Sydney and Brisbane

SYDNEY:


Next destination: Sydney.
As while I am writing this it is already four days into my stay I heartily have to admit: I don’t like Sydney CBD (means: city center). This has several reasons. One is the weather. Of course Sydney itself has no hand in this, but it is either too hot or it is raining, as it has done the last 3 days. And this is high summer season. Then I have discovered that I don’t like big cities and no big crowds
So in combination I just DID NOT enjoy Australia Day. Lots of rain and lots of people, yes! And Sydney has not much to offer if you don’t like hanging out at the beach, going shopping or spending ridiculous amounts of money on different leisure time activities (e.g. climbing the harbor bridge for 250$).
Of course there are the usual new office buildings next to 100-year-old smaller buildings – a nice contrast. The opera building should probably been seen from the water, but with all the rainy weather I wasn’t really keen on it. Maybe I’ll try that later.
The local modern art museum has a fascinating exhibition, maybe I can combine it, but they charge 20$ entrance, again this is ridiculous. But well: enough complaint – I’ll just start with everything in an order.

I arrived on Saturday quite late, so I just stumbled into my new hostel, Big Hostel on Elizabeth Street, and went to bed. The next day it was so ridiculously hot and humid (I suspected 40°C) that I just left the hostel for a pizza at lunch and spent the day hanging out at the hostel. In my room there was another girl – but we didn’t like each other much or found each other quite strange. The other people in the room just stayed one night and then left and all other people in the hostel – to be frank – could just ‘drop dead’. This did not improve my mood. In the evening I went to “The Rocks” – the part of town around the harbor bridge on which Sydney had been founded. I did a free tour there and the guide was quite funny. She told us lots of gruesome stories about the bad image that The Rocks had had during the times when Australia was still a criminal colony. One could say “The Rocks” was the worst place to be during those times.
On Monday, Jan. 26th, was AUSTRALIA DAY. Actually it was not a kind of federation day but just the day, when the English had arrived (and one could say, took the land from its original owners). My guide from the day before, a Sydneysider, agreed that this was just strange – she had preferred a federation day. Well, Australia Day meant there was a lot going on in the city, free music, boats in the harbor. So I prepared myself for the pouring rain (hoping for sun), preparing a picknick and my camera and went with an old double-decker bus to the harbor.
There were enormous crowds, a few boats in the harbor, though no sail boats as promised and no Qantas jumbojet flying low over the harbor bridge. I had really looked forward to this. I of course understand that the cause might have been the bad weather, but still I was quite disappointed.
So I just decided that the whole Australia Day was not worth it and headed off to the cinema to watch “Wild”, a backpacker movie with Reese Witherspoon. As I am backpacking myself (although I would never go hiking with the darn thing) lots of the things she was experiencing in the movie felt known to me, as well as the reason why she went on her tour.
On Tuesday the rain was still pouring down when I was picked up by Happy Bus Tours to do a daytrip to the Blue Mountains, just 1.5 hours from Sydney.
There were lots of nice people on the bus, but Rod the driver singled me out to be something like what felt like the tour mascot: everybody came to know me as Danny (not Danni) because Rod referred to me all the time. He might have taken a fancy to me, because he placed me up in front, so he could talk to me all day. “Say Danny, what do you do…?”, “Say Danny, where are you from…?”
At the end of the day he stood outside the bus. Everybody else received a hand shake. With me he opened his arms wide, said “Oh baby” and gave me quite a hug.
I grinned. Just imagine Crocodile Dundee with 3x the size and long hair – not my type. On the tour we visited 2 waterfalls plus a lot of water falling on the natural steps, which meant a lot of balancing on the slippery ground or once when I just took off my shoes and plunged into the puddles of water it was just cold but nice walking. Then we drove by a few meadows with kangaroos. Rod told us kangaroos were just like sheep, hanging out on grassland and eating. Hopping sheep – hilarious.
Then we had a very rainy lunch. Earlier we had picked up fresh homemade food somewhere in the area at a private house, so that was really cool. I imitated Rod’s sandwich: ham, cheese, tomato, salad leaf, pineapple and thousand island sauce…
After lunch he recommended that we do a really pleasant and easy creek walk.
Let me put it like this: it was not pleasant, but just wet and we had to watch out not to slip for about 40 minutes. But I am sure the walk is just lovely in the sunshine.
The best result of this walk I just discovered the next day: I had a tick in my arm. A really tiny one and I panicked. Internet (never ask the internet!) told me that the most dangerous tick in all the world was living in the greater region of New South Wales of Australia (heydeehooo, there I was!). I took it out, put some toilet disinfection towel on it (disinfection anyway) and marked the spot with a pen. Now, sitting at my new hostel at Bondi Beach I feel like scratching all over as of course there could be more ticks and I can’t check every part of me as I don’t have a suitable mirror and they are really tiny, just 1mm. Several days later: so far so good, nothing happened.
The next day I made up with Sydney – the harbor area is nice!!!
I took a bus from Bondi to the Circular Quay at the harbor. From there I walked through the enormous Botanical Gardens to a place called Mrs.Macquarie’s Chair. From there you have the perfect view on the Opera and the Bridge. Then I continued to the Art Gallery of NSW and saw the “Pop to Popism” exhibition featuring Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and many more artist. I really enjoyed myself.
After spending an hour at least at the museum I went back to the harbor and bought a ticket to Manly harbor. This is as far as a ferry-boar goes here and it takes exactly 30 minutes. I like boat rides but when we reached a part where the natural harbor opened up towards the sea – and the wind was blowing hard this day – it felt more like the Titanic. The boat danced up and down on the waves and I was glad when we reached calmer waters and finally Manly. As I had no business there I just relaxed half an hour on the tiny beach and took the next ferry back, again tipanicing slightly. Before the boat could enter CQ though, we had to hang out 20 min, because a huge passenger holiday ship was leaving the harbor. The captain informed us wishing us a “nice view”.
Next to CQ there is another art museum with mostly free entrance, so I went in there as well and enjoyed the permanent exhibition of extraordinary single objects. One was a full wall of handmade baby shoes with tiny shells decorated on it. Another was a carpet that was painted and decorated with organic objects. After this I had enough of my re-discovering of the city center and went back to Bondi to cook dinner: macaroni with delicious Newman’s Own Tomato Basil Sauce. Paul has never disappointed me with his culinary inventions. The next morning spread out what would be 3 pm before I got a move on, finished working and hanging around the laptop (I had to look up a lot for our NZ car rental, but still no solution). I packed some things into my rucksack, went to a shop at the corner, bought some bananas. The guy wanted 1,50$ per piece. I looked at the browny things and said: ”Are you sure?” So I just paid 1$. I had to throw away part of the ends anyway as flies were already chewing on there happily.
Then I headed off to the coastal walk from Bondi to Cogee: 6km in about 2 hours. It was great. The waves were monstrous that day and hit the rocks and cliffs everywhere. I could watch some reckless surfers riding them in places and at my final destination, Cogee Beach, I sat for a while, read a book before I caught the bus back to Bondi.

My last day at Bondi Beach and Sydney started with a LOT of stress. I realized 5 min prior to check-out that it was now and not one hour later as I had thought. So packing my backpack was in a little hurry, but I managed. Then I changed coins to make a call with a payphone. I had not done that for approx. 10 years!
And it was total stress. The money went through and the woman on the other end kept asking questions, reconfirming everything, asking my credit card details... I was busy booking my airport-seaside shuttle here to get to the Sunshine Coast to be hosted by a woman I had earlier met in Bali. She had confirmed that she'd host me the evening before.
After making the shuttle booking on the phone I was cursing the shuttle-woman (it had cost me 7$ to complete the phone call and the shuttle would be 37$). Not an hour later I was cursing the woman where I was supposed to stay the next 4 nights as well: she just canceled telling me she was too busy. Sorry - and that was it. Aaaargh!!! So I had a shuttle I no longer needed and no place to stay for the night, fantastic! I decided to let them all go f*** themselves and just spend my last 2 hours at the beach. But first I visited an amazing photo-gallery called Aquabumps. The photographer has been taking photos of Bondi Beach since 1999 EACH morning. And the results that I saw displayed were just awesome. I will checkout his website later, and so should you: www.aquabumps.com
Now I will fly to Brisbane and I have no idea what it has to offer…

BRISBANE:



Brisbane – my final destination in Australia.
I arrived on Saturday evening. Of course I had pre-booked a bed at Bunk Hostel. And luckily after arriving at Brisbane airport I could switch my already paid shuttle to the coast to a two-way-ticket with the local shuttle bus to Brisbane city center and I just lost 1$ like that! Thank the heavens!
The shuttle dropped me at BUNK, which seemed cool. They had been an art school earlier and some of their designs were still visible. There was a bat attached to the premises which promised free music and a cool place to hang out (even though I didn’t use it a lot). The 4-bed room was the most spacious I had ever stayed in on my trip, which felt great. The beds were squeaking a lot though, but well: when I sleep then I sleep. So who cares? Sunday was unbelievably HOT. It felt like at least 40°C with a burning sun and lots of traffic lights taking 5 min to let you cross. Everybody here is actually waiting for the lights to turn green. (I like Vietnam better – or Spain.)
First I went to a convenience store around the corner in China Town and had a nice chat with a girl from China who was working there. She told me which bus to take to the center. It’s really complicated again. The bus stops here have numbers instead of names and there is no map of all lines, so you have to know exactly which line you need to check stops or the timetable. But the bus drivers in Brisbane seem to be a lot more helpful and nice than in any other Australian city.
The bus let me off at the quay next to the river. Life here happens everywhere near to Brisbane River, which is bending its way through the city.
Next to the quay is the main shopping street, where I discovered a most charming out-of-suitcase- flea market, where everyone was sitting with umbrellas in the burning sun.
After looking around a bit I felt hungry…and what draw my eye? Macca’s – that’s what they call the McDonalds here. I had such a urge to eat a Big Mac that I couldn’t help it. It was fast-food as its best and I really enjoyed. I went also back to my ‘favourite’ mobile shop to ask them to unlock the wifi device I had purchased from them. Oh – that would just cost a lame 100$?? I can buy another one for that amount that in New Zealand. (Later on it turned out that NO shop in Brisbane was fit or willing to unlock it for anything less.) They’re all just plain crazy!
After this I enjoyed a bit of free music that was to be heard in the city center this weekend. The guy was simply playing the guitar and singing to it, but it voice was electrifying.
Because it was so unbelievably hot I decided to take the free river ferry and take a tour. That was quite interesting but unfortunately it was also very hot, because the windows could not be opened wide and upstairs was full to the brim. On the way back to the quay I couldn’t take it any longer and left early to take a look at Brisbane beach and pool, a free area to swim, splash and have fun.
I had taken a book with me so I just spread out and read for a longer while, when suddenly I spotted a spider on my belly. At first I was cool – I have nothing against spiders, but then the thought kicked in that I was in Australia and I had no idea if it was poisonous. Aaaah! I panicked for a second and tried to snap it off. After this incident I was just a tiny little bit more aware of everything small moving around me… When it was getting dark I headed on towards the bridge to cross the river and get into the city center. I was so hungry and tired suddenly. And I had a hard time finding a bus back. I complained a little to a bus driver and he was sooo nice to me: he just told me to get in, sit down and don’t mind paying.
The next day I was so much not into getting into the heat that I practically stayed in the hostel, got a bit of work done, chat a lot to the girls in my room and finally at 5pm we three went out to eat something at an Asian restaurant and then went to a cinema around the corner that had cheap day on Monday. We watched “American Sniper” with Bradley Cooper. The movie was excellently made and acted, but it was also full of war scenes so sometimes I spotted all of us not looking at scenes.
The next day I went downtown with the German girl. The English girl had already left.
We tried out the free circle bus, but actually there were not so many spectacular things to see from it. We got off at City Hall and visited the clock-tower there and a free exhibition, which showed dresses from actors and actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. We also had a veggie lunch, which unluckily later proved not to be so good as it had tasted…
After the clock tower she left for the hostel to head on to some other city and I went to Southbank over the windy bridge to see the modern art gallery. After this I hung out at “The Edge”, which provided cheap coffee and a superb look over the river, where I read a while, before heading off to another cinema, this time in the city center and having cheap day on Tuesday, to watch the new movie of Johnny Depp: Mortdecai. It was funny at times but most of the times it was just weird!
Johnny should stick to his brown hair and full beard and NEVER again turn blond, oily and with a moustache. I had the same feelings about him looking like that than his film-wife Gwyneth Paltrow, who felt sick when he tried to kiss her. ;-)
The next morning I just hung out again at the hostel, got a little work done again and enjoying myself, until my flight will leave for NZ.