G'Day!
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2007
1
79
97
Trip End
Aug 24, 2008
Sydney,
New South Wales,
Australia
Friday, April 4, 2008
The last stage was customs. The queue was huge and it took some time to get to the front. A man whose job was deciding who was safe to enter and who required further checks was supposed to be assessing the bio security risks of allowing each person to enter Australia. He seemed to base his decisions pretty much entirely on what sort of luggage the passengers had. Suitcase? Fine, no risk there. Backpack? No, no, you're clearly riddled with stuff that we don't want in Australia. Join that large queue there to have further checks. No, this isn't a sour-grapes assumption of ours: his reasoning all happened out loud.
The checks included looking at the soles of the shoes that we were wearing. These were not the shoes that we had been wearing to do the various activities that they considered to be risky. We weren't going to argue though.
Finally, eventually, we were allowed to leave. Charlotte was waiting for us. It was great to be met by a friendly face. Unfortunately, we weren't really going to be able to stay with her as she was a lodger in someone else's house, but it would be fantastic to catch up and besides, we had been able to find a few offers of places to stay through the CouchSurfing network.
We bought bus passes and caught buses into the city centre, where we found a pub near to where Ariyani, our host for the first few nights, lived. It was the pub that Charlotte had spent her first evening in when she arrived in Sydney and it turned out to be a very nice introduction to the city.
Ari met us there on her way home from work, collecting our bags in her friend Amy's car to take back to her place, then left again to go out with her other CouchSurfing guests for a meal. We got some food and drinks and caught up with Charlotte.
Some time later, Ari returned and collected us and took us back to hers. We were introduced to the other CouchSurfers, Benny and Julian, and Ari's dog, Wally. Wally is an overweight golden Labrador, who is Ari's pride and joy and who is allowed to get away with any behaviour he likes. We both really like dogs, but this one was the annoying spoilt brat of the canine world and we didn't really take to him at all.
After tea and conversation, most of which was Ari, Benny and Julian talking amongst themselves, we all went off to bed. The following morning, after toast and peppermint tea (most of a mint plant steeped in boiling water in a cafetière) for breakfast, we did some washing at a nearby laundrette, then went back to drop it off. Benny and Julian had helpfully locked the gate that they were supposed to leave open for us, so Jacob had to climb over the wall and open the gate from inside. We left our bag of clean clothes by the front door, locked the gate and headed into the city.
The first stop was Oxfam, where Ari worked. We said hello and got directions to a bookshop she had mentioned (to Benny and Julian) that morning. The bookshop was having a "50% Off Sale, Today Only!" which had apparently been taking place for a couple of months. We bought ourselves a nice half price guidebook.
Noticing an Apple store nearby, we popped in to see if they could find out what was up with our iPod and why it would no longer connect to our computer. They sent us to their service centre around the corner. We spoke to the girl there who told us that they didn't do repairs, they just sent broken iPods to Apple who generally send out a replacement.
Aside from being a horribly wasteful attitude (it's broken, don't bother trying to fix it, throw it away and have a new one), the fact that we couldn't connect our iPod to a computer meant that we had no way of getting all of our music back off it and onto any new player that they might have sent us. A brand new iPod is all well and good, but if there's nothing on it, it's not exactly a useful thing to be travelling with. We decided we'd just have to wait until we got home to sort it out and then headed into the city centre.
After a quick bite to eat at a food court, we went to the Indian embassy to sort out our visas. Indian visas are valid for six months from the date of issue, so we hadn't been able to sort them out before leaving home as they would have expired before we got to India. Sydney was the last stop on our trip to have an Indian Embassy which would definitely have English speaking staff, so we had decided we would sort it out here.
At the embassy building we found a sign advising us that passport and visa services were now in a different building. Brilliant. Consulting our map and hurrying across town, we found the right place, quickly filled in the paperwork and managed to get it all in before the 3pm deadline. Just.
Charlotte was working at a school in Sydney and finished work at 4pm. We found buses and got ourselves to the school in time to meet her once she finished, and accompanied her on her daily pilgrimage to nearby Bronte beach, where we had a swim in the pool and got washed around in the sea.
We stopped in at the Robin Hood pub for food (they were advertising steaks for $7, a price for which, it turned out, there was quite a good reason. Still, filled a hole) and decided to join in with the quiz. The questions were very Aussie sports based, so a team of three Brits didn't stand much of a chance. We did OK, but nothing special. We fared a little better at the paper aeroplane contest, but still only managed to score a pity-prize (a drinks voucher) from the quiz master. None of us very much care if our drinks are born of pity though.
Some time later, we went our separate ways and we got a bus back to Ari's. Another slightly awkward evening of stilted conversation that we weren't really included in, 'admiring' of the dog, then off to bed.
The following morning, we walked into the city centre, checking our email and getting ice-cream en route. We decided to head to the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, where we spent quite a while taking photos and being generally touristy.
That afternoon, we met Charlotte at the school gates again and we all went to Coogee Beach. We had a lovely afternoon swimming in the sea and lazing on the sand nattering.
Avoiding the crazy man who was ranting at people in the street, we caught a bus back to Bondi Junction, where Charlotte lives. Armed with antihistamines from a nearby pharmacy (Kirsty is allergic to cats; Charlotte lives with two) and groceries from the supermarket, we made our way back to Charlotte's house for tea.
We had a tour of the house, which is a lovely, grandmothery sort of place - something about the kitchen full of old kitchenware made us both think of grandparents - and prepared a meal of sausages, salad and bread, followed by some cake. Very tasty. Vince, the dog, whined and sneezed (apparently an unusual side effect of his hunger) until we relented and gave him a little bit of sausage.
After tea and nattering, we got a bus back into town, managing to time our arrival back at Ari's perfectly with her arrival home. She had been out for a meal with friends - an event that she had informed us of that morning, somewhat scuppering our intentions to cook for her that evening.
We chatted with Ari for a while and added our contributions to her wall. Ari's dining room wall is decorated with doodles, quotes and silliness, all contributed by friends, family and guests who have stayed. Jacob drew his standard Roman Centurion doodle and we also added a Swahili quote which we had learnt in Tanzania, as Ari has an interest in languages and likes to learn little snippets. As requested, we didn't provide a translation, as she enjoys finding out for herself. We did provide a clue though. The quote "Poa kichizi kama ndizi" was accompanied by a picture of a banana.
After packing up our belongings, it was time for bed. The following morning, we walked with Ari to her work, where she was going to be able to store our bags for us. She wasn't sure what time she would be finishing work, so we had to arrange to collect them at 4pm, which was a little early as our next CouchSurfing hosts wouldn't be available until after 6.30pm, but was better than nothing.
We walked through town to visit the Botanic Gardens, which are just behind the Opera House building. We wandered for a while, enjoying the really very attractive gardens, then found a section which was filled with thousands of fruit bats - quite an incredible sight. It was some time later that we finally tore ourselves away.
We set out on a rather silly mission. Jacob had remembered that in the Billy Connolly World Tour of Australia, he had eaten a dish called a "pie floater". This particular culinary treat consists of a meat pie, floating in a dish of pea soup. Jacob, of course, couldn't wait to try one.
Jacob was fairly sure that he remembered that Billy had obtained his pie floater from a stall near to the Opera House, but a fairly extensive search around the previous day hadn't revealed anything of a particularly floaty nature. We hadn't been able to find much information about the pie floater, but a search of both our guidebook and of Charlotte's various guides to Sydney revealed that there was a pie stall called Harry's on the waterfront in Sydney which sold something called a 'Tiger', which sounded sort of like it might be the right thing.
We found the place and ordered a Tiger each. A Tiger, should you with to recreate one, is a pie (Jacob had beef, Kirsty had chicken), topped with a dollop of mashed potato followed by a splodge of mushy peas then a spoonful of gravy. Poke the ladle down into the potato and peas to make a sort of bowl into which to pour the gravy. It was very tasty and pretty messy to eat, but the pie couldn't really be described as floating. Although we enjoyed them, we weren't convinced that we had managed to find an authentic floater yet.
After a bit of a wander in town, we headed back to Glebe, the district where Ari lives and works. We collected our bags then took a bus over to the school to meet Charlotte, went back to her house to drop our bags off and went out to Bronte for a swim.
We had a bit of a swim in the pool then decided to swim in the sea itself. The waves were extremely powerful that day and after a very brief attempt at wading in, Charlotte and Kirsty decided not to bother after all. Jacob stayed in for a while, but didn't exactly manage to swim. He was kept pretty occupied by trying to stand up again in the interval between the wave that had floored him and the following one, which had the same destructive intentions.
A little worn out by our nautical escapades, we caught a bus back to Bronte and decided on sushi for tea. We went to 'Sushi-go-Round', a sushi place with a conveyor belt full of dishes. Kirsty had, since discovering that she liked sushi, wanted to visit such a place, so was delighted with the choice of venue. Full of rice, we went back to Charlotte's for a brew before catching a bus to Kingsford to meet our new CouchSurfing hosts.
We arrived at Sarah and Dan's very 1970s looking house (riddled with odd slanty concrete sculptures and mouldings which will have looked avant garde and modern for about three weeks, thirty five years ago) and knocked on the open door, to no response. Just as we stepped inside to call hello, Dan came round the corner and got quite a surprise. This is not a conventional way to introduce yourself to people who, despite having never met you, are letting you stay in their house.
Sarah and Dan didn't mind in the slightest. They were extremely welcoming people and we had a great evening. We were presented with glasses of wine and Jacob sat nattering with Dan whilst Kirsty helped Sarah with food preparation in the kitchen.
Over food, which we tried to decline as we had already eaten but Sarah insisted on our trying, we chatted some more and met another housemate, also called Dan. To distinguish between them, Sarah's boyfriend Dan is known as 'Red Dan' (he's ginger) and their housemate Dan is 'Black Dan' (he's not). Simple.
Both Dans were computer types and they had a go at sorting out whatever was wrong with our iPod. "If there are any files on it, I'll be able to get them off". They couldn't get it to connect either.
We had a great evening and all got to bed far too late. The following morning, we did a little bit of online research and booked ourselves a rental car in which to drive up to Cairns. Although we'd decided that we would go with Charlotte to Adelaide, she wouldn't be on holiday for about another week, so we though we would take the opportunity to see some of the east coast and get some diving in on the Great Barrier Reef, before returning to Sydney to collect Charlotte and start the road trip.
Car rental sorted, we took a bus into town, stopping off at Oxford Street. Jacob had been stretching his ear-ring holes in order that they could accept some larger pieces of jewellery. He had already found an interesting wooden spiral in New Zealand, plus some other nice bits and pieces which we had lost somewhere along the way. The inevitable cluttered mess into which Jacob converted the interior of our van in New Zealand had eaten some nice big twirly carved buffalo horn ear thingies we had found. Hoping to find a metal spiral like the ones he saw, liked and didn't buy in San Francisco, we stopped off at a store called 'Off Ya Tree' to peruse their wares.
They didn't have anything of much note, but they did give us details of a shop in Newtown which might have more suitable stuff. After a lunch of burritos at a Mexican place, we got a train over to Newtown and eventually managed to find the shop, in spite of the directions that the 'Off Ya Tree' man had given us.
They did have some nice unusual bits of jewellery, but they were quite expensive and the shop refused to sell pieces individually, only in pairs, so we didn't bother. Instead, we went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, for a look at their nice, unusual stuff.
The museum was filled with the usual mixture of interesting and pretentious artworks. We nodded knowingly, wandered around until we couldn't take any more feminist comments on the disposability of modern consumerism riveted together out of Coke cans, so went to get ice cream.
We had promised Sarah that we would get the prawns that she needed for the evening's meal, but no fishmongers presented themselves on the way back. We had a look around the little shops in the main bit of Kingsford, but they too were sadly lacking in the seafood department, so we took a bus to Maroubra Junction, where we got prawns from a fishmonger and wine from a winemonger. Not that grocery shopping is, in itself, very interesting, but it's nice to get more of an overall feel for how the bits of the city fit together.
Kirsty's Dad phoned, which was sneaky of him as Kirsty had been intending to phone him. It was his birthday, which we were going to be missing. It was morning where he was, so he hadn't had much in the way of celebrations yet, but was enjoying his day so far.
We returned to Sarah and Dan's place, where Kirsty started making the prawn salad for tea. Sarah was the only one of the housemates around, but we had a nice meal and a natter. Both Dans came back a while later as Sarah was heading back out to the lab. She is completing her Masters in Physics and needed to do some work on an experiment.
We drank more wine with the Dans and watched some TV comedies before going to bed. The following day, after getting some washing done, we took a bus into town and went to visit Sydney Aquarium. We spent a great day looking at the fish, seals and sharks.
That evening, Sarah and Dan were going to be out and we had arranged to go out with Charlotte. We met at her house and went to a pub that Charlotte had heard was good. Unfortunately, it turned out not to be. We finished our drinks and went to another bar. This one had an upper and lower bar areas, which were split by a very short staircase of about four steps. The upper bar was playing music quite loudly over the stereo, but not quite loudly enough to drown out the live music playing in the lower bar. We ended up with an acoustic battle of the artists. Nobody won.
The bar staff we spoke to said that they couldn't do anything about it, as the upper bar was separate from the lower bar, so both could play what they wanted. We tried to argue that the sound waves were very clearly unaware of these boundaries and the resulting noise was not something that anyone in either bar would want to listen to, but our observations fell on deaf ears. Come to think of it, having deaf ears is probably a necessary part of working there.
We migrated into the lower bar, where at least if you stood close enough to the stage, the live music was sufficiently loud that the music from the upper bar was less noticeable. Soon, however, the band finished its set and the lower bar went back to playing a stereo and we were back to Pearl Jam and Counting Crows in unison.
After another word with a different barman, the music in the upper bar was turned off, to a collective sigh of relief from the clientele. We stuck around for a little while longer but soon decided to call it a night.
We got a bus back into the centre of Sydney, but the last buses to Kingsford had already gone, so we had to get a taxi back to Sarah and Dan's. The following morning, we were due to be collecting our rental car and driving to Cairns. Sarah had suggested that we also go for breakfast. Red Dan gave us a lift to the car rental place, where it took an extremely long time for us to be served. As we waited, we listened to the woman behind the next desk along conning some German tourists out of a lot of money.
They had booked a van a long time in advance, thus getting a special deal which waived the otherwise very sizeable one-way rental fee. Since then, the rules had changed - there are no longer any fee waiver deals. "So what," went the argument. "We already have a written agreement with you - your new rules cannot re-write existing contracts: that's what a contract means."
"Don't care," goes the counter-argument. "I'm not letting you take a van if you don't pay me what I say, and you've already told me you have to leave the country pretty soon, so what are you going to do about it, Little Miss Foreigner-In-My-Country who doesn't speak much English?" Moral: avoid Apollo rentals, they're a bunch of charlatans.
Once we finally got the car, it was getting pretty late, but we agreed to go with Sarah, Dan and the other flatmates to their favourite café and get takeaway for the journey. We got ourselves sandwiches and coffee and a bag of fruit from the shopping centre, said our goodbyes and prepared to hit the road.
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By the way, for those of you who have been wondering, that Swahili quote translates as "Cool and crazy like a banana". See how many useful things you can learn whilst travelling?
