(Me and Nick work on that tricky Metallica middle-eight... January 5th 2008, Wollongong)
Our time with Kirstie, Manu and Summer was coming to an end, so for our last day we all piled into the car and headed for Bobbin Head, one of Manu’s favourite running spots, as well as being one of the funnier double-entendre names around here. Michelle and I joined Manu for a walk along one of the routes, leaving Kirstie and Summer in the shade at a café. It’s a hot day. Really hot. Manu reckons it’s a bit warm, so yes, it’s really hot. There is shade along the way, and you find yourself walking just a bit slower in the shady bits. We go past a Goanna, which looks as bit like an Iguana. In fact I can’t tell the difference, and I still haven’t found anyone who can actually explain the difference…
The views of the lake and the hills are spectacular, and after half an hour we turn and go back. Manu suggests a detour, which to me looks knee threateningly steep, so I break off and head for the café. When we’ve all re-convened it’s back in the car and off through the National Park to a Wildlife reserve where more views are to be had, some kangaroos and turtles are to be seen and a colleague of Manu’s is to be met. Another trip in the car, partly on a ferry, and we get to Berowra Waters before heading back to K&Ms.
Manu and I get some take out Thai food and we all sit on the balcony, drinking beer and chatting, and finally we all go to bed.
The next morning we pack, call a cab and head for the station. It’s impossible to thank Kirstie and Manu enough for asking us to stay with them over C*****mas and New Year, for their hospitality, for sharing their friends, for driving us around, for feeding us and for, well, for being our friends. We try and convey our thanks, and look forward too seeing them in the UK later this year, when we hope they’ll stay with us.
Michelle had found us a room at a hostel in the middle of the Kings Cross area of Sydney, which if not physically, is culturally a long way away from Wahroonga. It’s backpacker central, and as we finally find the right street after finding every other wrong street in the area, we walk past about 50 backpacker places before we get to ours. The room seems ok, and there’s a fridge, a TV and three beds, and we find out that we have free Wi-Fi access – so plans for the next few days are made, places are booked and snacks from the local supermarket are snacked.
We also book tickets for the open air movie theatre which is showing The Godfather. It’s in Centennial Park, to the east of the city and we think we know where it is having gone past it on the bus going to Bondi. We need to be there at 7.30, so we start walking, panic that we’ll be late and hail a cab. The cab goes the other way to that which we have been going, and drops us off at the gate to the park 10 minutes later. We have more snacks with us, plus some beer and as it gets dark we sit on our towels and the movie starts. Covering ourselves in mozzie spray seems to keep the little blighters at bay and, despite Chelley falling asleep about halfway through, we have a brilliant time. Trying to figure out the buses on the way home seems a little more difficult than it should, but we have a map and decide to walk. It’s 12.30am, and we walk down Oxford Street, going past signs to Liverpool Street and Charring Cross, Paddington and finally Kings Cross and it’s taken less than 40 minutes. The corridor to our room is full of backpackers drinking cheap cider, we have the stairs on one side of our room and the men’s showers on the other. Sleeping is not easy, but we manage it thanks to the walk.
The next morning, fuelled by fruit, we catch a train and then a bus to get us to Circular Quay and then walk to The Rocks, the area under the Harbour Bridge which is billed as the oldest in the city. After walking an unnecessary extra couple of kilometres around the pillars, we find the way up onto the bridge and then up inside one of the pillars. The view is amazing, and at $9 each, a lot cheaper than the walk up the actual bridge. A lot safer, too. We walk over the bridge to the North side, buy pastries and head for the North Sydney outdoor Swimming Pool. Chelle gets in for a few lengths while I get on with some snoozing, after appreciating the view – one end of the pool is at the entrance to Luna Park, the other at the foot of the Harbour Bridge. It runs alongside the water in the harbour too, giving a great contrast in colours.
We catch the ferry to Balmain, a suburb to the west of Sydney (although not in ‘West’ Sydney), get milkshakes and raisin toast in a café, get back on the ferry and shoot across the water to Darling Harbour. There’s not really much there for us - it’s mostly fish or steak restaurants along with the Aquarium, but it does have a monorail station, and we catch it back into the city. It runs up high, 2 or 3 floors above street level, and gives an unusual view, and we get off, catch a conventional train back to the hostel, picking up take out pies and salad to have in. We’re knackered.
Despite the noise in the hostel, we sleep like very sleepy people and emerge at 9.45 in the morning, along with the realisation that we have to check out at 10.00am. Quick showers are had (it’s better that way in shared facilities sometimes, as is the fact that I can’t see very much without my glasses), bags are packed, toast and coffee is had in the kitchen while making sandwiches with the left over snacks from yesterday, and we’re handing back the key by 10.30am with apologies. We lock up the bags in the back room at the hostel and head out to fill up 2 hours before picking up our hire car.
Walking the other way is always a good thing to do. We had turned left as we stepped out of the hostel for the previous two days, so this day we turned right, headed down the road, found a park and an enormous set of steps which led down to the Woolloomooloo District of Sydney. And no, I didn’t just make that name up. Across the road is Harry’s Café de Wheels, an infamous attraction in the city which has been there since 1945, is open 18 hours a day, and is covered in pictures of celebrities eating pies at the booth, which is next door to the wharf which houses a posh Hotel and, as we were told later, Russell Crowe’s Sydney pad. A short walk round the wharf and we find ourselves in The Domain, part of the Botanical Gardens and about ten minutes walk around the headland from the Opera House. The geographical jigsaw of Sydney was finally starting to make sense, and we were slowly putting the final piece in place, but first we got distracted by a modernist structure at the side of the gardens. It turned out to be the ‘Andrew ‘Boy’ Charlton’ swimming pool and café, with Olympic size salt water serious pool, full of Sydney’s citizens dutifully counting lengths, and attached café, at which we sampled some green tea while watching the swimmers. Well, I watched the swimmers, Chelle was watching the lifeguard. Of course. I promised myself that I would find out who Andrew ‘Boy’ Charlton was, which I will do. Soon. Really.
Further walking through the gardens revealed that preparations were well underway for the Sydney Festival which starts the day after we leave, quelle surprise, and we complete our loop by finding our way to car rental central – Wilson Street – and going into the Thrifty office, to be told that they had no record of our booking. If you can recall, we made our booking through an organisation called ‘Backpackers’, a couple of days ago, but had received no confirmation. In characteristic fashion, I had decided that they were probably busy, and had simply forgotten to confirm. Maybe they had been to busy to book it, too. The lady in the office asked us to give her half an hour to investigate, and sent us around the corner for a coffee. Slightly concerned but buoyed by her calmness, we followed her directions and discovered her recommendation to be just one in a street full of Italian cafes. As we sat outside, trying not to worry about not having a car, or somewhere to sleep if we couldn’t get one, we enjoyed the sun, the parade of Italian cars including an old Fiat Arbarth (one for Justin there) and the conversations of the obviously gay couple of girls on the next table.
When we returned we were relieved to hear that there had indeed been a computer based cock-up on the car-booking front, and Thrifty would indeed provide a car for us – however, we would have to give them an hour or so to get it here, along with all the others that had been booked and not made it onto the list for the day. We were in no real hurry, so headed back towards the hostel and called my friend Nick, who was going to be meeting us and providing a roof over our heads for the next couple of days.
We called into a second-hand bookstore which had previously caught our eye, and I found a couple of Clive James books I had been looking for as well as wandering into a room at the back which was full of interesting vinyl records. As I walked in, the guy behind the counter put the first Crosby Stills & Nash album on the turntable, and the first book I spotted in the music section was Colchester’s own Giles Smith’s Lost In Music. It was turning into a splendid day, despite the car thing, and we sat in a park, eating our sandwiches, reading our newly purchased books waiting for a call from the Thrifty Woman.
By 3.30pm we were finally on our way, having called at the hostel to get our bags, and navigated our way out of the centre of Sydney and headed south to Wollongong, home of my friend Nick.
An easy drive means we arrive in North Wollongong by about 5 in the afternoon, and we find a beach café, watch the massive waves, and call Nick. I met Nick in LA over three years ago. We were both staying at the Orbit hostel, and ended up hanging out with Darren (from the Gold Coast, getting married – come on, keep up!), Gary (who we went out with, along with Nick, on our first night in LA on this trip…), and Fiona, who we will be meeting up with in Melbourne…Look, it makes sense to me, alright?
Anyway, Nick arrives and we have coffee and watch with a mixture of fear and excitement, as the Lifeguards rescue a guy who was stuck out in the huge waves that have been relentlessly pounding the beach since we arrived. In the most impressive piece of work I’ve ever seen, the Lifeguard paddled out on a board, through 16 foot high waves, got the bloke onto the board, and then paddled both of them back. The whole thing took over 20 minutes. A round of applause broke out across the beach and the café as they got to the beach, and if I had been the rescued, I would have felt indebted to the rescuer for the rest of my life.
We follow Nick back to his house, meet his mum who makes us feel very welcome, before heading into the CBD to eat Thai food, drink beer, and sample The ‘Gong. It seems to be a similar in size to Ipswich, there are a couple of night clubs, a few bars, a smattering of restaurants and, as it is Friday night, a fair amount of locals looking for a good time. The most obvious thing is that The ‘Gong is not a tourist place and its lack of pretension is obvious having spent the last few days in Sydney. As we sit in the bar after eating, the similarities with our home town are cemented when it starts to pour with rain. Back at Nick’s we watch the highlights of the 2nd test between Australia and India, which seemed simply like an intense international sporting event at that time, before the whole series was put in jeopardy by name calling and accusations of un-gentlemanly behaviour.
The next day it’s still raining as Nick cooks up a storm in the kitchen, before taking us up Mount Keira, part of the Illawarra Escarpment, which rears up behind the city, and provides breath-taking views across to the sea as well as up and down the coastline. It’s still steadily raining, so we go to the movies and watch National Treasure 2, which I had high hopes of being featured in having been an extra on the shoot in London about 6 months ago. Within the first five minutes it’s clear they didn’t use any of the shots I was in, so I hide the disappointment by pretending to not enjoy the film.
We have coffee and cookies, watch some more cricket and then head out to Napoli pizzas – Nick’s favourite restaurant. Like a huge number of places in Australia, this is a BYO place, meaning you bring your own wine or beer, and some places charge you a nominal fee to open it (called ‘corkage’), so we stop off at a ‘bottle stop’ on the way and get some Coopers Pale Ale.
The pizzas are excellent, the beer is good, and we finish the evening off at The ‘Gong’s micro-Brewery, down by the south beach, sampling a few of their own beers. Back at Nick’s Chelle leaves us to watch one of the worst films in the world, about Nazi’s bringing some Gargoyles to life, before I retire to bed too. As I drift off to sleep I hear some whist-full a'capella singing coming from outside somewhere, but feel too tired to investigate, and fall asleep.
Nick had also heard the singing, thankfully for my sanity, but we’re at a loss as to where it had come from. His mum cooks us a beautiful breakfast, we pack up and do the difficult good bye bit again. I don’t think we will ever get used to this, but at least this particular one is only temporary, as luckily, Nick will be in Melbourne next week, the same time as us, for the tennis. Plans are made for meeting up.
Here’s a thing. When Michelle was young, she used to hang out with her family’s friend’s children Andrew and Trevor. Andrew had, during his travelling days, met an Aussie girl called Penny, and eventually moved over and settled down with her. So far so normal, but it happens that they had settled in Wollongong, and his parents had suggested we call in and see them, as we would be visiting Nick in the same city. It’s a big place, the World, and Australia is a pretty big part of it, so the fact that one of Michelle’s childhood friends should move to the same city as a friend of mine, that I met in LA, is a bit of a coincidence. The fact that, once we had checked his address, Andrew lived less than 30 yards down the same road, Grey Street, as Nick, was a bit more freaky.
So, having packed the car up, waved goodbye out of the car window, we went over the hill and pulled up on the other side of the same road. Andrew and Penny had, after 15 years of living together, finally done the decent thing and got married just before Christmas. A lot of Andrew’s family had come over for the wedding, and some had stayed for Christmas and new year, but the final lot had left the day before we called, so they were feeling a bit empty. We were concerned that, having had a houseful for a month, they would want some time to themselves, but they were incredibly welcoming, with snacks, drinks and wedding photos, and we chatted for a couple of hours before heading off, this time driving a little bit further down the coast to Kiama, with a lot of useful information from Andrew and Penny in our heads.
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