Luna Park loonies and other tales

After finishing work last Friday we kicked off what would be our last weekend together for a while by visiting the Sydney institution known as Luna Park - basically a Coney Island or Brighton Pier style amusement park, beautifully situated near the base of the Harbour Bridge on the north shore. Looking back to the city centre from here you can see skyscrapers, ferries, the famous bridge and the probably even more famous Opera House without moving your head.

It being Autumn here now, it was dark when we arrived, which was perfect, given the giant illuminated entrance complete with giant clown face and scary mouth that you have to walk through.

Determined to get maximum value out of the wristbands we purchased for unlimited rides, we went on almost all of the determinedly low-fi and old-school attractions. We probably liked the "wild mouse" ride the best, which was a bit like the "crazy mouse" at the end of Brighton Pier, which we are also fans of. A wooden rollercoaster with ridiculously tight turns, it actually made us think our car would just wobble off the tracks. We went on it three times.

Other ridiculous attractions included giant slides that you slide down on a hessian mat - Hannah chickened out of the tallest one - and the "rotor", which seemed like a good idea at the time... and I suggested it! Basically you stand inside a scaled-up version of a toploader washing machine, which spins round very fast, the centrifugal force making you stick to the sides of the drum. Then the floor drops away to leave you suspended halfway up a wall. Sounds fun, doesn't it? Probably would have been, were it not for the fact that it made me so dizzy that my face turned grey and I made a loud "uuurrggghhh" sound for the duration of the ride. Hannah commented that it was this noise, more than the spinning around at stupid revolutions per minute, that made her feel the most sick. And after that we had fish & chips.

Saturday was our last day together in Sydney and we spent some of it shopping for clothes for Hannah - not that she wanted more stuff to carry, but because she'd been warned by a friend in India to 'cover up', having arrived in India with a wardrobe that was 90% useless. We spent the warm sunny afternoon in the Domain i.e. the big park in the centre of Sydney, which is on the harbourfront and has the amazing view of the Opera House with the Harbour Bridge behind it. There's a theme here isn't there...

Then after some beer and food at the Lord Nelson (great pub up the road, one of Sydney's best) Hannah completed her packing and we hit the sack - we had to get up early the next day so I could drive her to the airport (minor panic about the van not starting in the dark on a lonely suburban street on Saturday night when I went to collect it notwithstanding).

And then by 9am the next morning Hannah had passed through to security at the airport and was on her way to Mumbai and then Delhi - where she'll be for at least the next six weeks. After that she's probably returning to the UK, so although we have a plan, we don't actually yet know for sure when we will see each other again! (Sounds awful! boo hoo!). After I left the airport car park I drove to a shopping mall nearby, just for somewhere to stop the van without having to pay for parking (Sydney really is a bitch of a city for that) and gather my thoughts. It really is a big step that Hannah has taken and i'm sure it'll be the making of her career. I'm immensely proud of her going off to India on her own and not very secretly quite jealous. But my turn will come. Hopefully my remaining in Sydney will be the making of my career, or that's the idea anyway...

Despite being on my own I had plenty to do on Sunday, not least of which was figure out how to sell the van (poor Tara, she really needs to be driven by someone, or she'll just seize up, we reckon!). She's now parked up at a multi-storey car park in Kings Cross, where once i've managed to get her a safety check certificate, she can enter the backpackers car market based there. Having conducted a couple of visits in the name of research, this seems to be a rather depressing place, where bored travellers sit in the dark until someone buys their clapped-out wagon. Unable to do this myself during the week, it looks like this is what i'll be doing next weekend. Everything sells at a price though, and looking at the ridiculously hopeful prices some of these backpackers seem to expect to get (the nerve!), I should be in luck - even at $3000 we would make a profit on Tara, including what we've spent on servicing & repairs, and undercut the competition. That's less than 1500 quid for a fully equipped queen of the road (honest).

Robin

One week to go and counting....

This week I have been idly killing time in between undertaking various tasks on my 'to do list' and a bit of site seeing.

So far I have organised so me Indian Rupees (that come in large denominations - 5600INR  equates to a lot of notes, which while making me feel rich is actually only about 70 quid), I have stocked up on various toiletries so that I can avoid going shopping as soon as I arrive in Delhi, done some washing, and had a dry run at re-packing my back-pack. 

The latter being quite a feat as since leaving home I have acquired new Havaianna flip-flops (Buenos Aires, how could I not - they are so cheap there), a pair of Zara pumps  and a black t-shirt dress (Buenos Aires - retail therapy after a row), a pair of pointy toed Ked pumps (Melbourne, a bargain at a discount shopping mall),the hide of a calf (San Antonio de Areco, Argentina), a dress (Buenos Aires - retail therapy after finding ourselves in BA a second time...), a silver ring (Nahuel Pan, Argentina), a t-shirt and some tiny 'boardie' shorts (Yamba - I had to at least look like the surfie chick that I am sure I was once destined to be), a scarf (2 pesos from Temuco, Chile), a a pair of silver hoop earings (Vina del Mar, Chile) a lap top (Melbourne - again very reasonably priced and infinitely useful), a jacket (the weather in Sydney has been crappy and my Peter Storm pac-a-mac really was not cutting it in the fashion stakes I'm afraid), and finally a new pair of jeans (Kookai were having a blow out sale - my jeans had a giant hole at the right knee that was providing unwelcome air conditioning). Phew.

All I can say is that the burden of my pack was lessened slightly when I posted some things home from New Zealand, and some other things have been replacements for worn out or lost clothes (so I am not doubling up). Not to mention the couple of new things that I lost as well (one of the hoop earings and the silver ring, not that either of those would have saved me any space!). Anyway, somehow I managed to squeeze everything in, with a little space to spare for any more necessary purchases that I am bound to make in India!

So what else? Oh yes, sightseeing. I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art  at Circular Quay. It had 2 exhibitions, one of a contemporary Australian artist and one of beautiful Aboriginal bark paintings. Both were worth the visit and the sun shine over the harbour made it all the more worth while for an afternoon out.  Yesterday I went to the Australian Museum. Set in a large building it has a fantastic display of skeletons, an enormous collection of minerals (Australia seem to have an abundance, no wonder there are so many mines - apparently it is the worlds biggest exporter of aluminium and it's gold rush back in the 1800's was enough to make California's look more like the dregs in the bottom of a prospector's sifting pan), a dinosaur display, and most interestingly a lot of information about Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, both past and present. The real stories about the Stolen Generation were heart breaking.

Last night (Thursday) we went and explored China Town. After a Malaysian (!) meal we had a silly 5 minutes in a games arcade; picture 2 slightly unfit adults prancing about on a dance machine. The object was to copy the dance move that flash up on the screen to score points, in time to some pop versions of all your favourite east Asian hits. We did find Queen to rock to at least, and left rosy cheeked, puffed out and in admiration of the teenage Chinese couple who would have clearly whipped our butts in any real competition!

Hannah

Blue mountains, beaches, and pies

After a very hard (honest...) four days back in the office, we discovered that I had picked a good week to go back to work - Friday was ANZAC day. This is a public holiday in Australia, and starts off a bit like Remembrance Sunday, with a big parade of war veterans in Sydney and solemn ceremonies held at battlefields in France and Gallipoli. Later, everyone either goes to the pub and plays "2-up" (basically gambling on the toss of a few coins) or takes advantage of the three-day weekend to get out of the cities. We chose the latter option, and after packing up a rucksack and picking up the van, we set off through the western suburbs towards the Blue Mountains.

As the road narrowed we discovered that our idea for the weekend was not exactly original, and the traffic slowed to a crawl. However we didn't have far to go so didn't mind too much, and got lunch of our first pies of the weekend at the village of Wentworth Falls. Unwittingly, pies were to become a common thread of our weekend... they're just so ingrained into Australian culture that they are almost impossible to avoid!

Driving along the main road from Sydney, you don't actually realise you're in the mountains - the road actually runs along a high ridge, so that and the fact you're surrounded by trees means you can't see any mountain tops - everything worth seeing is actually below you, and so it's not until you get to the viewpoints at the edges of the steep cliffs that you actually see anything. So we'd driven through most of the Blue Mountains national park before we got our first real view at Wentworth Falls - but it was pretty incredible. Plus we were just glad the rain that had dogged Sydney all week had stopped, and quickly descended, completely unprepared, along the tracks running under the cliffs. Had we realised they were quite as muddy and slippery as they were, we probably would have chickened out. But strangely, getting dripped on by massive brooding sandstone cliffs, hundreds of feet above a forested valley, was actually quite fun. On the other side of the deep cut valley we could see other people doing a similar walk under the rock face, looking  decidedly ant like.

Next stop was Katoomba, the main town of the Blue Mountains, with its spectacular lookout over the Jamison Valley and the famous 'Three Sisters' (actually three big stacks of rock, if you hadn't guessed). Thronged by the tourist hordes, we discovered that pretty much every bed in town was taken, even at the campsite, and so had to drive up the road to Blackheath for a night under the stars in the back of Tara the Tarago. Back in Katoomba for dinner out and a few drinks while attempting to comprehend the "2-up" being played at the pub, we dodged the cold, but it caught up with us again by morning - it's definitely autumn out here now!

Hmmm, perhaps we could just drive back into Sydney tonight, we thought... but first had some walking to do. From Katoomba we descended the knee-jangling 'Giant Staircase' 250m down below the Three Sisters, and trekked along through the peaceful forest below the cliffs. Peaceful that is, until you pass through a gate 2km along welcoming you to 'Scenicworld', and are back surrounded by the tourist throng from above, who have reached the valley via the 'scenic railway' or the cable car - sorry, 'scenicscender'. Actually this was a deliberate move of ours, as we wanted to avoid the near-vertical walk back up the cliff. We took the railway option, a remnant of an old coal mine, and apparently the steepest railway in the world. It was also maniacally fast, and we were back at the top before we could even think about soiling ourselves.

We drove back into Sydney via some more amazing lookouts into a different valley near Blackheath, and the oddly named 'Bells Line of Road' which passes through an apple-growing area called Bilpin. After passing several roadside fruit stalls we spotted one selling fresh baked peach pies and slammed on the brakes. Well, they were all out of peach, but they were just removing some family-sized apple pies from the oven. We grabbed one while we had the chance, and even about two hours later when back at the apartment in Sydney it was still warm. Mmmm, pie for dinner.

Sunday then was devoted to exploring a bit more of the city, and we drove out to the eastern beaches and suburbs. We got a bit lost on the way to Bondi (road signage here is truly appalling) but stopped at some beautiful harbourside spots on the way. Bondi itself was nicer than we had expected, although busy - and this was just the start of a run of fantastic looking beaches and beautiful homes stretching down to Coogee. It really was hard to think that we were in the middle of a big city, and with a temperature of 25 degrees in autumn it wasn't a difficult decision to get into the sea for a dip. In the evening we went to Sydney Aquarium which was amazing, especially if you like big sharks and luminous fish (we did).

Hankering for some quick dinner on the way home, the only place we could find open was called 'pie face'. You can probably guess the rest. Back at the apartment, we finished the apple pie for dessert. Mmmm, pie.

After work on Monday we went to a great pub up the road called the Lord Nelson, which brews its own beers, and unusually for Australia, doesn't have a TAB (i.e. a bookmakers) inside, so lending it some atmosphere. The food looked great too. But oh dear, what do we have here, but a Monday 'Pie Night' special. Pie, mash, mushy peas, and gravy, for $6. We gave in to the pie. It was great.

We will probably try to eat fewer pies this week.

Robin

Back to work. For some anyway.

So, with Robin being re-acquainted with Arup  there hasn't been a lot for me to do, other than the afore mentioned retail therapy and some 'house keeping'. 

Yesterday (Wednesday) I visited Kings Cross, the red light district of Sydney. No, I don't have an unfulfilled desire to become a lap dancer; in a multi level car park is the 'backpackers car market' and I went to suss out the process for selling beloved Tara the Toyota Torago. It seems that it is a bad time of year to sell as many travellers are heading back to Europe for the summer,  but given that we won't be asking as much as the other vans on sale we might get lucky.  The market is one of the few places that it is possible to sell a vehicle that's registered 'out of state', in our case, Queensland rather than New South Wales. This might also go in our favour, as those backpackers remaining may well be heading up to the 'top end' for the much warmer winter weather. We'll see.

The walk to Kings Cross was nice as I after passing through the CBD I walked through The Domain and into Wooloomooloo where there is another harbour, this time with naval ships docked. A walk up some stairs (Sydney is surprisingly hilly) and I found myself on Victoria St., all leafy with many outwardly intact original victorian era terraced houses with typical corrugated roofs and pretty wrought iron balconies and verandahs.  This took me up to the main drag of Kings Cross, a much less attractive stretch of strip joints and 'adult' shops, with several groups of drunks inhabiting the entrances in the lurching manner I'm more used to seeing in London's Kings Cross or Camden Town. (Ah, how I miss home now...).

Before getting to the car market I made a pit stop at a tiny cafe to get a coffee (as required once a day). I didn't notice the east asian lady sat in the corner window seat as I went in until I heard a 'cooee' as she called out to the old man proprietor. "Gosh she's a bit glamorous" was my first thought as I took in her fuscia coloured trilby style hat, "my, what a lot of knitting" was my second as I surveyed the balls of yarn and several knitted articles spread about the table. My third thought  was: "She's not  lady. She's a man. Or is she? He?" I really couldn't be certain weather or not the vision before me was a granny, or a tranny. There seemed to be bumps in the right places to suggest the first, but the camp sounding voice and the quite large hands suggested the last or maybe s/he was less ambiguously a transsexual who just likes knitting. Who knows?!

Robin had a good day at work.

 

Hannah

Settling into Sydney

Lane Cove is a gem, so close to the CBD yet in the middle of (yet another) National Park.We awoke to the sound of pouring rain and slowly got ourselves together enough to drive into the city centre, thanks to the power of a tea made in the camp kitchen.  

Driving over the Harbour Bridge is incredible, with fab views in all directions. Shame about the weather.  Once in town we found a parking space at a price that could almost rival meter prices in London ($4.40/hr how much? ouch!) and picked up the keys to the apartment from the Arup office. A very short walk later - 2 minutes, if that - we were outside the apartment building of 187 Kent St.  Robin has no excuses for being late to work then.

Up to level 3, and into apt. 308. Well, calling it an apartment is a bit ambitious. A well equipped and smartly turned out studio flat is more of an accurate description. And it has a washing machine and tumble dryer. Wooo. (After camping, these little things are elevated to luxury status, believe me!).

The studio flat is only a few minutes walk from almost all the major attractions in the city centre. The Harbour Bridge is 10 minutes away in the historical and picturesque Rocks area (but sadly you can't see it from the studio's balcony).  Circular Quay where the old fashioned looking ferries depart is also only 10 minutes away and the Opera House a few minutes further on from there (unfortunately this area is also obscured from view by the towering office blocks). Darling Harbour is behind the apartment building (but you can't see that either, unless you go down to the gym on level one and take a swim....and it's just as well there is a gym as little exercise will be gotten on the way to the office!) which is another great place for a stroll.  However, there is a great view of the freeway. And some office buildings. And at night the odd bat flies past.

 

The rest of Friday, in the intermittent rain, was spent shopping for required work clothes.  surprisingly not to difficult a task as Myer, the major department store in Australia (somewhere between Selfridges and Debenhams) had everything Robin wanted. Phew!

Saturday and Sunday were spent visiting Paddington Market, shoe shopping, visiting Darling Harbour and the Sydney Fish Market, eating lots of yummy sushi and cupcakes (not at the same time), drinking flat white coffees, trouser shopping, and walking through the Botanical Gardens (where there are literally hundreds of enormous bats hanging upside down from the trees). Oh, and more clothes shopping!

Finally all this clothes shopping for Robin's work clothes got the better of me. Especially when he bought a rather natty uniform style jacket that he wore that evening, making me feel dreadfully scruffy in the same hoodie that I've been wearing for 5 months. So, on Monday I went and did a little retail therapy of my own. And feel much better for it, even if what I bought may not be terribly useful in the current Delhi heatwave!

Munched by a marsupial

So after Woolgoolga we drove south, planning to stop somewhere on the coast before reaching Sydney. It was Thursday, and we had arranged to pick up the key to the apartment that Arup had organised for me on the Friday. The plan was then to spend the weekend in the city buying clothes before starting work in the Sydney office on the Monday. Somehow I thought that the backpacker clobber I had been wearing since the 30th November probably wouldn't quite cut it in the office, no matter how relaxed the place seemed to be.

We had been tipped off by Naomi & co about 'Fredo's Pies', a pie shop on the main road south near a typical nowhere town called Kempsey. We got there less than two hours after Woolgoolga, just in time for lunch. The reason why we were so keen to stop here was because of the rare chance it offered to eat exotic species in the classic Australian pie format. Well, maybe not that exotic by Australian standards, but the 'croc' pie eaten by Hannah and the 'roo' pie favoured by me were pretty exotic for us.

(Just so you know, the crocodile meat in the pie looks and has the texture of chicken (doesn't all mystery meat?) but was quite fishy. I guess I might have been eating a 'salty'. The Kangaroo was minced and quite rich and tasted much better as a pie than as a 'kanga banga' sausage. Poor skippy.  Hannah)

Another few hours later and we stopped for a coffee at a small town called Bulahdelah. Hmmm, not much going on here. We realised then that although it would mean driving through the dark for an hour or two, we could actually make it to Sydney at not too unreasonable an hour. The freeway took us quickly to the suburbs and we directed the van towards Lane Cove National Park, and the campsite we had used when staying in Sydney previously. Since Woolgoolga we had driven 580km, not far off the distance from London to Edinburgh!

The wildlife at Lane Cove is pretty interesting, and we saw a tiny shy ring-tail possum in a tree, being dazzled by the torch of a park ranger. The bigger brush-tail possums were less shy, nosing around the camp kitchen while we ate our tea.

While sat outside the van playing cards (our favoured game is the traveller's standard - "shithead") another possum nosed around us looking for food scraps. For some reason our toes, poking out of our flip-flops, must have seemed particularly inviting - after sniffing around mine, this mischievous marsupial actually bit Hannah's toe. No blood, and tetanus jobs up to date, so no dramas, as they say here.

Robin

I really like possums, but I didn't  expect to be munched by a marsupial.

Hannah

Big Wednesday

With all the children orientated activities on offer at the Big 4 campsite it was high time that the adults got to have some fun. A 'phone call to Harpo's Surf School and we were all set with surf lessons for 4 adults organised.  Big Wednesday here we come!

We met Harpo at Woolgoolga, a small town just a couple of miles up the road (where we had visited a beachside market a few days before), feeling a little nervous. We eyed the (gentle) waves with suspicion.

We needn't have worried. Naomi and I had the first one hour lesson, and after covering necessary safety issues mostly concerning the rips or under tows, which are common and strong on most Australian beaches, we worked on the technique of hopping onto the board.  We now know that if we get caught in a rip we should stay calm, and either swim across it, or let them carry you out into the sea from where you can swim back in safely (given the 2 shark attacks on the gold coast recently I wouldn't have fancied the latter option).  We also know how to grab the sides of the board, and hoik ourselves up to a standing position that looks like a passable surfing pose. Sounds simple, but there is a lot to think about. Going from lying on your tummy to standing up with your hips and body facing in one direction while looking straight ahead is not quite as easy as you might think, even on the little tiddler waves we were 'catching'.

Naomi, who was outwardly the most nervous amazed herself by managing to stand up on the very first 'white  wave' and I managed to stand up on the second one I 'caught'.

Saying 'caught' makes it sound like we actively selected our wave, paddled out in front of it, then grabbed the 'rails' (we know all the lingo now) and pulled ourselves up all of our own accord....but no, the first few we managed to 'ride'  were more a case of us lying flat on our tums while Harpo pushed us off in the right direction when a suitably tame broken wave was coming our way. We did have to stand up on our own though.  Only one proper wipe out was suffered by Naomi, but as much time was spent falling off the board as it was riding the 'gnarly' waves.

It was fantastic fun, made even more enjoyable by the fact that Naomi and I had grasped the basics easily and were able to find our balance and ride one white wave after another, even managing towards the end, to paddle and catch our own waves. Harpo was impressed and said that we had set quite a high bench mark for the boys to reach......awesome!

Hannah

P.S.  Harpo, our instructor, was a great teacher and was encouraging and helpful all the way. How he can tell that the reason you fell off was because your foot was facing the wrong way etc I can only guess is because 10 years as a pro surfer means that he knows a thing or two. Highly recommended.

OK so now it was the boys' turn. Andrew and I had patiently watched the girls' lesson while minding the kids and were very impressed with their success. Two parallel thoughts ran through our heads: the first was "that looks easy!", so settling our nerves a little, but then the other thought was something along the lines of "oh crap, they're really good at this, we'll never match that!" - which made the nerves worse. So, we donned the too-small, soaking wet, rash vests that the girls had just used, and went through the safety issues and technique points on the beach, before 'hitting the waves' (man).

We soon discovered that this surfing lark probably wasn't quite as easy as the girls had made it look - standing up on the board on the beach was easy, but once in the water Andrew and I both had a tendency to forget all that, compounded by what must be for both of us a natural lack of balance. After inventing my own move, known as the Woolgoolga washing machine, and practicing it several times, I did eventually manage to stand up and travel a short distance towards the beach, and repeat this feat enough times to allow Hannah to get at least one photo to prove it.

Andrew meanwhile was having less luck, although he did manage to get up and stay up a few times, but not enough for Hannah to get a decent photo to prove it. For both of us, continually over- or under-balancing, then flopping into the shallow water, was getting quite tiring, but it was still enormous fun and Harpo remained encouraging and helpful throughout.

At the end of the lesson we thanked Harpo before Hannah bounded up to me and practically demanded that we have another lesson before continuing our drive south towards Sydney. Fortunately Harpo was free at 10am the next day, so we booked it immediately. Big Wednesday was thus followed by Medium-size Thursday (because there were only two of us doing the lesson, not four). Hannah continued to do well, and even I managed to improve, graduating from the Woolgoolga washing machine to the Woolgoolga belly-flop manoeuvre.

After that we left Woolgoolga and headed south, with a vague plan to stop somewhere before Sydney when we got tired. To be continued...

Robin