It feels to me like there is generally a relaxed understanding and connection between Australians and Brits - our cultures and world views don't exactly seem so different. If that sounds like a historical no-brainer, I figure I'm not entirely sure how much I'm going to get the same feeling in North America, but we'll see.
I was fortunate that my good friends from London Rob and Dushyan had decided fairly last minute to holiday in Sydney and then Melbourne with dates that almost exactly overlapped with mine. It's been fantastic to be able to see and hang out with friends from home again, if slightly odd too having been mentally prepared since March for not seeing anyone from home until Stockholm Pride at the end of July! It had felt as if an age had passed since I last saw them when in fact it was only a little over two months - time definitely passes a lot more slowly when you're away from the daily treadmill and experiencing something different every day.
The weather I experienced in Sydney was poor, with lots of rain and cloud, and one day which was so unrelentingly sodden it would have been atrocious by English standards. Even though late May is late autumn if not winter in the southern hemisphere, all the locals I spoke to suggested this was pretty exceptional and hot on the heels of a long spell of fine weather. If I'd had a dollar for every Australian who joked about the rain making me feel right at home, I'd be quite a bit less poor! Fortunately I was able to pass the wettest afternoon at the excellent Museum of Sydney which, with Sydney having been the first European settlement in what became Australia, really does give an insight into the excitements and many problems (and, sadly, crimes against the indigenous population) associated with nation-building in this (then) remote corner of the world.
The one day that the sun did come out, it was bordering on warm... and I got a touch sunburnt. It hadn't remotely occurred to this naive English boy that you can get sunburnt in the Australian equivalent of late November! Someone mentioned to me afterwards that it is partly due to the ozone layer being much thinner in this part of the world.
Where else could you start sightseeing in Sydney but at Sydney Harbour? The extraordinary Sydney Opera House is, like the Taj Mahal, one of those world-famous sights which really is as good as the hype. It's just so unique, and stunningly and perhaps strangely graceful. It's well worth taking a lingering walk right round, since it felt like it reveals something new from every angle.
The iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge is I believe (without having compared diagrams) of somewhat similar design to the Tyne Bridge which links Newcastle to Gateshead in England, but obviously beats it hands down for both size and setting. Its sheer scale becomes more impressive the more you see of it and learn about it. An essential activity is to climb the 'Pylon', one of the four mostly ornamental towers at each corner of the bridge - the view all around the Harbour and beyond is truly breathtaking and a major highlight of my entire trip. Also told there is the story of the bridge's construction, which took seven whole years after planning was complete. None of today's safety essentials such as helmets or tethers was available to the construction workers, and several died on site as a result.
There's a very pleasant atmosphere all around the Harbour too, which is quite a cultural as well as a transport hub. The free Museum of Contemporary Arts (MCA) there is excellent, but probably longer in the memory will live the unusual range of buskers around the waterfront, which included an Aboriginal man playing a dhidgerydoo over a hard house backing track, and a guy in a tuxedo dancing the samba with an inflatable dummy for a partner...
The other legendary area of Sydney is of course Bondi, and even with the ropey winter weather it was well worth spending half a day there. I feel that the reputation of the sandy beach area itself probably owes more to the undeniable atmosphere (even on a winter's day; in summer an average 35,000 flock daily) than to any particularly incredible natural beauty. However, wander just a little away from the sand and you do get a pretty breathtaking glimpse into the power of nature, with large waves off the Pacific Ocean fairly crashing into large rock formations. Even on this winter's day there were several dozen surfers out in the water and as I've never seen any before, it was fun to watch them enjoying the waves. A water baby I am not but it's not hard to see the appeal! Apparently the strength of the waves keeps the lifeguards busy rescuing swimmers on a daily basis however.
It's hard to capture much of the awesomeness of the waves around Bondi Beach in a still photo, but hopefully you get some sense...
Sydney city centre lacks a real focal point, say an iconic public square. It does have Hyde Park right in the centre of things, a fraction of the size of its London namesake but beautifully maintained and somehow very lovely indeed to wander around. Other than that though, although there are moderately impressive colonial buildings and statues dotted around the city centre, I generally found it a little on the impersonal and non-descript side. At nighttime in winter it is definitely helped by the projection of interesting light images onto some of the landmark buildings - definitely something that should be copied more widely in other cities.
But if the city centre is at times underwhelming, this is definitely compensated for by other reasonably central areas. Both Potts Point (where I initially stayed in a hostel) and, even more so Newtown (where my lovely Couchsurfing hosts Ghassan and Theo live), are really lovely, with a great atmosphere and charming independent cafes, bakeries and galleries. Newtown seemed to be a real leftie, arty, bohemian enclave with a sense of local community - I was genuinely amazed since the feeling of that I got was probably stronger than anywhere I know in London, and it was a real insight to be shown round the area by a savvy local. I talked to Ghassan about rental prices and it seems that very decent flats in Newtown are far more affordable than I'd expect for a similarly nice area in London.
Not entirely by accident (although it had only involved tweaking my first-draft itinerary plans by something like one day), my stay in Sydney coincided with the Eurovision Song Contest, all three shows of which are broadcast annually in full in primetime (thanks to time delays) on the country's multi-cultural network SBS.
Thanks to the lovely British ex-pat and keen Eurovision and schlager fan Louisa (miss you!), I had an invite to house parties for both semi-finals. I think Louisa had pretty much arm-twisted an American (!) friend Joe who just happens to have a spacious central flat that he wanted to allow an assortment of randoms (including a Swedish girl, and a genuine Aussie who's previously flown all the way to Europe to be at Eurovision) into his flat for this thing called Eurovision. He was a fantastically generous host, despite a conversation along the lines of:
Joe: "So will they sing different songs in the final?"
Me and Louisa: "No, the same songs."
Joe: "Oh. That's a bit boring."
Me and Louisa: "It's a SONG contest!!"
Joe: "It should be a band contest..."
I did try my best not to scowl for the next half hour, honestly I did...
Much fun was had with impromptu schlager parties afterwards (the second one a wake to help get over the debacle of the heartbreakingly dull and weakly performed Swedish entry failing to qualify for the final)... Slightly too much fun too late into the night, as the police turned up at about 1am regarding noise nuisance, and neighbours egged the balcony. I think it was Louisa's rousing solo performance of "Molitva" that had done it...
For the final we headed to Oxford Art Factory on Oxford Street, a cavernous basement venue showing Eurovision on big screens. The time delay in broadcast had become a problem, since earlier that day when I was introduced to a visiting member of Theo's family as a Eurovision fan, he said "Oh Germany won didn't they?" And in the middle of the Australian broadcast, one of the group of rather annoying Irish boys near us took great delight in telling me that the UK had come last. But nonetheless it was good fun, the venue was pretty busy with locals appearing to get quite into it... And the best song won (again) too. SBS's commentary by Australians had been bland and fairly clueless, and the venue closing almost immediately at the end of transmission was unexpected and unwelcome, but then how much can you really expect for Eurovision in Australia on Sunday night?
The slight downside of my one weekend in Sydney being taken up with Eurovision (and with the delayed broadcasts being on three consecutive nights whereas live in Europe you get days off in-between, it felt unusually hardcore) was that I didn't end up with the energy or proper opportunities for full exploration of Sydney's legendary gay scene. I did go to the famous Stonewall Hotel and a couple of other Oxford Street venues midweek, but really I'll have to reserve judgment until I go back to Sydney, whenever that might be. You can't do everything, everywhere, every time. I did skim in a bookshop parts of an Australian book lamenting the supposed shrinkage of Sydney's gay scene in recent years, allegedly due to integration with the mainstream and the 'Gaydar effect' (i.e. gay people now using the Internet to hook up instead of going out), or even gay people leaving Sydney for elsewhere. However just walking around the streets (and chatting with great locals) there was no doubt it's still a very gay city.
As I've mentioned Australian currency, a vaguely interesting point is that banknotes appear to be largely made of a very thin lightweight plastic rather than paper. Once you get used to this, it's really quite welcome, since they appear much more durable than British banknotes. I imagine there'd be a huge uproar if the Bank of England tried introducing the same, but surely everyone dislikes grubby English fivers? The banknotes make up for the extraordinarily large Australian coins - I'm sure they're larger than British 50p, 10p and 5p coins were before they were made smaller in my youth, even though tne Aussie versions are worth barely half as much. Added to that that the $2 coin is very similar to the $1 coin but smaller...
I was a bit surprised by Sydney's public transport, which seemed generally quite poor. The reach of the equivalent of the metro seems really quite limited, the trains are pretty dirty and a little dingy, and they're surprisingly infrequent, as in my limited experience were the buses too. There also doesn't seem to be any equivalent of the touch-card system that most cities I've been to seem to have adopted. This may well not be typical of the rest of Australia however, as Ghassan mentioned that the state government of New South Wales has been feeble for many years.
Gripes aside though, I had a fantastic week in Sydney, no doubt about it. There's no doubt that at a different time of year with warmth, no rain and light evenings, it would be even better. Do I want to go back sometime sooner rather than later? You bet I do.
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