The Sydney Experience

Sydney - one word I can think of for this city is KA-CHING! This is the seventh most expensive city in the world and don't we know it. After travelling through southeast Asia, the prices in Sydney can only be described as sticker-shock. Although it does help that our good old Canadian dollar is worth approx. 20 cents more than the Aussie dollar, the prices are still up there. For example, if you go for a meal, you can count on $20.00 for a main course, a glass of wine will run you $7.00-$10.00 and even a bottle of water can run as high as $3.00. We were paying about 25 cents a bottle of water in Vietnam! I often wonder when I see families how they manage here.

We have been out and about though, and are making good use of the extensive train system here. Pat took us to the zoo here one day, a lovely ferry ride across the harbour, a spectacular view from the tram car up to the zoo and ta-da, we spent a sultry summer day amongst the koalas, wallabys, exotic birds and gorillas. It was fair dinkum.

Yesterday we trained into the city and went to the aquarium ($27.00 entry fee) and took 3 hours to cruise around the sea creatures. Most impressive was the shark tank. The aquarium seems rather average until you cross a dock and wind your way down pathways to the bowels of the structure where suddenly you are engulfed by tubes of glass with huge manta rays, gobsmacking sized fish and menacing, fiercesome sharks swimming around, above, below and beside you. As they glide by you (about 5 different species), you can gaze into their deadened eyes and jagged, hideous mouths. It gave me the skin crawls and really makes you think twice about hitting the beaches here. While shark attacks are relatively rare, they happen and it only has to happen once - with my luck on this trip, I will be keeping my head above the water scouting for fins! The fish tanks are so impressive and massive depicting life on the barrier reef that we were oohing and ahhing for hours. Well worth the cost, that attraction.

Ivan has had and opportunity to jam at a local blues bar here and really made a big impression as most of the jam acts we watched were, to be polite, really, really bad! He could do really well here given enough time as the local live music scene is vibrant and varied, but it would take a good deal of time and effort and this really isn't the place we want to hang for a long time. The expense compared to the effort would likely not come to any great fruition.

There are some oddities that we have noticed here, that while the general population looks a good deal like North America, it differentiates Oz from our corner of the world. For instance, while the service industry employs 62% of the population, overall, the service here sucks. There is almost a disinterest or boredom factor when it comes to dealing with clerks and service providers. The TV here is atrocious and the programming is even somewhat juvenile, very weird. Attitudinally, it's a very macho society and I don't see a lot of happy, smiling faces here. These are only my impressions and I haven't been here long enough to make judgements, but this is how I initially see it. There are a lot of racial tensions emerging here right now and it's quite fierce between the Muslims and Aussies, this is not just my observation, there are acts of violence happening here with great frequency right now. I guess it's the way of the world now but especially high profile here.

Oh yeah, and they drive on the other side of the road. This in itself is no surprise but on occasion I have neglected to look right and nearly been splattered. Some streets have "Look Right" printed on the curbs - mostly in the tourist areas - and I am thankful for them. Our next adventure is tomorrow when we visit a place called the Blue Mountains - the pix look like the Grand Canyon and I'm looking forward to seeing some wilderness. Hopefully we can get up to Brisbane in the next 2 weeks and after that we have decided to brave the roads and have rented a camper to head south to Melbourne and on to Adelaide by plane. The camper deal is great! They have a thing here called the relocation program and you call in daily to see if there are any campers needing a return to their home stations. We have reserved one for the 25th of Feb. to Melbourne and the best part of the deal is that they only charge you $1.00 per day plus fuel and insurance. You get your insurance returned at the end of the trip (providing a kangaroo doesn't decide to use you as a runway), so for the cost of gas and a buck a day we get to see some of the countryside.

We are most grateful at this time for the wonderful accommodation that Pat has provided for us and we are sleeping like sloths. The 4 months in Asia was far more exhausting than either of us realized and our bodies, minds and spirits are in dire need of the peace being afforded us in the Shire.

As we have come to the realization that the pace of travel we set for ourselves was highly ambitious, an understatement to be sure, we are revamping our plans for the next year. After we leave Oz, we are going to India and then on to Europe and then....WE ARE COMING HOME....well, for a while anyways. We have decided to cut out the Africa and South American portion of the trip and to head home for the summer months, after which we will resume our travel next winter to those 2 continents. It is mentally and physically a good plan we realize now, so look for us to come your way in July '06.