Sydney!

Unfortunately, this blog does not have any photos due to a technical problem. It also has a lot of writing, sorry.

I arrived in Sydney with Darren and Izzy and pretty much went straight to stay with Darren's very generous parents who live in the Blue Mountains. This was a definite added bonus, as the mountains are beautiful. We spent a day near Katoomba, which started virtually entirely in the mist, then with masses of people and finally very hot with nobody else but us with some spectacular views. We also included 'Scenic World', hence the people. This was kind of gimmicky, but it includes the steepest railway in the world which used to be the coal mine track and is really quite good fun! Lots of views of the Three Sisters and, to finish off our legs at the end of the day, an awful lot of steps...

Sydney itself is incredible. Just the nature of being based around the harbour makes it a really attractive and fun city. Izzy, I think, was just excited to be in a city outside of Perth and kept being thrilled by 'civilization', things such as shops being open late and cafes being open beyond 3pm. Lots of nice restaurants and, like any good Australian city I am learning, a good Botanical Garden (although I am afraid I actually preferred Perth's and Melbourne's ones..)

Our trip over to Manly was a good chance to see the harbour and get the classic bridge/opera house photo (I think we've ended up with a lot of these). Manly itself was FAR busier than any beach I have ever been on (and had more loud speaker announcements then any other beach I've been on as well) but quite good fun to see. Better than the beach itself was the Scenic Walk nearby, lots of stunning views along the coast and looking out to sea. Waves and sea breeze much appreciated anyway, given that Australia was about to break its national average temperature record.

I did make a visit to the Opera House; it is an amazing building, particularly when you go inside, but I was far more impressed with the Bridge. There's something mesmerising about it, I walked across it and admired the view from the Pylon Tower at one end. The masses of photos and paintings of it, particularly during construction, are good fun too. I was staying in the Rocks very close to the bridge, somewhere that is newly trendy with lots of little streets and older buildings (see later), and got very annoyed with the cruise ships of obscene proportions that blocked views of the bridge.

The Gallery of NSW had a  number of these bridge paintings. Izzy and I managed to spend almost a whole day here, although rather a lot of that time was spent in the cafe. I really like the nineteenth century Australian art where you can pick out how the landscape is so different to European landscape, and therefore paintings. The trees are particularly different. I visited S H Ervin Gallery as well, which had a rather more modern exhibition on which I enjoyed.

This second gallery is right by Observatory Hill, where Dawes made some observations of the skies but also wrote the most comprehensive record of the language spoken by aboriginals in that area, which is now unfortunately extinct. I had read Kate Grenville's book that is based on this man, so it was quite interesting to see. In fact, I then went to a stage adaption of her other more famous book, 'The Secret River', which was incredibly well done. It is a rather terrible story which is much more striking on stage. Lots of weeping but excellent all the same. There's a bit at the end where one aboriginal old man is left on his own and the main character goes to bring him food. He gets frustrated at the man who refuses to speak to him and shouts at him for being a bludger and relying on other people's generosity. Having seen the rest of the play, we don't really agree with him -not in the book but probably added to reflect/challenge some current sentiment.

I also had a bit of a history session visiting the Hyde Barracks Museum, Sydney Museum and then traveled out to Parramatta. This was actually more settled than Sydney originally as it was fertile enough to provide food for the colony. The two historic houses I visited, Hambledon Cottage (named after Hambledon, Hampshire!) and Elizabeth Farm were both interesting, but what was much more so was the approach to conservation. Based on the opinion of the tour guide there, The NSW National Trust has little sway compared to in the UK, and has to work quite hard to conserve buildings. In fact, she got quite upset by a building, Subiaco, built by MacArthur's nephew, that had been bulldozed in the 60s. At the same time, there was the 'Battle of the Rocks', where many of the older buildings near where I stayed were due to be demolished and were saved as a result of lots of protests. The lady I spoke to seemed to feel it was still a major problem, although there is now a Heritage Building law which helps.

Other than that, lots of swimming in saltwater swimming pools, some wandering around the city as well as more suburbs with some older buildings. Definitely lots to come back to!