Lunchtime Snapshots

It’s starting to feel a bit like fall in Sydney. We set our clocks back this weekend, so I was confused to wake up at 6am Monday to blinding sunlight coming through my window. It’s still fairly hot during the days, but the nights are getting cool enough that a few leaves are starting to fall from the trees. Luckily I only work four days this week, since both Good Friday and Easter Monday (Easter Monday!?) are public holidays in Australia. The forecast is for good weather all week, so I decided to scarf down my sandwich at my desk and then use my lunch break for more worthwhile activities like walking around Hyde Park, which consists of about 40 acres of trees, walking paths, and monuments right in the middle of the Central Business District.

One of my favourite sections of the park is a long path that is lined with fig trees that arch all the way across the walkway. During the hottest part of summer the trees are filled with cicadas that make a really loud humming/chirping noise, but today it was mostly quiet.

At the end of the path there is the Archibald Fountain. It’s apparently there to commemorate the close association France and Australia had during World War I, but I don’t really see the connection because it portrays Roman gods grabbing on to bulls' horns and shooting arrows and playing lutes and stuff. I really like it though, because if you walk around it there is always something new to look at. It points east towards St. Mary’s Cathedral, and since it was almost time for 1pm mass the bells were going off.

There were lots of schoolkids around the park eating lunch, which is always sure to attract maybe the creepiest bird I’ve ever seen: the Ibis. The ones in the park are not shy at all and you can frequently see them diving into trash cans or trying to snatch people’s lunches with their disgusting beaks.

Footy!

Yesterday I went to my first game of footy! From what I can tell, the term footy is loosely used to describe Australian Rules football (AFL), Rugby Union or Rugby League (NRL) games, the latter being the variety I went to.

 NRL is more popular in New South Wales than it is in other states, and the players and fans have a reputation (perpetuated by Rugby Union enthusiasts) for being a lot rougher and unsophisticated, partially because Union is mostly played in private schools. I’ll stay out of that debate, but apparently fights break out fairly often at games, to the point where they have purposely begun to water down the beer to maintain the peace. Luckily for me, it was a fairly orderly match between the Newcastle Knights and the Cronulla Sharks (my team).

When we got there, a game was already going on for the Under 20 players (the teams that feed into the regular Sharks team). The stadium holds about 20,000 people, and since it was the first home game of the season and a beautiful day outside, I would estimate that it was close to capacity. The stadium is quite old, with never-remodelled bathrooms featuring a chain hanging from the ceiling that you pull to flush the toilet. There is a grandstand on each side of the field, but we just sat in the grassy hill on the south side of the field. I was close enough to the field to hear players swear, and there were some colourful moments throughout the game. The Sharkies had a rough time, and weren’t able to score a single try (similar to a touchdown, but you have to ground the ball in the end zone). Hopefully they’re just dusting off the cobwebs and can get in better shape before the next game!

The view from where I was standing.

Spotted: An OSU fan!?

Visitors!

This past week I had my first houseguests in Sydney! Rochelle and Stephan came down for ten days, and even though I had to work for a good portion of those days, I managed to squeeze in some leisure time. I took work off the Monday they arrived in Sydney, and met them at the airport to show them back to my house in Cronulla. They were a little tired from the flight, but jetlag from Seattle to Australia actually isn’t too bad (apparently it’s awful on the way back to the US). They really wanted to see the beach so we headed down there pretty much right away for a swim.

 
I had to work Tuesday, but Rochelle and Stephan met me at my office in the city for a few drinks. After 5:00 on Tuesdays, the Australian Museum is open to adults only. They serve beer and wine, and there is live music while you wander around looking at the exhibits. I would definitely go back since I probably only looked at half of the exhibits-the Aboriginal art exhibit was my favourite, but they had a lot of other nice exhibits specific to Australian animals, dinosaurs that used to live here, birds, etc.

Here we are at St. Mary's Cathedral before heading into the museum.

Saturday and Sunday were my only days off, so we had to cram in as much touristy stuff as possible. We went on a free walking tour of the city that I had gone on with Tony and Katrina when I first arrived in Sydney. It was fun to learn about places I walk by everyday without giving any thought. For example, in the Queen Victoria Building there is a clock donated by the Queen of England, with a letter enclosed that cannot be opened until 2080. Or the glass floor in Custom’s House with an extremely accurate model of the city underneath. Or the barracks near Hyde Park where convicts as young as seven years old were housed.

Sunday we took the ferry to the Taronga Zoo, which is probably the nicest zoo I’ve been to. It’s up on a hill on the north side of Sydney Harbour, so you get glimpses of the skyline while you walk between the exhibits. I finally saw a platypus! They’re usually very shy, but this one was swimming circles right in front of the glass. The Tasmanian devil was asleep in his den, but I still got to see him up close. I didn’t realize this, but the devil population is currently threatened due to a facial cancer that has a 100% mortality rate. It’s a very unusual cancer because it is contagious, and devils pass it when they bite each other in fights-very sad!

View from the ferry to the zoo.

 Making friends with a wallabee.

That night we went to opera bar and relaxed with a few beers. It was a really warm night, so we could sit outside with a view of the harbour and the hundreds of bats that were flying out of the botanic gardens. It was a really nice end to their time here, and I was really sad to see them go. Hopefully I get some more visitors soon!

View from Opera Bar.

America Party!

After six months of being here, I'm finally getting the chance to meet up with a few people from back home! Last Saturday, Lily (friend from Husky Band) was visiting from Melbourne for a few days, and I got a chance to meet up with her at the Botanical Gardens in the city. We walked around a bit and made our way down to The Rocks, the oldest section of Sydney. We started at the Hero of Waterloo pub, which has been operating since the mid 1800s. It's a pretty cool bar with live music and a lot of history, and no TV or pokey machines (somewhat rare in Australia) so you actually have to talk to the people you go drinking with. There is a dark, dusty tunnel that runs from the cellar of the pub to Sydney Harbor which was apparently used to smuggle rum out to the ships. Legend has it that there was a trap door next to the bar, and if someone became too drunk they would suddenly be dropped through the door, dragged through the cellars, and would wake up the next day as a newly (involuntarily) recruited sailor aboard a ship.
Lily and I had a really good time, but unfortunately an extremely intoxicated redheaded guy decided he was going to have a chat with us. We spent the next 20 minutes or so messing with him (I told him that my name is "Gwyneth" and that I'm a dancer with the Australian Ballet), and ended up fleeing to an Irish pub for one more drink before I headed back to Cronulla.

Here's a picture of our last drink of the night. Lily is on a working holiday visa like me, but she's been in Oz longer so she has to head home in a month or so. Rochelle and Stephan are arriving on Monday at 8 am and I'm already getting excited to see more people from Seattle! I'm taking the day off work to meet them at the airport and show them around a bit before heading back to work on Tuesday.

Happy Australia Day!

Last week I celebrated my first Australia Day! It's the national day of Australia and is celebrated every year on January 26th in commemoration of the arrival of the First Fleet in Australia. According to Wikipedia, the First Fleet was "the name given to the eleven ships which sailed from Great Britain on 13 May 1787 consisting of 10 Civil officers, 212 marines, including officers, 28 wives and 17 children of the marines, 81 free persons, 504 male convicts and 192 female convicts." They came to establish the first European colony in Australia, and landed in New South Wales (the state where I live). Basically people do the same thing as you do on the 4th of July in America- I ended up having a barbeque and drinking beer by noon. There was a free concert in the park about a five minute walk from where I live, so we ended up sitting out on the grass and listening to the runner-up from Australia's Got Talent sing Frank Sinatra mixed in with Nessun Dorma and a few other arias, followed by a fireworks show.


Australia Day was on a Thursday, so I took Friday off work and went to the Gold Coast with Hayden. It's about an hour plane ride away, and known for its really beautiful beaches and sunshine. Unfortunately Queensland has been caught in the middle of some pretty massive tropical storms lately, so by the time we got there the water was really murky from all of the storm drains that feed into the ocean. There were also a bunch of branches and logs lurking in the water, waiting to hit some unsuspecting swimmer in the head. Here are a couple pictures of the cleanup effort that was underway when we got there:

View of the main beach. It stretches on for about 7 miles.

There were backhoes all over the beach raking all the debris into little piles, followed by a dump truck that would come and collect them...

All of the shops sell stuff with the flag on it for Australia Day (flip flops, towels, shirts, stickers), so here I am modeling a flag that you can clip onto your car. You can see that there are a lot of high rises in the downtown area (known as Surfer's Paradise), many of which are vacation homes that people rent out when they're not using them.

On the hotel balcony. The weather was hot but you can see how gloomy it is in the background. Unfortunately it was pretty much like this the whole trip...

Ouchie!

Sorry, this is kind of a gross post but also cool!

I fell during my run yesterday. It wasn't the kind of fall where you feel it happening for a few seconds, it mostly happened like this:
Me: Oh look at the beach.
Me: Isn't the sun pretty on the water?
Me: Looks like the tide is in. Surfers got an early start.
Me: Ow that pavement really hurts.
It was really embarrassing because the only people who are motivated enough to get up that early/the only people who were there to witness it were SUPER ripped dudes. Anyways I cut my route short and went home. BUT I was bored at home tonight and noticed my scab is shaped like Australia!! Kind of neat.

Lazy Weekend

I woke up really early for no reason today, and since I couldn't get back to sleep I'm already on my second episode of MacGyver, which is apparently on all days at all times. Occasionally they mix it up with an episode of Murder She Wrote or M.A.S.H. It's strange which shows end up being a big deal over here.

More vocabulary to add to the list:

Cossie=Swimsuit
Grog=Booze
Pom=English person
Sparky=Electrician
Go to the cinema=Go to the movies
Petrol=Gas
Rice Bubbles=Rice Krispies
Z=Pronounced "zed"
H=Pronounced "haych"
Period=Full stop
Demister=Defroster