January 24, Tuesday
We’ve been a bit busy so there have been no entries since we arrived in Sydney. The Currans have kept us very very occupied.
The bus ride from Canberra was uneventful, though the stop of Goulburne, to get coffee (acceptable) at the local award-winning bakery, and two sausage rolls, was interesting in that a huge ram is stationed near the Hume Highway interchange, about 50 feet tall. It had been moved from downtown when the freeway was built and now sits over a 7-11 and a Shell station in a typical plot of urban sprawl.
We arrived at Strathfield, a huge suburban railway station, reminiscent of Clapham Junction or Secaucus to meet James and a quick run to their home in Burwood Heights, an established Sydney suburb. Strathfield itself is Koreatown, with streets of Korean grocery stores and restaurants. The smell of kimchee was quite exciting.
The first night we just spent the evening talking. Priscilla is starting a new job so she was a little worried about it, but it has gone well. She started yesterday. And Ella and Pia are growing up. Ella is six next week and Pia is eight. Both of course are delightful young ladies.
James cooked an exquisite piece of lamb and started us with a lovely shrimp dish with mild chili peppers on toast. A De Julia sauvignon blanc from Hunter Valley for the first course, and a Calambar Seppelt Shiraz from Victoria’s Grampians, mountains in the center of the state. Much more conversation and to bed.
Sunday we headed off to Manly. This is quite a trek because Sydney sprawls like most Australian cities over many hills and valleys away from the the Harbor. We took a suburban train to Circular Quay downtown. While Australians complain about their transit systems, Sydney’s trains are excellent. From Strathfield, the trains to downtown Sydney run no more than ten minutes apart, even on Sunday! We got off at Circular Quay to find the ferry to Manly almost ready to board, so we made our way through the crowd of Sunday beachgoers to get seats aboard outside.
The run across the Harbor is grand. Soaring over one side of Circular Quay behind the Rocks is the huge Harbor Bridge. Atop it stand two huge Australian flags, and along the walkway, cresting the arch, were dozens of people who walk over it, up to the very top, Not for us, but they look to be having a fine time. On the other side leaving the Quay, was Sydney Opera House. It’s beginning to show that it’s many years old, but it is still a very interesting structure. A titan of a cruise ship, the Rhapsody of the Seas was readying for a cruise at the Quay too. Those ships are gigantic and the Rhapsody is not one of the largest. It’s only 70,000 tons and only 300 meters long. It only holds 2400 passengers on its Australia-Alaska cruises. Only....
Manly is 40 minutes ride aboard a fast-moving ferry. Unlike Auckland, these ferries are not catamarans, but they are double-ended so they don’t need to turn around. They just arrive at the dock and then the skipper moves to the other wheelhouse. Debarking and embarking takes about 10 minutes.
Manly was a crush of people, though not overwhelmingly pressured. We walked the mile from the ferry to the beach where the local radio station was running a series of sports-events for the subteens. There were surf boat games in the distance and the waves were rolling in strong enough to surf on them with boards. The streets were decorated in preparation for Thursday’s Australia Day celebrations and there was a large amount of eye-candy around. Even a few speedos.
John had an Australian Burger, which comes with a slice of beet(root) and chips, Ben had a poppy-seed bagel with grilled chicken and vegetables. A good sandwich, but not a true bagel. John had a James Squire ale to go with his.
We walked back through the town, the girls got ice-cream and then off to the boat. Coming back across the harbor many groups of sloops were taking part in Sunday’s regatta. One of a group of spinnaker-powered sloops actually capsized in the harbor, but the two-man crew managed to right it.
We crossed paths with three tall ships too, coming to Sydney, we guess, for Australia Day. The first was coming into the harbor from the Pacific. We’d seen it from Manly beach, with all its sails full. The second was in the harbor and the third was moving under motor power with only its jibs up near Luna Park under the bridge.
A quick railway trip home from the Quay and then off to the Elms’ for dinner. Elwyn and Silvana, Priscilla’s parents, live in a huge bungalow with an Italianate garden designed by Silvana, who was born Italian.
They had been to Washington and we had enjoyed their company then. Silvana did a lovely Italian meal of olives to begin and then shrimp followed by Italian style eye round of beef and a huge Pavlova for dessert. We could get addicted to Pavlova, a sweet meringue topped with fruit and whipped cream--and a battlefield over possession between Ozzies and Kiwis.
Yesterday, Monday, Priscilla had to work, and the girls went to Silvana and Elwyn’s for the day, so James took us to see the University on its hill overlooking the city. We met the former premier of Western Australia, Jeff Gallop, as we crossed the quadrangle. He’s now professor of government at the University. A close friend of Kim Beasley, who’s Australian ambassador to the US. A very interested discussion of American politics with him.
The University was founded in the 1850s and is very grand. Its quads are more reminiscent of Princeton than Brown or Harvard, very gothic. Yesterday was registration day for the pharmacy school so there lots of students in lines, but not the hurry of students going to class.
The museum had a fascinating exhibit on the Etruscans, about whom little is really known, but it appears their language was not Indo-European and no one knows how its grammar worked. It has been written in Greek letters, so we have a rough approximation of how it might of sounded. Only about 400 words are known, though.
We had coffee, which met all specifications, at Toby’s with sandwiches and then walked through the Glebe section of town, passing an old closed-up department store, now student housing, called Grace Brothers! Are you being served?
Glebe is a very old neighborhood of colonial-era terrace houses, many very small. It’s clearly gentrifying but also quite ethnic and houses lots of students. The streets are narrow with the major ones lined with cafés, bookstores, upscale shops and, according to James, an occasional brothel.
Dinner last night started with Tasmanian camembert, which was superb with its fig jam spread. Then we moved on to the best Italian sausage from Summerhill with pasta and a Sangiovese. Dessert was ice cream. We also had a lovely Martinborough pinot noir too.
Priscilla’s dad, Elwyn, had volunteered to take us to Botany Bay. We took him up on it this morning to see where Captain Cook had landed and Captain Arthur Phillips brought the first of the convicts to settle New South Wales. Botany Bay today is a container ship port with hug vessels going in an out daily. But the area where Cook and Phillips visited and had the first fatal encounter with aborigines today is a national park.
It honors both the aborigines who saw their land taken by the Europeans and the Europeans who built the modern state.
Cook came to Botany Bay in 1770 and Phillips returned in 1788. The vessel did not stay, in fact moved up to Sydney where the first colony was built. Botany Bay, to Cook, appeared to have meadows and water, but the area he thought were meadows were marsh grass and the water supplies were insufficient.
We drove out to the headlands and looked out for whales, none to be seen today.
We also visited Laperouse, a town today, but originally the site where Capt. Lapérouse landed a few days after Phillips and left to be never heard of again. It’s believed his flotilla of ships went down in the Pacific in 1788. There is a monument in French to him, and a grave for the first European to die in Eastern Australia, a priest. Père Receveur.
We returned to Elwyn and Silvana’s home, came back with Priscilla and James and are readying ourselves for dinner at an Italian restaurant in Woolwich, the Cucinetta.
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