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Published: December 23rd 2009
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Well well well….we’re coming to the end - after this blog we have just a few days in Auckland and where we are up to in Wellington to document. I will attempt to do this as soon as possible, but for now I hope you enjoy a rather dull blog on Sydney and looking at the pictures.
As detailed in my previous blog, we flew to Sydney from Bangkok on 2nd December 2009. It was an overnight British Airways flight that had come all the way from London. This meant that most of the passengers were grumpy, as were the crew. What joy to be surrounded by miserable Brits again! We watched a few films on the very fancy ‘on demand’ system, stuffed our faces, and managed to get about an hour of sleep.
We were to spend 4 nights in Sydney: one in a hostel and 3 with Evan - a friend whom we had met on the Great Wall. Sydney was exactly as we expected it be: sunny, clean, organised, and ludicrously expensive. Two bunk beds in a hostel, for one night, cost about the same as a week in a double room in Vietnam, and this
particular room was full of utter plonkers. The overtly racist lad from York was a real treat.
We fled the hostel, living off no sleep, and explored the city. A venture into Hyde Park provided us with a chance encounter with the Anzac memorial. With the stained glass-splitting sunlight cast on a bronze sacrificial statue, it was a beautiful sight and the small accompanying museum provided an interesting insight into the Gallipoli campaign. It was watched over by a friendly old chap with whom I had a good long chat with.
The rest of the day was spent bleary eyed, but we fought against both our eyelids and the ferocious wind and caught the ferry to Manly. If Manly was in Britain it would be a seedy, disheveled shadow of its former self and its accompanying 1920s glory. In Australia, Manly is a long strip of golden sand with exclusive restaurants and surf shops. It still has a hint of tacky seaside-town about it, but it certainly puts Skeggy in its place.
We had fish and chips and watched the surfers - which were made up mainly of fearless children surfing perilously close to the rocks. The
waves weren’t enormous, but Cornwall would still have been jealous.
The ferry back to the city from Manly provides a fantastic view of Sydney Harbour, and we were finally to able enjoy the view offered from a boat without Laura being ill.
We spent the evening exploring so as to ensure that we avoided the hostel for as long as possible; we bought cherry tomatoes and sat by the Opera House until midnight.
The following morning we were picked up by Evan from the hostel. We had been debating what he did for a living, considering that he said he could pick us up at any time. We both thought that he worked in an office for a finance company. Needless to say, when he turned up with a gun strapped to his waist we were rather alarmed and surprised. Turns out he’s a Federal Agent and not an accountant.
We spent 3 happy nights at his flat, which was immaculate, enormous, and provided us with our own bed. We were staying in the south of Sydney, about a 45 minute train ride from the city centre. One point of note - public transport in Sydney
is atrocious! On Friday afternoon we partook in the Federal Agents’ Xmas party, but our involvement was limited seeing as ‘Pom’ was about as much as anyone could manage to utter (we joined them after they had been drinking for 4 hours). We did witness some police brutality which was blockbuster stuff - happily it was unrelated to the Xmas party. It occurred as myself and Laura were waiting to cross a road in the city centre. An elderly homeless chap was set upon by four New South Wales police officers. In fact, he wasn’t set upon, he was SAT UPON. Together with this surprising act, we had a shout from one of the officers of “Don’t try that again mother f****r” - which was met with rapturous cheers from the surrounding public. To make matters worse, one of the officers had eaten far too many meat pies. Evan’s reaction to our retelling of this event was to exclaim surprise that we were surprised. Bloomin’ Aussies. I hope I haven’t offended some of our more sensitive readers with the telling of this story.
The next day we headed to a national park and sat on a beautiful, quiet beach.
We also had enormous minced beef pies! In the evening we had a mighty barbeque with lamb, beef and some splendid red wine. So that was a real tough day….
We did some more sights with Evan on the following day, with him showing us some more alternative points of interest. We made a quick stop at Bondi Beach; you can’t go to Sydney without seeing it. Much like Manly, it failed to come close to being as tacky as I expected. I’m sure that no self-respecting Aussie would choose to spend their day on Bondi when there are so many other beautiful beaches in the vicinity, and Evan is certainly no fan, but as an ignorant Brit, I thought it was a rather classy place…notwithstanding it living up to its notorious reputation as being hugely popular with posers.
In the evening we got take-away Thai food, which considering that we had been out of Thailand for less than a week, was rather tasty.
Despite it being an incredibly brief stop-over in the Land of Oz, I felt like I had spent enough time to get an appreciation for the nation and the people. In contrast to
Laura, I have never had any particularly strong desire to travel around Australia. It is very dusty, there are a lot of racists, and they will beat us at cricket regardless of whether I’m at the Ashes in the winter of 2010 or not. Spending some time there did go some way to dispelling my prejudices (not the racism - we saw enough of that in one night alone!), and I will go back quite happily. All being well, we will be back in about a year’s time - so it’ll be great to catch up with Evan and perhaps make it to the Boxing Day test match…
We said our goodbyes to Evan, who had an early start the next day, and went to sleep thinking about New Zealand and all our plans…
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Sarah
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Tan
OMG, Laura you look like you have a proper tan going on there!!!! Sounds like your having a wonderful time!!! Keep the posts coming!!! Want to know all about the jobs!!! x x