Arriving in Sydney
Do you come from a land down under?
January 1999

My first few weeks in Australia were largely spent trying to readjust to a western style of existence that still managed to be noticeably different than where I come from.

Instead of being able to slip comfortably back into a more identifiable culture after the significant differences of Asia though, I found myself still metaphorically at sea with a culture that should have been fairly familiar.

But what is Capsicum? Why are drinks called Schooners, which as far as I was concerned was a type of oceangoing vessel? It also didn't help that for the first few days I spent my time at the Original Backpackers in Kings Cross, which is not one of the better areas of Sydney. This was rather disturbingly confirmed one morning when one of my dormmates wandered past after an unfortunate previous night.

I've forgotten his name, but the important fact was this guy was big. About 6'3" and built like the proverbial brick privy; he didn't look like the kind of guy people would consider messing with, but a large and nasty-looking gash down the side of his head seemed to indicate otherwise.

I asked what had happened and he explained he'd been out drinking in some pub nearby and had been toddling home in the small hours on his own. Two guys had stopped him to ask him for the time and before he knew what was happening, they'd got him in a arm lock and smacked his head off an adjacent wall.

In his resulting confusion they'd gone through his pockets and nicked his stuff. I remember distinctly looking at the poor bloke and thinking "If he gets mugged and beaten up at 6'3" and I'm 5'4"....".

I promptly moved to Bondi...

Bondi wasn't much better to be honest. The night life was so-so and the hostel I was staying in was more like a Bed 'n' Breakfast and so I didn't get to meet many people. Which is why these first few shots of Sydney are of beaches and landmarks. For some considerable time I just wandered about and tried to get a feel for the city...

My first assumption to be proved wrong concerned the weather. For some imbecile reason I had gained the assumption that the Australian weather was fine and sunny pretty much all the time. Hey... I was naive, but when Neighbours and Crocodile Dundee are your sole research texts, what can you expect?

So one of the things I completely failed to bring with me was any wet weather gear. Hell, I didn't even have a decent jacket. Despite being in the boyscouts I have never "been prepared" in my entire life. For some perverse reason I practically take pride in it...

Anyway it rained solidly for my first week which wasn't a barrel of giggles. The photos at the top of this page were the first I could take where it looked remotely sunny, by which time as I say, I'd moved to Bondi. Obviously when I went into Sydney harbour the bridge and Opera house were the first things I had to take photos of. It may have cost 102 million dollars, taken 14 years to complete and still be too small to actually house an opera but it's an impressive landmark nonetheless.

Australia Day

The Australia day celebrations occurred shortly after I arrived and consisted of lots of people milling about. There were some events I think but the sheer number of people stopped me from seeing most of them. The day is supposed to commemorate the landing of the first fleet in Australia on the 26th of January 1788, but this fact totally failed to register at the time. I only know now as I read about it in Lonely Planet some considerable time later.

Then again I was recently trying to explain to someone that Fireworks Night in Britain commemorates the attempt by Guy Fawkes to destroy Parliament with gunpowder barrels. Let's face it, that's something you'd be hard-pressed to establish merely by watching a few feeble council fireworks displays whilst holding a sparkler. I guess that if something's taken for granted so much by locals, folk forget that other people may not have a clue of what's going on...

Anyway, in the end I sat in Darling Harbour and watched boats plod in and out whilst an announcer told a rapt audience what they were. I took some photos which I've done my best to clean up, but I'm afraid they're still rather bad. At some mythical time in the future I may redo them from the original digital negatives but given the number of other things I need to do it may never happen.

The evening picked up though when I met an attractive lass and went to the pub instead. I'd had enough doing the tourist thing for one night frankly...

Up next: More fish than you can shake a stick at. It's the Sydney Aquarium.

© Barny Russell 2005