Sydney

We left Simon and the Aussie bush, last week and made a beeline for Sydney.
With only 5 weeks and over 3000km to cover in this country, we have had to put in a few ‘big’ driving days. Ten hours after taking our last breath of mountain air, we were navigating the freeways, toll ways, motorways, highways and byways of Sydney, the biggest city in Australia.

With only one wrong turn, we made it to Matt’s place in the heart of the urban jungle (Matt is an Aussie friend of Kathleen’s who she met while working in Banff last winter).

It is always neat to arrive somewhere in the dark and have your true whereabouts revealed in the morning light. From Matt’s front yard we could see the ocean down below through a maze of streets and real estate. Matt was a great tour guide. He took us to North Head, a spot over looking Sydney Harbour with spectacular views before taking us into the city on the Manly ferry. He was patient with us as we went snap-happy with the Harbour Bridge and Opera House, even more patient as we explored the weekend markets downtown, and provided us with a wealth of information about the history of Sydney and other cool and interesting facts. It really made me think about Toronto…I don’t think I would be able to do the same if someone came to my city. I could take them around, but it made me realize that I really don’t know much about the history of the city where I grew up.
After a day of ‘big city’, we were ready to get into the surf. We rented a few boards and wetsuits and headed down to Manly Beach. The swell was BIG as there were some weather systems moving (which resulted in almost a week of rain from this day onward) and the waves rolling in were also BIG. But Matt knew the beach well. There was a sand spit under water at one end of the beach where the waves would be smaller and more manageable. We spent the afternoon playing in the whitewash, a perfect place to start to get the hang of the being propelled by the water without the risk of being munched in a giant wave, and working on our leg muscles, resisting the constant vacuum of the outgoing waves. Exhausted, but that good exhausted-after-swim feeling of just having used every muscle in your body, we dried off and tucked into fish and chips from a place that has been serving fish to salty surfers for over 50 years.