Just over ten days we had now been in Australia and already it was time to fly on to major city number three. We'd had an awesome time in Melbourne, a truly unique city full of little nooks and crannies to explore and like I said in the last blog, like we have both said in fact, Melbourne is a place you could easily find yourself in permanently. (just for the record, what you want and what you wish for are two completely different things!).
Anyway, we got to check-in just as they were closing the flight, the closest we had ever come to missing a flight and one that if we missed, would mean both a loss of money and a loss of our much-appreciated lift from Sydney airport, provided by Morgan and Kylie, who we would be staying with for the next eleven nights. Earlier in the day back in Melbourne, we had finally managed to track down shells cousin Lee who we had been frantically trying to contact in our last few hours. Amazingly, we managed to spend an hour catching up over coffee in federation square before once again we had to dash off on the train to try and make it to the airport in time for our flight. It was fantastic to see Lee who was the first familiar face we had seen in almost six months.
Anyway, back in Sydney we arrived at Morgans, in rushcutters bay, just down the road from the city. We dumped our bags then headed straight back out to check out an FC Sydney game. Now this is the second time I've been to Sydney after travelling over to stay with Morgan five years ago, where we caught an FC Sydney game for the first time, I can safely say that the quality has not improved. It was the equivalent of watching the third or fourth tier of English football. Abysmal but equally entertaining and far more importantly, shell loved it! She'll be off to buy a Forest season ticket as soon as we're back! Also, just like Melbourne, Sydney has a food heritage as rich as it's skyline. A city that has been populated by such a melting pot of different cultures that has seen a variety of food to match so we gorged on these amazing Naan bread wraps filled with tandoori chicken, sauce and potato, not as unhealthy as it sounds and beautiful with a couple of beers. On the way back we managed to crash a 30th birthday party with a friend of Morgans. We had a couple of beers and managed to help ourselves to some amazing food that was being bright round on wooden platters! It sounds a bit wrong I know but there were loads of people in there and way too much food, you take what you can get-we are budget travellers!!
The next morning we woke late and went out with Morgan for a walk into the city. We walked around the bay and through the majestic Botanical Gardens before approaching the mighty Opera House and Harbour Bridge but as the clouds had rolled in we decided to leave the obligatory photos until a better weather day. From there we walked up into the city and around Hyde Park before walking up to Morgan's, via the bottle shop (off licence), to buy enough beer and cider to last us at least a few days.
The next day we headed down to Bondi to meet Jai, my oldest friend, who had moved over here with his girlfriend Fi a few months ago. It was great to see him, if not a tad surreal but we had a good day on the beach in the sun. Apparently Sydney has had a terrible summer so far so I guess we were lucky to have had such great days so far, especially after not seeing a cloud for all of our time in Perth and Melbourne. Anyway, it was great to see Jai and meet a couple of his mates. We got invited back to one of their houses for tea and biscuits, how British! Especially when she whacked out the Hobnobs!
The next day the humidity was mental, storms were definitely a brewing. We walked, yet again, for the whole of the day. First to take 'those' pictures of Sydney's famous landmarks. After posing for some great shots we then walked around to The Rocks, a really attractive part of Sydney's heritage. This was the place, around 200 years ago, that Captain Cook and the first band of convicts set up shop within the harbour and decided that this is where they would send those really dangerous criminals that stole loaves of bread or blasphemed whilst hitting their finger with a hammer. I know you don't want to hear about the history, you can read a book to do that, but how ironic that in those days criminals who were sentenced to transportation I.e sent to the colonies, often asked for the death sentence rather than be sent to Australia. Imagine that now...
Its a strange one being here again. Obviously very little has changed in five years but it's just extraordinary how many British accents we have heard. I would be interested to know how many Brits have made the decision to start a new life over here in recent times but it must be a ridiculously high number. Geographically its obviously a huge distance but culturally it's scarily close. All you have to do is just look around, listen to conversations, jokes, supermarkets, even by switching on the tv and things are just so intrinsically linked. Fascinating stuff.
Anyway, the next day we walked up through the trendy districts of Darlinghurst and Paddington to a large pub on Oxford Street, one of Sydney's main thoroughfares. There, in one of the best spots in the city, our friend Ben, an old uni friend, had just become licensee of a new pub. It was great to see him, even better to see that he has landed completely on his feet, I would expect nothing else! Anyway, we were fortunate enough to be spoiled by Ben who treated us to lunch and beers for most of the afternoon (our first steak in six months tasted like heaven). From there, once Ben had finished, we headed down the road to some of the pubs that would be absolutely rammed come this time Saturday night. Sydney's Mardi Gras parade is the worlds biggest and as we sat here in a bar some three days before it was already full of people who had made the special pilgrimage to their beloved site. We stayed in there for the rest of the night, it was great to catch up with Ben and even better to have a good session with a mate, some things you just cannot do without! While we were in the pub the heavens opened, delivering rain and wind in huge proportions. It was so surreal, drinking with a mate who I last saw in a Pompey pub, shivering inside while outside was cold, wet and windy. Had we even gone anywhere??
Unfortunately the aforementioned rain just wouldn't shift, in fact it was so bad that even now as I type away in the sun, New South Wales and Victoria have been absolutely inundated by floods. Outside of the city, apparently, is terrible. It's ok, we only plan to camp in all of these places in the next two weeks...
Anyway, by saturday the rain showed no signs of stopping but the Mardi Gras of course had to go on, imagine the uproar here if they cancelled if they moaned about the name of a penguin! The parade itself didn't start till 8pm so we got up there at about seven to get a good spot which proved pretty impossible given the fact that the crowd was already seven deep, we needed a step! luck would have it that we had brought a couple of milk crates from ben's pub so despite the umbrellas obstructing our in front of us, we managed to get some kind of view.
Despite the rain the parade was typically over the top! It involved about two hundred floats of every conceivable gay and lesbian project, community, occupation and so on, culminating in an appearance by the demigod herself, Kylie. I've never understood the adoration of Kylie by the gay community until I came here, it is absolutely and phenomenally crazy!
The next day, to everyones relief, the sun finally made an appearance! With this, we shook off the remnants of our hangover and headed to Taronga zoo, which surely lays claim to the worlds most impressively located zoo. Obviously the animals were immense and when compared to the zoo in Thailand we visited it was like visiting the Savoy Hotel for animals. The real winner here though was the view, simply stunning and the only place in the harbour where you can take in views of all three of the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge and the city skyline in one view. As for the animals, we have now learnt that Australia is the only home to eleven of the worlds top fifteen most poisonous snakes. Even better to note that all of said snakes can be found in the places we intend to camp over the next few weeks! At least shell revised the 'what to do in event of snake chasing you' literature. I think it read something like 'don't count on boyfriend to be of any use, just run and cry like he does'....
From the zoo, Kylie (Morgan's GF, not the Locomotion singer) drove us around to Manly, sydney's second most famous beach. By now the wind had picked up and the rain almost within reaching distance but we did manage to get a few photos and a sense of what it was all about. In essence, too touristy and too much like Skegness on a bank holiday. I guess that's slightly exaggerated but compared to Sydney's other beaches it didn't really stand up.
Back at Morgans me and shell cooked up a Mexican chilli feast, at least to repay some of the amazing generosity! It went down a storm and what was even better than eating great food, was getting the chance to be unleashed in a kitchen once again!
With only a couple of days left in Sydney the sun finally came out to play. We took a walk down to circular quay, Sydney's famous city centre ferry terminal, and took a ferry over to the Eastern suburbs, arriving eventually at Watsons Bay. We headed off the ferry and immediately queued for fish and chips as this was, quite famously, Sydney's most well regarded spot. Watsons bay was also the place where I spent most of my time when i was last here, quite freakishly, five years ago to the day. It is a beautiful area with stunning houses and a perfect park running down to the sea. It also has, arguably, the most perfect views of Sydney in the entire harbour.
Sydney was, five years ago, a place that just took my breath away. I had an amazing time here and couldn't wait to come back, especially with shell this time. After six months of travelling it was amazing to be able to kick back with some of our oldest and best friends and not think about moving for a while. We've both loved it here, we can't lie. We're not saying we want to live here forever but you can't rule out the possibility of giving it a go for a while, the way of life is just incredible. The bars, the streets lined with coffee shops, the sport, the fact that everyone in the city seems to leave work to jog home and the fact that despite this health conscious last point, everyone seems to spend every last penny either eating or drinking. It's infectious, not without it's problems but then where is perfect?
So onwards! Tomorrow we leave Sydney to travel to a place called Gosford, to the north. There we will be picked up by Rowan and Teeny, two friends we made in Munich a few years ago and have maintained contact with. We don't really know where we are going but we will be off for about ten days up the coast and into the bush until we get to Brisbane. Time to get all Mick Dundee......
Much much love, Donk and Sheila xxx
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