Our last ever week in Sydney, December 2023

A week off… Oh! God! Not more shopping!

Saturday, 16 December 2023

We arrived around 1100, and almost immediately fell afoul of the probably corrupt decision by the Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport administrators to move the taxi rank from immediately in front of arrivals, to some obscure location far away, thereby providing a veritable shooting gallery of disoriented and nonplussed travellers for the Albanian mafia to pick off. I made an error. Confronted by one of the Albanians, reassuring me that the cost of riding with him into the city would be “the same” as a registered cab, I agreed, rather than telling him to fuck off, which is what I should have done.

We were comprehensively ripped off although, in the plus column, we didn’t have to wait in line and the car was nice. To be even more absurdly forgiving, our driver was actually quite pleasant and chatted away merrily throughout the ride.

Oh, well, irrespective of all that we were duly deposited on the pavement outside the Mantra on Kent, a lovely hotel with lovely staff, right in the heart of Darling Harbour and just two blocks from the QVB. We dumped our bags and went for a potter down to the Rocks.

We love the Rocks and especially the Saturday market; we have many happy memories from there. Today felt a bit lacklustre, though. The market isn’t what it once was. To me it felt smaller and more transactional. Prices were high. The man with the spray cans who used to paint surreal space scenes was gone. The guy who makes tiny glass statues from thin rods with a blow-torch was there, but his work space was tiny and he only seemed to be making one kind of thing.

So we wandered in one end, out the other, and went to find some coffee. Then I yielded to the inevitable and navigated us back to the QVB….

While Jo was in there, I went across the road for a potter around Abbey’s, then we found a little eatery for dinner and retired to our room quite early.

Sunday, 17 December 2023

Today was a low energy day. I think “everything” just caught up with us and it was a struggle to whip up the enthusiasm to do very much. In the absence of any clear alternative, I’m always a starter for the museum (the proper one, on the corner of William and College streets, not the Museum of Sydney which doesn’t interest me at all) so we decided to go to there. Fortunately, and I use that term advisedly, the route we chose to get there took us past any number of retail flesh-pots: QVB, Westfield, Pitt Street Mall…. Jo’s head went back, her nostrils flared, her hunting instincts aroused, but in the end it was Bared Footwear that undid us at the end of King Street, just opposite St James’s where I could see the park beyond, and thought we’d made it to safety.

At first I elected to just sit on a low concrete wall outside. How long does it take to wander around a shoe shop? Well, as it turns out, longer than my bum can endure sitting on a concrete wall. So I went in. Here I was faced with an animated conversation involving Jo, another customer, one of the sales women, and several pairs of shoes that Jo and the other woman had fetched from various corners of the store. The essence of the thing seemed to boil down to how many and which shoes they needed to buy and how many and which shoes they merely wanted to buy. Or something like that. The sales woman pityingly conveyed me to a chair then returned to help wrestle with the great shoe dilemma of ’23. Eventually it was all decided satisfactorily and I experienced a momentary surge of optimism that we were about to resume our walk to the museum, but, alas. This place has an upstairs….

To make a long story short, we did eventually get to the museum. Their dinosaur exhibit has been seriously enhanced since my last visit there, but the mineral gallery has been ruined by marketing. By that I mean only a fraction of the collection is on display, and that fraction now resides in arty and artfully under-lit display cases that provide nothing useful in the way of additional information and make it hard to see the specimens. Yet another triumph of style over substance.

Monday, 18 December 2023

Today we had a tour booked – the “Wildlife and Wine Tour” – leaving from the Sydney Marriott on Pitt Street at 0715. Thus, our first challenge of the day was to estimate how long it would take us to walk from the Mantra to the Marriott, approximately a kilometre, and to be up and ready in time to make the trek and arrive at the appointed hour.

It was one of those “small group” things, and there were about ten or a dozen of us all told. The minibus was pleasant enough and the driver’s non-stop commentary not entirely cringe-worthy. Mostly, but not entirely.

We have been to the Blue Mountains goodness knows how many times before and had zero interest in doing it again, and we had picked this particular tour largely if not wholly because it headed off in the opposite direction. The drive down the coast towards Wollongong was quite spectacular; Jo had never seen this part of Australia before and I had only once, very long ago, so I was keen to see it again.

There were several points of interest but the main one was a visit to an animal park where we could see kangaroos and koalas up close, and even feed them outselves. One of the more frisky koalas jumped from a branch on one tree to another, which rather surprised me. I’d never seen any that behaved that actively before. Ok, no: it is not capital W wildlife, but we didn’t have the time for that and as long as the animals are happy and well cared-for, I’m not a purist.

Then there was lunch at some place by the seaside, and after that we were off to a boutique winery for a tasting. On the table at the winery were some bowls of nibbles, including a few passionfruit. One of our party, a young woman, had never eaten one before, so the rest of us all encouraged her to give it a go and weren’t satisfied until she’d done so and sworn an oath they were now her favourite food of all time. (In fact, I think the words she actually used were “I wasn’t expecting that,” but it was close enough.) I mention this anecdote because the wine, itself, was unremarkable.

I think it was about 1800 when we got back to the Marriott, and began hiking back up Pitt Street to get back to our hotel. No doubt we picked up some dinner on the way, but I can’t remember now. A good day. I’d give anything to be able to relive it.

Tuesday, 19 December 2023

Today was the day actually set aside for shopping, as opposed to all the other days when shopping was purely incidental. I went back to Abbey’s, but even that little Paradise can only fill in so much of the day. The rest of the day was excruciating. But, again, I would give anything and everything to be able to do it again.

Wednesday, 20 December 2023

We’d set aside the day – or at least the morning – for a trip across the harbour to Taronga Zoo. It was alternately drizzling and bucketing down, but we decided to go anyway. I quite like the rain, myself; Jo was a bit more circumspect but willing to give it her best shot, no doubt figuring I’d “owe her one” if we got soaked and would have to quit my whinging about all the shopping.

We got to Circular Quay and enquired at the ticket booth. Well, bugger me! No need to buy a ticket any more: you just stick your credit card in the turnstile and it deducts the price of your ticket and let’s you through. When I think of all the hand-wringing angst over public transport cards (different cards for different services in different cities; what a fucking mess) back home, it makes me laugh. Why do we need any?

As we got out onto the wharf, we could see the iconic Manly Ferry, cutting its way to Circular Quay (Reckless, Australian Crawl, 1983). It gave me a little shiver.

Despite the rain, we had a great morning at the zoo. It was a familiar enjoyment to be scuttling from shelter to shelter in between downpours, cuddling under verandas, and peering out into the gloom. There were very few other visitors, presumably on account of the rain, and we felt like we had the run of the place to ourselves. Perhaps the highlight was stumbling upon an unscheduled feeding of the Tasmanian Devils, which neither of us had ever seen before, let alone out in broad daylight and positively showing off to their tiny audience.

Jo had her little jacket that kept the worst of the rain off; however, I was soaked to the skin by the time we made our way down through the park to the ferry, but I didn’t mind. We got back to the hotel eventually, showered to warm up and changed. Then, although I cannot remember for sure, I believe we may have wandered around the corner to the QVB, just to fill in a little time until dinner….

Thursday, 21 December 2023

It was wet again, today. We caught the Manly Ferry across the harbour and scuttled through the wharf and out onto Belgrave Street. Naively, I had assumed we were just going to mooch around and see what was what in the general area, but it soon became apparent that we were “going somewhere”. Belgrave became Pittwater Road, and still we went on. Eventually we arrived at a place called Assembly Label whereupon Jo vanished inside and I found a veranda to sit under for quite a long time. To be fair, she did shout me a coffee at the little café next door, before we began retracing our steps back to Market Lane and The Corso. We had lunch somewhere – I can’t remember the name of it now – where we went down a half-flight of steps into a warm, crowded place that seemed to offer a little bit of everything. The wait-staff were not on roller skates (not that I could see, anyway) but seemed to charge around the place at breakneck speed without them. It was all very convivial and I remember being well-fed, though the opposite of restful.

We came back in the mid-afternoon, and mooched back up Pitt Street, via the mall of course, before eventually ending up back at the Mantra.

Friday, 22 December 2023

Today we followed Park, then William, as far as Darlinghurst Road, then turning south to get to the Sydney Jewish Museum. I had been once before; Jo hadn’t, and was feeling some trepidation because even thinking about the holocaust upset her, and I’d told her some of the exhibits would be confronting.

When we arrived, we discovered there was a quite strong security requirement to enter the building; it was a bit like checking in for a plane flight. Of course we were conscious the heightened pro-Palestine protest movement in the wake of Israel’s arguably disproportionate response to the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023. (I say “arguably” because I’m not sure how I’d feel after decades of suicide bombings and rocket attacks.) We’d even had to skirt a protest in Hyde Park on the day we went to the Australian Museum. But the holocaust museum is essentially a memorial; who’d want to damage that? What a sad state of affairs.

Anyway, we got in and waited around for half an hour or so to join a guided tour, which I dropped out of in due course, although I hung around the fringes and listened a bit whenever our paths crossed. Generally, I prefer to look at things at my own pace, lingering here and there when something catches my interest, and moving through more quickly if I am not engaged. If the guide is only repeating what is on the exhibit labels then what is the point anyway? Jo saw it through. She was always much more patient than me.

I found the museum less captivating than in my previous visit. My recollection of that time was that the exhibits were more raw, and they affected me more deeply. Today the museum felt vaguely “sanitised” somehow, like they didn’t want us to see the worst bits. It was just a feeling; maybe I wasn’t looking properly.

Anyway, it was quite harrowing enough for Joanne who I think was pleased when it was over, although she did wander about with me for a while after the tour finished. When we emerged from the ghastly shadow of 1945, it was almost a surprise to find the sun was shining brightly and it was warm. We found lunch some place on Darlinghurst Road then wandered back in the direction of … well, yes. The QVB. I actually went in myself, on this occasion. It was heaving and horrible.

Saturday, 23 December 2023

We were feeling wiped out for no good reason, but it didn’t matter: We had to leave early to return home. Not even the remotest chance of nipping around the corner for a bit of sneaky retail.

We took a conventional cab to the airport. No mafia in sight.

Reflection