Monthly Archives: December 2009

Christmas Dinner and Boxing Day (2009)

By | | Australia
Leave a comment

We had an AMAZING buffet for dinner, seafood like you would not believe (snow crabs, cray fish, sushi, shrimp) but there was also beautiful salads and steak and roast pork. And the dessert buffet! We both ate waaaaaaay too much, eyes most definitely bigger than our bellies finally. And a nice bottle of champagne to go with it.

Feeling bagged full, we reckoned if we didnt go for a walk immediately, we would collapse into bed straight away, so changed into trainers and went across the road to Hyde Park. After a few moments, we went back to the room to pick up a camera as the place was full of bats. Not little ‘was that a bat, an owl, or just a seagull’ flying things, but proper, honest to goodness could be a Bat Signal bats. Loads of them. Google tells us that there are so many of them they were trying to cull them fairly recently.

Today (Boxing Day) we walked down to Circular Quay and then across the Harbour Bridge. Not up and over the bridge, just the standard pedestrian foot path. Some impressive sights to be seen there. Some excellent shots of the Opera House from the other side.

Later on, we decided to go out to Darling Harbour and see whats going on there – I had spotted it has a shopping centre open to 9pm, thats NINE AT NIGHT! We are so used to Perth closing at 5:30pm that shops open till 9pm are a huge novelty. (We have repeatedly mentioned The Fort being open till midnight on the run up to Christmas and how that would never happen in Perth)

On our way down a young guy ran across the road in front of us, slipped and cracked his head on the edge of the kerb. We tried to help him up, but he was totally spaced and just lay in a puddle in the gutter. After trying to make sure the passing cars didnt drive over him, we managed to get him moved, and spotted a lot of blood coming from the back of his head. Grabbed a passing bloke to phone an ambulance, and then the guys mother arrived (he had ran on ahead to get something when he fell). We managed to move him to in front of the Apple Store (The staff were closing up and checked he was OK rather than trying to move us along coz he might stain the glass 😉 ) He came round properly and was rather embarrassed about getting an ambulance, but he had bled a lot and didnt remember falling or being moved  so must have been very concussed. So we waited till the ambulance arrived before leaving them.

So, we got our walk round the harbour after that bit of excitement, and it looks amazing. Gonna spend some time there during the day! Just had some FAB room service food, and looking to head to bed. Carpe Deium once again!

ARGH DAMNIT. Bloody Weather.

By | | Australia, grrrr
Leave a comment

So, one of the recurring themes of our time in Australia is how god awful the weather is – especially combined with the crappy building quality.

We have spent so much of our time here in the pissing miserable wet, or cold to the bone that it really rankles. The thing is, of course, that we come from Scotland and are well used to a bit of cold and wet.

What causes the angst here is that we seem to be living amongst people who are in a constant state of bloody denial about the weather.

We had a new guy over from the UK for a few weeks – and when out walking for lunch, one of the Perth locals proceeded to tell him that it was sunny for 9 months of the year, and that you  could go for months without a cloud in the sky. When I called this as BS, they insisted that last year was unusually wet – when I pointed out that this year has been exactly the same… they tried to blame global warming (which, of course, doesn’t exist the rest of the time).

So, in classic style, here we are in Sydney for christmas/new year. And it’s raining. of course it’s bloody raining. When we get back to the UK, I will make it my life’s mission to find ever advert showing Australia as this sunny paradise, and add some bloody rainclouds to it.

At least we are in Sydney – a proper global city with stuff to do in the rain, rather than stuck in the arse end of nowhere. (where, ironically, it’s 30 and sunny today).

I could scream.

Christmas on Bondi Beach

By | | Australia, General Mumblings, Uncategorized
1 Comment

It’s been a pretty eventful couple of months. I have handed in my notice at RMAP, and it is probably a surprise to nobody that we are moving back to the UK!!

We are not there yet, but at this point, it looks like there isn’t a job for me back in Scotland (only Oxford) and as the whole point of moving back home is to be with friends and family… ending up 400 miles south isn’t what we had in mind.

Anyway, it seems that there will be enough interesting stuff happening to do some more blogging again (unlike back in Dullsville Perth), so it’s time to kick off the blog again.

We landed in Sydney yesterday (xmas eve) and are now prepping up for Hogmanay out on the Harbour. This is real bucket list country – yesterday we wandered down to the harbour to see the iconic bridge, and of course, the sydney opera house. The feeling of standing beside such an iconic, recognised the world over building was something else – almost as big a rush as seeing the pyramids.

A magical evening of cocktails sitting in the elegant bar, as some guy played christmas music on the piano, and a nice long lie.

We hit the gym for an epic session (not bob), got ready and headed out – Sydney’s public transport was largely running, and the train out to Bondi Junction was reasonably busy – then the buses (standing room only) out to Bondi Beach.

So… it’s basically like Irvine, or burntisland. Very much like burntisland, in fact, with the same fine white sand. And the way people are huddled around windbreaks trying to keep warm. In the rain.

As with many of our experiences of Australia, the weather has played a large part in making it entirely average. You can see even more so here than usual that the tourism people here earn their money ten times over by carefully picking which footage is used in advertising.

Anyhoo, the rain is likely to last until Thursday, so we may have a single good day out of our eight day holiday to enjoy the beach.

At the moment, we are sitting relaxing in our gorgeous hotel room waiting to head down for dinner – which will hopefully be rather nice, especialy after the “bondi burger experience” of lunch. shudder.