Barbecue and Booze

Despite the sights of Sydney harbour being so well known, seeing the Opera House and Harbour Bridge for the first time still inspired a sense of awe. I suppose it's like meeting someone famous, you know them so well and yet still get star-struck when seeing them in the flesh. The only famous people that I’d met had been Jimmy Saville and Chris Akabussi, the comparison with the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge, with respect, didn’t do justice to the city’s most famous landmarks. Seeing them at night was even better, the return ferry trip from Manly on the northern side of the harbour the best way, with the lights around the Opera House giving it a surreal ghostly appearance.
It took me until the third evening after arrival in Sydney before I was to purchase me first main meal. I wasn’t starving myself to save money though, after arriving in the late evening I made a quick dash to have a first look around the harbour, returning to the hostel in time for the barbecue and booze night that was put on. I got acquainted with Luke from Leeds, another pre-university young man with the build of a Rugby back which was no coincidence. I also met a guy from Hull amongst the host of British backpackers that seemed to have descended upon Sydney. Looking at him, his recently acquired degree in sports science was very much in evidence, and it was with regret that I couldn’t remember his name as the two of us headed out to a bar on the following evening. I just hoped that I would find it out before I embarrassed myself.
He’d heard of a place that did cheap steaks and a pub quiz. We arrived at The Pyrmont Hotel in the Darling Harbour area of town. As we ordered our food and drink, the bar tender flipped a coin. The meal was free with a correct call. The steak and mashed potato tasted all the better having not had to pay for it.
We won a prize in the quiz, the guy running it being very charitable by giving us a little goody bag for coming last. Though with two of us and one T-shirt, there was an argument about who should have it.
“You can have it,” I said
“No, it’s yours.”
Our reluctance for ownership was down to the wording on the front that read 'My boyfriend stayed up until 5am drinking to get me this shirt’. We also got some temporary tattoos which, having had a few beers I later wished had had a bit more emphasis on the temporary. In our defence at the poor showing in the quiz, points were awarded for comedy answers and we may have been concentrating too much on that element. Some example questions were:
What US TV program won record ratings and looks at the lives of the dysfunctional in America?
Answer: Jerry Springer.
Our answer - the US presidential election.
Which recording artist recorded the album 'pieces of you'?
Answer - Jewel.
Our answer - Bin Laden.
We didn’t make ourselves popular with the Americans on the table next to ours with that one, but one of the girls was happy to receive our T-shirt as a peace offering and we invited them to play pool to show we weren't complete idiots.
Brooke, sporting the T-shirt with Hayley and Stephen took us on in an international pool competition which I can proudly announce was won by the UK 3 - 0. After that we decided to mix the teams up.
"You choose who you want on your team," I said to Brooke, " Me or ...er... him."
"You've forgotten my name haven't you," said the guy who's name I'd forgotten.
" Er, no, no " I said, suddenly realising how big he really was, "It's Mark." He didn't look pleased. "Only joking, Matt," I offered. "No it’s Chris...no wait Andy!"
I'd got it but it was too late. Andy didn't look pleased. To make it up to him I suggested he teamed up with Brooke – she did look good in that T-shirt. Hayley had left and so I was left with Steve, who I found out was gay. This wasn't how I had envisaged my first night out in Sydney. Andy forgave me for forgetting his name in the end, leaving as he did with Brooke’s phone number. I didn’t try and get Steve’s.
After a couple of pints at an Irish bar a couple of evenings later, Andy and I decided to attempt to supplement our income of nothing, with a visit to the Star Casino. We agreed that we would each put $20 into a kitty for investment at the roulette table. Whatever was won would be split into half, one half for winnings and one half for further investment. It was my first time betting in a casino proper and there’s definitely something to the theory of beginner’s luck. Time and time again, our spread bets came up and as we got more adventurous we lucked out picking single numbers more then a couple of times. We ended up walking away from the table with $100 each. Not a huge sum, but I was finding out that the lifestyle on a backpacker budget was somewhere between that of a student and the homeless. I was more then happy to call it a night, but Andy turned to the black jack table taking away another $100 while I was left to rue my relative cautionary ways.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t help ourselves and ended back at the casino on the next evening, our confidence high after the previous night’s successes. Luke overheard the bragging that we did to his face and insisted that we attempted a repeat performance. That night, The Pyrmont held an 'odds or evens' evening, a correct call of odd or even when the bar staff ran a random number generator would get the order for free. Any money we saved was taken to the casino.
I should have stayed in the bar. I lost every single bet I placed on the roulette table, black jack and the big wheel as I went from one table to the other desperate for a lucky break. I’d gone through my allocated cash within half an hour of walking through the door. The casino had just about got everything back that I took away on the previous night. Andy didn’t do much better then to brake even but with that beginners luck halo shining brightly around his head it was Luke who starred, somehow walking away with a cool $1000 from the black jack table fully admitting that he didn’t really know what he had been doing. His trip up the east coast of Australia was paid for. As we left, Luke was carrying a handful of leftover chips together with his one for $1000. He dumped the smaller denominations on a single number as we passed a roulette table. It came in.

Next day, I took a bus out to Coogee beach to take the coastal walk to Bondi. The stretch of coastline was fabulous, with the discovery of hidden gems like Gordon’s Bay and Bronte Beach and passing through a massive humbling cemetery that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. From word of mouth, I was not expecting too much from Bondi beach. I arrived and found what appeared to be, well... a very nice beach. By this time clouds had gathered and as I got down to the beach proper, the heavens opened up. It’s hard to judge a place with such a huge reputation associated with good times in the sun when it’s the start of the winter and when hiding from the rain under a shelter. But even so, it’s hard to see why Bondi is so well known, it’s not even the nicest beach in Sydney - Manly and Coogee looked like much nicer places to hang out. When the rain cleared I took a walk around the suburb of Bondi. On such a gloomy day, the place reminded me of a seaside town in England; I could have been passing through Portsmouth.
I was still getting used to the Australian informality. In the tourist brochures I read language such as 'codger', 'bloke' and 'no crap.' I just loved seeing the anti-littering slogans; 'don't be a tosser!’ My first days in Sydney seemed to consist of sleeping off the beers drunk the night before and doing administration tasks such as picking up my visa, applying for a tax file number and applying for a Medicare card. They certainly seemed to like their bureaucracy in Australia. As aesthetically pleasing as the main hubs of Sydney were, the people seemed to be a rush. It felt like London with an opera house. I thought that it was a little sad that there were so many British backpackers that had arrived in the city and chosen to stay on and work there for the majority of their stay. Luke had done just that, leaving himself just six weeks to attempt to see something else of the country before his visa was due to expire. Spending the evenings in the bars seemed to be something I could have been doing at home. This didn’t feel like the real Australia, I needed to get out of Sydney.
I left the city to spend some time in the Blue Mountains, around 100km and about two hours to the west of Sydney by train. The place was magnificently peaceful and I could have spent hours just sitting at Echo Point. It was whilst there that I realised I had been away for a month and I was in a mood of reflection. My belt size had already decreased by one notch and it seemed my stomach had shrunk to the size of a walnut whilst my bladder had increased to the size of a grapefruit. But I was learning all sorts of useless new things such as that Hong Kong had the highest rate of orange consumption in the world. I was becoming more at ease being in Australia with the seemingly endless array of strange and lethal creatures. On one of my first evenings walking around the Glebe area of Sydney I had caught sight of what first appeared to me to be some kind of large deadly insect. I shuffled over toward it, only to discover that it was the discarded end of a sausage. I was discovering that I didn’t need to be so paranoid, although there was always a reminder to be on guard. The large crows, that seemed to be all around Sydney appeared as if they were planning a co-ordinated attack at any moment. They looked like relics from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, their size and strange call, which sounded like the screech of an Ewok being flushed down a toilet made their cousins in the UK look like cute budgerigars in comparison.
At the edge of the small town of Katoomba, Echo Point overlooks a huge valley full of the Eucalyptus trees that are common to the area. The name of the Blue Mountains is derived from the blue hue given to the air when sunlight shines through the oils given off by the Eucalyptus trees. The ‘mountains’ bit is harder to explain, the landscape is actually a series of canyons and valleys separated by several high plateaus. Echo Point is the starting point for many great hikes, one of which includes The Giant Stairway, 800 gruelling steps to the valley floor. Alternatively there is the vertical railway line which boasted at being the steepest line in the world. In a position that was closer to standing rather than sitting when boarding the cart, I thought it had a better shout at the title then the one in Hong Kong. If the idea of something as trivial as a sneeze being enough to cause enough forward momentum to lead to the toppling out of the cart is too troubling, a cable gondola was also present as an alternative for getting to and from the valley floor. At the edge of the valley stands the three sisters, large chunks of rock left over from erosion on a thin ledge that imposingly tower 900 metres over the valley floor from their lofty position. Originally there were seven distinct formations, the others having long since toppled down.
The sisters have special spiritual significance to the Aboriginal tribes of the area and I gained my first insight into some of their culture reading their story. The tale involves three little Aboriginal sisters Meenhi, Wimlah and Gunnedoo and their witch doctor father called Tyawan. In the Blue Mountains, one creature was feared by all, the Bunyip.
Nearby to the hole that was the home of the creature, Tyawan had left his daughters on the cliff. Here, a big centipede appeared, frightening one of the sisters who threw a stone at it. The stone crashed into the valley. The rock behind the sisters split open and Bunyip emerged in a rage. The sisters were trapped on a thin ledge and Tyawan, seeing what was happening used his magic bone to turn the sisters into stone to keep them safe. The Bunyip chased Tyawan so he changed himself into a Lyre Bird, losing his magic bone in the process. After the Bunyip had gone, Tyawan returned and searched and searched for his bone while the three sisters stand patiently, waiting on the ledge to be turned back into Aboriginal girls by their father.
I was staying at the Flying Fox Hostel. Though it seemed to attract a younger crowd, the whole place had a great homely atmosphere with a cosy log fire in the lounge area and in the corner I spotted, joy-of-joys, an acoustic guitar. The hostel was run by a charming couple, Ross and Wendy, who really did make their guests feel at home.
I was sharing the dormitory with a tall young Finnish guy called Micko. An avid climber, he would spend everyday pursuing his passion. Coincidentally, his next stop was Hong Kong and it brought a smile to my lips when reflecting on my time there as I spent an evening giving him advice about the city.
There was also a British hippy chick called Lucy who was working at the hostel for a few hours a day in exchange for her accommodation and meals. She took great pleasure in taking the piss out of the state my hair, leaving me no ammunition as she bounced around the place with her perfect golden curls. She was a bit of tree hugger but I certainly wouldn't have minded being the tree. Halfway through our introductory conversation, she cut me off mid-sentence squealing with delight and running to the door. She’d spotted a small dog out of the window and had run out to give it some fuss. I figured that I'd either be driven bonkers or be eating tofu by the end of the week.