Travelogue – Sydney, Australia – Part 1

 As part of a month long work assignment, I traveled to Sydney, Australia. Work was incredibly hectic (it was a 2 month assignment, squeezed into one) and the client was demanding but all that pressure faded whenever I stepped out into this beautiful city.

It’s probably one of the most beautiful cities I have been to till date. And without a doubt, one of the most expensive and for good reason.

Before I start on some sort of travelogue on Sydney, I should mention an interesting work culture aspect in Australia. Australians were protesting against their Government with a slogan ‘We want our life back’ for their ‘long’ 9-5 job (5 day workweek). True story. A Japanese or a Singaporean would probably die hearing that.

Back to the travelogue. I had about 4 weekends to explore Sydney and the surrounding areas (as mentioned earlier, weekdays were work-packed!). Here is my story of the 4 weekends I spent in Sydney. As part of the journey through these weekends, you might want to pick up tidbits about what to do and not to do in Sydney.

Weekend 1:

I landed on Saturday afternoon and by the time I enquired a few things and made a few phone calls, it was dusk. I didn’t venture out that night. However, I did pick up various pamphlets of various Sydney attractions.

I probably had a 15-20 pamphlet stack to start with and whittled them down to 5. However, I realized that I need to tour Sydney first, before doing specific things like scaling the Harbor Bridge, exploring Sydney Aquarium and some such. I looked up Sydney Walk on Wikitravel, wrote down some important pointers and started on my journey. I was put up at Artarmon, a 15 min train journey from the center of the city. As soon as I got down in Town hall station (a station in the center of the city), I realized I had lost the ‘important pointers’ list somewhere in the journey. I frantically tried to recollect various locations that I had written down and started exploring the map in the station. An old man (he was 75, as he told me later) walked up to me and asked me where I wanted to go. Given the prejudice that Indian media had subjected me to, I declined I was going anywhere. However, the samaritan persisted and I gave in, telling him that I wanted to walk around Sydney and see various points of interest. He said, ‘walk with me’. Typical Indian mentality kicked in, and I began thinking ‘Should I pay him money? Is he a tourist guide? I don’t want to pay him money, given my measly allowance’. However, I walked along with him and the thought persisted in the back of my mind till he said good-bye without asking for anything. I subsequently requested him that I’d buy him lunch, but he declined it and only wished me an enjoyable journey in Sydney. I was humbled. A more appropriate word would be ‘guilty’.

Sydney View - A collage

Anyway, this good samaritan took me to almost every corner of the city in a matter of 4.5 hours. He kept pace with me and walked continously. I, for one, could not believe he was 75. But then again, he couldn’t be below 60. And here I was, 28, already feeling tired by the end of 4.5 hours of walking.

We got out of Town Hall station, and emerged outside the majestic Queen Victoria building. We cut across George street, Pitt street and Bathurst street to emerge on Elizabeth street and walked towards Hyde park. Hyde park is one of the largest parks I’ve been to, with wide open spaces, lots of greenery and housing multiple monuments like the ANZAC memorial, St. Mary’s Cathedral (catholic church) and various other Government buildings. After visiting all these monuments, we proceeded to walk along Elizabeth street to visit the Hyde Park Barracks (where they housed criminals in the past), Reserve Bank of Australia, the State Parliament house (Sydney is the New South Wales state of Australia), Martin Place (where one of the scenes of ‘The Matrix’ was shot) and the Royal Mint house (where they minted coins back in the 1950s. Now, its just for tourists). We walked for a long time, cris-crossing multiple streets (he claimed to know all the shortcuts. I, on the other hand, couldn’t keep up with the names of the streets that we were traversing. Appropriate to say, we were traveling one street every couple of minutes for about half an hour). We finally made way to Circular Quay, a point in Sydney where different ferries take people to various beaches, and also a point where you could see Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Opera house in a single frame. We spent quite some time whiling around Sydney Opera house (which by the way, is a magnificent piece of architecture from the outside and pretty ordinary from the inside). We then proceeded to the Sydney Harbor bridge which was on the opposite side of the harbor. At this point, the samaritan wished me luck and that was the last I saw him.

St. Mary's Cathedral

An important tip here. Just adjacent to the Circular Quay, there is a Customs house, which houses a 3-D view of entire Sydney. It is placed one level below the ground, covered in glass (to be morbid, it like a coffin placed in a graveyard, but a transparent one). It gave me an excellent perspective of where I started (Town hall) and how I traveled to Circular Quay. It gives a mental picture so clear, I’d probably never forget it. No map is striking in such clarity. Highly recommended.

I whiled around Circular Quay, hunting for food (by and large, Sydney forbids Vegetarians I guess. Extremely difficult to find vegetarian food. Even if you do find vegetarian food, like water in a desert, options are limited to one. If the restaurant owner is generous, he might throw in 2). I satisfied myself with some pathetic Starbucks veg roll and their wonderful Frappucino before walking along the historic ‘The Rocks’ (the oldest settlement in Sydney, where eventually people were segregated and housed during ‘the Plague that swept Sydney back in the early 1900s) and window shopping for a while. From ‘The Rocks’, I walked along and below the Sydney Harbor bridge and walked towards the Sydney Observatory. At this point, I was extremely tired and decided to head back home.

I walked along a road. I didn’t know its name, but I walked. I walked and walked till my legs started to hurt. I knew, in general that the direction was right toward the station (Town hall), but I severely underestimated the distance. And the distance probably doubles mentally for a food-starved, physically tired person. I finally reached Town hall and then to Artarmon. That day was probably the longest I slept in a long time. Stone-dead-sleep is probably an appropriate phrase.

P.S: Select photos here – https://picasaweb.google.com/105375483626318518949/SydneyAustralia?authkey=Gv1sRgCL-g5u-_spTeywE#

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