Australia - Sydney - Why Is It So Cold?!

So we said goodbye to Brisbane on Sunday. A huge thanks once more to the many excellent Australians who made our time there so much fun, with special mention to the Stein family and our roommates Mick, Colin and Ingrid.

We arrived in Sydney and my first thought coming off the plane was "brrrrrr". I have officially become a cold weather wuss. It is a respectable 15 to 18 degrees here during the day and I have never felt so cold in my life. I sleep with most of my clothes on (admittedly, I don't have enough at the moment) under many many layers of blankets and walk around all day in the sun in jeans and a sweater and scarf and still the circulation has not returned to my hands.

We're taking advantage of Carolyn and Gavin's hospitality once more and staying at their place in Mona Vale, taking the VERY scenic one hour L90 bus ride in and out of downtown Sydney every day. Having rushed around the CBD (central business district; no one calls it downtown here) to see every major sight in our $5 guidebook over the last few days, here are our review (Mehr's specific input: "It's bloody cold in AustrAHliaH!" Mehr thinks she's hilarious when she puts on an Aussie accent. She adds that the Sydney Opera House is... "Meh."


Yay's

Sydney Tower views. Not so much actual tower, which is kinda ugly. Take a book, go mid afternoon and hang around to watch sunset. Wicked 360 views of the city.

Opera House bathrooms! Not kidding. The sinks were incredibly cool. The water just disappeared into the wall!



Harbour Bridge. I really liked it, more than I expected to.




Stolen Generations Maze in the Australian Museum. Aside from my academic interest in genocide and historical trauma, I found this exhibit to be a really engaging way of presenting a really controversial issue. For those who are unaware, the Australian government used to remove mixed children from Aboriginal communities and foster them to missions or white families, very similar to Canada's Indian Residential Schools. The exhibit showed the social impacts of this practice through various media. Very well done.

Sydney Jazz and Blues Fest. We caught the Dan Sultan concert right on the Darling Harbour waterfront which was excellent. Better yet, the whole event was free! I was sorry we only arrived in time for the end of the festival.




Manly ferry to Circular Quay. $6 for a 1 hr cruise with great views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.




Hyde Park. Has sweet artifical lamplit promenade and a very strange Greek-mythology themed fountain in the center. Also, there are generally loads of fountains in Sydney, all spouting heaps of water. I don't think Australia understands what the word 'drought' really means.


Art Gallery of NSW. I really enjoyed this place. And I'm not usually one for art galleries.
The Rocks. Feels like a movie set. Full of historical buildings and yummy cafes.

Storytime on Mona Vale beach. Not an actual scheduled event. Mehr and I took our books down to read on the beach and I read several of Garner's politically correct fairy tales aloud to her (she'd never read them before!) as we watched the chilly surf crash on the sand. We were the ONLY people on the shoreline; the clever Australians were all inland where they were sheltered from the winds. Looks fairly similar to Cavendish beach, PEI.

Food. I really haven't been disappointed with a meal here yet. We particularly enjoyed the Malaysian restaurant we patronized for dinner with my friend Aaron, who recently moved back to Australia from Canada. Also my new favourite fish is Barramundi. I may even like it more than I like salmon. And that is really saying something.

Paddy's Markets in Market City. We wandered around in there for an hour. Buy of the day: matching aviators, which you will soon have seen all too often in our photos henceforth.




Warringah Mall Target store. Where I finally caved and bought a second sweater. I'm that cold.




Lighting of the Opera House sails. They're much prettier when painted with different coloured lights at nighttime.





Meh's

Opera House. It's not a gleaming white and huge as the pictures indicate. And $35 for the one hour indoor tour? Pass.

The weather. We REALLY wanted to try out sailing for a day but the windy sunny weather prohibited this activity. It's been nice enough to be outside but not nice enough to really want to stay outside.

The Domain and Botanic Gardens. I think I'm over gardens.

King's Cross much-hyped cafe atmosphere. We both liked the Rocks better and Mehr insists it's all too reminiscent of East Hastings, strung out sketchmos included.


Boo's

OzTrek. Included in admission to tower exhibit. Very dated tourism promo for Australia. Cheese factor = ouch.

Museum of Contemporary Art. Excepting on wall with some funny postmodern concrete poetry work by Richard Tipping and a lovely painting by Rosemary Laing, I was literally yawning through most of the exhibits. My cell phone also rang in the silent gallery and I got evil glares from all twenty artsy poseurs in my midst. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

Australia - Brisbane - The Tourist Extravaganza

The week after our trip to Fraser Island was spent furiously touristing Brisbane with a vengeance (pictures link to be found on the side bar under Illustrated Version). I had tried to save the "tourist" activities for when Mehron arrived, only to discover that there were fewer than we'd imagined. Better yet, I am singlehandedly curing the drought in Australia. Of the 9 weeks I've been in Queensland, it has rained for 6 of them. This in a state whose weather motto is "beautiful one day, perfect the next". So poor Mehron has gone from the paradise islands to damp chilly wet city living.

Our first fun-filled day was spent toodling around the Botanic Gardens (like NZ, every Australian city has some of these). We were very much looking forward to our tour of the Commissariat Stores Museum, which was advertised as a history of the Brisbane penal colony. Misrepresentation of the facts, let me tell you. Although the building itself was constructed by convicts, the museum actually outlined the separation of Queensland from New South Wales as its own state with artifacts completely unrelated to the storyline. Example: the dialogue between the governors here and Queen Victoria over the name of the new state was above a printing press. What??

As we left, it of course started raining again (if there is one cloud in the sky, it's a safe bet rain is coming) so we decided we would wait it out with a leisurely lunch. We happened upon the famous Pancake Manor, a restored manor that serves 24 hour pancakes and other breakfasts. We considered that to be a heritage site and very much enjoyed our ten dollar tour of buttermilk pancakes and syrup in the dank old mansion. We braved on through the light mist of rain that was continuing to ANZAC square, a rather picturesque plaza near Central Station. However as we approached the center, torrential rains picked up and we had to duck for cover in the subway tunnel. We conceded defeat at that point and hopped on the train back home.

Day Two we had a very late start getting out of the house at three p.m. (the morning rain was a factor) and made it to the Museum of Queensland about an hour before it closed.



Fun fact: Australia had its own dinosaur: muttaburrasaurus. We then wandered around South Bank, which is quite pretty at night time as the city lights come on. I have decided Brisbane is much better looking at night. We were due at a friend's place for 7pm to watch the State of Origin rugby match, first in a series of three games between NSW and Queensland teams (it's a big deal). Because I'm hopeless with estimating distance, we of course were late, but luckily didn't miss the beginning of the game. I made an effort to explain some basics of the game to Mehr before it started, but also gave her the fallback option: "when in doubt, imagine a complicated version of Red Rover".

Day Three was our ambitious journey to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which literally took us almost three hours each way to get to on the south side of Brisbane. Lone Pine made good on its promise; there were TONS of koalas everywhere.

Mehr also got to frolic with kangaroos and wallabies, which she has decided are not as cute in real life. Also, they smell suspiciously similar to skunks. We meant to get back to the Queensland Cultural Center as well to see the Art Gallery or the Library, but by the time the incredibly slow bus got us back downtown it was after closing time. Plus we still had to take the train and do the half hour walk home. Oh well. Next time right? ;)