Travels around the world – Sydney and Manly

After a brief visit to Australia’s capital, we found ourselves in, what is considered by many, the city that deserves to be the nation’s capital.

Sydney is completely different. As soon as you arrive you are aware that you are in a lively, vibrant and interesting city.

We arrived on Oxford Street at the Bus station and explored the area a little and booked into a backpackers hostel before making our way to the tourist parts.

Ian had decided that he was only going to stay for a few nights and was going back to Brisbane.  There were various reasons for this decision but there is no real need to go into this.  There was a great deal of speculation that we’d fallen out or something had happened but this is not the case.  It was simply the fact that Ian wanted to go to Brisbane and I wanted to stay in Sydney so that is what happened.

The first “Tourist” bit that we saw was “The Coat hanger” or “Sydney Harbour Bridge” as we had gone over this on the way into the city and had also seen the Opera House from the bridge.  My first impressions were that the Opera house was quite small and didn’t really do much to get me too excited but over time it grew on me and the more I looked at it the better it got.

As well as Circular Quay we went around the Botanical Gardens and to the Hard Rock café.  There is nothing like going into a restaurant that has a full sized car inside.

As Ian felt bad about leaving me in a strange city all alone we had arranged to meet up with Adele, I had kept in touch with her since we had met in the farmhouse during the fruit picking time.  We went to see her in her hostel and she told us that she was thinking of moving to a different part of the city.  This is how I ended up staying in Manly.

The Hostel was only about 300 yards from the beach, even though Manly is quite a small place there is plenty going on and it has its fair share of beaches.  The best way to get over to the city from Manly is by sea, you can use the ferry or the faster sea cat.  I usually opted for the ferry as I wasn’t usually in a rush to get there and I could enjoy the view.  There is a certain part of the journey where I always made sure I got to the front of the boat.  The ferry seemingly heads out away from the city first of all to get around the headland and Toranga Park Zoo, once it has negotiated this bit it makes a sharp turn and the view of the city is revealed.  This to me is the best way to see the Harbour Bridge and the Opera house.

After a few weeks in Sydney Adele and I parted company, we kept in touch while we were both in Manly but rarely saw each other.  She had moved into an apartment near the Esplanade and I was living in a house with a few other backpackers in a place called Fairlight.  They were a good bunch; mostly British but there were a couple of Canadians that stayed there for a while and two American girls from Florida.

Just after I had moved into the house I was told of a night out, we were all heading into the city as it was Mardi gras that weekend.  I didn’t ask many questions and just went along with it.  It turns out that it was the annual gay pride event that is huge in Sydney.  Thousands and Thousands of people take part every year and they close off parts of the city for the parade. All of the bars are decorated in pink and everyone is dedicated just to enjoy themselves.  It was a pretty good night but with the vast amount of people there it didn’t take long to get separated from the group.  This wasn’t a problem as there were plenty of people willing to chat.

The Fairlight crew turned out to be very social and there were always nights out, concerts or something going on. While I was there I went to see a local band with David, he was from Chesterfield in the UK.  In the end we saw them about 3 or 4 times and it turns out that they had just been signed to a label.  They didn’t make huge waves but I did buy the CD when it came out and we were interviewed at one of their concerts for a newspaper article taking a fans perspective of a “Caligula” show after David had started chatting to a journalist.

The main night out for us all was Thursday, over in Darling Harbour there was a bar that did half price drinks and put on a buffet.  The lure of cheap beer and free food was always too tempting to resist so we always made our way there.  David worked in the city anyway so would meet us after work and I would pop in for a couple of hours before heading off to work as I was doing the night shift by then.

Nights out were not always in the City, Manly itself had a good night life.  The top part of the town had the livelier pubs and was normally full of surfers, Manly was a good place to Surf and was also the site for the Ironman competitions.

The other side of town had some quieter places, Susan (one of the American girls) worked at “The Boat Shed” so we would normally go and have a couple of drinks with her at the start of the night before moving on.  Manly is one of these places where you can go out at any time.  One night was a quiet chilled out evening at home but at midnight we decided to go for a drink.  The normal bars were open until 4am and this was about the same time that the bakeries started to open.  Walking home from a night out eating a freshly baked pizza is one of life’s luxuries.