The last nights of the Pom

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Though my original plan had been to complete my circuit of the country by finishing up in Melbourne then having some time in Tasmania to really feel as though I'd comprehensively "done" Australia, various distractions along the way meant that Victoria and Tasmania were going to have to wait for another time. Thus Sydney was to be my end-point, with a final road trip that looped through New South Wales getting only as far southwest as Canberra.

On the recommendation of Alex, my tentmate from Fraser Island, I opted to stay in the Railway Square YHA in Sydney. The larger dorms in the hostel are actually converted railway carriages, clustered next to (but separated from) Platform 1 of Sydney Central Station, so you can hear the platform announcements through the day and can even view the morning commuters if you pull up the blinds.

There wasn't much of the city I hadn't already seen, so Darling Harbour was the only new area I visited. The rest of my time in Sydney was spent mainly on admin tasks, including buying an old edition of the Rough Guide to South-East Asia to do some planning for next year's trip. I think my top-level summary of Australia would be that it's been a lot of fun but not overwhelmingly interesting, whereas India was the reverse. I'm expecting SE Asia to be (sweeping statement) somewhere betwen the two. My travels there will be on much shorter timescales per country than India and Australia have been - I doubt I'll spend more than 2 months in any one country, if I'm to get through the whole region in 2007 (with China and Japan stretching the definition of SE Asia).

As part of my road trip (mainly blogged in previous entries) I also visited 2 Sydney suburbs. The first was Homebush, site of the Olympic Park. I'd been in Japan when the 2000 games were held here and had experienced some of the most partisan TV coverage in Olympic history. Such was the focus on Japanese athletes that you were guaranteed to see in-depth coverage of the first round heats of the 10m doggy paddle if there was a Japanese competitor, but Ian Thorpe's world record-breaking 400m freestyle swim could be omitted due to the absence of Japanese swimmers in that final. The flip side to this was that sports such as judo received almost 24/7 coverage.

The Olympic Park has changed in the last 6 years, with the main stadium being reduced in seating capacity (though it's still the largest in Sydney) and various sculptures having been erected to commemorate the games. There have also been some other reshufflings such that, for example, the venue for badminton is now part of some general exhibition halls and new courts have been built as part of a public sports complex. I also ventured to the top of the site hotel, to get panoramic views of the entire site as well as all the way to the Sydney business district skyline.

My other trip to the suburbs was to Bondi Beach, on my way back from Canberra. For such a well-known place, there was a mere one sign on the highway into Sydney from the south, and that exit was blocked off. Throw in a healthy dose of my own navigational incompetence, and you can understand why I ended up making a return trip through the Harbour Tunnel (on one occasion running the E-tag gate too quickly, which the rental company will no doubt hear about) before hitting the right road. Bondi was disappointing, partly due to it being under lowering skies and swept by a fresh breeze courtesy of an approaching storm, and partly because it resembled Saltburn Beach just with more surfers and less sewage. My journey back to Sydney was conducted in lashing rain during rush hour, and I got hopelessly lost (again), which also coloured the experience.

While walking through Chinatown, I saw an advert looking for a flatmate where the rent included "all bills and rice".

My final evening in Sydney and Australia was spent in the company of Denise. She's also returning home shortly but in her case with no further travels in mind - she's already put some major thinking into what to do next, which will be to start her own business. I only hope I achieve some similar clarity when all this bumming around comes to an end in 200n. We tried out Scruffy Murphy's, a bar that on some other night of the week offers cockroach racing. The presence of work Christmas parties and people wearing Santa hats seemed incongruous given some of the temperatures I've experienced recently, but the mute testimony of my watch's date showed that Christmas was indeed just around the corner.

It really didn't feel like my last night in Australia, which I think means I'm certain to come back rather than I just don't care about saying goodbye to the place. Though I'll probably wait for a few months before constructing any lists of most/least favourite aspects of this trip, I'm certain that backpacking will top the most favourite one. Though it's hardly specific to Australia, my enjoyment of this trip has rested largely on the many people I've met in the hostels, through activities organised by the hostels, or on the Greyhound. Having never hostelled before, and having had a fairly solitary existence in India, I was completely unprepared for the constant stream of people coming into, and out of, my life over the 6 months I spent down under. Sure, some of them were a pain in the neck who I never want to see again, some disappointingly decided not to stay in touch after we'd spent fun times together, and some were friends in Australia and will be friends afterwards, but I was exposed to a cross-section of ages, careers, nationalities, and opinions that was more diverse than any other period in my life that I can think of. The common bond of travelling was the only linking theme, and that was sufficiently fundamental as to mean our backgrounds were almost meaningless. Being free of the baggage associated with being a 30-something guy with a university education who used to work as an IT project manager in an American investment bank was enormously liberating. What people saw was simply John the Pom.

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Photos

Chiron the Centaur
Sculpture at the Olympic Park

The view from my dorm
Sydney Central Station Platform 1

Sydney Christmas tree
The largest in the southern hemisphere, apparently

Sculpture
Seconds after snapping this, I was requested to stop taking photos (in a public shopping centre)

The Attractor
Sculpture at the Olympic Park

The Attractor
Sculpture at the Olympic Park

Games Memories
Sculpture at the Olympic Park listing out the names of all volunteers who assisted with the 2000 Olympics/Paralympics, plus some showing videos of special moments from the Games.

Games Memories
Yet another famous namesake

Comments

[chillibee]

a good read
Just stumbled on your blog- interesting reading, John the Pom :)