Sydney

The Morning View at Bennelong Point

After two days in Christchurch, New Zealand, I boarded a plane for a three-and-a-half hour jump across the Tasman Sea. I was off to Australia, the seventh and final country before I concluded over five months spent in the Southern Hemisphere.

I was on a timetable; I had three weeks before I had to be on a flight to Hong 
Kong and a whole lot of continent to explore. Australia is a huge country – nearly the size of the contiguous United States – and three weeks meant I had 0.2359 seconds per square kilometre. This might sound like a lot to one with no concept of these things; but I knew that my forty-seven days through Brazil had given me almost twice that amount (at 0.4217 sec / sq km), and I barely scratched the surface of that country. My travels through Argentina and Chile were more leisurely, where my thirty-six days and twelve days afforded me 1.119 and 1.371 sec / sq km respectively; yet I left large swarthes of both countries unvisited. The 0.4706 sec / sq km afforded by my one week in Peru might, at first glance, seem as lacking as my time in Brazil; but I had already spent a little over two weeks travelling in Peru back in 2006. Even my two days in Uruguay, which I'd pegged as my most cursory visit in South America until I crunched the numbers, gave me nearly a second (0.9806) per square kilometre of exploration time.

How to best use my time required a certain amount of fore-thought, especially given that my expectations of how thorough a country should be travelled were ratcheted through the roof by my recent six-week stint in relatively wee New Zealand (where I had a glorious 13.0973 sec / sq km). After much research into the logistics of travelling about a country where most of the sights are located on the coastal regions, where the entire centre is a gigantic wasteland of desert (and Uluru, or Ayers Rock to the colonials), I decided that seeing everything wasn't in the cards. Fortunately, I'd already been graced with seeing the Great Barrier Reef region of North Queensland during a family vacation in 1995, so the pressure was off as far as that was concerned. But how best to choose my pick of the rest?

Here was my situation:

After five months of travel, travel fatigue was beginning to set in. All the moving around, the researching of new destinations, the unpacking and packing of my backpack, the familiarising myself with strange environs, and the attempts to make the most of it all through the constant change was beginning to wear on me. I hadn't slept in the same place for more than five nights since my two-week volunteering stint in Rio de Janeiro five months previously.

After the month and a half in New Zealand, I was also suffering from a bout of big city withdrawal. Don't get me wrong. New Zealand has cities, and I quite enjoyed my time in most of them. But when the population of New Zealand is a million less than the population of the Greater Toronto Area; when a country of 4.3 million people is dwarfed by the number of people living in cities like Shanghai, Tokyo, New York, London and São Paulo; hearing Kiwis talk about time in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington as "big city living" was adorable. Just freaking precious.

So I decided I would visit Sydney and Melbourne, and I split the time down the middle. Twelve days in each city. Thus I arrived at the Sydney Airport, thrust into a sea of humanity; the crowds only exacerbated by the fact that everybody had to line up for a pat down at customs just to make sure nobody was sneaking so much as a micron of foreign atmospheric dust into the country.

Used, Much-Handled Porn (or Quite Possibly the Most Unhygienic Thing I've Ever Heard Of) 

Once I left the crowded environs of the Sydney Airport, it was onto crowded streets of inner-city Sydney. My base of operations was the Blue Parrot Backpackers; situated in Potts Point, the most densely-populated area in Australia. Located a short five-minute walk from the hostel is the heart of Kings Cross. Once known primarily as Sydney's red-light district, and reputed home to organised crime groups; Kings Cross is now an urban mélange of ethic restaurants and strip clubs, bars and adult stores, upscale ice-cream shops and frugal backpacker accommodations. I found myself in a heady convergence of sights and sounds, where used-looking prostitutes lingered outside the McDonald's filled with travellers jonesing for nothing more than a cheeseburger and free WiFi. Big city? Hells yes.

Members of the Blue Parrot Caipirinha Drinking Club

Sydney was also a convergence of another sort. I had arranged in advance to meet up with Kim, Kelly and Marianne; girls I had bonded with months previously over a few vino de rioja-fuelled days in Mendoza, Argentina. Kim and Kelly were continuing with their own backpacking adventure and heading in the same general direction I was; travelling through Oceania on our way to Asia. Marianne had concluded her backpacking in South America; but was due for a medical school exchange term up the coast in Newcastle, and decided to come in a couple of weeks early and join us for some fun. After a few days at the Blue Parrot, Jeff and Jeff wandered in. We adopted these two hosers from Winnipeg; who adjusted to the start of their extended overseas vacation like true champs, immediately falling in with the culture of shared meals and dorm rooms and communal showers and  (good Lord was there a lot of) drinking.

Marianne, Kelly and Me at Darling Harbour

And so it was: days spent exploring the city and nights chilling around Potts Point.

Lounging Around on Bondi Beach

At the Apex of the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb

Jeff and Kim Checking Out the Blue Mountains

We grabbed Chinese BBQ down in Chinatown. Darling Harbour and Circular Quay were perfect areas to relax over an afternoon beer. We wandered back and forth through the beautiful Royal Botanical Gardens and perused the weekend markets down at The Rocks. The Jeffs and I shelled out one evening for the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb, which afforded us the opportunity to both scale the iconic structure and take in some breath-taking views of the city at night. We ventured further afield too, hitting up the superlative Bondi Beach and trekking the five-kilometre coastal walk down to Coogee Beach. There was the day trip out to the Blue Mountains, just an hour or so drive from the Sydney CBD. In the evenings, we ate heartily by throwing together various meals of hostel-made fried rice, veggie and beef skewers, and our attempts to recreate the awesome cabbage and pasta salad we'd discovered at hostel asados back in Mendoza. The nights were well lubricated as we took full advantage of the fifty-percent discount offered on purchases of six bottles or more of wine down at the local Woolworths. The effects of the Caipirinha Night might be better left undiscussed; I still mourn the gruesome and unusually rapid sub-ninety-second demise of that Double Quarter Pounder and those eleven McNuggets.

After a week, the girls took their leave of Sydney and headed up to Byron Bay. The Jeffs followed after a couple of days, leaving me with a few days to pursue the activities which I do best sans witnesses. Like my complete Sydney Opera House nerdgasm day; when I was up at five in the morning for a dawn photography session at Bennelong Point, followed by an architectural tour of the Opera House interiors, capping off with the evening performance of Massanet's Manon in the Opera Theatre.

Jørn Utzon's Past and Future

I left Sydney reluctantly. If you like big cities, you've got to get out there. Cosmopolitan and energetic, eye-catching and friendly, urbane yet maintaining a touch of grit from its convict colony roots; it's a city done right.

Related Entries:
1. A Sydney Photographic Teaser
2. Mendoza
3. Working at the Crèche
4. Look Back on New Zealand