Photogeni-city

I've been seduced by Sydney once again. Generous, well-organised, well-resourced, comfortable Sydney.

It's hard, coming from Christchurch, not to be fearful of the bricks, especially when they are piled up 14 storeys high. Here is the view from our penthouse in Darling Harbour:

Looking straight down was not good.

From the woman who saw our confusion at the Central Station and stopped to help, to the Frenchman greeting us with a bonjour in his café in Abbotsford, the people were beaut. (Monsieur le café was a bit non-plussed by Claudia's readiness to parler. They don't often do that in Abbotsford...)

View from the Sydney Rowing Club. "Not that I'm an alcoholic", said the ferryman at King's Wharf, "but you can have a drink at the SRC and bolt back down to the jetty when you see the ferry on its way back from Parramatta." So true!

The funniest holiday moment was when we wandered up from Circular Quay and saw - and heard - the winos nestled semi-comfortably in a portico on the south side of George St having a vigorous debate about God knows what. Even when listening to Billy Connolly, I have never heard anyone use the word "fucking" so often and with so few breaths in-between. We passed on and around the corner, at which point Ian started replaying the Cosby wino sketch where Fat Albert comes and jumps on the wino. Unfortunately, Fat Albert was about 10 feet in front of us but Ian hadn't noticed - until I suggested we could just dial one up - at which point Ian finally looked up and instantaneously jumped out of his skin, did a u-turn without touching the ground, narrowly avoided stepping in front a bus, and took off purposefully and very hastily to the nearest pharmacy, where he seemed to hide for some time. George and Clauds and I followed slowly, crying with mirth. Fat Albert (a Sydney bus driver, although how he manages it I know not - think Mr Jackson supping honeydew through Mrs Tittlemouse' window...) seemed oblivious and we sincerely hope he was indeed spared the entire incident.

The next funniest moment - hmmm, tricky - was it when a pigeon pooped on Claudia on the Corso? surely not! - or was it before that, when we were having a seriously delicious lunch at a beach-front place at Manly and a mega-squillionaire seated near us was loudly discussing Christchurch's problems, his over-performing investment in Queenstown, his fillies and his investments that are about to mature with a couple of sycophantic lunch-pals that (as Ian pointed out) were probably his bankers? Neither was really funny; I merely mention them both to remind me of an otherwise very pleasant day.

After lunch we wandered down to the ocean baths and back again:

There is no doubt that Manly is a lovely spot. Having recently read Rob Mundle's "Bligh, Master Mariner" I was very mindful that this was ocean that Bligh had sailed and probably charted. The next day, when back at Darling Harbour, I asked at the Aussie National Maritime Museum for directions to the Bligh exhibit and was very surprised at the non-plussed facial expressions - I had (naively) thought that his connection with Sydney would be honoured at the ANMM - and perhaps it is - but the volunteer whom I interrogated looked completely blank. I did find a statue of Bligh at Circular Quay:

For me, a highlight of our stay was crawling over the Endeavour replica. George came with me, although it has to be said that his capacity for listening to volunteers is even less than mine, so he was difficult to keep up with. The crew of the James Craig (3-masted barque) did not appreciate George's free-roaming spirit (we prefer you to keep wiz ze tour group!!) so I lost him from that vessel very quickly.

Bank's berth on the Endeavour. I didn't ask whether he really shared his 2 sq m with that piece of furniture - the volunteers were earnest but I wasn't sure about their reliability on matters of fact.

The Endeavour was really wonderful. The submarine was interesting too, and cramped, but at least you could stand up in it.

More later - maybe...