Farewell Australia

A big city is a true rarity in Australia. With a country the size of Europe and a population of just over 20 million, the padding of population is relatively sparse. It’s with this contrast in mind that entering into Sydney provides quite the step up from the generic small-town feel of the majority of Australia. This step-up is amplified ten-fold if your passage of travel commences from Byron. I’d been to Sydney once before with Keegan and Bob back in June, but the transition from Brisbane was a slight one. It was the moment at which we disembarked from our 14 hour bus trip, into the middle of the city, lacking all of my vital bearings and having to haul my tortoise shell of a rucksack towards our hostel, a hostel that we knew nothing about, which put this trip to Sydney truly into perspective. Helpfully, after a bit of abnormally un-male behaviour (i.e. asking for directions), we navigated our way through a nostalgically British set of directions (past the Strand, opposite King’s Cross, through Hyde Park etc... Thieving gits!) and found ourselves at the entrance, of what would prove to be, our worst hostel of the year... A good start to Sydney, however, it DOES get better... To an extent.

Before I continue, I’d have for my words to be misconstrued and anyone to retain the opinion that Sydney is a nasty city, as it really isn’t. In fact, you’ll find that after I’ve you’ve taken out all the flaws of our hostel (no social area, 8 oven hobs between 200 people, rude staff etc) you’ll find I’ve got nothing negative to say about the place. We started our Sydney tour by eradicating our Greyhound hangover at the world famous Bondi Beach. For those who are questioning my generous usage of the term “world-famous”, Bondi holds the majority of its high regard within the surfing community and chances are, even if it’s just the slight ringing of a bell, you’ve heard of it through surfing. Once you get there, it is no mystery as towards its well earned reputation. We arrived during a skate and surf boarding competition, so it was plain to see, however even outside of competition time, the perpetually huge waves would give you a clue as to its purpose. Our trip to Bondi marked a relatively low energy sort of day, possibly due to us still being within Byron mentality. After a brief nap on the beach, we headed off for some cheap tapas, an exhausting sort of mini bus journey back to the hostel and then a wander into the city for a few drinks.

Our second day saw us, rather uncreatively, retracing two sets of my own footprints left from my last excursion. We headed first of all to the Sydney aquarium, somewhere I’d been raving about ever since our first touchdown in Cairns. The aquarium is probably the best I’ve been too, although I’ll be the first to admit I’m not nearly as experienced in the field/pond as I’d like to be. But it is the venue for my first ever platypus sighting, which is something that you never will quite forget. While on the subject, a brief interlude of platypus facts always goes down well!

1)      The platypus is the only mammal to lay eggs

2)      The male platypus is one of a very rare collection of venomous mammals with a venomous spur on its rear heels

3)      The female platypus sweats milk for its young, and is the only mammal to do so

4)      When taxidermists first sent a platypus specimen back from Australia to England, biologists dismissed it for months as a practical joke (beavers tail, ducks beak and otter stuck together)

Now that I’m certain everyone is feeling much the wiser for that interlude, I’ll continue with the aquarium! The aquarium had a wide collection of different exhibits that I found awesome, such as the shark tube (you walk over, under and next to sharks outside of the glass), a 20 foot long ray, a pair of dugongs, long-necked tortoises and many other bits that would probably bore normal people, but kept me entertained for hours! First the zoo, and now this, not painting myself in a very exciting sort of light am I?

After the aquarium we completed our compulsory Sydney tourist initiation and did our Opera House and Harbour Bridge viewing experience. We did it via a trip on the Manly Ferry, this being a ferry to Manly, not a masculine boat. The reviews back about the two landmarks have been mixed; I was not left disappointed and thought they were both very pretty, with the opera house notably being very striking. But, others have said that it didn’t match up to expectations, were too small, were ugly etc. Beauty, I suppose, is in the eye of the beholder. It was just as we touched down in Manly, however, when the skies opened and the lightning storm struck with vengeance, so it was with a quick hasty retreat (through the botanical gardens, so not that quick or hasty) back to the hostel and settled in for the night. However, by then Dom and Olivia had arrived, so we stayed up for a bit, drinking beer whilst overlooking a roundabout, this wasn’t some obscure passion of ours, it was merely the only place the hostel had deemed necessary to provide for socialising... But I shan’t go further into that rant I promise.

Due to a booking error, the next day formed Sim and Ben’s last day in Australia before their very early flight to Christchurch the next morning, whilst me and Whisken had another day afterwards to tie up all the lose organisational ends. We did a little bit of researching and decided to head to rent a car and head to the Blue Mountains National Park, just a few hours West of Sydney. With a $50 a day car acquired and an early wake up achieved, we battled through the infernally variable one-way system that is Sydney and headed for the hills. The Blue Mountain NP is a vast area of land consisting of 100s of miles of mountains, forests, lakes and waterfalls, so we knew from the beginning that we’d only see a tiny portion of it. But with our landmark sights already highlighted, we made a route and set off on a hike that can only be described as “understatedly long”. Our first stop was called the three sisters, three giant stacks of stone within a forest that is associated with an ancient aboriginal fable. This portion of the hike involved climbing down more than a thousand steps which, in hindsight, should have set alarm bells ringing concerning our future prospects of returning to the car, but in actual fact, merely lead us to remark how easy the hike was looking like it was going to be. Along our walk we passed Witches Falls, a rather dramatic three-tiered waterfall with lookouts at each of the tiers up the mountain. We also passed a few breath-taking observation platforms balanced precariously over ledges providing a panoramic view of the National Park from which ever altitude you found yourself at the time. Even after more than a thousand ascending steps, we agreed the hike was one of the best we’d done and have some pretty good photos to prove it, along with a set of 8 aching legs as reminders.

Across the next day, once Sim and Ben had left, Whisken and myself mainly got into the business of finishing planning our Fiji Christmas, the remainder of New Zealand, along with some dull financial details such as tax that I shan’t insult anyone’s time by detailing. But mainly, when looking back at the whole Sydney experience, we can feel that we gave our Australian experience a good sort of send off. The highlight will undoubtedly consist predominantly of Blue Mountain views and memories, but the ferry trip and Opera House are also going to have to be fondly remembered of course. Despite the sentimentality associated with our surrogate home over the past few months, as well as the nostalgia impact associated with leaving any country for the last time on this trip, it felt like time to leave. I had been anxiously awaiting New Zealand for some time, and had heard so many different positive reviews of it, that I couldn’t be too downhearted about leaving the expensive, sun-baked vastness that is Australia, but was glad to leave with some damn good memories as well as a general feeling of appreciation for the opportunities it had provided. But, it was on to my 8^th country that we went (or 3^rd last for those pessimists out there), and into the land of sheep, Lord of the Rings and volcanoes that we were aimed for. The adventure continues!

R