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December 2nd 2006

Published: December 13th 2007

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Platypus in Sydney Aquarium

Will and Alex

The Opera House

Needs no further comment !

Courtesy of Qantas (who serve Byron Bay Cookie Company cookies on their domestic flights, making them clearly the world's best airline) we are whisked from Melbourne to Sydney in an hour and twenty minutes. Melbourne and Sydney, which a cursory look at an atlas would suggest are neighbours, are in fact over 700km apart, the same distance from London to, say, Hamburg. The route takes us over the very mountainous terrain of the Australian Alps, at the far southern end of the Great Dividing Range. The Alps are home to mainland Australia's highest peak, 2,228 metre Mount Kosciuszko.

As we descend into Kingsford Smith Airport, we overfly the Blue Mountains National Park, a range of sandstone cliffs shrouded in an eponymous bluish haze emanating from the eucalypt forests that cover them. We had briefly thought about visiting the Park, which is within relatively easy reach of Sydney, but that scourge of Australia's - bushfires - had swept through parts of the mountains barely a month earlier. We're not having the best of luck with bushfires - a few days after we left Kangaroo Island a serious fire damaged the Flinders Chase National Park in the west of the island, half

Platypus !

A platypus up close at Sydney Aquarium. Everyone was enthralled by these extraordinary little creatures.

the Grampians National Park which had attempted to visit a few weeks ago had been destroyed by a fire in early 2006, and now the Blue Mountains were going up in smoke. Of course, natural fires are a vital part of the ecology of parts of the Australian bush - some species of plant even produce seeds that are activated by fire - but many of the fires that sweep through the bush each year are not natural at all.

The shuttle bus from the airport drops us off in busy central Sydney, in what seemed to be some sort of Chinatown district, where we had booked a room in a small hotel. The somewhat suspicious-looking establishment managed to cock up the booking - or, much more likely, they just gave the room to somebody else - and we found ourselves laden with heavy bags in the heaving streets of Sydney, without a room, on a Saturday afternoon in high season. Ever so slightly exasperated, we trudged to Sydney's huge YHA hostel which happened to be nearby. Unsurprisingly the hostel was chock full, and even if it hadn't been I don't think I could think of anything more unpleasant

Don't mince your words...

A nice, typically Australian, sign in Sydney Aquarium.

than staying in a city-centre hostel in a place as large as Sydney...Still, the helpful staff made a few phone calls and managed to bag us the last remaining double room (don't do dorms - sorry) in a much smaller hostel, also YHA, a little way from the city centre in the neighbourhood of Glebe. Never have I been so glad to have a reservation messed up. Glebe is a pleasant half-hour walk or a ten-minute bus ride from downtown Sydney and is a bit of an artsy, bohemian place, complete with cafés, students and a most pleasant leafy village atmosphere. Rather exhausted by our traipsing about looking for a room, we spend what's left of the afternoon sniffing around Glebe's shops, a quirky and eclectic mix of second-hand bookshops, health-food stores and new-age Ayurvedic crystal healing clinics (or something like that).

The following morning, fit as fiddles from our long Tasmanian walks, we head into town on foot. Our first stop is Darling Harbour, a cute little marina formed by the adjacent peninsulas of Pyrmont and Sydney's central business district. The Harbour is home to the world famous Sydney Aquarium, which we have been advised not to miss.

Queen Victoria Building

Or, as the locals say, the QVB. All decorated for Christmas in the middle of summer...

It certainly is an extraordinary place - one of the Aquarium's main features is a series of huge, multi-million litre seawater tanks. The most impressive of these is home to a vast collection of sharks, including 3.5 metre-long grey nurse sharks (harmless apparently, despite extremely fearsome-looking gnashers) as well as various species of wobbegong, carpet sharks that look nearly as strange as they sound (but taste delicious as fish and chips) and have the reputation of being very difficult to get rid of should they decide to bite you. The shark aquarium is supplied with water from the Harbour, and has two glass tunnels you can walk through as massive sharks and rays glide above your head - signs helpfully point out that when looked at through the concave glass, the sharks appear a third smaller than they actually are...I am mildly surprised at the lack of terrified, screaming children. After all, the popping-up head scene in Jaws gave me nightmares for months ! Even more of a hit with us than the sharks, the seals, or even the Barrier Reef Aquarium, was the platypus tank. As you may remember we saw one from a distance near Lake St Clair

And the Queen herself

Smile dear, you're in Australia !

in Tasmania only a few days before, but the platypuses in Sydney Aquarium were something else. We watched, our faces glued to the glass, as three platypuses frolicked in their huge aquarium, diving to the bottom leaving a trail of bubbles escaping from their fur, snaffling amongst the rocks, pebbles, wood and vegetation at the bottom (continuously stocked with invertebrates from feeder tanks behind the scenes) for a few minutes, before bobbing back to the surface like giant furry corks to munch on their catch of tiny prawns and the like. It was absolutely incredible to watch - see for yourself on the video !

We continue our walk through Sydney's central business district past Circular Quay, the hub of the ferry network that keeps Sydney's economy ticking - Sydney's urban area stretches all around Port Jackson's highly indented coastline. Along to Bennelong Point, originally a small rocky island in the harbour but now home to what is perhaps one of the world's most iconic buildings. The Sydney Opera House, which since our visit has been declared a World Heritage Site, is a strange thing to behold - especially if, like we have, you've seen countless pictures of it

White Elephant

A monorail does the circuit of Central Sydney. It's practically faster to walk, and locals hate it - looks fun though !

in books, magazines and on the television. Perhaps it was the weather, unusually cold and cloudy for the time of year, perhaps we'd trudged just a little too far around Sydney that day, but we both found ourselves a little - just a little - underwhelmed at the sight of the House, and a little underwhelmed at feeling underwhelmed, too. Designed by a Dane, Jørn Utzon, the Opera House was completed in 1973. From a distance, the building shows no sign of ageing whatsoever. It could have been built yesterday, and would still look extraordinary in its distinctiveness. Closer up, though, and much of the effect is lost, the power of those graceful curves overtaken by the reality of aging concrete. There is some kind of event on so we can't go in, but what little we can see of the foyers is disappointingly reminiscent of London's South Bank Centre, an arguably less impressive hymn to concrete. Walking back down Bennelong Point we pass a gift shop selling Christmas decorations - we can't resist a kangaroo wearing a Father Christmas hat and scarf. For the tree at home next year...

Our walk back to Glebe takes us through Sydney's

New and old in downtown Sydney

commercial district, a lively place awash with humanity, but perhaps less distinctively Australian than you would expect. It's only three weeks or so until Christmas and Australians seem as hell bent as Brits on raiding shops in preparation. It's through these shopping streets that the Sydney Monorail passes, weaving in between buildings and disappearing into tunnels overhead - it's like something out of a "what the cities of the future will look like" books I used to borrow from the library as a child. Locals don't seem too keen on it though, resenting it for being a white elephant and not much use to anyone except tourists. And they say Poms like to have a good whinge...A monorail still looks like more fun to me than a big dome.

The next day looks much more promising - sunshine and blue skies, or what New South Wales should be like in December! We've planned to walk the famous coastal path which links the Sydney suburbs of Coogee and Bondi (yes, as in Bondi Beach), a walk that's described as one of the finest in Sydney. After breakfast in the hostel we hop on a bus that takes us directly to

The Coat-Hanger

Also known as the Harbour Bridge.

Coogee from Glebe. Coogee is a popular place for Sydneysiders to come and surf the day away - luckily it doesn't live up to its name, supposedly derived from the Aboriginal word koojah, meaning "stinking place" - and as you might expect for a seaside suburb a short hop away from the bustling city, it's a pretty well-heeled place with some pretty well-heeled houses.

A strange thing happened in Coogee in 1935. A local aquarium had put on display a 3.5 metre tiger shark that had been caught in the waters off the beach - a few days later the poor creature began to look a little green around the gills, so to speak, and, in front of a small audience, proceeded to regurgitate a human arm into its enclosure. The arm, relatively undamaged, had a distinctive tattoo on it, and it was quickly identified as belonging to local small-time crook James Smith. Interestingly, the arm had not been chewed off but neatly sliced off with a knife. This didn't prevent the aquarium owners from killing the poor shark a few days later. The rest of Smith's body was never found and nobody convicted of his murder, although the

The Harbour Bridge

As seen from the Rocks.

prime suspect ended up shot dead in his car a couple of months later. Mystery, mystery, mystery...

The walk north up the coast is indeed beautiful, affording stunning ocean views eastwards out to sea. The path winds its way sticking close to the coast along the tops of cliffs, occasionally dropping down to sea level to cross a beach. The coastal architecture is nearly as impressive - obviously this is an area popular with Sydney's wealthier folk, and modern metal and glass structures, seemingly all window and little else, abound. The Antipodean equivalent of Sandbanks, perhaps. Clovelly, Bronte - each beach is prettier than the last. After a well-deserved lunch at one of the smart little cafés that unsurprisingly abound around here, we come to the last beach on the walk, the most famous of them all: Bondi Beach. It is truly immense, a beautiful wide sandy beach - no wonder Sydneysiders rush here at every available opportunity. In a couple of weeks' time there'll be Christmas barbies aplenty on the sand, no doubt, and cries of "throw another shrimp on, Bruce!". It's amazing quite how much the "seaside experience" in Australia differs from home - there's nothing down-at-heel

Circular Quay from The Rocks

This is where all the ferry services around Sydney Harbour converge. A hive of activity.

about Sydney's beaches. Not a donkey in sight - even the seagulls seem good-natured.

Back in Glebe, we meet up for dinner with Evelyne, a former colleague of mine, who also left her job a few months ago to do a spot of travelling with a friend and happens, by lucky coincidence, to be in Sydney at the same time as us...Strange, after so many months away from home, to see a familiar face and hear a familiar voice. We gorge ourselves on burritos and Mexican beer and discuss how fantastic it is to not have a job and be seeing the world instead...

The following morning we head back into central Sydney from the hostel in Glebe, to Circular Quay - where we board one of Sydney's rather odd-looking double-ended ferries for the short hop to Manly, north of the city centre across Port Jackson. The Sun is out and the half-hour ferry trip offers us jaw-dropping views of Sydney Harbour - the Opera House is transformed against its new blue background. It's difficult to think of a more impressive urban landscape.

Captain Arthur Phillip, an officer in the Royal Navy and a Governor of New

Sydney's CBD and Circular Quay

The building in the middle at the front is where the big cruise ships disgorge their passengers so they can go to Gucci.

South Wales, visited the area we are now heading to in the mid-eighteenth century and was apparently so impressed by the masculine and confident behaviour of the local inhabitants that he baptised the place "Manly Cove". Manly is now a chic suburb, more than a little reminiscent of the French riviera, with stylish promenades - The Corso being the best known of these - art deco architecture and smart eateries: the perfect place to enjoy our last day in Australia. The calm, laid-back atmosphere, beautiful beach and coastal scenery embody so much that we love about this country. Such is the vast size of Australia, however, that we have barely scratched its surface: we are already making plans for our next visit, which we have given the working title of "GTAA" - or Great Trans-Australian Adventure. Perth to Cape York in a four-wheel drive camper. Can't wait.

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