If 24 hours was not enough time to get to know San Fran­cisco then 3 days is hardly enough to come to terms with the won­der that is Sydney. I was at first a little shocked with how at home I felt here. This we decided was due to the large Eng­lish influ­ence on Aus­tralia. When in San Fran­cisco I couldn’t help but notice the dif­fer­ences; they stood out all over, but here I can’t stop see­ing the sim­il­ar­it­ies. Little things like the feel of the under­ground. For example there is the fact that you have to stand to one side on the escal­at­ors just like in Lon­don, only here you stand on the left. Another thing like home is the large ‘city­boy’ feel to the centre of town.

A lot of people work in Sydney and they have all the top end shops just like Bond Street and the like. After a while I had to con­sciously stop try­ing to com­pare Sydney to Lon­don and that is when it got to me. The har­bour here is one of the best I have ever seen with fant­astic light and very clean. The opera house backed by the bridge is an almost incom­par­able photo oppor­tun­ity that can stand amongst a small group of the world’s best. We took a large amount of film and foot­age here des­pite the near gale-force winds. The sky is a pure shade of blue and simply won­der­ful to behold.

Back­pack­ing in Sydney is every­where, but nowhere more so than Kings Cross. Like its UK name­sake this area is lined with the dregs of the city and along one street is a lit­ter of strip joints and all sorts of com­mer­cial sleaze. Our hostel was one street away but may have well been a light-years dis­tance. The glitz gave way to quiet streets of large houses among tene­ments and an avenue-like feel of trees. Sim­ilar to Ams­ter­dam; one minute its all neon lights and sex, the next it is quiet and peace. The Jolly Swag­man was our first port of call and we grabbed an early break­fast before head­ing to bed and loos­ing most of the day to Jet­lag. The JSM hostel is full of younger world trav­el­lers all boast­ing of their Jack Daniels prowess and how many steps they fell down while drunk. I didn’t mind the place, but at this point we hardly know any bet­ter. Speak­ing of drink, one thing that I found funny was that you couldn’t buy alco­hol in the super­mar­ket. In fact I had to wander for a good 20 minutes before I could find one dinky little shop that even served the dev­ils drink. Spy­ing the usual tattle of Fosters and Stella I asked the guy to recom­mend me some­thing local,

“Cooper’s mate, the rest is all shit,” he said point­ing at a pack of pale ales, “Don’t worry about the bits in the bot­tom of the bottles, that’s nor­mal, just roll the bottles before drink­ing and don’t shake it”.

It may well be nor­mal for you mate, I thought, but I held my peace and paid the man. The price of beer is high in this part of town and 6 beers cost me 8 quid.

They were, of course, very cold, very nice and bloody strong.

The next day we headed into town by foot. Sydney is small enough to walk across without a major trekking licence and we quickly found ourselves in the Royal Botan­ical Gar­dens, which are fant­ast­ic­ally beau­ti­ful. The light was idyllic and the rust­ling trees were all new to me. Wild­life abounds here and we saw some huge spiders nestled in the bushes and our ears rejoiced to strange exotic sound­ing bird calls. When at home bird­call is some­thing that you get so used to hear­ing that you simply fil­ter it out and it becomes simply back­ground noise unable to grab you atten­tion. When here you find all the calls com­pletely new and each one pulls your atten­tion sky­wards as you try and spot the bird that could have made that noise. To me they all soun­ded very strange and very loud, I wondered: do vis­it­ors to Lon­don think the same about the pigeons? One thing we don’t have in Lon­don is gigantic bats, but here they hang from almost every tree. Appar­ently a real pest? I love bats myself and was spell­bound for a good few minutes watch­ing them swoop and hoot about the tree­tops. I also saw some­thing as large as a cat, bound across the grass and up a trunk. “What was that?” Cesca asked a local. “Just a squir­rel mate,” came the reply. If that was a squir­rel, I thought, then they grow bloody big here!

The gar­dens gave way to a path along the bay lead­ing up to the Opera House that was lined with a large flock of school kids in identical blue sun hats. They were all pic­nick­ing before tack­ling the har­bour and they had picked a great view of the Opera house. We stopped along­side them and took in the view ourselves before get­ting closer. The Opera house sits on one point of a small bay with the bridge on the other. It is smal­ler than per­haps you would ima­gine, but it has a uni­ver­sal appeal and is bathed in light. We wandered through strong winds whip­ping around the struc­ture and innu­mer­able Chinese school kids all scream­ing with excitement.

In the middle of the bay is the main transit ferry ter­minal that grants access to the many other bays, islands and Isth­mus that lead out to the ocean. We had been advised to try Watson’s Bay so we paid for a ride on a Super­Cat for a few bucks each. Unlike UK fer­ries this thing moved like a speed­boat and we were zoomed across the waters towards the bay far in the dis­tance. In what felt like record time we arrived and dis­em­barked at a lovely look­ing beach front with a world class fish and chip shop. I don’t know what it was that was in the bat­ter we ordered, but it was crack­ingly good. We decided to walk off the lunch­eon and took a very long stroll to Rose Bay. This was decept­ively marked as close on the map, but actu­ally took a good few hours. Still it offered amaz­ing views of the bays, the dis­tant har­bour, some inter­est­ing local streets & houses and some more bloody huge spiders in the bushes. I don’t know if they were dan­ger­ous, but I wouldn’t like to find out. We even­tu­ally came to Rose bay and played with a local pel­ican before grabbing the next light-speed ferry back to the Circle Terminal.

The next day we headed to Bondi. The fam­ous beech, even on this winter day, was full of surfers and we snapped away while lay­ing on the golden sands. I find sand bor­ing but I relaxed listen­ing to my iPod and Cesca wrote up her Journal for a few sunny hours. After all this sun had gone to our heads we retreated a few streets away and found an amaz­ing café inside a second hand book shop called Ger­trude and Alice. The lunch there was very wel­come and I munched away mer­rily while read­ing a book about Tarant­ino. After lunch we took in the walk from Bondi to Coo­gee beach, which again was decept­ively marked on the maps as close by. It was not close. How­ever such a walk was beau­ti­ful to behold and by the time we made it into the Coo­gee beach area the sun had dipped mag­ni­fi­cently over the hori­zon. This time of year it is dark by 6pm and this means the evening’s light is spec­tac­u­lar. We stopped for sup­per in a beach front res­taur­ant and had a great pasta repast before catch­ing the bus back into Kings Cross.

By this time we had both had enough of the Jolly Swag­man and moved on to the more fam­ous Eva’s Back­pack­ers. Eva’s was a much nicer hostel, but far more basic. Our room was bright and clean but had no sink or TV. It simply held a big bed. On the roof was the laun­dry room and a view over the city to die for and we spent a few hours doing our wash­ing before head­ing into town to buy me a new day­sack, my Nanue Pro Bag hav­ing really dug into my shoulder over the last few days. Sur­pris­ingly the Nanue became the first cas­u­alty of our trip and was binned. We walked around the Darling Har­bour but quickly decided that it is was a tour­ist trap and passed on it to come back to Eva’s and a good night’s rest.

As I write this it is the next morn­ing and we have left Sydney and are head­ing on the train up to the fam­ous Blue Moun­tains. I rel­ish this chance to get away from build­ings. Per­haps it is because I come from one of the world’s premier cit­ies, but I long for some coun­tryside. The Blue Moun­tains should more than make up for the last weeks’ city hopping!

We will be return­ing to Sydney in the fall of our Aus­tralian jour­ney and I am going to reserve any judge­ment of the place until then. I really liked my time there and as a starter to this trip it has led us gently into the lar­ger journey.

The moun­tains await!

Regards,

Basho

This work is licensed under a Cre­at­ive Com­mons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: Eng­land & Wales License.

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