Upside Down World

Welcome to Australia

We came to Sydney on one of the cities very few cloudy days – and loved it right away for that. Finally some cool, dry air around us, what a feeling! Other changes to our last four months’ environment include: orderly traffic, what feels like very few people in the streets, neither weird smells nor tasty smells in the air, no noise during the day but lots of it during the night (that’s right opposite of what happens in Asia), having to pay tons of money for a crappy bed in a 100 bed dorm, the possibility to buy whatever our western hearts crave for, the ability to understand everything around us and, of course, the need to prepare our own food (or the opportunity to do so, depending on the mood we are in after a long day of sightseeing around the city…). In short: the excitement of exotic Asia is over, the adventure of what feels as close to home as it will get on our trip - even though we will be the furthest away from home - has begun: Oceania.

Sydney Harbor

We stayed in the backpacker area of Kings Cross that is in walking distance of the harbor – so on our first day we inevitably ended up where every first time visitor to Sydney will end up eventually: at the tip of The Domain, right across from Australia’s landmarks: the Sydney Opera House and the Harbor Bridge. On our way through the parks and along the Woolloomooloo Wharf we spotted lots of fun birdlife. The first to cross our way was the Ibis which we hunted for a while to get a good picture. Only the next day we learnt that they are everywhere and people call them air rats…well, we thought they were lovely! Jens

Rainbow indeed

found his new best bird buddies in the white and yellow cockatoo and I fell in love with the slightly smaller rainbow lorikeet that hid in trees and could only be spotted when looking for them carefully. The most colorful “birds” of course were all the adult Sydneysiders that celebrated their Christmas parties at the wharf, all dressed up and pretty. A huge and loud party – and outside, in the summer night.

What a show off...

Christmas time in the city

The next day we went on a walking tour. We started out at the busy Circular Quay area where all the ferries start from, went down to The Rocks where the earliest European settlement formed the basis for today’s Sydney, walked around the financial City Centre all the way up to the town hall and crossed the shopping area to get to Hyde Park and the Royal Botanic Gardens to finally end up at the Opera House. We took a ride on the free bus (with about a million other people, it felt like being back in Asia there for a while) and checked out the shopping area in a little more detail, had a picnic in the park and explored Woolloomooloo by accident – we picked a wrong turn on our way back to the hostel.

Sydney City Centre

At the edge

Bondi Beach

We didn’t have enough of the walking yet, so the next day we slipped into our swimming suits, packed a towel and a lunchbox and took the bus to Coogee beach. From there, we walked along the scenic coast up to famous Bondi Beach, passing some of the cities nicest beaches and climbing some beautiful cliffs with excellent views. We tried out the water a couple of times but had to face a (literally) cold truth: we’re not at the Indian ocean any more…(it’s the Tasman Sea now, for everyone who started wondering at this point). The water felt colder than the Northern Sea ever did so all that got wet that day were our lower legs. Just hanging out at the beaches and watching all the people was great fun, though. Surfers, divers, snorkelers, families with young children and teenager gangs shared the spaces and on this sunny day there were lots of all of them. It was just great! Getting back to the city in the afternoon, we got off the bus a little early and explored Darlinghurst with quite back roads and the backpackers party strip on our way back to the hostel.

Our friends are all on board...

After changing hostels on the last day, we had just enough time to explore the touristic heart of the waterfront, Darling Harbor. It’s here where you’ll find museums, cinemas, bars and restaurants, cruise ship docks, a big Santa Fest, wildlife in zoos and aquariums, the eldest bridge in Sydney,etc.. We walked around there for a while, watching excited tourists getting off their massive cruise liners, others saying good bye to people who were about to board their ship, sea gulls stealing food, children playing in the fountains, people chatting while sharing their lunch in one of the posh restaurants, Santas walking around in red shorts and sunglasses and the like. What a wonderful place. We then checked out the Maritime Museum of Sydney. Of course we didn’t spend much time in the exhibition halls but ran right outside to visit the massive destroyer and submarine that lay in the inner harbor, Cockle Bay. On both ship there were volunteer guides some of whom had actually served on the ship. It was especially great to walk through the submarine with one of them, who told us so many anecdotes of his life on board that ship that everything became very real. It was a fascinating visit – and for whichever reason no head was hurt along the way…

Haha - ehm, no - Arrrgh, arrrgh

All in all, we really enjoyed our short time down under (yes, when we were little we also knew exactly that if we only dug a whole deep enough, we’d end up in Australia, probably upside down). Still, the next morning we were excited to get up early to leave Sydney (only to return soon, of course) to go to Auckland. At least that’s what we thought. We ended up in Middle Earth instead, but that’s another story.