Sydney

Dave, one of Mike and Beck’s flatmates, is a Hugh Grant fan and so over the week we watched a few movies – one of which was 'Love Actually'. The movie begins in an airport – with people welcoming others and the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant saying)
"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion... love actually is all around".

... and I began to think that our trip down under was all about saying ‘Hello’ and that is what our week in Sydney was all about. Yes, we have just had a week in Sydney (Mum, Harry and me) saying ‘Hello’ and ‘We have missed you so much’ to Mike and Becks, seeing their new home, workplace and some of the sights of their new city.

We hadn’t been to Sydney for a few years and I think we appreciated it more after having seen so many other cities in the last two years - like many other visitors we have come to the same conclusion -Sydney does have one of the best harbours in the world.

Like most flights to Australia they leave rather early and so with that a 2 hour time difference and that early start we felt a bit tired the first day. We found our hotel in Kings Cross – a large room overlooking the city sky scrapers and Sydney Tower and Harbour Bridge with a bathroom fitted for the disabled (complete with the shower floor sloping the wrong way). With that bit of travel (we had sussed out the transport system and found a week ticket that covers ferry’s, trains and buses) we were ready to explore. We wandered around Mrs Macquaries head and sat on her chair carved around 1816 in solid stone at the northern most point of Mrs Macquaries Road. She was the wife of Governor Macquarie and liked to sit and watch the ships come in. Must admit it was quite an amazing sight with the blue water and sky and all those unusual looking birds (white cockatoos, coloured parakeets, moorhens) and bats (Mike later said they were the flying fox – not surprising since they had quite a distinctive ginger streak – most were doing their usual trick of sleeping upside down with the occasional one having a short flight - they made lots of noise and if they were really asleep then it must have been the bats snoring).
We did go to a number of beaches including Manley Beach and Shelley Beach a lovely cove a few hundred metres around from Manley.
Good Friday was Mum’s 83rd birthday and the customs officer wished her a happy birthday and a waiter at a restaurant gave her a little jewellery box. Food here is good and reasonably priced and we sampled Austrian (they sell schnitzel and strudel – some of my favourites), lots of Asian cuisine, pizzas and pies as well as having some great meals at Mike and Becks's. We’ve seen a few parts of Sydney not ventured to before:

• Haz went to see Brian and Lyn – cousins who live over at Gordon with their two children
• Mum and I caught a ferry to Watsons Bay and enjoyed wandering around the streets with little colonial houses and sitting in the park overlooking the beach
• We had a great walk across the harbour bridge (built in 1932 and lovingly known as the 'coathanger'). Mike took us on his daily walk from work to home. It rained, torrentially, while we were on the bridge and we arrived rather dripping at their place (the taxi driver didn't say anything when he saw us wearing Mike's teeshirts and shorts on the way home).
• Went to Luna Park which had that 'old world' feel about it as it was originally built before the bridge and closed down to enable the bridge building. It is still modelled on the 1800’s amusement parks in America.
• Parramatta – where we went to visit the oldest building in Australia – the Governor Generals house built in 1876 - where the first Government Buildings stood and where the English settlers first settled. Their arrival, did impact on the aboriginal people such as the Burramattagal, who suffered greatly from the influenzas and other diseases that arrived on the ships. Parramatta was also where the convicts lived and worked (pictures showed that they were treated similarly to slaves and took on the role of horses and donkeys since there were no such animals in Australia at the time).

And then it was time to say 'Goodbye' (with a lump in my throat and watery eyes as we waved goodbye to Mike, Becks and Dave standing high up on their way to the bridge).