Clowning around in the City

Clowning around in the City
Sydney, Australia

Sydney, Australia

With unplanned stops for maintenance to La Toya, school holidays to avoid and with the need to get to Sydney in time for Australia Day our expert planning that had got us through Queensland seeing everything and anything we wanted didn’t quite pan out the same in New South Wales. Whilst we did still get to see some lovely places we definitely needed more time.

With La Toya back to full health it was time to head to the big city of Sydney. To get to Sydney we had to pass through the roads which head through the Great Dividing Range. The Great Dividing Range, or the Eastern Highlands, is Australia’s most substantial mountain range and the third longest land-based range in the world. The range stretches more than 3,500 kilometres from Dauan Island off the northeastern tip of Queensland, running the entire length of the eastern coastline through New South Wales, then into Victoria and turning west, before finally fading into the central plain at the Grampians in western Victoria. Factoid!

For anyone who has ever driven a 24 year old, diesel, automatic campervan you will know that hills just instil fear in you. When you see the sign for ‘slow vehicles keep left’ you know that this is going to be a white knuckle ride wondering if you are going to make it to the top. Never have we been happier that La Toya broke down before we got here. The roads are carved through the mountains and therefore hard shoulders are pretty non-existent through the entire journey. Thankfully our wonderful girl looked after us and with her new radiator got us safe and sound to Sydney.

Big cities are a nightmare for campers, the camp sites are usually in the middle of nowhere with no easy public transport to get you to where you want to be in the thick of the action so after perusing the many overpriced extortionate hotels which didn’t even offer parking we found a new website that was soon to become our saviour. AirBNB is a website made up primarily of people that have a spare room or a holiday home and they use AirBNB to advertise. We found a spare room on the outskirts of the city with an Irish couple called David and Aiofe. Being used to turning up at strangers houses by now we had no qualms about rocking up to see our room especially as for a change we were paying for the priviledge and were not going to be directed to the garden shed for the sheers and lawn mower. Our biggest problem here was that we were seriously hoping that David opened the door to us as we had no idea how to pronounce Aiofe’s name. Damn, we were welcomed by Aiofe. After a short tour and introduction we had both exchanged the knowing look of ‘I still don’t know her name, do you’ and we had to come clean and ask. Seemingly she is pretty used to this and explained that it is pronounced E-Fa. I am glad that we got that sorted, no time for some tourist sights.

This was our second time in Sydney together so we had already seen the main sights, but that didn’t stop us seeing them all again. First up, Darling Harbour. In the run up to Australia Day, Darling Harbour had been transformed into Sydney Festival with a big top tent and various other attractions. There was one that attracted us, The Merchant House. A giant optical illusion, whereby you lay on the floor on the front of a house and the giant mirror above makes it look like you are dangling from the windows or climbing the walls. We had just 10 minutes to get in position, take some photos and swap, but boy did we have fun!!

Many moons ago Tim and I went to a show in Paris which blew our minds, it had crazy circus acts, magic acts, comedy acts and aerial stunts and unbelievably the same show was not showing at the Opera House. Now called La Soiree, we had to give it a go. We booked the cheapest seats in the house, which surprisingly just happened to be directly alongside the main stage with pretty much the best views in the house. The show totally lived up to our memories, with crazy aerial acts, a magician that much to our shock and horror stripped down to her birthday suit, a scissor swallower, mind blowing acrobats and even a comedian who did a rather good drag act of the Queen. There was no better way to finish the night than with a few photos of Sydney by night.

The next day we had booked a Jet Boat trip around Sydney Harbour, it was a little disconcerting when we showed up that they give us giant water proof capes and told us to take off anything that we didn’t want to get wet. Minutes into the ride we could see exactly why, and Tim was quickly thanking me for insisting that he take off his trainers. The boat would power forward and with a quick count of 3,2,1 would spin around soaking all of us in the front two rows. After about 3 spins the smug dry people at the back of the boat very quickly had their hair and spirits dampened when the captain managed to spin the boat in such a way that a tidal wave came over the back of the boat and soaked them all, oh how we laughed!! The boat trip was over before we knew it and all we managed to get was a quick selfie of us looking rather like drowned rats, which is exactly the look that we rocked for the rest of the day.

As Jersey folk seem to get pretty much everywhere we managed to track down an old friend of Tim’s, Ross, who was living in Sydney. We had a nice little outing to the Northern Beaches and Tim had little time to catch up with Ross as I spent our time grilling him on the route that he had taken on a trip from Sydney to Melbourne over Christmas, awesome that’s one leg of planning all done, over a cup of coffee, thanks Ross. Ross dropped us back into Sydney at the infamous Kings Cross, despite it being just 3 in the afternoon, within minutes out of nowhere a begging, delirious, bedraggled and scantily clad girl appeared with bleeding track marks down both her arms and legs It turns out The Cross is every bit as run down and rotten as it ever was!! Time to find the train, quick!

Our final outing of the day was to check out Circus Oz which was housed in the big top in Darling Harbour. After the amazing show that we had seen just days before in the Opera House, we had high hopes for this show. Very quickly they were dashed and we were astounded by just how bad this show was. Seemingly you needed to be under 10 years old to think this was good. It was just unbelievable there were a few vaguely good aerial acts but it was mainly balancing and clowning around, frankly the young self-taught street kids that we saw at the circus in Battambang in Cambodia put every one of these performers to shame. Hey ho, time to head home for a pizza for an early start to go to the Blue Mountains.

You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men…… well we arrived home to our little Air BNB house with frozen pizza in hand and found our hosts David and Aoife sat around the kitchen table with 4 friends having a mini house party. Being too polite to tell them that we were starving and just wanted pizza and bed we felt it was only polite to accept their offer of a glass of wine and joined in. The party finally wound down and we got our pizza in the oven at 4am, as I am sure you can guess, this well and truly put pay to our trip to the Blue mountains, but we did have a very fun night and got a few tips of places to visit in Tasmania so all was not lost, although we pretty much lost a day of exploring to our hangover and only managed to venture to Luna Park for a few pictures.

So the big day was finally here, Australia Day, the 26 January. Here is a mini history lesson for you as to where the Australia Day celebration comes from, as I certainly didn’t know!!

Australia Day is the official national day of Australia celebrated annually on 26 January, it marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British Ships at Port Jackson, New South Wales, and raising of the Flag of Great Britain taking possession of the land in the name of King George III.

It wasn’t until 1808 that celebrations began on t
his date when emancipated convicts began to celebrate their new land.

By 1818 the celebration, known then as Foundation Day was being marked with sporting events such as the Regatta in Sydney Harbour where there were 5 races for different classes of boats from sailing boats to steam boats.

Initially this celebration related to New South Wales only but by 1935 all states were celebrating 26 January as Australia Day.

1988 marked the 200 year celebration and also marked the start of the huge scale events that now take place, by 1994 the celebration was a unified public holiday.

For the indigenous people of Australia, Australia day is a symbol of the adverse effect of British settlement on the indigenous people. It is more commonly referred to by them as “Invasion Day”.

There have been a number of attempts to change the date of Australia Day, the main reasons being that it falls during the school holidays so it is difficult for schools to engage children in the event, it was initially only relevant to NSW, it is intrinsically linked to Australia’s convict past and it fails to include all Australians especially the indigenous people.

For now Australia Day marks a mass celebration around the country, with citizenship ceremonies, concerts, street parties, fireworks and of course the Sydney Harbour boat races.

To celebrate Australia Day in Sydney in the most apt way, we booked ourselves on a cruise around the harbour so we could see the various boat races and all the action unfolding from the water.

It was a grey and overcast day, but it was a really lovely way to spend the morning. The harbour was filled with boats of every size, from tiny tin boats, to cruise ships, tall ships and even helicopters and the Airbus A330 doing a flyover, which terrified those of us that didn’t know that this was part of the celebration. Back on dry land and Sydney was getting pretty busy with the celebrations ramping up and before long the happy family atmosphere was fast becoming a drunken mess so we decided to slope off and celebrate at home with La Toya and to watch the day unfold on the news.

We got back to our house, put the key in as usual, opened the door and suddenly the house alarms were blaring. It seems that when we arrived Aoife forgot one important piece of information, aside from the pronunciation of her name, the code to turn it off!! We knew that they were at an Australia Day party, we tried calling, we tried texting and got no response. The neighbour came over and saw us stood on the door step panicking and couldn’t really help. We tried our last form of communication, we sent an email through Air BNB in case they got this, amazingly they did and peace reigned once more, well our ears rang for a good hour but at least the alarms were off. Ha ha, mental note to self, always ask about house alarms at future home stays!!!

Our time in Sydney was over and it was time to get back into La Toya and set off back on the camping train. We would be following the coast, across into Victoria and down to Melbourne.

On the road again……