Category Archives: Australia

An Afternoon in Manly

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Every guidebook has a “secret” hint on how to see some of the more famous sites without paying the usual price. In Venice, you’re advised to take the number one vaporetto rather than an expensive gondola ride; in Chicago, go to the 96th floor of the Hancock for a cocktail rather than the concrete dud of an observation deck. And in Sydney, instead of paying for a harbor cruise, you’re told to take a ferry boat out to Manly.

The water angle of the opera house

Sydney, I was pleasantly surprised to discover, isn’t on a semicircle harbor, but on a harbor with an uneven coastline, so there are many more houses with water views than in a lot of other cities. Manly is one of the suburbs with those views.

I actually tried to go to Manly twice. The first time, it was an ok day when I started out, but by the time the boat docked, it was drizzling rain and cold. Since I had a weekly transit pass, I just turned right around and went back to Sydney. Take two was much more successful. It was a beautiful day, and the decks of the ferry were full of teenagers carrying surfboards and families lugging beach equipment.

Manly boats

I met up with Heather, a friend of a friend, and we had a nachos and beer lunch, which is the perfect start to a lazy Sunday afternoon. We walked through town, and she popped into a few restaurants so she could say hi to her friends. She manages a restaurant, and she shared funny stories about the food service life in Manly.

The Corso in Manly

News from bygone days

Manly Beach was much narrower and much more crowded than Bondi had been, and I didn’t really want to squeeze in on the sand between sunbathing beauties and shrieking children, so we went on the short coastal walk instead. The path was full of people enjoying their weekend, and it was also narrower than the Bondi walk, so I was more crowded in general. But it was a great walk, past a pool right on the ocean that lets the saltwater spill over the edge to fill it, past a long lizard sunning himself, past a small group of suited-up divers taking rescue lessons, and right on up the small hill to a view of the coastline curving in and out all the way to the horizon.

Spot the lizard

I said farewell to Heather and got back on the ferry for the return trip. I’d timed it just right for sunset, so as the boat rounded the point and came in to the main harbor, I saw the opera house and bridge lit up in reds and golds. A lovely end to a relaxing day.

 

Good night, Sydney

Coastal Walking at Bondi

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I first heard about Bondi Beach from a book I read as a kid. It was one of those puzzle narrative books, not Choose Your Own Adventure, but similarly interactive. Every couple of pages, the narrative would pause as the characters had to figure out a riddle or number problem, and the reader was meant to do the same. I was always too impatient to actually do them, so I flipped to the back to read the solution before moving on. Anyway, one of these books featured a brilliant scientist who loved to surf, and when his niece finds him missing, she knows just where to look for him—at the surfer’s mecca, Bondi Beach, Australia. The beach went on my mental list of Places to Visit.

Surf’s up

In my mind, Bondi was pronounced “Bond-ee” and was a small beach town far away from civilization. Neither of these things is true. It’s pronounced “Bond-eye” and it’s a suburb of the decidedly civilized Sydney. I took the metro out there, and then a short bus ride to the beachfront. The town part of the beachfront is about three blocks long, lined with surf shops, cafes, fancy restaurants, and clothes shops. Unfortunately, a four-lane boulevard separates this area from the esplanade; it must be nice for cruising in a car, but is annoying for pedestrians and for the intimate feeling usually found in beach towns.

Bondi Beach

I’d read in my guidebook about a place that had gelato so delicious, it was considered the best in all of Sydney, not just Bondi, and it also did pizzas at reasonable cost. Oh, the dangers of entrusting a guidebook with your feelings of anticipation! Those pizzas were not reasonable (at least, I don’t consider $18 for a 6” reasonable), and the gelato was priced as if dairy cows were going extinct (I’ve since discovered that one scoop of ice cream costs $5 no matter where I go in Australia). I got a panini and resolved to buy ice cream later in the day.

I was quickly realizing that the warnings I’d heard before coming here were all too accurate; eating out in Australia is expensive no matter where you go. I’d like to think that’s partly because they actually pay their servers a living wage, rather than the paltry $4.25 an hour American servers make. Tipping isn’t common here, because it isn’t an integral part of the wait staff’s pay. They get paid for the work they do from their employers, which makes sense to me. If you feel particularly well treated, you can round up your bill or leave an extra dollar or two, which returns tips to the realm of nice gesture rather than optional expense left to the whim of finicky customers.

After lunch, I strolled down to the beach. It’s a wide beach, and all of it is fine, white sand, with no sea debris mucking it up. They must do a lot of maintenance on it to keep it that way, and it is well worth it. I read my book, did some people watching, and looked on as twenty adorable kids about age 10 got a surf lesson.

Kids eager to get their lesson started

Go, kids, go!

One of my friends back home put me in touch with a friend of hers who had been to Sydney before, and his only must-do was the Bondi coastal walk. When I arrived in Sydney, everyone in my hostel rhapsodized over the coastal walk. I checked my guidebook and it gushed about the coastal walk. Guess what I decided to check out?

On the coastal walk

Well, I’m gushing and rhapsodizing, because that walk was gorgeous. A paved path, occasionally broken up by uneven stone stairs, it winds its way 6 kilometers along the coast, from Bondi to the town of Coogee. I walked to Bronte, then stopped at Tamarama on the way back for a ginger beer and Magnum ice cream bar (I keep my promises).  The path was full of people out for a jog, families on an afternoon stroll, and tourists like me who stopped every 10 feet to take another photo of the plunging cliffs and deep blue sea.

Rar! This looks like a dinosaur head with its mouth open.

A nice afternoon snack

The path from the other side of a cove

I enjoyed visiting Bondi, and can easily recommend it for a beach visit. If you’re a surfer, take the advice of an obscure puzzle book from my childhood and visit!

Sydney: A Garden City

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As with all major cities I’ve been to, Sydney has several large parks for city dwellers to gather in and reconnect to nature. Near Hyde Park is The Domain, and right next to that, the Royal Botanic Gardens. I love the idea of The Domain, which started as the private park of the first governor, and eventually became open to the public. Now, it’s set aside specifically for public use and enjoyment.

The Domain

Signs dot the park that read “The Domain is for everyone to enjoy… Please walk on the grass. We also invite you to hug the trees, picnic on the grass and talk to the birds (but please don’t feed them!).” How lovely! Of course, it then goes on to list the many things you can’t do, including seemingly innocuous things like flying kites and throwing frisbees. Still, the main sentiment is great. The Domain is used for concerts and other gatherings, and when I visited, lots of people were out enjoying the sunshine.

Art Gallery of New South Wales

I went into the Art Gallery of New South Wales, briefly, and took a look around. Signs indicate which areas you can and cannot take photos in, and the Aboriginal section was definitely one you can’t photograph. Otherwise, I’d show some of them to you. One piece by Genevieve Grieves, called “Picturing the Old People,” was a video installation on multiple screens that I particularly enjoyed; it showed someone setting up various tableaux, rearranging backdrops and subjects to get them just how he wanted for a photography shoot, including dressing people in “native” dress instead of the suits and ties they arrived in.

In the Australian Art room. I don’t remember ever seeing paintings hung in this style of stacking, which was the prevalent way of doing it in earlier centuries. Maybe in the Louvre?

I walked down Mrs. Macquarie Road to the point, where I saw the opera house and bridge from another angle. From the tip of the peninsula it was also easy to see Fort Denison, which was originally used by colonists as a prison and execution site, before American warships circling it in the early 1800s prompted the Australian government to convert the tiny island into a fort for protection. Funny, then, that in 1942, when Japanese submarines attacked Sydney Harbour, the American ship USS Chicago took out one of the subs, but damaged Fort Denison while doing so.

Fort Denison

Abutting The Domain is the Royal Botanic Gardens. It was a pleasure to stroll through them and admire the foliage. There were several different parts to the gardens, including ponds, a path along the harbor, and the inevitable gift shop. The gardens were huge, and I spent well over an hour wandering through them before ending up at the stairs leading to the opera house.

I do not know any names of flora or fauna, so here are some unlabeled plants and birds I enjoyed looking at.

And finally, here’s the most self-satisfied satyr I’ve ever seen:

I mean, look at that face:

Oh heyyyy, playa

And with a wave to this friend of Dionysus, I left the (manicured, well-maintained) wilds of the gardens and re-entered the concrete world of the city.