Sydney: The Return and New Year fun
Trip Start
May 03, 2008
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41
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Trip End
May 02, 2009
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Sydney,
New South Wales,
Australia
Monday, January 5, 2009
First of all we visited the Australian Museum which was interesting principally because of its gigantic Dinosaur skeletons and the fact that the museum had a BBC Nature Photographic exhibition on there. Some of the photos were fantastic and depressingly showed me up to being the useless photographer that I am. The rest of museum was interesting enough with a floor dedicated to minerals of different kinds (Australia being a big mining country) and also a floor with hundreds of stuffed animals. These might be a taxidermists dream but I always find them soulless myself and so did not spend all too long studying them. Some of the Dinosaur skeletons were as tall as a house and the reason why I wanted to visit the museum as I'd always wanted to see a full scale large dinosaur in the flesh so to speak or not so as the case may be.
After another day just organising dull travel things and posting even more belongings back home it was now New Years Eve. Now sometimes in life you have to do the cliché things but seeing the New Year watching the fireworks of the Harbour bridge and the Opera house must be one of the best travelling clichés. Unfortunately we weren't the only people interested in watching the fireworks. Premium places to watch them filled up early in the morning which seemed crazy to us as although good if you know what do you do for fourteen hours when you're standing around waiting for a fireworks display. And before you even think it (that is the alcos amongst you) booze is banned on New Year in the parks and streets so no you can't drink for that time either. Our group after much discussion of what was best came to a compromise of viewing it from one of the best areas just outside the city centre instead. We chose Pyrmount Point which was still on harbour and had a good view of the bridge but sadly not the Opera house without all the crowds. We arrived at nice place in the small grassy area beside the harbour equipped with our drinks, snacks and blankets and sat around in the sun for the long wait till midnight.
At around eight was small fireworks display for the kids and then finally at twelve the big fireworks erupted. Seemed to be over a bit quick to me maybe I was just over whelmed by the occasion of it all. Afterwards it took us two hours to walk home as there was little chance of getting any public transport. All in all it was a pretty chilled out way to spend the New Year relaxing in the sunshine.
The next day Clare decided to cook everyone (everyone in Newtown) a proper Christmas dinner with a turkey and a ham. We told her she was crazy (she's crazy) but to her credit she got up on New Year's Day and cooked dinner for around a dozen people. As a responsible guest I joined in the mammoth clean up after as it wasn't pretty and took us hours to clean everything.
A few days later on our second attempt after being washed out the first time, we finally visited Manly Beach. In our previous stint in Sydney we tried to go to Manly on three different occasions each time the weather stopped but finally this time we caught the packed ferry from Circular Quay in the harbour out to Manly on a glorious day. We got some great views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge again as we stood on deck looking at them as we motored by. When we arrived in Manly we found a place of the beach and relaxed for a few hours. The two girls at one point went down to the water to test it out but didn't get any further than putting one toe in and complained it was freezing and too cold for them. Not to be deterred I later jumped in (the only way to do if it's cold water) and found out that in fact they were right it was freezing. Still though it was nice to have a little swim.
When we arrived in Sydney we weren't quite sure where we were going to go next or what to do. Hearing the negative things from back home and the fact that jobs in Australian cities weren't that promising, decided to look into fruit picking and the possibility of a second year visa. Not being quite sure where to do it and what to do we read up and talked to a few people. The general consensus was that both Northern Victoria and Western Australia were good to go at this time of the year. We contacted the national harvest line who very unhelpful telling us that at that time were no jobs in fruit picking anywhere in the country and after a bit of persuading I finally got the woman to admit that although that she couldn't guarantee we would get anything, that the Mildura region in Victoria might be a place to get jobs when the fruit season was starting which was supposed to be right then but because of the weather had been delayed for a few weeks. On thinking about this we thought it was best to head to Melbourne in the meantime whilst waiting for the jobs as we hadn't been there yet and it was where we had planned to move to if we had have been still searching for jobs. But on the way to Melbourne we decided to stop off for a few days inbetween at the nation's capital, Canberra.
