Travel Journal

A place of our own in Sydney

Shortly after arriving in Australia I heard from some distant cousins of mine offering us a place to stay in Sydney. As it turned out two of the three brothers live there and one of them had conveniently booked a holiday from New Year until January 14th. As a result we landed a free house in Bondi, about half an hour walk from Bondi Beach and half an hour by train to the city centre. This couldn't have been better for us, and we ended up staying for 11 days.

Sydney offers pretty much everything you could want in one place; a clean, attractive city centre, nice beaches, some huge parks and gardens and even a national park. On the other hand the suburbs still had quite a local feel and even the city centre seemed to have a slightly slower pace of life than some of the other big cities we've visited.

There was plenty to do, and as always we focused on the cheaper options. We spent a couple of days exploring both the area, which included walking along the cliffs from Bronte Beach to Bondi. It was quite a sight as we came around the point and first saw Bondi Beach; I don't think I've ever seen so many people squashed into one patch of sand. And that's not to say that it's by any means a small beach, but it's so popular and well-known that by mid-afternoon you couldn't get a square meter of either sand or sea to yourself. It was enough to put us off returning to Bondi for the rest of our visit!

The principle sights in the centre of Sydney are obviously the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Having walked around and taken the obligatory photos of both, we decided to view the bridge a little closer. Unfortunately the famous Bridge Climb cost $190/person, and as we didn't have that kind of cash to burn we opted for the cheaper 'pylon lookout'. For a mere $9 each we climbed one of the pylons and were rewarded with some wonderful views and a museum on the building of the bridge.

You may have noticed that we are suckers for just about any type of park or garden; we are very fond of picnics and just sitting down or wandering around generally. However the royal botanic gardens in Sydney really are worth mentioning as they far outstripped just about every other garden we've enjoyed. Of course they do have an advantage over many of the others as they were established in 1816, and so many of the plants are very well established. But I think really it is the size and central location that was most impressive, as they cover a huge area of the harbour front that in any other city would have been replaced by homes and businesses decades ago. Other highlights included being attacked by giant birds (see below), seeing some impressively large spiders and discovering the resident colony of fruit bats hanging from the trees.

Our experience at Bondi did not put us off beaches forever, so we took a day trip to Manly on the north shore. This also meant that we got to go on a ferry which was very exciting. Manly was accidentally named by Captain Phillip on his arrival in Sydney in the 18th century; he described the Aborigines that he met as 'manly in appearance' and the name has stuck. The place itself wasn't particularly attractive, being fairly built up, but the beach was large and not as crowded as Bondi. Chris braved the freezing sea (with the aid of a hired wetsuit) to practice his surfing, but I was put off attempting to repeat my previous brilliance by the crashing waves that seemed to be challenging even the more experienced.

We discovered from our map that we were staying not too far from Sydney Harbour National Park and so decided we should visit it. I don't know whether it was that we didn't take the scale of the map into account or something, but walking there was probably not the best idea. It took us two hours, and we arrived to discover that the park itself was comprised of two small separate peninsulas packed with people (it was a Sunday). However we did achieve our aim of reaching the outer point of Sydney Harbour to see the wide open sea, and enjoyed some great views of the city from a distance.

On arriving in Sydney we hadn't really learned much about Australia's colonial past, and this seemed like a good place to do something about it. We visited the relatively new Museum of Sydney for a really good exhibition on the harbour bridge (much superior to that in the bridge itself) and some background on the first few governors of the settlement in Sydney. We also stopped in at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour, which turned out to be so good that we spent the whole morning there. One highlight was a 19th century trading game, in which I ended up shipwrecked and pondering the riches I could have made while Chris finished with a profit of $2million.

Sticking with an aqueous theme we visited the Sydney Aquarium, which was absolutely rammed due to it being the school holidays. However we still enjoyed seeing the platypuses, sharks, seals and all manner of fishy things. I made a point of going through the barrier reef section muttering 'it's not as good as the real thing' in a smug way.

Our visit coincided with the Sydney Arts Festival, which takes place throughout January every year. There wasn't too much that we wanted to see, but I did managed to persuade Chris to come and see the musical version of 'Snugglepot and Cuddlepie'. The story is based on the great Australian childrens book by May Gibbs but I'm afraid may not have meant much to Chris who didn't have the book as a child. Still I enjoyed it very much, although some of the jokes were clearly very Australian as they went straight over my head while the rest of the audience guffawed. I don't think it'll make it to London.

Sydney definitely lived up to our expectations and we were sorry to leave, although I expect the free place to stay had something to do with it. Still we had to leave our comfort zone again at some point, and travelling in Australia is so easy that it wasn't too much trouble.

Emily

posted by Chris and Emily @ 05:11