Sydney

We arrived in Sydney in what was definitely the smallest plane either of us have ever travelled on, bar none.  We had been on some small planes in Indonesia but this was super small with about 12 seats!  We were greeted at North Sydney train station by my friend Dave Walsh.  For those of you who don't know Dave is an ex-PwC colleague who moved to Sydney with his girlfriend Lynette in January and they had kindly agreed to put us up for the 4 nights that we would be in Sydney.  It was so great of them as we saved a lot of money in an already expensive Sydney.  After a slap up meal courtesy of Lynette, we spent a few hours catching up before heading to bed as it was a school night!

 

The next day, Rob and I headed into Sydney CBD to have a look at the main sights of the city.  We got the local bus across Sydney Harbour Bridge and Rob caught his first glimpses of the world famous Sydney Opera House.  We walked all around the Opera House, took a peek inside and took lots of photos of it and the Harbour Bridge.  We ambled around the Sydney Botanic Gardens for a few hours.  It really is so beautiful and definitely one of the nicest we had seen so far on our travels.  We saw lots of different tropical birds as well as squirrels running around the place.  Springtime was a great time to be in Australia because, aside from the weather not being too hot, there were so many plants and flowers in bloom.  The Botanic Gardens were no exception.  We spent a bit of time at Mrs Macquarie's Chair, which offers a great aspect of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge together.  Mrs Macquarie was the wife of the Governor of Sydney back in the day and she liked to walk to his particular headland in the Botanic Gardens to sit and admire the view across the whole harbour.  We could understand why because the view really is great.  There was also a great view of the harbour around by Wolloomolloo, where we saw four or five Australian Naval vessels.

Sydney Opera House

Sydney Harbour Bridge

The view from Mrs Macquarie's Chair

Prickly cactus tree

Tree hugger

Our next stop was to the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, but we discovered on arrival that it was closed for renovations.  There was some alternative exhibition going on outdoors around the The Rocks area and Circular Quay so we went and had a look at some of these instead.  A lot of what we saw left us wondering why it actually was an exhibit, like the red telephone box on the path, but other stuff was cool like this cocoon chair thing that seemed to made made out of scraps of leftover materials (the photos depicts it better!).  We had a great stroll around The Rocks, which is one of the earliest places of settlement in Sydney by the British.  There are lots of old buildings, narrow streets and cobbled pavements, which is very quaint.

After our lazy day around the CBD we headed back out to North Sydney and the four of us went and had a delicious meal at Dave and Lynette's local Belgian beer house - think steaks, mussels, Belgian beer and wine.  It was a real treat as we had been cooking for ourselves during the two weeks we had been in Australia.

The following day was the day of the RWC Quarter Final match versus Wales.  We were all really excited and while Dave and Lynette went out to get supplies for the BBQ we were going to have, Rob and I decided to explore their locality.  Dave and Lynette had only been living in Cammeray for about a week before we descended on them, but they all accounts their old apartment was no place for visitors (think cockroaches)!  The new apartment is in a lovely suburb which is really close to a bay inlet where there were lots of people sailing and close to the bush where we took a short hike.  It was great to experience a little bit of suburban Sydney as we never would have done so otherwise.  We both agreed that we would like to live there.  Don't worry though, it's not on the cards!

Park in Cammeray suburb

Buying supplies for a BBQ also meant buying the BBQ itself, so when we got back from our hike Dave and Rob got down to putting together this very important piece of apparatus, while the girls got down to preparing the food.  Rob certainly earned our keep and the barbie was ready right before the match started.  We were joined for the match by another friend and ex-PwC colleague Steve Moloney and his girlfriend Zara who had recently arrived in Sydney after travelling through Asia.  We all had lots of stories to swap and it was great to catch up with everyone and we drowned our sorrows in disappointment at Ireland's loss.  The barbie was pretty good too!

Men at work

Sunday was our last day in Sydney and we first spent it by heading over to Coogee beach where we began our walk from Coogee to the famous Bondi beach.  The walk is about 6kms and there are some great views along the Sydney coastline and down into lots of bays and inlets where the locals are catching some waves or chilling out.  We were really lucky this time to spot some humpback whales in the distance.  We could see their spray shooting high up in the air.  We were delighted as we had missed out on seeing them in Byron Bay.

Overlooking Bondi Beach

After spending some time at Bondi beach we went back into the CBD where we paid a visit to the Gallery of New South Wales in The Domain.  There we saw some very impressive Aboriginal and contemporary art - not everyone's cup of tea, I know.  As we left the Gallery we saw four or five people standing on soapboxes voicing their opinions on this, that or the other.  It was really entertaining to watch as one spectator was really having a go at one of the speakers and there was lots of shouting going on.

Outside Gallery of NSW

Soapbox shouters

Then it was time to return to Cammeray for the last supper with Dave and Lynette and to say our goodbyes, as we had a very early start in order to catch the flight to New Zealand.

Claire, Dave & Lynette