New South Welsh Wanderings

Sydney, 23.11.10.
On the 12 hour, 900+ kilometre journey from Melbourne to Sydney (yes, that's a long way), I turned out to be sat next to a German called Eddy. He was friendly and talkative, but happened to be one of those people whose face oversteps the personal space boundary ever-so-slightly when they chat, and whose eyes seemingly bore deep into your soul. So I anticipated a slightly uneasy 12 hours. He was a lovely guy though, if a little odd, and after an hour or so of nattering away about how 'very cool' and 'crazy' he thought the lagoon at Brisbane was (endearingly pronounced 'Bris-bain'), the intense conversation thankfully relented and we could both try and catch some sleep. These overnight Greyhounds - with their sit-up-seats - were actually a surprising downgrade from the sleeper buses of Vietnam. Who'd have thunk it?!

And so to Sydney. On arrival we went for a bite to eat and one of Oz's fantastically smooth 'flat white' coffees, planned the next few days, and gathered our composure at the hostel, before heading out into the smiling sunshine to meet up with Jess's cousin Jordan (who she hadn't seen for about 10 years) and his mate Danny. They were both out in Oz for a year on working holiday visas, and as they were currently living in the King's Cross area of Sydney they'd offered us a little insider's tour of town. The four of us wandered out towards Circular Quay, chatting away excitedly, until we emerged from the CBD and all of a sudden there in front of us was the bay, the magnificent Harbour Bridge, and the Opera House creeping in from the right, all glistening attractively in the sun. We had a similar feeling to arriving at Angkor Wat or Halong Bay. When you are suddenly presented with these simply iconic places - places you've seen hyped up in 2D on hundreds of postcards or screens before arriving - the feeling upon actually standing before them and trying to take them in is very surreal. It takes a good half hour before it starts to seem real. We couldn't believe we were most of the way round the world, stood next to the famous Opera House, basking in its glow.

From there we headed through Sydney's beautiful Botanical Gardens, which curve around the harbour and eventually lead to a picture postcard view of the Opera House and bridge. On the way to said view we paused to feed the park's resident Cockatoos (Jordan had brought some bread, and coaxed us into letting the exotic birds land on our arms to munch it), and having stood gazing over the harbour for a while we went for a caffieine fix back in the CBD before emotional goodbyes to our lovely tour guides. It had been a brilliant day. After dinner at the hostel, we rounded the evening off with a promenade around the nearby Darling Harbour (Sydney has so much water and so many bays), where the lights of the skyscrapers glittered in the water and made the night sparkle. What a lucky, beautiful city.


The next day, after a walk up to Observatory Park and a view overlooking the bay to the other side of the bridge, we had a mosey along the bridge itself to gander back at the city, and then headed back to the bridge's base to explore the area known as 'The Rocks'. This is where Sydney began, as a penal colony in the 1780s, and as such is considered steeped in history. Ha! Oh Australia, how youthful and sprightly you are. It was indeed vastly different from the other areas of the city we'd seen - a quaint maze of cafes, old pubs and houses tucked down little alleys. We had a look in an old cottage before heading back through the CBD to Hyde Park (one of the many familiar names...) where we picnicked and lay in the sun in front of St. Mary's Cathedral, listening to distant buskers. The next plan was to take a bus out to Bondi to visit the famous beach. We had anticipated a slightly underwhelming strip of sand crammed full of bronzed posers, so were pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a really nice bit of coast, with a fair few fat backpacker whiteys mingled in with the Greco-Romanic God-like locals. Reassuring. We had a paddle and a sunbathe before a coastal walk past the famous Bondi Icebergs club (a swimming pool right by the sea) along to Tamarama beach round the gorgeous headland.

Blue Mountains
We played a bit of ping pong in the hostel the next morning while waiting for our Blue Mountains tour pickup. Steve, the middle-aged tour guide who showed up, was the epitome of Aussie. Sandy haired, smiley faced, and wearing a khaki safari suit and bush hat, he directed us jovially to the bus and we were on our way Blue Mountainsward. Almost everyone else on the tour, as it happened, was Asian, and as such seemed less interested with information and more so with strange photo opportunities. Oooo - call me stereotypical, but one camera-happy lady felt the need to film most of the journey out of Sydney, some of it over my shoulder. I'm sure her morbidly dull 15-minute film of nondescript road and blurred houses will go down a storm back home. Maybe it was because by comparison we seemed a little interested in what he had to say, maybe not, but Steve seemed to take a shine to me and Jess. Among his fun facts of the day were the following:
- Sydney's population is 4.something million. (i.e. quite a high percentage of Oz, and, as we'd later realise, about the same as the WHOLE of New Zealand...ha).
- Kangaroos can rotate their ears 360 degrees.
- Female kangaroos can control their joey's development in the womb, so if there's a bit of a food shortage at the due time, they can withhold the birth. They are almost constantly pregnant. Crazy.
- All marsupial babies (not just kangaroos) are called joeys.
- They don't so much hop as literally bounce, because their hindleg tendons are majorly elastic.
- The Blue Mountains were formed 250ish million years ago, and today are the same as they were 160 million years ago. Epic.
- They aren't really mountains, more a bloody huge valley formed under the sea.
- They get their name from the blue mist that emanates from the Gum trees when they get hot.
- And many more that I forgot.

The day began with refreshments by the Nepean River, greater Sydney's Western boundary, followed by our first breathtaking mountain lookout and a bush walk on which Stevie informated us about various plants and their cunning and extensive Aboriginal uses. We paused to take in a view of Wentworth Falls (for all you Yorkies out there - ha!) before a picnic lunch in a sweet little village called Leura. Next we took the world's steepest train (52 degree incline) down onto the jungle-clad floor of a gorge, past views of Katoomba Falls and the 'Three Sisters' rocks. The train played the Indiana Jones main theme as it descended, which made my day. We had a wander round a boardwalk on the forest floor, marvelling at the lush and exotic surrounds with its web-like, dangling branches, before cablecar-ing back up, past 'Orphan Rock', to have a cheeky ice-cream and hop back on the bus. Next was the final lookout point, a flat rock outcrop with no barrier which was simply magical. We sat taking it in, feeling the peace, and feeling very jealous of a lucky local couple nearby who had clearly been sat doing that all day, rather than being restricted to a 15 minute slot on a tour. Imagine this being your backyard!

Steve deposited us at a ferry port in the early evening, from where we cruised Captain Cook style up the Paramatta river, past countless gorgeous harbours and houses, and back into Sydney, heading under the bridge and docking at Cirlular Quay. It was a fantastic end to our stay in Sydney. The next plan was Byron Bay, which is a little way south of Brisbane, and as with everything in Oz, incredibly far away. Bring on the overnight Greyhound!

Byron Bay, 26.11.10.
Our midday arrival in Byron was tired, dazed and confused. We checked into Greenlands Guesthouse, a somewhat shady and open-to-the-elements type joint that we had booked without knowing as much. It was run by some overly laid back Israelis who saw no need for rooms with locks, and were also keen to attract the greatest number of insects they possibly could by leaving all doors open and lights on. The room was pretty crawling. As I showered and paranoidly anticipated one of Oz's deadly spiders to scuttle out of the drain, I told myself 'it's only one night!'...

We headed out into the sun but were immediately poured down upon, deflating spirits further. Hurray, we thought, another beach town where there's nothing to do when it rains...and it's raining! Mui Ne take two? Thankfully it was one of those odd, ten minute bursts of insane rain that happen further up into Oz's tropics, and soon we were heading back out into scorching sun. We aimed for the nearest beach. This involved a longer walk than anticipated, through hot coastal bushland and past a sign that encouragingly informed us that 'brown snakes are prevalent!' It was worth the walk, though, when we arrived at Tallow Beach, a long and practically deserted strip of gorgeous sweeping sand, hot in the sunshine. The drier sand was so fine and clean that it squeaked when you walked on it, which we did, at great length. We ploughed on and on, up the seemingly endless beach (I reckon it was about 5k before we finally turned off back through bushland towards a road), and the entire way we only came across 3 other people. Amazing. I have a feeling that the occasional little blue jellyfish we encountered dotted along the beach may have something to do with that (no doubt some variant of perhaps Oz's most deadly animal, the box jellyfish...), but it meant that we had the entire beauty almost all to ourselves.

After that trek, and an unanticipated trek back into town, we munched some well-deserved fish and chips before a paddle and a frisbee on Main Beach. Our frisbee skills paled in comparison to those of a beardy bloke we watched in fascination for a while, who was playing solo, dancing around and flinging it about in all manner of contortions and somehow always managing to catch the bugger. We later saw him again, but were delighted to see he'd found another intense frisbee hippy to play with, a fellow hirsuite and unkempt wastrel who looked the spit of him. It was surreal.

Main beach was virtually identical to Tallow Beach, aside being full of people. We wondered why this was, and felt very smug and thankful to have had the slice of paradise on the headland's other shore practically to ourselves. A lengthy walk in the heat was definitely worth that.

One odd discovery that we made while in Byron was to be found in the supermarket. I did a double take when I noticed this sign above an aisle:

Manchester?? That's a place, not an object, surely! How can you buy it?? What does my hometown have in common with nappies?! It just looked so out of place - had someone slipped it in as a joke? I scoured the aisle but couldn't find a hint. Deeply amused and confused, we later asked Richard why we kept seeing 'Manchester' in shops around Oz. He told us that it refers to linenware, bedsheets, that sort of thing. Truly bizarre. I guess it has some vague connection with the old Mancunian cotton trade. But yeah, one of Oz's interesting quirks, I guess...