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Published: November 14th 2005
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Ordinary Days
Well, we had just another ordinary weekend. You know the type - - daily trips to the beach, a few hikes over sea-side cliffs, a Guinness Book bungee attempt, the world’s largest airplane and of course a battle with a new nasty bug. Just your basic weekend down under - - where nothing is done on the small scale.
We had read that there would be some sort bungee jump attempt down at the beach on Friday morning around 8 am. So we hustled ourselves together and got down there around 7:45. Sure enough there was a decent sized crowd on the promenade along with media vans, wild, bungee-jump appropriate music, and best of all free bacon and egg rolls for everyone.
It turned out the jumper was A.J. Hackett the actual inventor of the bungee jump and associated bungee cords. He’d turned his love of all things dangerous into a business and is a sort of the Evil Knievel of jumping off big things. He holds the record for jumps off of famous buildings and bridges all over the world. And adding to his list, that morning he was going to jump out of a
Above Watson's Bay
This is up on the cliff walk above Watson's Bay looking west back toward the city and harbor. helicopter from about 1,000 feet up strapped to ‘Grant’ a local news anchor darling akin to Matt Lauer. The record that Guinness would be granting them, if successful, would be something like: Most ridiculous reason to jump out of a plane by two insane people.
Of course, before the actual jump, there wasn’t much to see. Just another sunny morning down at the beach. Beautiful - but not really newsworthy. So there was a lot of Ra Ra Whoohoo type build up with blaring music and announcements of A.J.’s other accomplishments to fill the time. Finally a helicopter flew in and hovered out over the ocean - and it was admittedly pretty far up there. They announced the countdown, which somehow got bungled, and we all started in at three instead of ten. Three, two, one . . . . and out of the helicopter fell a very small bundle, which we assumed was A.J. and Grant.
They really were way, way, way up high and it was pretty crazy when you actually saw them hurtling towards the ocean. They seemed to fall for a very long time when finally the bungee did its thing and they bounced back
Typical Australian Architecture
This is in the park at Watson\'s Bay and is very representative of the classic shingled red roof building style. and swung around above the water. We all cheered and clapped as if falling out of a helicopter took some sort of skill other than madness.
Frankly Les and I thought the most complicated thing during the whole event was the maneuvering that the helicopter pilot had to do in order to gently place A.J. and Grant, who were upside down and strapped together, onto the beach without bashing them into the cliffs or drowning them in the surf. Instead he put them down in a small designated area on the beach where all of A.J.’s loyal groupies stood waiting in blue and yellow A.J. adventure shirts.
But it was fun in a silly sort of way and AJ and Grant both ran up to the promenade right where we were standing so when they climbed up off the beach we got to say ‘hi’ to the inventor of the bungee cord. Plus, free breakfast and Les got his head into one of the photographs that made it onto the official Sydney Channel 7 News web site.
The other big story this weekend in the aeronautical world was that the big super jumbo jet more properly known
Les and Abby
Walking up the main path thru the park at Watson's Bay toward the playground. as the Airbus A380 came to Sydney. Before we actually knew about this, we had a slightly unnerving experience on Sunday morning. Since we have to take the love-em-and-hate-em busses to get to church we are never sure if we will get there on time or wildly early. This Sunday, it was the latter, and so we took Abby to a nearby playground to kill some time. Well you can imagine our thoughts when this jumbo jet flew overhead, very low, very slow, and with a small jet like plane right on its tail.
Then again in the afternoon, I looked out the window and watched as again, this big jet, flew very low and slow across the sky with a little jet right next to it. When I saw that, in our age where planes don’t fly low and near city skylines, I decided we were missing something. So I hopped online and checked it out. Sure enough - there it was on the front page. The A380 was touring Sydney (with a small jet just behind it taking media footage) and would be making loops around the Harbor and beaches for the next few days to just
The Jumbo Jet A380
Here is a shot of the plane as it flew around the Harbor, if you look v. carefully you can see the small jet just above it. sort of get the people of Sydney super excited about it. Too bad it won’t be flying passengers till 2007.
But armed with that knowledge it was fun to watch it. And it is really big. We had a great view of it on an excursion we took to Watson’s Bay.
Taking the bus directly north from Bondi you ultimately run out of land and find yourself in the ‘oldest fishing village in Sydney.’ The town is right on the spit of land that forms the outer edge of the Sydney Harbor. It looks due north to Manley where we visited when we first arrived and were almost blown away.
Watson’s Bay is wonderful. It is one of our favorite beach towns so far. It’s very small, but has two great cliff walks, a large and nicely manicured town park complete with a playground, views of the city, a few pubs, and a ferry wharf. It feels very slow and laid back with none of the crazy Bondi glamour and frenzy. Our shadow bus of Japanese tourists was there, but when they were off being officially toured, we mostly had the town and park to ourselves.
Jumping at the pool
Abby is jumping in the children's pool at the north end of Bondi Beach, when the tide is low, there is a rock pool just to the side that is also fun for kids. Excursions in the morning, the midday nap, and beach or pool trips in the afternoon were the order of the weekend. And with a sitter on Saturday night and dinner at Iceberg’s, a club built into the cliff wall overlooking the ocean, it was nearly the perfect weekend.
The only glitch was the discovery of yet another creature that can fly into our windows. The Australian Cockroach. This is not your mama’s cockroach. Further it is not associated with the same social stigma. Everyone here deals with them, and it’s odd if you don’t get a few now and then. Of course since they fly, the root problem can be traced to the issue of screens, which I will not belabor again right now. But as it was in the 90s this week we simply had to open some windows for a few hours at night. And so when we turned on the lights after watching a movie - surprise!! Skittling, scuttling, nasty cockroaches! We caught (and killed!) four in all. And here’s the thing - they were at least 2 inches long. So we may melt - but we won’t be messing around with our windows again without the screens!
But that was a minor glitch all things considered. As I’m typing this it’s in the high 70s/low 80’s, crystal clear, with a nice breeze. Abby is napping, but when she wakes up we’ll be off to the beach or rock pool for the afternoon. Just another ordinary day in Oz.
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