Enjoying a beer in Bondi
Since backpacking across Canada in 1998, I have visited various other countries and cities, but mainly around Europe. The Canadian experience left me with a desire to get out there again at some point, to experience the freedom of travelling light, being awed by new sights and the meeting of new people.
Australia had never really appealed to me until a few years ago, when it dawned on me that, a couple of mates were living down under. On closer inspection, I realised the country could have a lot more to offer than I had originally given credit for. I planned to head out in 2007 but I had started an online dance music record store, which, although successful never quite provided an adequate enough income to afford such luxuries as backpacking.
So 2010 was to be a new hike, to the Great Ocean Road, to Bondi and beyond. I organised it with work a couple of months in advance, and was kindly allowed to book all my holiday for that year in one go. With this in mind I prepared for the journey ahead. With the purchase of a new backpack, lightweight sleeping bag and other travelling essentials. I also armed myself with a new camera, with which I used to record my journey.
Lost Luggage.. Again
Tough MacPac Design
The flights were booked from the UK, and with a quick stop off in ‘humid’ Hong Kong, I found myself cruising at high altitude above central Australia. As we descended into Sydney, I thought of the last time I backpacked and how I collected the wrong bag. I hoped my backpack would be collected without stress this time, however, this was not to be the case.
By the time the last person had collected their bag, there were just three items of luggage slowly rotating on the carousel, and none of them resembled my ‘macpac’, I couldn’t believe it! In fact, all the staff were disappearing too. I called for assistance, and after a search of the area, I was directed to a Chinese man who, as I filled in a lost luggage ticket, discovered that my surname was the same as his first name.
‘Bing’ found this most amusing and kept repeating “Bing, your name is Bing.. ha ha” I tried to raise a smile out of one corner of my mouth but the thoughts of losing my carefully planned package of clothes limited my ability to offer up a belly laugh. As a last ditch attempt before giving up, I stood on the top of some metal railings to peer down the delivery chute, to my astonishment, my backpack was rolling like a rolly sausage far below. The ‘travelator’ had to be turned off so that someone could climb in from the depths below and ‘clear it’.
The security guards laughed reminding me it was a highly unusual occurrence, to which I thought “nothing seems unusual in my world”. I then had to be cross examined at bag search as I appeared suspicious for coming through customs so late after the flight had landed.
Around Sydney
Palms & Scrapers
I love that first journey in a new land. It’s truly exciting, trying to take in all the new sights, sounds and smells. Australia seemed bright, busy and colourful. Lush palms and soaring skyscrapers greeted my tired eyes.
I decided to split the youth hostels up with hotels throughout the trip. The idea was to provide some much needed lavish comfort amongst the sometimes impersonal nature of youth hostels. My first stay was in a hotel with outdoor swimming pool.
The view from the hotel room did not disappoint, and seeing as I appeared to be insusceptible to Aussie jet lag I headed out the night of my arrival for a few beers. I ventured around a few bars in Kings Cross, dropping into a few Irish pubs and touristy type bars, I later discovered a funky little jazz club.
This first experience of an Australian club was an interesting one.
Sydney Harbour from hotel room.
A rather stylish and friendly woman came over and started chatting. Her friends were all quite lovely too and we danced and drank.They wanted to smoke, so we moved to the smoking terrace. With the busy street scenes of Kings Cross unfolding outside, one of the women became unbelievably racist towards Aboriginal people, claiming their DNA is closer to Neanderthals than humans (she naively believed this). One of the women had her bag stolen, so I decided it was time to retire to the hotel and try and steal some sleep.
Something that did strike me in Sydney, was the lack of Aboriginal people out and about, and for such a huge city I found this a little eerie. Where were the indigenous people of Australia? This would become clear later in my journey.
The next day I took a hike around town, with a trip up the viewing tower, and a walk around the parks and Opera House, but more interesting to me was the walk home.
Fruit Bats
As the sun dropped, an intense orange sky began to glow over the harbour, and as the sun set dozens of huge fruit bats began to flutter above. As I took photos the locals looked at me and probably thought I was a bit odd, to them it was an every day occurrence, to me it was the intro to the 70s ‘Scooby Doo’ cartoon.
Kings Cross was on my doorstep and one evening I sat with some new friends watching the world pass by. We were sharing a beer and talking about music when a Rastafarian stepped out of a cab with two ‘dolled up’ women, they walked off.
About half an hour later, the Rasta returned with just one of the women, and she was absolutely out of it, falling on the floor and he was trying to prop her up whilst hailing a taxi. As we watched a story unfolded. A group of other women stopped and demanded to know what was going on, he protested his innocence, then a group of other passers by started getting involved, at this point the Rasta guy was becoming really agitated. By the time the police arrived he was surrounded by about fifteen to twenty people all trying to pull this limp woman off him.
I’m not sure what was going on, or where the other woman was, maybe we should have intervened, but there was so much of that stuff going on in Kings Cross. I also witnessed a tramp attacking another tramp from that seat.
Sydney from up high
I spent a few days in the hotel and, although it was quite up market, I discovered tiny blood sucking bed bugs in my clean sheets along with a few bites. I was sort of pleased to head to the hostel for the rest of my stay in Sydney.
The city was interesting, although, If I’m honest, once you appreciated the harbour and a few bars and parks, Sydney itself was just like any other city, in fact I found the pedestrian crossings really frustrating, having to wait for ages to cross at every block.
Sydney did offer some memorable experiences though. I do recall visiting one of the coolest roof top night clubs inside a tall building which was surrounded by skyscrapers.
It was like something from a George Michael video, with large lit-up pool and projector screen which accompanied the DJ, lots of fake tan and white jeans. I met some fun partygoers here, but the price of a small bottle of beer was around $9, so a little expensive considering I was supposed to be backpacking.
Bondi & Manle Beach
Surfer at Bondi
The rest of my stay in Sydney was spent in a backpackers. This was quite horrible, very noisy, unfriendly spoilt teenagers and a bit of an alcohol problem at night. It reminded me of the kind of Australia I had always imagined, and I hoped to never experience.
I am just grateful I rented my own room with a nice lock. The teenagers next door were arguing until the early hours, and the night club below often played cheesy shit dance music until all hours, the room was more basic than a prison cell but I’ve slept in worse.
The community spirit of other backpackers I’d stayed at in Canada seemed a distant memory, it seemed a bit ‘dog eat dog’ here. There was a generally moody atmosphere, and loads of hungover looking college kids queuing up to moan at staff. I know a few people who came, and went the next morning, due to the ‘school holiday’ atmosphere at night.
During my days here, I discovered Bondi Beach. What a brilliant place, this really made up for where I was staying at night. If I ever return to Sydney I would head straight here.
Bondi Lifeguard
Bondi had a friendly vibe and I found it surprisingly less commercial/busy than I had expected. I headed back to Bondi both night and day, it was so simple to get to from the city.
One occasion I ran from Bondi to Coogee bare foot, this was foolish and I developed a bit of plascia fasciitis (knackered foot). I became a member of Bondi surf club just so as I could drink a nice cold beer and was disappointed to discover shark sightings amounted to only a couple each year.
The other beach I visited was Manly. This was attractive but extremely busy and funnily enough, it resembled more of how I imagined Bondi to be. Hordes of people, sun shades, bikinis, volley ball, extremely touristic.
Blue Mountains
Blue Mountains Haze
The Blue Mountains was done by coach. This was a bit ramshackle and we had problems as the doors wouldn’t close. Things were made worse by a Japanese couple who were late getting back on the bus at every single stop by about 20 minutes.
This really pissed off everyone on the trip and it was starting to get a bit ‘Lord of the Flies’, even I found myself wishing they could understand the words the guide was saying “if you’re late again we’re leaving you here, OK guys?!”, it made no difference.
A single day wasn’t really enough up here, I felt the loneliness of Australia once or twice, with the vast forests, and seemingly no wildlife? No bird song, no animals, I wondered if the recurrent years of forest fires had taken more of a toll than we were led to believe, regardless, the views were effortlessly impressive on a vast and remote scale.
Sydney Sunshine
My time in Sydney was coming to an end, so I had one last night in Kings Cross, which reminded me of home a bit. Broad Street in Birmingham about fifteen years ago. I limped through the streets back from a bar where I’d made friends with a Mancunian musician earlier in the week.
My limp made me a bit of a target for the drunks and pimps outside their brothels “hey mr cowboy, you wanna come inside, I got a lady for you mannn!”. Tempting as it may have been I limped on by and tried to laugh off the various comments. I was told Kings Cross was the most dangerous part of Australia, but what I found was quite a cultural little hub, the abundance of police (and tourists) probably kept it all from getting too wild on the main drag.
My bags were packed, and I embarked on flight number three to meet longtime mate Doctor Jones on the Sunshine Coast.
