Detour stop number two on my
journey to South Korea, and this time it’s to explore the wonderful city of
Sydney and meet up with the travelling duo, Ed and Amy. They departed England in September and although I hadn’t planned on seeing them over the year
that followed it was great to see their well-travelled, beautiful faces.
I arrived in Sydney in early
December, and like most cities that abide by the Christian calendar, it was
pleasantly festooned with merry decorations. This was odd for me for two
reasons; 1) it appeared that Sydney really made an effort with their decorations,
they had a serious budget that I’ve never really experienced back home in
England. My home town of Bedford make an effort each year which normally
involve hanging flashing lights and tinsel from lampposts around the town but
nothing major. And 2) I had never experienced a scorching December before,
during my stay in Sydney temperatures rocketed to mid-thirties which was nice
but seemed odd when standing beside a Christmas tree and carollers. Winter in
England has its benefits and drawbacks; one inch of snow brings the country to
a stand-still, it also brings the hours of moaning about the weather (which
we’re renown for), but an Australian will never know of the joy of watching
someone struggle to walk on an icy pavement and then fall over. One of life’s
simple pleasures.
My first few days were troubled with jet-lag, being
extraordinarily tired but not being able to sleep and then waking at 5am.
Rather than waste that time trying and failing to fall back asleep I took that
opportunity to walk around my surroundings. I was centrally located in
Woolloomooloo (great name, I know), so my first stroll took me to Circular Quay
where you can get a great view of the harbour, the stunning Opera House, and
Sydney Harbour Bridge. The views were even more incredible as the sun was
rising, and no one else was around making unnecessary noise, being that it was
about 5:30am.
As the tourist that I am, I visited many of the surrounding tourist hot-spots. The Royal Botanic Gardens were located very closely to where I was staying so it would have been rude no to walk through them. The Gardens were OK, I was expecting more if I’m honest. These were supposedly famous gardens but to me they were just gardens. A bit of greenery and a few shrubs, a florist may have valued them higher but for me I think the space could be utilised better if all the trees were dug up and football pitches were laid in their place. With more access to decent facilities, and further involvement the Australian national team could become a genuine force.
Darling Harbour is a fun place to visit, there’s always
street performers, street artists, and a great view from the many bars that
have a daily happy hour. Within the Darling Harbour area is the wildlife park
and the aquarium; again it would have been rude to have gone to Australia and
not seen a kangaroo and/or a koala so a visit was necessary. The wildlife park
was great, more than 80% of the plants, mammals, reptiles, and frogs are unique
to Australia and cannot be found anywhere else on earth. Seeing the iconic
animals for the first time was very interesting, seeing creatures that I’d only
seen on the internet; kangaroos, koalas, wombats, Tasmanian devils, platypus,
echidnas, and so many different types of snakes, spiders, and other creepy-crawlies.
The trip to the aquarium was a disappointment by comparison. Don’t get me
wrong, it was still pretty cool to see the sharks, manatees, stingrays, and
jelly fish but there was nothing unique to Australia. I felt like I could have
seen the sea life at almost any large aquarium in the world.
That's a picture of a koala sitting in a tree like it's an arm chair, and a picture of a kangaroo scratching his arse.
The city itself is very exciting. It combines a business
district with the tall skyscrapers, the busy region of Chinatown, modern
buildings, the many bars and restaurants, and the millions of people that pass
through it every day and night. I thought it would be quite interesting to find
out about the (very short) history of the city, so Ed, Amy, and I decided to
take the tour of The Rocks. The tour would explain about how the first European
settlers had colonised the area, and the colourful tales that would follow over
the next 200 years. The tour was due to start at 18:00 but the tour was late,
we waited for a full four minutes before we got impatient and went to the pub.
I got the gist of the tour from the leaflet so, I’m good. It was that afternoon
that I tried kangaroo steak. Not bad. It tastes very similar to beef steak just
a bit chewier.
The evening entertainment in Sydney was always surprising. I
had my first experience of crab racing. Yes, crab racing. A race which pitched
crabs against one another to race to the edge of a large platform. Despite the
premise the atmosphere was very exciting, although the bar was not encouraging
gambling you could “buy” a crab and if your crab won you would win a prize, often
a beer tab. It was funny to watch so many people get so animated cheering on a
crab that had no idea that it was in a race, and would remain motionless for
most of the duration of the race. It was a different, fun experience though.
We ventured to The Soda Factory/Bobby’s Boss Dogs, a bar
that specialised in gourmet hot dogs, on two separate occasions. The first was
to watch a screening of Home Alone (I forget how good that film is sometimes)
and the second was to binge eat as many $1 gourmet hot dogs as possible. The dogs
were pretty good! The first 3 or 4 were a delight going down then the dogs
became a challenge, I think I ended up forcing 6 down and Ed managed 7. We
asked the bar tender if there was a record, he said there wasn’t but he said
he’d be surprised if someone could manage 4. So I think without really trying
Ed managed to set an unofficial record, although not such a great idea when you
have a 15 minute waddle home.
Something I haven’t mentioned so far that Sydney is famous
for is its stunning beaches. Pretty much the only thing I had planned when I
arrived in Australia was to lie on a beach and do nothing. When you work in
customer service, like I did, I worked for a bank taking call after call about
complaints and charges I couldn’t think of anything better than to lie on the
sand, not having to speak to anyone, pure bliss. We mainly went to Bondi Beach,
but we did go to Manly Bay on one occasion. The relaxing beach experience was
tainted slightly with the risk of getting eaten by a Great White Shark if you
decided to venture into the water. I have a friend from England who is
petrified of sharks; she has nightmares about them, so scared in fact that she
talks about them almost on a daily basis. I always laughed at her fear of
sharks, and rightly so considering she lives in Derbyshire, but when you could potentially be less than 30 miles from a shark I had every right to be
apprehensive from entering the water. The life guards have measures in place
whereby a helicopter will patrol the coast roughly every thirty minutes but
even so there were 48 shark attacks in Australia in 2008, that was 1 every
week. So forgive me for being slightly afraid of a man eater.
On one of my many walks around the city I decided to walk
across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Now I know the bridge is legitimately safe to
cross but when a lorry, or bus would cross the bridge the pedestrian footpath
would shake, this made me very anxious. But I was already half way across so I
persisted. Along the bridge I noticed a couple of padlocks locked to the
gridded guard rail. This is a custom that has become very popular across the
world, couples will write something soppy on a padlock, lock it to a public
fixture, and this will represent their everlasting love. Bollocks if you ask me,
and I think this particular padlock summarised it all for me. This relationship
lasted all of 2 months, Josh’s ex-girlfriend obviously felt so aggrieved that
she had to go back to the padlock and scratch her name off. The padlock remains
but their love isn’t quite everlasting. Utter bollocks.
Here are some other highlights from my time in Sydney.
