Today we got straight into tourist mode and jumped back onto the underground to take us back into the heart of Sydney, we only had a bit of a sketchy plan of what we were going to do today but this was plan enough for us! We got off at Martin Place one of the nearest stations to the harbour and where ‘it’ was all happening or so the guide book reliably informed us! When we departed our station we headed to the Hyde Park Barracks Museum. Funnily enough we had actually walked past this place yesterday on our meanderings!
The guide book had recommended the Barracks for a bit of a visit and it was cheap too, so this clinched the deal and in we went! Once again we found out on our travels that cheap does not necessarily mean shoddy as right from the start the entire place was both informative and quite interesting too. We were both given audio guides and armed with these off we set round the place. We found out about yet more prisoners sent over from the UK who had only ever stolen a loaf of bread or (Gosh no!) in more extreme cases pinched an egg or perhaps the valued orange, it seems once again that no prisoners sent from the UK to Oz ever committed any serious crimes ever, would you believe it! Well no, quite frankly I for one do not believe it, there will have been the odd case of orange stealing – as back in the UK to this day we did deport of lot of orange stealers – but as for murderers, looters, rapists we shipped em out quicker than you can say ‘cor blimey who’s nicked me fruit!, so Australia at least admit that you got some bad fruit along with the good!
Still it made no difference to us though as the place was ‘top drawer’ and followed you through the history of the building – which in places had been ‘peeled back’ – as well as the history of the many inhabitants that it had received as well. Some of the exhibits were interactive, that is you could actually lie on some of the hammocks which were made up exactly as they had been back in the day. This ‘interactivity’ was not only great for the odd photo but it was possibly the cause of me misplacing my sunglasses which my good wife nipped back to retrieve, she is not a bad old stick – and will possibly break my ribs if she reads this, possibly getting deported to Australia in the process, funny how things turn out eh!
Next though we had booked to go on one of the harbour cruises so from the barracks we now had quite a ways to walk – at quite a pace too – to make sure we made it to the wharf on time. It was very hot and Sydney is a busy old place and we even had to enlist the help of a good samaritan along the way to point us in the right direction but finally we reached Wharf 5 with enough time spare to buy ourselves a Mars bar apiece.
The boat which was going to take us around the harbour was very plush indeed as are most of the boats zipping about on the waters round here. So we picked ourselves out a prime position upstairs in the shade and readied ourselves for the off. It was a perfect day, the harbour looked amazingly bright and colourful in the bright sunshine and the amount of sea-faring traffic was quite astounding too – lots of boats, yachts, ferries, cruisers and even the odd bathtub (well maybe not those but you get the picture). The skies mirrored the water too as there were lots of jets flying from the nearby airport, helicopters off on sightseeing trips and even the odd seaplane for those lucky tourists with a few extra bucks to spend!
The trip was for two hours and it took us from the wharf under the iconic Sydney Harbour bridge, past the iconic Opera House and even as far as the perhaps not-so-iconic Fort Dennison but it was all really good fun. Halfway round we picked up some tourists from Asia who proceeded to take up any chair devoid of even a partial bum cheek and those who weren’t fighting for seats seemed to be staggering about as they were heavily weighed down by lots of cameras with very long lenses, so with something akin to ‘camera envy’ I hid my wee click and play and promised to feed it whoever the other bigger cameras were on! It may not be the biggest but for some of the cameras being carried about I think we would have needed another backpack! On our return journey which was still frightfully hot it was quite nice to receive the complimentary free drink from one of the many stewards as we admired the scenery from the returning angle.
Once back on terra firma and after we had regained our more landlubbery legs we decided the sea air had given us a bit of a hunger so went off searching for foodstuffs, so Chinatown down the way from the wharf seemed the obvious choice. As ever, it took us quite a while to decide what we wanted and were we would eat, which as most of the menus seemed to offer similar fare seemed quite a waste of time but eventually we picked a place and settled back to eat some noodle soup … mmmm. Thinking we were still in Asia and had the immunity we had built up as we travelled round the place, we ordered the hot noodles, however the waitress being a kindly soul convinced us poor (stupid!) travellers to take the toned down version as the ‘hot’ may be just a bit too hot for our palettes. At first we cursed her and her meddling ways but then the noodles came and even this ‘toned down’ version of noodley goodness managed to have me in tears by the first sip! Where was the volcano behind the counter that this lava was being extracted from … okay maybe a little over the top but you get the picture. How quickly our tastebuds have forgotten that we used to enjoy chillies and the like, I suppose we must have built up a resistance to the heat or we got used to it, either way we were not used to it now and it burnt lordy how it burnt (lol)!
Mouth well and truly burnt out it was time to venture back ‘home’ so we returned to Elis’ explaining about our day out. Good soul that she is, she invited us out but by this time we were absolutely knackered, city life definitely takes it out of one! It was not all beddybys for us though as for a while we watched a huge storm taking place out to sea with lightning flashes lighting up the sky it was great until we realised that it was heading our way so we hot-footed it back to the safety of our little campervan.
Our Excellent Adventure! 