A WALK BOUT SYDNEY, MATE!

 Holly in Sydney's Queen Victoria Building - contemplating shopping

A WALK BOUT SYDNEY, MATE

We found a hotel on line before slipping off the ship, caught a cab to China Town, to the Central Station Hotel, and are ensconced here for two days, then we’re spending two days elsewhere, not far away, and then, well, we’ll see – you can plan too far in advance you know.  We arrived yesterday, Monday, and it’s Tuesday here today – I think.

We may do an overnight out of town for our final stay but we have to convene a tribal council – the two of us – if we’re going to do that. 

We did this in pieces, two days at a time, because we wanted to be “flexible” – and, I suppose, anxious.

To demonstrate that we do plan, we made theater reservations for this Tuesday evening at 8 pm at the famed Sydney Opera House – the sea bird edifice that marks the Sydney harbor (pictured here on our blog) – and we’re looking forward to seeing that building from within and experiencing its fabled theater acoustics.

We took our own walk a bout in the City yesterday, Monday, because a double decker bus seemed like a too wet viewing mistake when it was raining – even if ever so lightly. 

Holly had those plastic see-through pull overs that keep you dry and that did us just fine and, in addition, so many of the buildings have overhangs and various kind of in the building walkways it wasn’t much of a problem – although the terrific map I was carrying did kind of merge into a lumpy sticky paper mass, with the drip drop rain drops constantly striking it, so that it refused to unfurl completely or rightly by the end of our tour.  This state was achieved about the time the sun came out in full force and we could get out of our plastic rain proof containers.

We made our way to the Central Train Station not too far away past abundant back packer hotels that I believe we could recommend. 

We did look at the YMCA – and it’s a far sight more upscale than I would have guessed.  Even the price.  AU$ 160 a night during the week; think a price even more from Friday to Sunday.  Not the youth hostel prices that I knew as a young European wanderer.

On our walk about, we found the 1888 hotel restaurant that we reserved for our second two days ($120 a night), so that’s Wednesday and Thursday, leaving us Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  But we got a place for Sunday, so that only leaves Friday and Saturday.  And for those days maybe we flee the city for the nearby mountains and the sites there. 

All our walking ways during the day, there were the wonderful scents of hot foods even at the Central Train Station, more like an orderly bazaar, and it made me think of New York’s Grand Central Station underground at 42^nd Street.  Of course, I’m talking about the bustle and the vendors. And I suppose less about the food.

We walked down George Street toward the harbor, a true city skyline, unimaginably expensive everything (but not quite Fifth Avenue), visited the Queen Victoria Building (the Queen outside and shops of every kind and cost within), gated Parliament (from outside), St. Mary’s Cathedral, historic bronze statues (mostly by fountains), caught a cappuccino and latte (de rigeur), visited the “Occupy Sydney” encampment at Mark Street, walked through the Hyde Park gardens, studied the Ibis – a bird that’s taken up a home in the city because the wet lands have been compromised, but the high point was the Australian Museum.   

They have a collection of aboriginal artifacts, Australian bird studies, skeletons, dinosaur fossils, and a large exhibition on saving Australia from extinction.  They seemed surprised we would pass on their Alexander the Great Exhibit (no doubt as impressive) but we had a plan for this tour.  As I’ve stated, a theme of our vacation has been a consciousness about what’s extraordinary and, by the same token, what we’re losing that is extraordinary.  Limiting our observations to the aboriginal exhibit, you can’t help but see the parallels of conquering a people by declaring their lands unoccupied lawfully, nullius terra, and then taking it for your nation instead.  The British did this to the aborigines, we did this to the native Americans.  The exhibition is a study of the aborigine dreaming through all of this – as a matter of confirmed religious spirit.  But it struck me that this “dreaming” was a coping mechanism for all the indignities they suffered by the occupation by the British.  In recent years, the government has restored many rights.  For example, the High Privy Council (like our Supreme Court) did finally conclude that you couldn’t say this land was not lawfully occupied by the Aborigines – and so the international doctrine of nullius terra, by which the land was seized, was unlawful.  And there were severe efforts to eliminate or so dilute the aboriginal blood line that they would vanish like a dream.  The art the aborigines created for their tools, shields, weapons, baskets and various implements was striking and beautiful to behold.  They almost had to expel us from the Museum.  We stayed until you had to leave.

'In the evening, we were starving and fond our way back to that 1888 building where we expect to stay when we leave this hotel, and entered its huge open door bar filled with locals to try their much advertised and discounted spring ale and hard cider (cold and quicly consumed). 

Then we went to their restaurant upstairs to try their chips and mash – lots of taters in the diet at this venue – while watching cricket (and having no earthly understanding of what they were doing with those paddles but the stadium crowd was quite excited). 

Our Brazilian waitress who had studied American English – her description- had no idea what the cricket rules were but had asked her supervisor, she said, earlier that evening. 

This splendiferous evening out left us quite full and somewhat giddy.

So we made our way back to our China Town abode – and now we are gathering ourselves for another day in Sydney.