Before I write about Australia I’d like to say thank you to Alina and her family for letting me stay on my last night in New Zealand. It was so good to catch up after such a long time and also to have a break from hostels.
Sydney seemed quite overwhelming when I first arrived, on Friday, March 30, but that’s because it’s a city of just over four million people and that’s the same as the whole population of New Zealand. At the airport, Annie from Paris came over because she recognised me from the hostel in Milford. She wasn’t staying in the Wake Up! hostel, like I was, but we met up later, along with my roommate Jemma from Dover, to explore the city, starting with the iconic opera house and harbour bridge.
Even without the place names such as Kings Cross and Oxford Street, Sydney felt very much like London, but despite it being cleaner, we still saw a few rats and cockroaches. We went for a drink and ate takeaway at the beautiful, illuminated harbour. Annie wanted to go to a gay bar, and there was no shortage of places to choose from. After gatecrashing a party at a nearby bandstand for a while, we ended up in ARQ, where Lady Gaga performed last July. Understandably, the club was still milking this. At certain points during the night, footage from the gig was shown on screen, literally every other song was a Lady Gaga hit, and for Poker Face they even brought a Lady Gaga lookalike and dancers onto the stage.
Other memorable parts of Sydney included: the Royal Botanic Garden, where I saw loads – possibly hundreds – of huge bats and a few huge spiders, which freaked me out, and also dozens of colourful but noisy rainbow lorikeets; Paddy’s Market, where you could buy all kinds of tat relating to Australia; Darling Harbour and Tumbalong Park, with lots of water features that I really liked but Lonely Planet described as “exceptionally tacky”; Hyde Park with a large war memorial and fountain; a ride on the monorail; and the tallest building in the city, Sydney Tower, which was where I was when I realised I loved Sydney. The tower was about the same height as the Sky Tower in Auckland (just over 300m), and I got to look over the landmarks during daylight, sunset and darkness. The tower also had a great 4D cinema experience which was a five-minute 3D film about Sydney during which you were sprayed with water, felt heat and wind, and had bubbles blown at you at relevant times. I was surprised to see souvenirs such as kangaroo-scrotum bottle-openers and kangaroo-paw back-scratchers in most of the tourist shops; I didn’t think we used animals for that kind of thing these days.
I had originally planned to stay in Sydney for four nights, but when I was nearing the end, I added another night, and then another. There was so much to see and do.
The hostel, which was an eight-storey former department store, built in about 1900, had a bar next door where Jemma and I went for $10 steaks on three occasions as it was such a bargain. It had a quiz night and we formed a team with two young Canadian girls who were useless when it came to the questions but were good company. We were thrilled when we came second out of the nine teams. We only cheated a little bit and even the quizmaster told us a couple of the answers privately. We won some free drinks vouchers.
I had hoped that Manly Beach, which was a half-hour ferry ride from Sydney, would offer my first chance to go surfing in Australia. As Jemma and I waited for the ferry, we had ice cream and watched a street entertainer called Psycho Sam put a balloon over his head and inflate it from inside until it exploded, and then swallow an inflated modelling balloon whole. Manly was hosting a major volleyball tournament. We watched the final, which involved players hoping to be at the Olympics this summer. Just as I was about to hire a surfboard, the beach was closed because the lifeguards kept having to rescue people from the dangerously strong currents. Some people stayed in the water, but I wasn’t allowed to hire a board. According to our Danish roommates, the beach was closed the next day too, because a shark was spotted.
We had better luck at Bondi Beach, which was about half an hour away by bus. It was much less crowded than I expected, and as it was three days into ‘low season’ it was cheaper than usual for me to have a surfing lesson which was a useful refresher. When the Let’s Go Surfing instructor, Ash, heard about the time I strangled myself with the leash and had a red line around my neck for two weeks he said I “must be quite retarded” because he’d never heard of that happening to anyone else. The water was lovely and warm and it was a good session, and I hired the board for an hour after the lesson to get some more practice. In the three hours I left Jemma on the beach with my camera, she took 380 photos! I couldn’t resist buying a Bondi Beach towel and rash vest as a souvenir of a great time.