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Published: March 15th 2012
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Some interesting facts about Sydney:
1 - It is named after the great comedy actor - Sydney James
2 - It is the only city in the world that rhymes with kidney
3 - It has the highest observation tower in the Southeren Hemisphere.
Sounds interesting, so we thought we should go and have a quick shufty.
At the ticket booth, they seemed to be advertising a Skywalk, which, if it is anything similar to the one at the Grand Canyon, is basically a glass bottomed observation deck, so we thought we’d do that too (I do have a thing about heights, so I consider this therapy). They radioed up to see if there was room on the next Skywalk in 5 minutes and there was, so they took us a shortcut up to the lift and soon we were 280m above Sydney. The view was brilliant.
As for the Skywalk, we had to change our shoes and put blue jump suits on, be breathalysed (!) remove our watches and any other loose items. I was getting a little nervous as the guy who was asking us this also had some sort of harness with
karabiners on.
“Any questions?”, he said.
“Er, just one. What exactly is the Skywalk?”.
He laughed. “Too late now mate”.
We all then put harnesses on!!
By this time I was getting seriously worried as I thought they may have us abseiling or hanging off the edge of the tower. My trousers were also starting to worry.
Happily, neither of us need have worried, as it turns out this was all just good health and safety. It was a walk round a glass floor at the top of the tower, the harness clipped on to a safety rail as it was quite windy. I guess it’s different at the Grand Canyon when there’s no-one below so they’re not so bothered if you were to jump off, so no harness or jump suit. (Weird slippers though!).
Then we were off to visit an old friend Kay, who picked us up in the burbs and took us out to her house. What a fantastic location, looking over a luscious sub-tropical rainforest valley. As there’s so much room, the burbs aren’t all on top of each other. Everyone seems to have enough space. Beautiful.
After
a nice refreshing glass of sparkling, we went to take Skipper (Kay’s little terrier) for a quick (well I say quick) walk on coast and watched a couple of guys hang-gliding in the ocean breeze before heading off to Manly beach to a Bavarian beer restaurant to sample the various wares, including delicious beer-battered butter fish and chips.
(What’s butter fish?)
(Don’t know). The beer slipped down nicely, the food slipped down nicely, the photographs seem to get a little more blurred as the night went on (and I thought that was my eyes ), we said our goodbyes and caught the Manly ferry back to Central and home.
It’s our last day in Australia today. Tomorrow we fly to Chile (17 hour flight altogether!) and begin our South America tour, which will be different. Don’t quite know when the next blog update will be.
As for Australia, it’s really blown us away. Both the North and the South. I wasn’t expecting to be so knocked out with it. The people are great, the weather is great, the countryside is great. It is easy too see how people want to stay here.
It’s
hard to put it into words. Perhaps some poetry:
Oh Australia
With your Bigness and All That Stuff
Kangaroo Poo on Golf Greens
And Space, There seems Enough.
The Tropical North is Jungle
Butterfly Dinner Plate
Wallaby, Roo and Koala, Plus
The Barrier Reef is Great
The Sub Tropical South’s More Temperate
Huge forests green and brown
The only complaint I’ve really got
The Moon is Upside Down
Oh Australia
She’ll Be Right
No Worries.
Would we return ?
Christ on a bike, does the Pope shit in the woods ?!?
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