Advertisement
Published: June 21st 2008
Edit Blog Post
There weren’t many of us left by this stage. Liam and Jim had returned from the far reaches of Victoria where they had been working and playing cricket for about 2 months and had saved not very much but were determined to go home with pretty much nothing. Their idea was to spend their remaining cash supplies in their final 3 days in Sydney and to honest they made a fair bash at it. Lee and I had offered to put them up at our house for a couple of nights to save them money and the first thing they did when they got to ours was head out and buy a few cases of lager to help numb the pain of leaving Australia in the next few days.
The plan was to have everyone round to ours to give them a wee send off and to be honest we did a pretty good job. Lee and Rosie put together one of our famous punch concoctions using the time honoured recipe from The Malpass in Queensland and the rest of the party pack was made up with beer and a few nibbles to keep a lining in our stomachs. I’m
not sure that Jim would agree, but we all had a fair old night of it to say cheerio to the boys. Jim ended up making a mess of our bath as he was feeling al little delicate by the end of the night but he still managed to soldier on and make it to his bed at a respectable hour of the morning, a real trooper so he is.
And so it was down to 5 of us left in Sydney. We had all met in town to say goodbye to the guys on their last night as they had been out in town getting souvenirs sorted for the families and the girls got all emotional and it meant that there was only 5 of us left in Sydney. Lee and I, Rosie and Phil and Fran were the only folk left from our wee group and it was getting to the stage that Lee and I were planning trips ourselves to get used to when everyone had left.
Lee suggested we take a trip to Shark Island one weekend that we were both off. This sounded like a great idea to me, Sydney Harbour plays host
to all manner of aquatic life and it’s no surprise to see humpback whales playing about in the harbour every so often so it would be a great trip to go out and do a bit of shark spotting. As before, the weather had been rotten coming up to the weekend but come the day of our trip, the sun came out and provided a great day to get out on the harbour and chill out. The reason for Shark Island’s name, however, became apparent on the ferry out to it. No matter where you travel on Sydney’s harbour ferries, you are provided with a guide who will point out points of interest o the harbour, including Russell Crowe’s house, Nicole Kidman’s house and also the most expensive house in Australia, a sprawling 6 story effort that will set you back a cool $55,000,000. Lee and I have ordered two of them !! Turns out though, that Shark Island is so named because it is shaped like a shark, nothing to do with the chances of spotting one of the critters. It’s absolutely tiny as well, you could run the length of it in about 45 seconds but it’s a
cracking wee spot to have a picnic and watch some of the thousands of yachts that take to the harbour on days like this, some of them are the actual yachts that compete in the Sydney to Hobart race and are absolutely huge.
The usual fare of cheese, pate and biscuits was consumed and washed down with a couple of bottles of wine and we basically stayed there for the afternoon, talking rubbish and watching the world go by from the middle of Sydney Harbour.
Rosie and Phil had been at Watson’s Bay for the day and it was on our way back on the ferry so Lee and I stopped off for an hour or so and enjoyed the delights of this little spot by the water, it’s just a tiny little part of the coast around the harbour but it’s in a nice and cosy bay where you’re sheltered from the wind and you can enjoy the rest of what’s left of the sun for the day. It’s a great alternative to sitting in the house on a nice day, you just get on a ferry and go and sit on an island for the afternoon in
the sun, a bit like going out to Inchcolm for the day but with a little better scenery.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.15s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 16; qc: 57; dbt: 0.1083s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb