Australia

---

We got to Sydney and stayed at a hostel called Billabong Gardens in an area called Newtown, which we picked at random. The hostel was OK except that of the two members of staff, one seemed to be stoned most of the time and the other was a bit nasty. The neighborhood turned out to be near the university, so it had lots of relatively inexpensive places to eat and was on the main bus lines into the downtown. It had a university-town, vaguely Bohemian atmosphere, though I got the impression that the atmosphere comes mostly from non-student tattooed and pierced hangers-on rather than the students themselves, who seemed pretty lame. We visited the Sydney Harbor a few times at various stages, and were pretty annoyed and jealous about the lovely lifestyle that the Sydney folk seem to enjoy. Everyone was out at 6pm, hanging out at little bars and cafes on the harbor, with great sunny weather (but not too hot). While we were there, there were four days of cloudless blue skies. The "historic" district down by the water, since rebuilt for tourists, called The Rocks was a bit lame, with nothing with any particular character. We walked across the Sydney Harbor Bridge and got a great view of the Harbor and had a nice drink at a pub on the other side. We visited two suburbs, both quite pleasant, called Bondi and Manly, which are mostly know for their beaches but people live there as well. Bondi was hosting an annual outdoor sculpture exhibition called Sculpture on the Sea. The walk was quite nice along the coast but the pieces were the usual modern sculpture nonsense, tending even into the installation art realm of further silliness. After weeks and weeks of trying to go to the cinema, we finally managed to see Serenity, which was great. One thing that I didn't like about Sydney was that the bus signage was appalling. In London, you can basically rock up to any bus stop in the city, look at the information posted there, and figure out how to get to any place within reason from that bus stop or any other nearby stop. In Sydney, if you don't already know which number bus you want and where to get it, you're screwed, because bus stop signs only indicate which number bus stops there, not where it goes or what else might be in the vicinity (for example, the same number bus that you took to get there, but going in the other direction!). While we were in Sydney, we took a day trip to the Blue Mountains, which are a range of mountains just to the west of Sydney. We almost didn't go, because the pictures of the scenery that I had seen up to that point were not actually that impressive. Anyway, it turned out to be really worthwhile. We saw some kangaroos up very close, and did some nice walking around cliffs and lookout points for distant waterfalls. We had a ride on a cable car down into a valley and then caught the worlds steepest inclined railway (it felt like more than 45 degrees--quite scary, actually) to get out again. Down in the bottom, we had a little guided walk through a cool wood of ferns. Obviously, we didn't even scratch the surface of Australia, but it was fun to get to know Sydney a bit and we did sneak up pretty close to some kangaroos.

---

Photos

Skippy and friend
Skippy takes a break from fighting crime with Constable Carruthers.

P at Bondi Beach
This is about 30 minutes from Downtown Sydney. How unfair!