Summer 2018 big trip - day 17

Monday 13th August

Last day in Sydney. We got on a Big Bus tour to see the city, but I'm sorry to say that I barely took any photos and didn't make any notes so can't really remember anything. Does anyone remember much of what they saw on one of those tours? I did love the city though, the history was interesting, and I remember the pretty, colourful old terraced houses with balconies, and the thoroughly modern high-rise covered in plants with a huge panel of mirrors facing downwards and angled so that sunlight could reach everywhere.

We'd booked onto a two-and-a-half hour boat tour of the harbour for the afternoon, and the bus tour got us to Circular Quay just in time. Thankfully it wasn't very windy or cold up on the boat deck, and the sun was out, so we could happily gaze out at the beautiful views of the stunning harbour while listening to the tour guide's commentary on the history of the place.

In 1770, Lieutenant James Cook and his crew on the HMS Endeavour were the first known Europeans to see Australia. They made first landfall on the east coast at what he named Botany Bay (due to the range of new-to-European-science plants, insects and animals they found) then sailed north, exploring and mapping the coastline. (In northern Queensland there is a town called Cooktown, and another called Seventeen-Seventy, and probably many more such references.) Not far from Botany Bay, Cook passed an inlet, noted that it looked to be a good and safe anchorage, and named it Port Jackson, but didn't go in. It would be another eighteen years before someone went in.

In 1788, having taken eight months to sail from England with a fleet of eleven ships carrying over a thousand people, Captain Arthur Phillip decided to venture into the little inlet Cook had marked as Port Jackson, and "had the satisfaction of finding the finest harbour in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in the most perfect security." We now know that it is the second largest natural harbour in the world after Rio de Janeiro, with 240km of coastline and 66 bays. Choosing a bay with deep water, good defence positions, and a source of fresh water nearby, he made landfall and named that particular bay after the Home Secretary at the time, who had authorised Phillip to establish the new colony - Lord Sydney. Sydney Cove is where Circular Quay now is, the one the modern city grew out from and is based around.

The colony of New South Wales, the first European settlement in Australia, was a penal colony - most of the settlers were convicts. Their sentences were either for seven years, fourteen years, or life, but of course, even if they managed to survive until being freed, they had no way to sail back to England. So most stayed, claimed some land, worked hard and made a new life for themselves. Brits in Australia are still referred to by Aussies as POHMs ("poms") - Prisoners of His Majesty.

Now, two hundred and thirty years after it was founded, Sydney is the size of Greater London but has a few million less people at 5.1 million. Sydney Harbour is a National Park and a heritage-listed marine park; since legislation introduced in the 1970s forbade anyone from 'putting muck into the harbour' as the tour guide put it, industry has moved out and the water is very clean. There are sharks. It's very sheltered, right next to the ocean but protected from it. It doesn't need dredging, but there are a lot of reefs and over a hundred shipwrecks. Most of the land along the extensive shoreline is public, either open to the public or set aside as a park, because the authorities didn't think it was right that only the richest should be able to enjoy the waterfront. I like that they did that! Of course, only the richest can afford most of the waterfront houses (and have their fancy cars displayed in glass-walled rooms to show off to tourists on boats), but many of them don't own the water frontage; so the public can wander along and sit on one of the pretty, white-sand, nearly-empty beaches directly in front of some millionaire's house, or just go for a stroll, if they so wish.

After a lovely couple of hours - boat trips are nice anyway but Sydney Harbour is amazing and beautiful! - we wandered around a bit, saw some of the old colonial buildings. It was getting dark, the lights were coming on, there was a park with tall globe lamp-posts and a fountain, it was pretty. We made our way back to Circular Quay to have a nice last-night dinner on the waterfront. The next morning, we'd go our separate ways - my mum and stepdad back up to Cairns, and my sister and I to Bali.

I really wished I didn't have to go.

Summer 2018 big trip - day 16

Sunday 12th August

I'm actually writing this, or the part about this evening anyway, on the day for a change, although it won't be published until I've caught up and written and published the rest of the days until now. It's because I've had the evening to myself in this wonderful little house we're staying in, and I want to write about it before I forget about it.

It's a quirky place, in a lovely residential suburb. The house is old and cold, and the lounge is dark. But I'm sitting here in one of the armchairs (which don't match each other or the sofa), with the tall standing lamp next to it spreading its warm light into the room, a blanket over my knees and the little gas heater on (it heats the room very well, but probably is far from energy efficient). It's perfectly cosy. The floor is dark wood, with a red rug over it. There are pictures (as in artwork, not photographs) on the walls and vases dotted around. There are DVDs of the Italian crime drama series Inspector Montalbano. The kitchen has a stovetop whistling kettle, a wooden board for bread and a bowl of lemons on the counter. There are eco-friendly chemical-free cleaning products and books on homemade things like that. Upstairs is a large lounge area which is light and open and airy, but warmer than downstairs, and there's a dining table covered in sewing materials. And, best of all, there are books in every room. Hundreds of books. Books on subjects I wish I knew more about. Travel and foreign countries and languages, cooking, history, literature/ fiction, plants, gardening, sewing and needlework and embroidery, art and crafts and more. I could spend a week here just in the house, devouring a treasure trove of books. Alas, I cannot, so I've just noted down a few that I'd like to find and read when I'm home.

My sister, mum and stepdad went to see Pink this evening. I didn't fancy going, and had a couple of options for what I could do for the evening, but after a day walking around Sydney Harbour, I felt like staying in, out of the chilly wind, and watching a bit of Netflix. I watched the last episode of Spanish drama Cable Girls, an episode of Queer Eye, and then a quirky French rom-com called Blind Date, which I loved. Such a lovely, relaxing evening :)

So, rewind... In the morning we walked from Waverton into the city centre. The route took us through the lovely suburb, which again reminded me of Vancouver, and brought us to the waterfront at Lavender Bay, where we were greeted with a view of the Harbour Bridge directly opposite. We walked along from there, eventually reaching Milsons Point and Luna Park, a fairground built in the 1930s at the foot of the bridge. The entrance gateway is the kind of thing that would be very creepy if the place was closed. I wonder why fairgrounds are like that, creepy when closed.

The suburb at the northern end of the bridge is called Kirribilli. I've since read that it's one of the city's most affluent, and it was very nice, though we only saw a very small part of it. There were trendy, quirky cafés and eateries and a wonderful market in the large underpass under the bridge road. My sister and I spent a long time wandering around the market before we went back to where our mum and stepdad were sat people-watching (they immediately told me they'd seen a woman who was me in 30 years), and we all started across the bridge.

I can't remember how long it took to walk across. The thing is enormous. It's over a kilometre long, and nearly fifty metres wide with eight lanes for cars, two for trains, one for cyclists and one for pedestrians. It's quite impressive that the designers in the 1920s thought ahead and decided that cars and other road vehicles would become commonplace enough that the bridge would need six lanes just for those (the two tramway lanes originally constructed were later converted to roadway as well). The bridge was nicknamed "the Iron Lung", as its construction brought vital jobs to the city during the Depression. In the shadow of the other end of the bridge is The Rocks, a pretty area of cobbled lanes originally established in the early days of the colony in the 1790s, when it was more of a slum. We wandered through but not really around it.

We stopped for lunch at one of the numerous waterfront restaurants on Circular Quay. Despite its name the quay is in a rather square U-shape, with The Rocks and the Harbour Bridge at one end and the Opera House on Bennelong Point at the other, with an art gallery and boats (from harbour tour boats to cruise ships) and shops and restaurants and more all along in between, and the skyscrapers of the CBD rising behind. Such a cool place! We sat outside, with a great view of the bridge, where they had notices everywhere warning customers about the seagulls, and spray bottles on some of the outer tables. One thieving bird swooped down and snatched a small fillet of battered fish from one woman's plate as she was still eating. Thankfully we were seated under a parasol, which provided a deterrent for the gulls as well as shade from the sun. I had barramundi with salsa verde and a lovely fresh salad - so simple, but so good. Fresh fish! *Grins* Yum. Also had a mocktail, a strawberry and lychee virgin mojito, which was nice.

After lunch we continued along Circular Quay to see Sydney Opera House up close. I had looked at going there while my family were at the Pink concert - there was a performance by the Australian Symphony Orchestra - but it turned out it was at 2pm rather than in the evening, and I'd rather see the city during the day. A bit of a shame, though, I would have enjoyed that. The wind was chilly but we didn't go inside, we stayed outside looking at the architecture and the plaza and the other tourists and the views and it all... then went and got a coffee to warm up before we started heading back to the house. I don't like tea or coffee or hot chocolate, which sometimes, on cold days, is something I wish was different. (Back in January I had a white hot chocolate for the first time, which I loved, but it's too sugary and sweet to have often, and not many places do them anyway.) If I had known that a babychino was just warm milk with no coffee, I would have gotten one long before now. Why don't they just call it warm milk, and have a 'small' cup option as well as an espresso-sized one? Babies aren't the only ones who like warm milk.

Earlier, outside an Italian restaurant opposite the jetties, I'd noticed a sign saying "Come and try our homemade cannoli!" or something like that. I looooove cannoli, so as we passed it again on the way to the train station I went in and asked if they did takeaway cannoli. They did, so I ordered one, and after a few minutes they brought it out in one of those plastic takeaway containers - a crisp, golden cannolo (-o is singular, -i is plural) filled half with a thick chocolate-ricotta mixture and half with a glossy, sweet, vanilla ricotta, and fixed to the bottom of the container with a dollop of the vanilla mixture to keep it from moving around. They put the container in a paper bag and I held it close and horizontal on the way back to Waverton, looking forward to enjoying it after dinner while watching some Netflix :)

Summer 2018 big trip - day 15

Saturday 11th August

We arrived in Sydney - civilisation! - on the Friday evening. I loved it immediately. It reminded me of Vancouver. It was a modern, relatively young, cosmopolitan city by the water, the evening was clear and cool and fresh compared to the last few weeks, and it was beautiful, with the lights of the buildings and the water of the harbour. I felt relieved and comfortable.

View from the train after passing over the bridge on Friday

We were staying at the house of Linda, an old school friend of my grandma's. We were met at the airport by Linda's friend Richard, who took us on the train (double-decker, spacious, efficient, I like them!) to the house, which was in the lovely suburb of Waverton, just north of the Harbour Bridge. Again, the area reminded me of Vancouver. Linda's house was wonderful, I loved that immediately too. Quirky, cosy (apart from being cold), and full of books. Very "me".

We went for dinner in one of the two restaurants in Waverton. There's an Indian and a Thai and we went to the Thai, which was very good! I do wonder why Indian and Asian restaurants give you such huge portions that are large enough for two or even three people. So much goes to waste.

On the Saturday we went on a day trip out to the Blue Mountains. I'm writing this a week and a half later on a computer in my hostel in Singapore and haven't made any notes in ages so haven't got much to say. The train took two hours from central Sydney to Katoomba, where a chilly wind was blowing. We made straight for a coffee shop, which happily turned out to be my kind of place, too. It was a quirky independent one called The Pirate Ship Coffee Shop, sold coffee they roasted themselves and had a menu of nutritious hot and cold food and homemade cakes. When my sister asked if they did hazelnut lattes, the owner replied they did not, as they believed good coffee was good enough on its own without adding flavoured sugary syrups (they didn't use those words, weren't so blunt) - good for them :)

We got tickets for the hop-on-hop-off bus tour and stopped first at a waterfall, then did a bit of a walk along a trail, got our first views of the mountains. I can't remember the details of what we did, but it was quite a bit of walking around, seeing some great views. After a few hours we had lunch at the centre at Echo Point. My mum and stepdad had wraps or sandwiches but my sister and I had hot food - she had "burnt ends", which were amazing, and I had a veggie lasagne, which was also very good. In the centre they had an area about the Aboriginal history of the area, which was interesting. Some of it since the Westerners settled was awful. The Echo Point viewpoint, which is the main one, was cordoned off. Someone was on the walkway just below, contemplating jumping. There were lots of people behind the police tape, curious onlookers and people looking at the view. We went off for another walk, which was pretty hairy and strenuous with ever so steep and narrow steps and lots of people trying to squeeze through - but the exercise was good - then went back to the point and got an ice-cream. Eventually the guy was persuaded back up and was led off with his hood covering his face to the police vans and ambulance, and the viewpoint was opened.

We headed to the nearby village of Leura and got the train from there back to Sydney, where we had dinner in a Chinese restaurant. It was one of those older, huge upstairs ones, with a patterned red carpet and loads of tables. I don't know why but I like those places. It also had tanks of live lobsters and crabs, so your meal was as fresh as possible if you ordered either of those things. They were enormous! Then back to the house. It was colder inside than out, haha.