Sydney and around

Sydney


We spent our last five days in Sydney and wow, what a great city! We found a room in a hostel ‘Noah’s’ in Bondi Beach, which is just a short train ride from the city centre.

The beach is famous for its Christmas days where the Irish and other foreigners chose to spend the day. For a small beach it usually hosts thousands, but we practically had it to ourselves as it’s winter.
Bondi is a cute little surfer area but we spent most of our time, short as it was, in and around the city.
We managed to catch the last weekend of a three week Brian Eno curated light festival. This included ‘The Lighting of the Sails’ where a multi-coloured changeable light display was projected onto the tiles of the Opera House, resulting in a spectacular show.

Also lit were an old building and various light displays along the peer known as ‘The Rocks’. We also managed to catch a show on the harbour where in re-enactment of a prisoner ship burned in the 1800’s, they burned and sank a prop ship (for three shows a night for the entire weekend) Amazing stuff. Because of this there was a great buzz around the docks with food and mulled wine stalls, along with fire barrels to heat up the cold spectators.

One of the days we took a ferry to Manley Island where we did a gorgeous costal hike for about 10km but unfortunately the sparse mist turned to heavy rain and we decide to bus it back taking the scenic route- via a shopping centre where we stopped for food and a peek around, back to the peer.
Another day we took a ferry over to Toranga Zoo which was lovely- we couldn’t leave Australia without seeing a Kangaroo, Wallaby or Koala!

We also visited Government house once again getting caught in some torrential rain


... and we walked the famous harbour bridge across to Luna Park, which was closed.

Naturally we visited the Opera House, unfortunately unable to catch a show but worth it all the same.


While in Sydney we were also able to catch up with Mary Kerins another great friend of ours.

We just caught her as she was flying out to Perth the next day. Consequently it was a quiet night with a lovely dinner and ended with us being kicked out of a coffee house; they were closing and we’d no sign of leaving of our own accord! It’s so great to meet friends while away, even if it’s only for an evening! Mary, looking forward to seeing you when we all get home in October- or in London!


Our 15 days ended all too soon- although our wallets took a beating, it was a great trip. Of course we only covered a small fraction of this vast land but for now it was enough for us. Did we love Australia? The part we saw was really nice, but we recommend a lot more time and perhaps to do it overland to get a better feel for the place … as for the Australians? We reckon they could do with an extreme course in customer relations with a side helping of manners thrown in- but of course we mainly dealt with those in the service industry or run-a-ways not your average Joe. Will we be back? It’s so far from anywhere else, so probably not in the near future.

Fiji here we come.