From A Land Down Under #5: Sydney

The fifth and final installment, in which we look at some opera house or other, find ourselves pining for Birmingham and are advised to take up duck farming...

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Wednesday 11th June

* If you ever want to know what bewilderment feels like, try stepping off an overnight coach service into a service station that's been made up to look like Uluru and ordering a simple bacon and egg sandwich at Subway.



* According to our trusty 'Lonely Planet', "Newcastle was settled in 1801 as a colony for the worst behaved convicts". Funny, that - back home we just sent them all to Sunderland... It's a shame we haven't got time to stop and find out how Wallsend, Gateshead and Jesmond all compare to their namesakes back in Blighty, or whether Coal Island really was renamed Nobby's Head in honour of our former winger and cult hero.

* It's with some trepidation that we walk into the foyer of the Y Hotel Hyde Park in Sydney. Recommended in - you guessed it - 'The Lonely Planet Guide', it's savaged on Trip Advisor. True, it's not the height of luxury, and bathrooms are shared, but the special offer of a double room for $68 a night in a hotel on Wentworth Avenue in the city centre was irresistible and it proves perfectly adequate for us.

* At first Sydney feels very strange, and I'm not sure why. And then it dawns on me: I'm surrounded by people wearing suits. Nothing unusual back home, to be sure, but here, for Australians, it just doesn't feel right, especially not after spending a week and a half with natives who don't ever seem to actually work, but simply stand behind a counter being friendly and helpful while counting down the hours before they can hit the surf again. Funny how disorienting it is to once again walk around in city streets, the buildings suddenly vertical rather than horizontal, the air heavy with the sound of traffic, everyone you pass clutching a frappamochachino and yakking about money.

* It's with the Royal Botanic Gardens that Sydney starts to set itself apart from other cities. The Suncorp and Deutsche Bank skyscrapers may tower above, but in amongst the ferns, palms and cacti there are screeching cockatoos and trees laden with fruit bats like heavy black raindrops.







* The Opera House, jutting out into the harbour, is still aesthetically striking even after all these years - and indeed now very much a model for cities the world over seeking an iconic architectural centrepiece. Why take in a show when you can have your photo taken on the steps outside proudly wearing your football colours, and then go into the dark inside to use the toilets and marvel at the basin (essentially a huge warped piece of wood with a trough underneath) and the backlit toilet roll holders? Never let it be said we're not cultured.





* The Fortune Of War, on The Rocks (Sydney's oldest surviving colonial district), claims to be the city's oldest pub, having been founded in 1828. It's a bit cheeky, though - according to the pictures on the wall, the building was actually demolished in 1920 and rebuilt two years later.

* The attraction of the imaginatively named Australian Hotel a few streets away is simple: the promise of a choice of 96 different Aussie beers. The Little Creatures Pale Ale on tap has that tasty Turkish Delight tang I so enjoyed about the Mill St Tankhouse Ale in Canada, but I'm not at all sure about my next choice of tipple, a bottle of Redoak Organic Hefeweizen. Beer shouldn't taste of beans on toast, surely?

* Like the Australian Hotel, Sailor's Thai has come personally recommended, but our visit is a disappointment. Arriving when only one party of suits is left, we seem to be something of an inconvenience given that the waiting staff's attentiveness borders on hurrying harassment. My stir-fried beef is soft, tender and delicious, but it's very definitely on the pricey side and do I detect the hand of a vindictive chef, annoyed at being kept in work late by a couple of tourists, behind what are a couple of extraordinarily hot dishes? Jenni drains the jug of tapwater with scant regard for the local drought, and I wonder if we might not have been better staying put in the Australian Hotel, steering clear of the Hefeweizen, sampling their croc or peppered kangaroo pizzas and feeling like we were the only people in existence with no concept of the significance of the ongoing State Of Origin rugby league game between Queensland and New South Wales.

Thursday 12th June

* If you don't count the plane on the way over or the tent on Fraser Island (which moved location anyway), tonight will be the first time we've slept in the same place on two consecutive nights. In the circumstances, it would be rude not to enjoy the luxury of a lie-in without the pressures of checking out or moving on, and we do just that before tumbling out of bed and downstairs for a breakfast fry-up.

* As the ferry pushes off from Circular Quay, past the Opera House and into the open water of the harbour, we look back at the city wreathed in morning mist. If anything, the view across the harbour from the cable car at Taronga Zoo is even better. Despite the mist, there are hints of the day to come, though - a day of blue skies and pleasant heat we were hardly expecting this far south at this time of year.





* Our decision to come here to the zoo has been motivated by a desire to tick off some of the last remaining native animals on our list: platypuses, kangaroos, emus, dozy koalas, and assorted snakes and rodents. My personal favourites are the echidnas, large spiky porcupine-like anteaters which have an aimless yet at the same time busy and deceptively fast waddle (Jenni tries taking pictures, but complains "I keep just getting echidna arses"). One comes to greet me, going up on his hind legs with front paws against the wall before losing his balance and toppling over backwards like a hapless windowcleaner falling off a ladder in a Laurel and Hardy film. But to us Brits, used to thinking of voles and sparrows as wildlife, all of Australia has been a zoo - a point handily proven by a possum rooting around in a hedge next to one of the paths; no one - not us, not a Canadian couple who stop to look, not even one of the zookeepers - knows if it's free to do what it wants or has escaped from a cage somewhere.





* It's not all about the natives, though - there are lions, a tiger, inquisitive giraffes, clever elephants, playful binturongs and a slothful bear. We're impressed by the eternal hopefulness of the male bearded dragon, which has up to 75 different strategies for attracting a female mate - "Well, I've tried 74 other things - this one is bound to win her over..." Sadly, the image of a beard-waggling male bearded dragon is not the one I ultimately take away with me - no, that would be the not-at-all-edifying spectacle of one juvenile gorilla catching the shit out of another's arse and eating it. It's almost enough to make you want to side with the creationists and reject all this nonsense about us being descended from monkeys.





* After that there's only one thing for it - back on the ferry for happy hour bourbon and cokes at the Fortune Of War in the company of business types with loosened ties devouring the financial pages and feeding the pokies.



* NOW we're talking. At the risk of sounding like one of those Brits who goes abroad only to search out a good old boozer called something like the Red Lion which has a dartboard and pool table and serves warm beer and "proper" food, I feel like uttering a "Hallelujah!" on walking into the Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel. There's even a fire - totally unnecessary on a night like this, but that's beside the point. All the beers are brewed on the premises - we admire the copper vats through the window - and served in pint glasses (not schooners or midis or whatever). I go for Old Admiral, while Jen has Three Sheets - and that's exactly what you'd be after a few pints of the stuff.



* Little Italy, a stone's throw from Hyde Park and our hotel in East Sydney, is indeed very little. With its brightly rambunctious atmosphere and cheap, unpretentious pizza, Bar Reggio contrasts sharply with its neighbour, the aptly named Just Another Restaurant, which is shut up by the time I wander past and round the corner in pursuit of more BYO wine from the bottle shop.

Friday 13th June

* A longer lie-in today - partly to work up the strength for the main activity of the day ahead, and partly to work off the excesses of the last night...

* The main activity in question: catching a bus out to Coogee Beach east of the city centre and walking up along the coastal path to Bondi Beach. The route takes us past Gordon's Bay and the steep Bronte, Clovelly and Tamarama Beaches. The spectacular view over the sea is shared by both the owners of the million dollar houses with huge windows to maximise exposure to the sun and those who've come to rest in Waverley Cemetery. No sign of the Bra Boys - must be too cold for the big girls' blouses.





* As we round the headland into Bondi, Jenni spots a whale in the distance back towards Coogee. Bondi itself has considerably fewer people on it than the 35,000 it regularly accommodates in the summer months. On the cliff edge below the path overlooking the bay is an assortment of drapes and poles forming a hippy's home. It seems you don't necessarily have to be dead to get away with paying nothing for the privilege of waking up to that view.



* Gertrude & Alice is two minutes' walk and a million miles away from the beachfront. A coffee shop squeezed into a bookshop, it's great for a quick browse, but after a while the floor-to-ceiling shelves come to seem a bit claustrophobic, and there's only so much quiet erudition and airy French pop that even this arts graduate can take.

* Scottish cuisine is now truly global, it seems.



* At the Bite Me burger/bar joint on the promenade it's Senseless Friday. Senseless?! Half price cocktails make perfect sense to us, even if the fact that their servings of chips come in dinky shopping trollies doesn't. Initially we're sat outside when, waiting for service, Jenni suggests I try the bearded dragon's favourite method of attracting female attention. It worked, but in hindsight waggling my beard in the barmaid's direction must just have looked as though I was jerking my head at her extremely rudely - though I should have guessed from the politely quizzical look she shot me when I caught her eye. The promenade itself is quiet - "like Great Yarmouth out of season", Jen says, though without the pirate-themed crazy golf course.

* Newtown has been billed as a multicultural part of town, and certainly the choice of where to eat is bewildering - so it's sod's law that we choose somewhere that, despite the intense competition on all sides, really isn't very good at all. The starters in particular are poor - my fishcakes sounded very appetising from the menu but turn out to be disconcertingly gelatinous, rubbery and largely tasteless, while Jenni's soup is extremely strange and very definitely not in a good way. Which all goes to prove that you can go all around the world and there's still nowhere quite like home.

* The night ends in Cooper's Hotel, which has its own betting shop and hosts a weekly meat raffle. Lively, but not really what we're in the mood for - namely, bed.

* Back off the nightbus in the city centre, we notice that !!! passed through on Monday. What a shame we couldn't have added Oceania to the list of continents on which we've seen the New York party animals, after last year's sightings first at Glastonbury and then in Toronto.

Saturday 14th June

* Breakfast wolfed down and bags stuffed and stored in the luggage cupboard, there's just time for another wander down through the Royal Botanic Gardens, sleeping and fidgeting bats clustered overhead, to Bennelong Point and the Opera House. There's a chilly wind and spots of rain in the air - and for once it feels autumnal, if not actually wintery. Time to head home.

* But before I can do that (leaving Jen to go on to Melbourne for her conference, the reason we're here in the first place), we're accosted by an old woman down at Circular Quay who, recognising us as tourists, stops to enthusiastically recommend the Timber Show, telling us about a whole variety of things including a chest of drawers fashioned out of a piece of every type of wood native to Australia. Friendly enough, you might think - but the warning lights start flashing when she deviates off to talk about how she's written to the Norwegian government to advise them on best practice for fish farming, explaining cryptically that she has "a vested interest in Norway". It's only after being advised that the impact of the impending economic crunch can only be softened by keeping ducks that we manage to escape, running back to the hotel so I can make my shuttle bus to the airport.

* Even amidst the mad rush we still find a moment to stop by a shop to pick up some souvenir Tim Tams for work - not very exciting, admittedly, but probably preferable to racially offensive cheese...

* If I thought the journey over was bad, the journey back to Blighty is infinitely worse. It's far too hot; the man in front of me decides to recline his chair and sleep, while my chair declines to recline and I'm left with my knees around my ears; a baby not only manages to stay awake the whole way but to shriek the whole way too; and, worst of all, I'm sat next to a couple of Mackems. Thankfully that last glimpse of the city shining in a salmon sunset is enough to sustain me through and convince me it really was all worth it.