Arriving in Sydney was a relief, but also a
little sad. I had really gotten attached
to the weird little Canadian! :) We had to run the several blocks to her
brother’s apartment in the rain to get her and her stuff there, so we could
make our appointment to drop off the van.
The arrival window was super tight. So tight that we decided we should check in with the office BEFORE cleaning the vehicle. They said they weren’t fussed and we could take the time to get the car to the car wash. We filled up the gas tank and drove around looking for the car wash.
When we finally found it, Joe and I worked like a
machine packing everything up, vacuuming out the inside, cleaning out the
fridge and the food box, putting the beds back together, and checking all the
nooks and crannies. If I do say so
myself, the car was definitely in better shape when we dropped it off than it
was when we picked it up. We also washed
the outside. It shone, I don’t mean to
brag.
We dropped it off at the office, making sure to
tell them that the radio, TV, dome lights, and fridge didn’t work
(annoying). The woman looked over the
car and was satisfied with the state of it.
As we were finishing up, two guys came in to return their vehicle and said
they had hit a kangaroo. They had
purchased the insurance for the car though, so they were all good. We had not purchased insurance, so we
breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn’t hit anything.
We walked out of the Spaceships office sad to
leave our little vehicular home behind and sad that that good thing had to
end. But it was so freeing too! We had everything we needed on our backs and
could go anywhere!
We popped into a little ethnic mom-n-pop
restaurant for some phone charging, internet, and relieve the hunger that had
been building. Sydney’s public transport
system was mapped on google, meaning that I could plug in our hotel address and
it would tell me what buses to take. We
walked across the street to the bus stop and waited only a few minutes.
We had a booking at a place called Casa Central
for two nights. It took a bit of walking
to find once we got off the bus at the main downtown bus station, but we made
it just fine. The place was small and
quirky, but really comfortable for a backpacker’s budget residence. Our room was decent sized and had a big
window that looked out onto the side of a building with a huge photo of Iggy
Azalea. It was warm and comfortable.
The next day we went walking downtown, starting
up the hill from our place to a huge park with lines of old trees and a
fountain in the center. The war memorial
was at one end, which we went in to visit.
We watched a young man and an older man playing giant chess at the
entrance of the park. The older man was
calm about the game, while the younger one would occasionally betray his
nerves. We left before it ended, but I’m
fairly certain the older man would have won.
He had confidence.
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| The old man on the right paced up and down |
The Sydney harbor was beautiful. I know that it is glammed up and you hear
unnecessary hyperbole about it, but it really is breathtaking. There is city all around it, but the little
fingers of water reach into the city just enough to give the place plenty of
waterfront. It was super clean and not
overdone. The landmarks like the Opera
House and the Harbor Bridge were gently put in the picture and there was
nothing too gaudy.
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| Me and my beaux |
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| Didn't get to see a show, but the outside was still lovely |
I googled on my phone some of the best cheap
places to eat and found a rooftop bar a few blocks back that sounded
awesome. We walked and walked and walked
to find it and when we finally did, it turned out to be too expensive for our
blood. We instead ate at a little
sandwich shop around the corner. It was
good, but it would have been fun to have seen the harbor from the roof.
Sleep at the hostel was so refreshing. It was nice and quiet, even though our window
looked out onto the noisy street, and having room in a warm bed was bliss after
a couple weeks of sleeping in a tent or crammed into the van.
We had to move rooms the next day because they
had another booking for our room. The
hostel was small, so even their dorms, where we moved to for the second night,
went way up in price and they quickly ran out of rooms. We booked for the following night at another
hostel whose price was low, but ratings were pretty bad. It was right around the street from a giant
theatre where they had Les Miserables playing.
Joe bought tickets to that for my birthday present. I’ve seen the play, but I was just as excited
to see it again. It was SO good.
One day I also took the morning to go back to the
Chatswood post office to pick up the sleeping bag liners that were waiting
there for me in the package forwarded from Port. Such a waste that I had to go back for that,
but I also sort of enjoyed it.
We explored the city some more, going to some
museums and finding good places to eat.
Life in Sydney is expensive, so we had to be careful, but we managed to
keep expenditures in check.
One thing we did splurge on was going out with
Em. She was staying with her brother and
invited us over to party. When we got
there, I felt suddenly under-dressed. I
had hiking boots and rain gear on, where Emily looked clean, polished, and
artsy. I got a little nervous when she
said that other friends would be joining us.
We had made a bond with her, but it had been within the constrains of
cramped life in a caravan. From the
stories, her brother and his friends whom she had sailed with to Australia had
done quite a bit of partying on the boat.
It seemed likely that they were probably “mates,” or the blokish
partying kind.
It turned out though, that they were super
cool. I didn’t like Em’s ex-boyfriend
much, but he was still okay. But her
brother was one of the nicest guys we’ve met!
He sounded like such a Canadian and he was super generous and engaging. We sat around drinking in the common area of
his apartment building and then eventually walked to a dance club, where I felt
even stupider trying to dance in my hiking boots. We said goodnight a little before everyone
else did, since we had to find the right bus to take.
We had originally hoped to go to the Blue
Mountains sometime while we were so near to them, but it ended up being too
much of a hassle. We would have had to
find buses, make plans, spare time, etc, and it just felt like too much. I’m a little sad now, but in the end we can’t
see everything.
There was another detail to the puzzle that
influenced our plans. Before leaving
Port Douglas I wrote to a few people that we might want to see on the way. When we left New Zealand, Peter and Colleen
gave us the addresses of their son in Perth, as well as Peter’s sister Shirley
in Canberra. We wanted to see them
because Peter and Colleen had been so important to us while we were in New
Zealand and we felt like we owed at least that.
So Shirley and her husband Des were coming to Sydney to see one of Peter
and Shirley’s brothers who was visiting.
They would be leaving on a Sunday.
We vacillated about whether we would go with them or not, as it sort of
cut our plans short in Sydney. But in
the end, it was both convenient and something that we felt like we owed. So we agreed on a time and a place to meet
them.
We got up the harbor bridge on our last night for
photos. Joe tested out his prolonged
exposure setting on his camera and got some really cool shots. We moseyed back to the hostel via some of the
old town.
The next morning we packed up and headed out of
the city on the subway, where we were to meet Shirley and Des. They wanted us to come far enough out of the
city that they wouldn’t have to hit any traffic, which made a lot of
sense. We got to the end where we needed
to be, set our stuff on some benches, I went and got us some coffee, and within
only a few minutes they arrived, despite the fact that we were pretty early.
We loaded our stuff into their car and started
out. Conversation was pretty easy, but
their personalities were… different.
They were very generous and interesting people. Des had the Aussie male syndrome that we have
encountered a lot before, knowing everything and always being right and always
the hero for imparting wisdom on us lesser morals, not unlike our nude Aussie
male acquaintance, Al. Des was way
better than Al, don’t get me wrong. But
it was strange to see this personality in yet another Australian guy.
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| Seeing the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) was a bonus! |
Shirley was basically a slightly less positive,
but otherwise identical clone of Peter.
Her voice and face were so familiar.
She had a hundred things to say about everything, but was as generous as
anything, especially to two strange travelers like us.
Over the next few days with them, we got around
to see some of the government buildings, galleries, and museums, including a
big and slightly overwhelming science museum.
On the second day of this culturalizing experience, Joe noticed that the
NBA finals were playing and he could get to watch it on the internet live. It’s rare that he would choose sports over
anything else, but this was one of those times.
I was glad to have some alone time anyway, so I went off and started
exploring the city some more. After a
while, the other three joined me and we went to the capitol building to watch
the parliament session.
Parliament in Australia is quite different than
the States. Not necessarily better or
worse, but very different. Where the
senators and legislators in the States are stuffy and suave, the legislators in
Australia yell at one another or over one another. Maybe I like that better because at least
their struggle is honest and on-the-table instead of under it. But at the same time, it annoys me because it
is the behavior that I hate in legislators: acting as though they were still in
high school and government was just a popularity contest.
It was remarkable to see though. There were arguments and insults and obvious
distaste among the representatives.
Another cool part: we got to see Tony Abbott, the
Prime Minister of Australia! He was in
Parliament with everybody else. He was
an interesting dude—sort of seemed like not the brightest guy on the floor, but
maybe the best at shmoozing. People in
Australia largely dislike him these days, since he does not seem to be interested
in preserving Australia for Australians.
While we were in the session, they formally passed CHAFTA (China
Australia Fair Trade Act), which we saw as a way for people to make a quick
buck, but would be a negative in the long run.
I admit that the layout of the place was pretty
beautiful and modern, but we were told by Shirley and Des at least a hundred
times that this symbolizes that, the city was designed for cars, and that
everything incorporated into the buildings and architecture were intentional. It was strange, especially because not a day
earlier Joe had complained that he hated human spaces designed for cars. I didn’t look at him so as not to betray our
opinions.
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| The futuristic capitol building of Australia |
They took it to the extreme in the capitol
building. The place was built into a
hill, which supposedly represented that the government was accessible to and
under the people (the hill is planted with grass that people can walk on). The stone used to pave the front area was
red, representing the Red Centre of Australia.
The ugly green marble used on the posts that held up the roof
represented the trees and the Aussie attachment to nature. The whole thing felt like a futuristic
over-design. Very strange.
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| A remake of a photo I remember from my cousins' Aussie photos. With bonus weka! |
But it really was beautiful. Sadly we hit it on rainy days, so that took away
some of the beauty, but it was still really nice.
We also remembered why we dislike staying with
people like that. Helpx is nice because
you’re doing work in exchange for their hospitality. We were visiting them because Peter and
Colleen had been so important to us, but they kept paying for our meals and
giving us wine and treating us like royalty, which made us feel like major
moochers. We even tried to pay back the
kindness by making dinner or offering to pay, but they insisted. It made us feel a little helpless.
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| Reddish tint of the wine seems to have gone to my face & ears. Myself, Joe, Des and Shirley around the table for dinner. |
It was a lovely visit though. It was kind of fun to see the capital of
Australia, and the cultural learning there.
They had a bathtub too, so I got my fill of baths, which I missed
madly. We skyped with Peter and Colleen
(though sadly I was PMSing and not very sociable) as Joe and I were fixing
dinner. We had a nice chat.
We stayed for only a few days, but it felt so
comfortable with the two of them. I
would say I wouldn’t be able to handle all day every day around them, but
that’s my own thing because I’m unsociable and neurotic. :)
Shirley was kind enough to take us to the train
station where we would catch a train to Melbourne. We said warm goodbyes and waved through the
window until Shirley was out of sight.
What a sweet lady.
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| Shirley and I! |
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| Shirley took this photo. It's one of my favorites of the two of us. |
We arrived in Melbourne in the evening, but it
was still light outside. I had made a
booking for us at Haven backpacker’s hostel, so we pulled out my phone and
navigated to the right place. It was a
twenty minute walk, but fairly easy to find.
It was buzzing! We had a dorm bed
in a spacious and nice dorm with two other blokes, one of whom was Italian and
spoke broken English. The other guy was
a Brit who was traveling before starting full-time work. Both were very nice.
We went out for a walk and immediately found some
of the art and architecture of the city.
We crossed a bridge that was brightly painted and had murals all along
it. The streets were very clean and we
learned early by someone telling us newbies that Melbournians did not wait for
the light to change in order to cross the street. Any time you thought there was space enough in
traffic, it was free for all.
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| My manly-man throws rose petals in the air |
We found out that in a day or two there would be
a festival of lights and art during the solstice. It looked like fun, so we planned to attend.
The city was rather cold. It was nice to get back to the hostel in the
evenings where I could turn on the heat and snuggle up in bed.
We did go to the Light Up the Night festival,
which was thousands of people crammed into one block of strange and interesting
art. I am not an artist, so I have no
credibility to say this, but contemporary art seems to mean, who can make the
strangest things. For instance, there
were people in giant islander costumes (at least 15 feet tall) wandering around
the whole time.
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| The giant man and woman |
There were countless
bands performing in the weirdest outfits they could put together. One of the installments were a collection of
spaced black teepees that could be entered one person at a time. We waited at least 20 minutes in line for
these and once inside, There were three eggs in three nests and some non-related
weird music and side-lighting. And that
was it. That is what we waited 20
minutes for.
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| Just late-night fountaining |
It was fun though. Also, cold.
I was using every long-sleeve I had to try and keep warm.
On the way home, underneath a bridge that we
passed there were some flashing lights and people dancing. When we got closer, we realized there was no
music, but all the dancers wore headphones that were playing the same music as
everyone else. It was a silent
disco! Joe caught them all off-guard
when he started dancing without headphones, as if he could hear his own
music. They laughed. He got a pair of headphones and danced for a
few minutes and then laughingly we started walking back to the hostel.
Melbourne is a rich city. When we visited the old treasury building, we
learned that there had been a gold rush in that part of the country and when
the rest of Australia tried to cash in on that rush, they split from the other
states. That is why Victoria is so
small. So for such a small state, it is
exceedingly wealthy, which is apparent in the architecture, infrastructure, and
design. The state government building
has gold leaf all over it. The buses are
well-equipped and frequent. There is
public art and public works everywhere, paid for by taxes and income of the
wealth in the state. It’s very grandiose
and lovely.
We went around and saw some of the museums,
including the treasury and government house, but the real gem was the Victoria
State Library.
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| Just one of the reading rooms of the Victoria State Library |
For our nerd brains, it
was the ultimate place to visit. They
had exhibits on the best books throughout the entire history of the written
language, and there were floors and floors of these exhibits! There were floors and floors of books, nice
study desks everywhere, great internet, great lighting, and even a room devoted
entirely to chess—chess books, chess magazines, and rows of chess sets on
tables for people to play.
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| The chess room. Do anything else in there and you're just a pawn |
We discussed
getting an apartment in Melbourne and staying for a while just so we could
visit the library every day. Nerds.
The best part about it is that Joe gets as giddy
about that stuff as I do. Who knew I
would find someone as dorky as me?
We were a little sad to leave Melbourne so soon
with so little time to spend at our new favorite place, but we were also
excited to go to Tasmania. We woke
unreasonably early to catch the way overpriced bus to the airport, got checked
in, on our flights, and were off!
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