad?! There's $25 I'll never see
The Worlds Bar
King's Cross' finest drinking establishment. Pictured is Richards enjoying one of their famous teapots of cocktails. again.
Our stay at The HAH came to an end on Boxing Day, at which point Matt and I had booked into different hostels, both just around the corner from each other and from The HAH. However upon arrival at our hostels, which again I will name and shame as Chilli Blue Backpackers and the City Resort Hostel, we had run out of energy and tolerance of shitholes and I received a call from Matt saying we were off to the Blue Mountains to recover and get out of Sydney for a couple of days instead.
Matt had checked into the Holiday Inn executive suite and hired a car, so off we went to Katoomba, which is the largest town in the Blue Mountains and has most of the famous sites nearby and even fresh air and a lack of crack whores.
A day out of the city was perfect therapy and the scenery is fantastic in the mountains. All too soon however we returned back to our accommodation in Kings Cross. I checked into the City Resort Hostel in Palmer Street and five minutes later checked out again. The dorm I was allocated had three Japanese
Bondi
Bondi Beach - not bad as beaches go. Also has a particularly crap golf club on the hill next door guys in it and had dirty clothes, crockery, rubbish and underpants strewn all around the tiniest of rooms, so I went back to reception and demanded a refund. At this point the Chinese lad at the desk pointed to the NO REFUNDS sign placed strategically behind him, but soon changed his tune when I told him to phone his boss asap. Needless to say I got my money back.
After an hour or so of looking around for somewhere decent to stay, I stumbled upon The Grantham in Potts Point, which is a serviced apartment block giving views over Sydney Harbour and the Opera House. Regardless of the expense I checked in and there we were, two supposed backpackers laying out $200 a night for a semblance of comfort.
As I mentioned earlier, Sydney is without doubt the gayest place on earth and I've lived in Brighton and London and they're nowhere close. Call me a homophobe if you will but quite frankly I found Sydney a distasteful hole which I was looking forward to leaving as soon as New Year's was out of the way. Fortunately my balcony gave a perfect view of the fireworks and meant
Sydney Opera House
By far the most impressive part of Sydney and possibly the only reason to visit. that I didn't have to mingle with the rabble down below. Unfortunately it also assisted in giving someone who shall remain nameless the opportunity to throw my mattress off the 8th floor balcony onto a Saab convertable below, in full view of the rest of the building. We weren't too popular with the management of the building after that incident. Luckily there was no damage to the motor.
The Ashes roadshow rolled into Sydney on the 2nd Jan and predictably enough I didn't bother to attend the match. It was good to see Bradders and Sue and some of the Barmy Army regulars that hadn't made it to the first three tests and we all had a fair few drinks to catch up in Coogee Bay on the eve of the match. We lost the match of course and the series 5-0, which is a disgrace and hopefully the players will all be suitably punished when they return to England.
Dejected and fairly desperate to leave, I pounced on a relocation camper van opportunity to take a vehicle up to Brisbane for a dollar a day, with the only cost being fuel, so Matt and I drove this
Christmas Day, HAH style
Drink this lot and you might not notice you're in The HAH huge VW motorhome 1000 kms to Brisbane in the allotted timescale of a day and a half, stopping at Byron Bay for a night out with Clarky and Alistair on the way. The plan from Brisbane was to head up the coast to Noosa and then to try and get another relocation to Cairns.
I spent a couple of days in Noosa, which is supposedly the Cote D'Azur of Australia and I have to say it is a very nice place. Rather quiet, but it has great beaches for surfing and a good National Park area with koalas and scenic walks etc.
Of course there was no chance whatsoever of me surfing, so we hired out a two man kayak for a few hours and Matt promptly got us lost on what was supposed to be a simple circular route around a peninsula. In fact we were so lost that I was beginning to recall some of the scenes from Deliverance again and after missing our return deadline we quit in search of food and a map.
After stocking up on pie and chips we realised where we had gone wrong and if we had carried on
Christmas Day, HAH style
How festive are we? Complete with festive Christmas witches hat!? the same way we would have arrived at a huge lake and that could have been serious trouble. Although tired from hours of constant paddling, we eventually returned the kayak an hour and a half late to an irate Frenchman who spent the next ten minutes moaning. He should consider himself lucky, as we were toying with the idea of bailing and getting a cab back, we were that far away from the hire point.
The relocation to Cairns didn't happen due to a lack of availability, so I caught a Greyhound back to Brisbane and from there a flight to Cairns. As I write I'm about to embark upon a tour to Cape Tribulation, north of Cairns and hopefully see some crocodiles and a better class of wildlife than was the norm in Sydney.
After much deliberation and research (5 mins on Lonely Planet's website) I decided that perhaps my constitution would struggle with Mexico, so I've rerouted my ticket to take in New Zealand instead and I fly to Auckland on the 17th January after hopefully watching some of the Australian Open tennis in Melbourne.
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