Sydney People & Culture

For the quintessential Aussie experience, head to Manly and northern beaches...the types of people you'll meet and the lifestyle here is all Home and Away...

Lane cove is a quite suburb 10 km from the heart of Sydney . I you are in the area the Lane Cove River tourist park is a must do. The Tourist Park is a gateway to a multitude of tourist attractions and activities at other National Park’s in the area. Take a bushwalk in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and see Aboriginal rock engravings and hand stencils by the Guringai people. Climb up to the beautifully restored Barrenjoey Lighthouse at Palm Beach to experience one of Sydney ’s most breathtaking views. Cruise the waters of Pittwater by ferry and enjoy its steepsided river valleys and coastal stretches. Buy souvenirs, books, toys and posters featuring Australian native and cultural heritage at the Bobbin Head Information Centre. From the Tourist Park you can walk or drive into the National Park to enjoy a lunchtime picnic or barbecue at one of 35 picnic sites. Hire a rowboat and paddle along the tranquil Lane Cove River , or mountain bike along 40kms of designated bushland maintenance trails. Show the kids injured wildlife in rehabilitation at Kukundi Wildlife Shelter. Or watch them at play while enjoying coffee and cake at the riverside café. The best restaurant for me in Lane Cove is a small Italian restaurant called “Carlo’s Place”. It is located at the top of Longueville Road in Lane Cove. The place is run by a jolly and jovial Italian named Carlo who is also the Master Chef and is ably assisted by his wife Sonia. Great food, lovely ambience, small place but has a very homely feel to it, allround good experience.

For a quick and cheap option to see some of Sydney's world famous harbour - take the ferry to Manly and hang out with the beautiful people for lunch at the Manly Hotel. You can't get better food and closer to the water than this!

As I mentioned back in Kuala Lumpur, Tanya has never really been one for big cities. However, we had a couple of nights stopover in Sydney before heading for the Gold Coast and northern Queensland, and I felt sure that she would enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of Darling Harbour and the waterfront restaurants and bars . It's strange how memories can get warped over time, and I was convinced that I remembered walking along George Street looking in all the shops and had told Tanya that she would be in for a shopping experience not unlike that of Oxford Street in London. Quite where I got this memory from, I have no idea - Sydney has always been altogether more relaxed than London about everything, and there certainly wasn't anywhere even vaguely reminiscent of Oxford Street (although there actually is a street called Oxford Street in Sydney, just to confuse matters). I felt ever so slightly foolish, walking along George Street with Tanya, waiting for the packed shopping areas to turn up and becoming more and more confused. I still have no idea where I was thinking of. In terms of shopping, Sydney doesn't really seem to have any particularly centralised shopping districts - at least, not in the same way as we think of shopping areas back home. Rather, Australian towns and cities usually have a relaxed pedestrianised mall which runs for a couple of blocks and contains smaller shops and perhaps one or two department stores. Serious shopping in Sydney seems to be contained in a couple of indoor shopping centres rather than on the streets themselves, which does give the city a more relaxed feel but sometimes means you can wander for quite a while wondering where all the shops are! On our first night, I left Tanya to sleep off the flight in our hotel room and went out to get my bearings and find the local store. After wandering around for some time I returned with nothing more than the location of a small 7-11 style convenience store on the corner, and a story about a young man who called across the street to ask me if I knew the way to Paddington and, when I called back that I was a tourist here myself, went on to suggest that I might like to think about getting a hair cut. Apparently everyone's a critic, even on the other side of the world! One thing that is very easy to do in Sydney is to get onto any number of organised tours of natural attractions in the area, by jumping on a coach at the modern and highly tourist oriented Sydney coach station. From here, if you so wish, you can even embark on a month long tour of the entire country - assuming, of course, you've brought a few sacks of gold with you to pay for such an extravagance. Although the Blue Mountains do sound as though they should be something out of a fantasy novel by the likes of Tolkein, they are in fact a collection of sandstone ridges to the west of Sydney, and Tanya and I got up early on our second day and made our way to the coach station to join a sightseeing tour. The Blue Mountains are not, however, everything they seem. In the well versed Australian tradition of making everything sound as grand as possible in the hope that people will come from far and wide, the only part of the Blue Mountains which has anything to do with mountains is, in fact, the name. What we actually have here is an extraordinarily large plateau into which nature has stamped its mark by carving out gorges nearly three quarters of a kilometre deep. The small town of Katoombais home to a number of attractions to which tourists flock waving large quantities of cash, of which by far the most well known is the Scenic Railway. Part of the larger and even more grandly named Scenic World, the railway claims to be the steepest cable-pulled funicular in the world - and having ridden it twice, once on my first tour of Australia back in 1995 and again on my tour with Tanya in 2002, I would be inclined to agree. I have, however, also ridden on a cable railway with a similar claim in the United States - so I usually take these things with a pinch of salt. All the same, if you want to come as close as any normal person is ever likely to come to experiencing G force in an earth-based vehicle, you would do worse than ride the Katoomba Scenic Railway! Originally constructed as an aid to coal mining operations in the nineteenth century, the track runs down the cliff at an incline of 52 degrees over a four hundred metre distance - something which really does have to be experienced. The train trundles down the gorge at a leisurely pace - but you still feel a little as though you may well be about to die, especially when you leave the safety of the station and, after a few seconds, the surrounding rock walls of the tunnel disappear and you emerge into the forest on the edge of the cliff and feel as though you're surrounded by sky and dropping at an alarming rate down towards the bottom of the gorge. It's all an illusion, of course, and the train is being pulled slowly along on a cable, but it can be quite an alarming experience if you're not expecting it. As is the case in Kuranda, of which I will be speaking later in the book, visitors to the Blue Mountains can travel one way on the railway and return by cable car on the originally named Scenic Skyway. Already offering a death defying but beautifully peacefuljourney across the gorge and over the Katoomba Falls, the latest innovation to the cable car system has been to completely replace all the old cars, originally installed in 1958, with a state of the art 84 person cabin. The new Skyway boasts an electrostatic glass floor which has the disturbing habit of becoming slowly more transparent as the cabin makes its way across the gorge, until many of the passengers are seemingly defying gravity and hovering in the air above a two hundred metre drop. It was often difficult to get people of a slightly nervous disposition to ride in a cable car before - if you have friends like this and want to persuade them that a ride on the Katoomba Scenic Skyway is a great way to spend the afternoon, it's probably best not to mention that there won't appear to be a floor to stand on by the time you're half way across! At the base of the railway, it's possible to follow a winding walkway along the cliff face and through the forest to the base station of the Skyway. This walk takes visitors across the Katoomba Falls, where many stand along the bridge and look over the edge and get ever so slightly wet. Along the way, you can even stop off for a sip of Blue Mountains spring water at the Blue Mountains spring. And after the descent on the railway, a relaxing walk in the forest is probably just what most people need! Not content with scaring the willies out of tourists by plummeting them down the gorge on a 52 degree incline or taking the floor away while they're innocently making their way across it on a cable car trying to enjoy the waterfall, by the time I returned to the Blue Mountains in 2002 Scenic World had also spent millions of dollars on creating their latest attraction - the Sceniscender.This is not, as the name might suggest, any sort of activity which involves sending scenic postcards, but rather an altogether more spectacular way of descending from the shop to the bottom of the gorge two hundred metres below. Hence the name - a contraction of "Scenic Descender". The Sceniscender claims to be the steepest cable car in the world in the same way as the railway is the steepest funicular - it really does seem as though Katoomba has something of a penchant for getting people up and down as fast as possible. The most famous natural attraction of the Blue Mountains is probably the so-called Three Sisters. The guides, always happy to tell tall tales, will tell you the story of three sisters - Meehni, Wimlah and Gunnedoo - who entered into a forbidden love with men from another local tribe. In the battle that followed, the tribal elders used great magic to turn the sisters to stone to protect them from the fighting - but then the elders were killed in battle and nobody else knew how to turn them back. Unfortunately, so-called Australian dreamtime stories abound in this part of the world and it is sometimes hard to know which ones are actually based on Aborigine belief and which are totally made up for the tourist industry. General consensus has it that this one is almost certainly made up, not least of all because no explanation is given as to how exactly turning somebody to stone would increase them in size to that of a sandstone monolith several hundred metres tall! I've always wanted to have the time to just walk around in these places at my own pace - to park up and spend the day wandering the forest trails, looking out for wildlife hiding in the bush and exploring everything the area has to offer. Unfortunately, the main problem with Australia is that everywhere is so incredibly remote and the only real public transport outside the cities are the Greyhound Pioneer buses which run from city to city without stopping along the way - so the only way to get to places such as the Blue Mountains without hiring a car is to join a tour, which always means being back on the bus after a couple of hours. In fact, the Blue Mountains is part of a larger World Heritage Site and is surrounded by National Park land - so you could quite easily park up the car and spend the best part of a month getting hopelessly lost in the forests and come out of it not having even seen a fraction of what the region has to offer. Instead, those of us with limited time on our hands usually end up seeing what we can on a limited day tour, walking along a boardwalk with dozens of other tourists, pointing at things which millions of other people have seen before us and saying "Ooh" in a convincing voice. They say that just one lifetime isn't enough to see everything the world has to offer - I would take that a step further and say that one lifetime isn't even enough to see what Australia has to offer. I won't go into details here about the sights and sounds of Sydney, as I will be doing that elsewhere in this book - but one thing worth mentioning is that I did manage to take the opportunity of catching up with someone I met out here on my previous trip. Sherry is the cousin of a friend of mine back home, and during my 1999 trip I had met up with her briefly and she had introduced me to some of the sights, including the beautiful Victoria Building - a place full of domed ceilings and stained glass, which would probably have been even more impressive if it hadn't been for the fact that somebody had decided to turn it into one of those walk-through shopping centres where every little olde-worlde shop sells clothes or gadgets. In 1999, I had phoned Sherry upon arriving in Australia and arranged to meet her outsideHMV, which turned out to be in the basement of a shopping centre in Pitt Street Mall. As I had, at that stage, absolutely no idea what she looked like, I was understandably worried that I would be spending a large part of my afternoon making a fool of myself by walking up to complete strangers in the centre and asking if they were expecting to meet a friend of their cousin back home in England. As it turned out, I only had to endure a strange look from one person that I did this to, who obviously thought I was on some sort of blind date, before Sherry came marching out of the crowd and explained that she had known immediately exactly who I was because the camera bag hanging from my shoulder had "tourist" written all over it. Although not literally, of course. We had lunch in one of the larger food courts Sydney had to offer, and Sherry gave me some pointers as to where I should be heading during my stay in Australia and what I should and shouldn't spend my time seeing. She also told me how refreshing it was to be able to have a conversation with somebody who understood the British sense of humour, and it got to the stage where she was almost thanking me every time I said anything mildly sarcastic, something which I really hope didn't say too much about my conversational skills! I made a note to try not to say anything too sarcastic to any Australians just in case they didn't understand my sense of humour and I should find myself leaving the building quickly via the window. On our last night before moving on to the Gold Coast, Tanya and I called Sherry up and arranged to meet at a waterfront restaurant on Darling Harbour for a meal. I hadn't eaten on the harbour before, and it seemed to me like spending an evening at one of the more up-market riverside venues in London. After the sun goes down, Darling Harbour is quickly surrounded by lights as a myriad of cafes, restaurants and wine bars open their doors to everyone from students looking to get drunk to well dressed diners out for an expensive meal. As the moon glints on the water and ferries continue to come and go from the many docks surrounding the harbour, seats are brought out onto the pedestrian walkways around the waterfront, and by seven or eight o'clock the place is a hub for the night people of Sydney. There aren't many places where you enjoy a meal while watching the ferries come and go, and then take a stroll around the harbour, stopping to watch street artists painting portraits for tourists and entertainers keeping the crowds entertained with juggling and magic before walking home through the Chinese gardens. Darling Harbour by night offers a different side to Sydney, somewhere where I would probably spend most of my evenings were I to be lucky enough to live here. From the extensive menu, which was brought to us on a forklift truck due to the sheer size of it, I erred on the side of caution and chose the fish and chips, picking it on recommendation from the waitress. It was delicious, but alas, as is often the case in Australia, I am unlikely to evercome across the exactly the same dish again - even when travelling down under. You see, one thing that you can always be sure of in both Australia and New Zealand is that "Fish and Chips" means a different thing wherever you go. Back home in England, if you don't specify what you want when ordering fish, you'll probably get Cod. On the other side of the world, you pretty much get whatever the particular restaurant feels like serving you - I honestly don't think I've ever had the same thing twice. Often, you're greeted on arrival by a poster the size of the wall displaying all of the hundreds of fish available across the continent and pretty much cross your fingers and hope for the best. My favourites, since you ask, are Red Snapper, Barramundi and some delicious but nevertheless unidentifiable nuggets of fish which Tanya and I got from a small fish shop in New Zealand where the owner strongly resembled Joe Mangle from Neighbours.You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer or www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

It's been the season to be jolly for some time now, but the difference would seem to be that the Australians have noticed. Back in the UK, all the shops had already started selling Christmas cards before I left but The Thais, being mainly Buddhist, naturally wouldn't know Christmas if it came up and slapped them in the face with a wet fish. Hong Kong is slightly more prepared and already has all the buildings covered in neon greetings which light up the sky at night, but it's mainly the ex-pat community which celebrates it seriously. So it's really nice to find that Australia has the season's greetings coming out of its ears. It is, of course, slightly surreal that while the weather here at the moment is boiling hot and everyone is walking around in Tee shirts and with surfboards tucked under their arms, the shops are full of snowmen, reindeer and jolly old men in white furry beards and red overcoats. Australia strikes the visitor as a very different place as soon as you arrive. It appears to be full of places with wonderful names like (and I'm not making these up) Booby Island and Yorkie's Knob, to which tour guides called Kylie will gladly take you to watch real Aborigines doing traditional painting in the outback - Even though you know perfectly well that said natives are probably going to hop straight back into their Mercedes after you've gone and head back to their luxury homes in the Blue Mountains. This might sound slightly cynical, but I should point out that I came here once before on a coach tour in 1995 and learned a lot from speaking to local people - people, I should say, who have to be some of the warmest, most welcoming folks you are ever likely to meet. If there's one thing guaranteed to bring you back to Oz again and again (and there are many others, believe me), it's the people. Friendly doesn't even cut it - I'm sure it's the weather, but it really is so refreshing to be made to feel so welcome by a whole country full of people, especially when I come from the UK where you generally can't look at the headline on a newspaper on a street stall without being asked in a gruff voice "so you gonna buy that then, or what?". Australia is also full of wonderful creatures that don't resemble anything else on Earth, contains some of the most beautiful scenary you could wish for, and is a country where you have to drive for hundreds of miles to find another living being that isn't fluffy and doesn't greet you by going "baaaa". There is a town I came across on my previous trip which greets the traveller with a sign which reads " Population 250 (2 people, 248 sheep) ". They also have a sense of humour second to none here, and actually understand sarcasm as a form of wit which is always a bonus for us Brits. The Australian banknotes are colourful, to say the least. Each value is a different vibrant colour. Deep red, bright yellow, deep purple - buying something with cash is like an explosion in a paint factory. The notes are also made of a form of plastic with a transparent window in the middle to deter forgery, which is unique in any currency I've encountered but such a ridiculously good idea that I can't understand why nobody has borrowed the idea - screw a ten dollar note up into a ball and let go and it springs back to it's original shape and pristine condition, no dirty wrinkled money here. But of course, everything in Australia has to be slightly surreal in some way so a good idea like this has to come with strings attached. In the case of the Australian dollar (originally known as the Royal back in the sixties until this name proved unpopular), this string is the fact that there has been no coin to represent anything less than 5 cents since the beginning of the 1990s. Now, you might think that this would logically mean that retailers would price all the items on their shelves at values which divide into 5 cents, but no! You will still see items priced at 1.99 or 3.98 or whatever, amounts which you cannot physically pay - it is, believe it or not, left entirely up to the shop whether they insist that you pay more than you actually owe and keep the difference, or round down. Go into a shop, buy something for 4.99, hand over a five dollar note and stand there waiting for your change while the shop assistant looks at you as if to say "What?" I did, it's great fun. There's that good old British sarcasm again... Christmas in Oz is very tempting. As we flew in over glinting lakes and through clear blue skies, I knew that this was where I wanted to be at the start of the last year of the Millennium. England is on the other side of the world: I am going to get the chance to swim with Dolphins, refer to complete strangers as "Blue" with absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, and generally have a great time slapping shrimps onto barbies. In Sydney, I caught the free shuttle bus to my hotel, checked in and fell straight into bed. I hadn't slept for 48 hours straight, and the last time I was in Sydney I had managed to get up for breakfast at 6pm and baffle the waiter in the restaurant by eating Cornflakes while everybody else looked at me curiously over their three course dinners. In the evening, feeling refreshed, I thought I'd take a wander and get my bearings and discovered that my hotel is in Paddington and is just down the road from Oxford Street, Marylebone, Kings Cross and Bakers Street. I feel right at home. On my first trip to a local McDonalds, the woman in front of me asked for a McChicken Sandwich and I could swear the assistant asked her if she would like it to be made with real Chicken. I'm sure this must be some local expression which I do not yet understand, but exactly what the hell is an artificial Chicken? The traffic crossings in Sydney are interesting. After pressing the button and waiting something like 5 minutes for the lights to change, they give me about three seconds to cross before changing back, hardly enough time for the cars to actually stop. Little white images of people are drawn onto the road at all the pedestrian crossings, and I haven't yet figured out whether this is a helpful attempt on the part of the Australian government to tell me where to cross the road, or whether they are all chalk outlines drawn by the police whenever a tourist gets run over by a bus. During the night, all hell broke loose in the sky. Thunder and lightening like I'd never heard in my life kept me awake for hours. I was sure I would awaken in the morning to find myself on a different continent with a dog called Toto - when I dared to draw back the curtains to peer out, the sky was alight with the most incredible electrical storm and the road outside was awash. Come the morning, though, the roads were all bone dry, the sun was hot, and there was a bus outside waiting to take me on a complementary city tour for the day. That's one of the most remarkable things about this continent - if you're out and about and it starts to rain, don't let it worry you. The rain will probably be warm, and you'll probably be bone dry and steaming within two minutes of it stopping anyway! On my first full day in Sydney, I took an orientation tour which promised to briefly show me the sights and then leave me to find my own way back to anywhere I found inspiring. Our driver took us across the famous harbour bridge to Milsons point, from which panoramic views of the harbour and opera house could be seen, and across the Spit Bridge (which, disappointingly, was not crowded with people spitting over the side) to a small district called Seeforth. We drove through scenic Manly, where our driver thought it important to point out the Manly Girls School, which sounded to me like a finishing school for Tom-Boys, as well as showing us the surfing beach at Bondi.
I have to say that Bondi Beach impressed me a lot more than it did when I was here in 1995. For some reason, I remember being distinctly unimpressed after what everybody had told me about the place - but it's obviously been cleaned up quite a lot since then and was actually quite impressive. Nevertheless, it's still nothing like the huge mile long strip of golden sand covered in bronzed bodies and surf dudes that we are led to believe from well edited television, and in my opinion there are better beaches than Bondi even round the Sydney area, but nevertheless I had time to stroll along sweating buckets and doing some western style shopping which I haven't managed to do for a while. The orientation tour finished with a drive around the inner city including Kings Cross, the entertainment centre and casino at Darling Harbour, Chinatown and various other places which I made notes to visit over the next few days if I got the chance. The tour also included a harbour luncheon cruise at which the driver introduced me to another passenger called Monica (As in Monica from Friends, as opposed to Monica from the Whitehouse, she was keen to point out), with whom I shared a meal and discussed the best places I should see while I am here as it turned out that she had already done most of it and was on her way out of the country as I was on my way in. The captain, with only a massive amount of prompting from us, allowed Monica and I onto the bridge and probably broke every rule in the book by allowing us to take it in turns to sail the boat around for a bit. The captain seemed very much to enjoy us both having small panic attacks every time another vessel or the Sydney Harbour Bridge came anywhere within a mile or so of us! Yesterday, I wandered down to The Rocks , the old area of Sydney harbour front, to see if it was as I had left it. All the memories came flooding back as I walked along George Street, through the shopping district to the harbour - Circular Quay was unchanged, apart from a few new hoardings advertising the Olympic Games for Sydney 2000. Circular Quay is where all the ferries go from, backs onto both the Opera house and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and very much represents the modern waterfront entertainment and shopping side to Sydney. The Rocks , on the other hand, is Sydney's birthplace and as such is full of beautiful old buildings proudly displaying plaques dating them or showing off previous occupants. Most, of course, are now occupied by modern shops, chic boutiques and roadside coffee shops - but local planning rules don't allow much change here so the area retains pretty much it's original charm even if you know there's a McDonalds hidden away inside one of these old buildings. The Rocks is very much the side of Sydney that I would like to see more of, it represents the world that is being pushed aside and trampled upon by modern skyscrapers and high-rise apartment blocks. There is a square here, where a band plays at lunchtime to locals and tourists drinking Cafe Late outside coffee shops or browsing the shop windows. Even McDonalds has seemingly decided to pander to local sensibilities, and has opened up a McCafe here where you can buy French pastries and cakes so you can pretend to be posh for a moment while eating your Big Mac. There are only three places in Australia where you do not actually own the land you live on - The Rocks being one of them. Due to it's historical value, the government can technically come along and turf you out whenever they like in the interests of keeping the area looking the way they want it - so it's no good trying to turn your charming cake shop into a nightclub. There should be more places like this, more governments willing to think along these lines and keep these places from being lost - although it hasn't always been this way. It seems almost unthinkable now, strolling through the cobbled streets, that it was as recently as 1970 that the Australian Government were seriously planning to tear the whole area down and build office blocks - and only an outcry from just about everybody in the hemisphere caused them to instead declare the area as historically significant and move on to some other harebrained scheme. This from a government which, until recently, imposed a blanket ban on buildings over 4 stories within the city for aesthetic reasons. In fact, the famous Park Hyatt Hotel in The Rocks is only 4 stories high, can only accommodate a select few at a time, and will cost you several hundred dollars a night. So there go my plans for a night in the nice part of town! I strolled around the Quay in the afternoon and looked at the Opera House, although to be honest it does suffer rather strongly from the fact that its image is on every card and every picture of Sydney you are ever likely to see. Unlike the Grand Canyon or the Great Barrier Reef, it just isn't one of those places that looks that much more spectacular in person - you really can't say "Ah, but wait until you see the Opera House for real" because it pretty much looks exactly as you had expected it to and can be something of an anticlimax. In the typical surreal style I've come to expect from Australia, the Opera House was designed in 1957 by a Danish architect called Jorn Utzon, who made a few basic sketches, sent them in to a competition and was presumably totally blown away to find that he had won the opportunity to design what would become one of the world's most well known and photographed landmarks. The problem was that this all went to his head a little and his final design turned out to be far more complex than anyone had imagined - it was over two decades before the Opera House was finished, during which time those in power changed and Utzon found himself arguing about his designs with people who didn't like them much. As a result, and also partly because Utzon's original design was too costly and too complex to build as he had envisioned it, what we see today is an amalgam of his ideas and a total redesign of the inside which probably doesn't bear much resemblance to the original vision. I came back along George Street, crossing onto Liverpool Street and making my way to Darling Harbour. I hadn't realised how near it was to Circular Quay - about a ten minute walk. When I was here a few years ago, my hotel was so close to the Quay that I nearly always took the ferry. Darling Harbour was originally designed and built as recently as 1988, and is the ultra modern side to Sydney. This is where you will find a multitude of shopping opportunities in the Harbourside Centre, a behemoth of glass and metal that manages to dominate an entire side of the harbour and contains a whole level of little Cafes and restaurants, each representing a different country and cuisine. I had hoped to pop in for a Coffee and Croissant in a quiet corner of France, but for some reason the entire complex was closed off and covered in scaffolding and builders drinking tea as is so often the case when I really want to see something - so I strolled into the harbour front park and sat on a bench by a fountain in the middle of a lake, baking in the heat and watching people whiz by on roller-skates. Australia has an amazing way of making you never want to go home.
New on the harbour front since my last visit is the IMAX theatre, and apparently a new multi-million dollar Night-club which has just opened, but they've obviously spent so much money on the insides that they haven't thought to leave any over to make it visible from the outside in any way, so after spending an hour looking for it I gave up. The guy at my hotel reception - fountain of all knowledge - tells me that the club holds 2500 people and is the place to be seen in Sydney. Always assuming it wants to be seen itself. One thing I've noticed since arriving in Sydney is that the advertising on hoardings and bill-boards for the 2000 Olympics seems to have become a lot more low-key than it was the last time I was here in 1995 - rather strange considering just how close we're getting to the event. At the moment, most of the hoardings are advertising the upcoming Gay Pride Mardi-Gras, which will be happening at the beginning of February - there is very little mention of the Olympics at all. So, have I got anything bad to say about Sydney? Well, the only thing that has put a damper on my visit so far are the profusion of notices pinned hap-hazardly on every wall of every building around Paddington, Oxford Street and the outer suburbs which read " Have you seen this girl? Last seen vicinity of Hyde Park. Parents desperately worried. Please call… ".
This does bring me back down to Earth. For all its good points, in many ways Sydney is no different from any other big city the world over.My complete journals are at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and /globalwanderer2

Lane cove is a quite suburb 10 km from the heart of Sydney . I you are in the area the Lane Cove River tourist park is a must do. The Tourist Park is a gateway to a multitude of tourist attractions and activities at other National Park’s in the area. Take a bushwalk in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and see Aboriginal rock engravings and hand stencils by the Guringai people. Climb up to the beautifully restored Barrenjoey Lighthouse at Palm Beach to experience one of Sydney ’s most breathtaking views. Cruise the waters of Pittwater by ferry and enjoy its steepsided river valleys and coastal stretches. Buy souvenirs, books, toys and posters featuring Australian native and cultural heritage at the Bobbin Head Information Centre. From the Tourist Park you can walk or drive into the National Park to enjoy a lunchtime picnic or barbecue at one of 35 picnic sites. Hire a rowboat and paddle along the tranquil Lane Cove River , or mountain bike along 40kms of designated bushland maintenance trails. Show the kids injured wildlife in rehabilitation at Kukundi Wildlife Shelter. Or watch them at play while enjoying coffee and cake at the riverside café. The best restaurant for me in Lane Cove is a small Italian restaurant called “Carlo’s Place”. It is located at the top of Longueville Road in Lane Cove. The place is run by a jolly and jovial Italian named Carlo who is also the Master Chef and is ably assisted by his wife Sonia. Great food, lovely ambience, small place but has a very homely feel to it, allround good experience.

Fantastic city, everything you might need, fantastic nightlife, and the transportation isnt that bad with most buses coming around every 15 - 30 minutes to the same place, it has beautiful parks, beaches and an incredible culture.

You have to go to Sydney at least once in your lifetime. It's definitely a place to see before you die. Relax at Circular Quay in one of the many street cafés, shop in the Queen Victoria building and go on a bridge climb. If you're not afraid of heights, it's something you shouldn't miss. It is certainly not cheap, but if you choose the climb at sunset, the view and the whole experience will be so rewarding. For those who are interested in music, buy yourself a ticket for a concert at the opera house. On a beautiful day (there will be plenty of them!), take the ferry to Manly and lie on the beach. Go to the Rocks and stroll through the shops. It's been 6 years since I last was there but I will go again in July 2008 and update you then! See ya

Being one of the cosmopolitan capitals of the world, Sydney hosts a wide range of pubs and clubs. Clubs playing mainstream dance music can be found all the way along George street in the city. For something slightly different, head to Manly's Boatshed for nightly live bands and an intimate crowd, or The Steyne at Manly beach for a choice of different pubs, clubs and beer gardens under the same roof.

Try going around the city by bike. You can go with a group bike tour (complete with a rented bike, helmet and tour guide) or you can rent your own bike. Its safe, it affords you to see much more of the city, its environment friendly and its good for your health.

Lovely area - cute markets on sundays and great snorkeling, if youre into that sort of stuff! No matter what i suggest a trip with the ferry to manly anyway - its worth it, just to see the beautiful Opera House and the Harbour Bridge from yet another angle... =) And, i like the beach here more than the superduper famous Bondi...

Rent a bike and head north of the city 10km to the Scott Dillon's surf musuem. Scott is an epic surfer whose been surfing for over 70 years.

Lane cove is a quite suburb 10 km from the heart of Sydney . I you are in the area the Lane Cove River tourist park is a must do. The Tourist Park is a gateway to a multitude of tourist attractions and activities at other National Park’s in the area. Take a bushwalk in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and see Aboriginal rock engravings and hand stencils by the Guringai people. Climb up to the beautifully restored Barrenjoey Lighthouse at Palm Beach to experience one of Sydney ’s most breathtaking views. Cruise the waters of Pittwater by ferry and enjoy its steepsided river valleys and coastal stretches. Buy souvenirs, books, toys and posters featuring Australian native and cultural heritage at the Bobbin Head Information Centre. From the Tourist Park you can walk or drive into the National Park to enjoy a lunchtime picnic or barbecue at one of 35 picnic sites. Hire a rowboat and paddle along the tranquil Lane Cove River , or mountain bike along 40kms of designated bushland maintenance trails. Show the kids injured wildlife in rehabilitation at Kukundi Wildlife Shelter. Or watch them at play while enjoying coffee and cake at the riverside café. The best restaurant for me in Lane Cove is a small Italian restaurant called “Carlo’s Place”. It is located at the top of Longueville Road in Lane Cove. The place is run by a jolly and jovial Italian named Carlo who is also the Master Chef and is ably assisted by his wife Sonia. Great food, lovely ambience, small place but has a very homely feel to it, allround good experience.

Go for a snorkel off Shelley Beach!

Hmmm where to begin? Sydney is a fabulous city, not only because it's on the coast and has the Opera House as a trademark but simply because it is still at a stage where we can call it a metropolitan city but isn't yet so terribly congested. And that is truly the beauty of the city, with lots of green and recreational areas.

But now to some insider tips:
- Do the Harbour Bridge Climb (it's breathtaking)
-Visit the Rocks and eat out in Darling Harbour (the atmosphere is great and relaxed): Restaurant recommendations: Angus Steak House, Jordan's seafood restaurant
- Take the monorail to get around town: Oh at the QVB exit there's an enormous bookshop (if you're looking for a book, they most probably will have it): Kinokunya Bookshop
- Stop at Star City, the QVB (old shopping arcade)
- Visit Tarronga Zoo
- Head to Bondi Beach for a weekend on the beach!

Sydney... I find Sydney a great and exciting city with so much to offer. The harbour is one of my favourite places to hang out on the water or catch a ferry over to Manly. But a good way to see the harbour is the catch the city ferry that does a 2 hour tour of the harbour and little inlets and some interesting facts. A nice city to walk around ( the Botanical gardens and Opera house ) and always feel safe.

Try going around the city by bike. You can go with a group bike tour (complete with a rented bike, helmet and tour guide) or you can rent your own bike. Its safe, it affords you to see much more of the city, its environment friendly and its good for your health.

Sdyney - Australia's largest city,the capital city of New South Wales. Place must go -- Sky Tower + OZ Trek, Sdyney Aquarium, Hunter Valley Winery, Hunter Valley Gardens, Port Stephens, Dolphin Watch Cruise, 4 wheel Drive Sand Dune Sand Toboganning.

If you plan to travel to Sydney, you should visit Terri Irwin's zoo in Queensland cos she is best owner in the world!

It's been the season to be jolly for some time now, but the difference would seem to be that the Australians have noticed. Back in the UK, all the shops had already started selling Christmas cards before I left but The Thais, being mainly Buddhist, naturally wouldn't know Christmas if it came up and slapped them in the face with a wet fish. Hong Kong is slightly more prepared and already has all the buildings covered in neon greetings which light up the sky at night, but it's mainly the ex-pat community which celebrates it seriously. So it's really nice to find that Australia has the season's greetings coming out of its ears. It is, of course, slightly surreal that while the weather here at the moment is boiling hot and everyone is walking around in Tee shirts and with surfboards tucked under their arms, the shops are full of snowmen, reindeer and jolly old men in white furry beards and red overcoats. Australia strikes the visitor as a very different place as soon as you arrive. It appears to be full of places with wonderful names like (and I'm not making these up) Booby Island and Yorkie's Knob, to which tour guides called Kylie will gladly take you to watch real Aborigines doing traditional painting in the outback - Even though you know perfectly well that said natives are probably going to hop straight back into their Mercedes after you've gone and head back to their luxury homes in the Blue Mountains. This might sound slightly cynical, but I should point out that I came here once before on a coach tour in 1995 and learned a lot from speaking to local people - people, I should say, who have to be some of the warmest, most welcoming folks you are ever likely to meet. If there's one thing guaranteed to bring you back to Oz again and again (and there are many others, believe me), it's the people. Friendly doesn't even cut it - I'm sure it's the weather, but it really is so refreshing to be made to feel so welcome by a whole country full of people, especially when I come from the UK where you generally can't look at the headline on a newspaper on a street stall without being asked in a gruff voice "so you gonna buy that then, or what?". Australia is also full of wonderful creatures that don't resemble anything else on Earth, contains some of the most beautiful scenary you could wish for, and is a country where you have to drive for hundreds of miles to find another living being that isn't fluffy and doesn't greet you by going "baaaa". There is a town I came across on my previous trip which greets the traveller with a sign which reads " Population 250 (2 people, 248 sheep) ". They also have a sense of humour second to none here, and actually understand sarcasm as a form of wit which is always a bonus for us Brits. The Australian banknotes are colourful, to say the least. Each value is a different vibrant colour. Deep red, bright yellow, deep purple - buying something with cash is like an explosion in a paint factory. The notes are also made of a form of plastic with a transparent window in the middle to deter forgery, which is unique in any currency I've encountered but such a ridiculously good idea that I can't understand why nobody has borrowed the idea - screw a ten dollar note up into a ball and let go and it springs back to it's original shape and pristine condition, no dirty wrinkled money here. But of course, everything in Australia has to be slightly surreal in some way so a good idea like this has to come with strings attached. In the case of the Australian dollar (originally known as the Royal back in the sixties until this name proved unpopular), this string is the fact that there has been no coin to represent anything less than 5 cents since the beginning of the 1990s. Now, you might think that this would logically mean that retailers would price all the items on their shelves at values which divide into 5 cents, but no! You will still see items priced at 1.99 or 3.98 or whatever, amounts which you cannot physically pay - it is, believe it or not, left entirely up to the shop whether they insist that you pay more than you actually owe and keep the difference, or round down. Go into a shop, buy something for 4.99, hand over a five dollar note and stand there waiting for your change while the shop assistant looks at you as if to say "What?" I did, it's great fun. There's that good old British sarcasm again... Christmas in Oz is very tempting. As we flew in over glinting lakes and through clear blue skies, I knew that this was where I wanted to be at the start of the last year of the Millennium. England is on the other side of the world: I am going to get the chance to swim with Dolphins, refer to complete strangers as "Blue" with absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, and generally have a great time slapping shrimps onto barbies. In Sydney, I caught the free shuttle bus to my hotel, checked in and fell straight into bed. I hadn't slept for 48 hours straight, and the last time I was in Sydney I had managed to get up for breakfast at 6pm and baffle the waiter in the restaurant by eating Cornflakes while everybody else looked at me curiously over their three course dinners. In the evening, feeling refreshed, I thought I'd take a wander and get my bearings and discovered that my hotel is in Paddington and is just down the road from Oxford Street, Marylebone, Kings Cross and Bakers Street. I feel right at home. On my first trip to a local McDonalds, the woman in front of me asked for a McChicken Sandwich and I could swear the assistant asked her if she would like it to be made with real Chicken. I'm sure this must be some local expression which I do not yet understand, but exactly what the hell is an artificial Chicken? The traffic crossings in Sydney are interesting. After pressing the button and waiting something like 5 minutes for the lights to change, they give me about three seconds to cross before changing back, hardly enough time for the cars to actually stop. Little white images of people are drawn onto the road at all the pedestrian crossings, and I haven't yet figured out whether this is a helpful attempt on the part of the Australian government to tell me where to cross the road, or whether they are all chalk outlines drawn by the police whenever a tourist gets run over by a bus. During the night, all hell broke loose in the sky. Thunder and lightening like I'd never heard in my life kept me awake for hours. I was sure I would awaken in the morning to find myself on a different continent with a dog called Toto - when I dared to draw back the curtains to peer out, the sky was alight with the most incredible electrical storm and the road outside was awash. Come the morning, though, the roads were all bone dry, the sun was hot, and there was a bus outside waiting to take me on a complementary city tour for the day. That's one of the most remarkable things about this continent - if you're out and about and it starts to rain, don't let it worry you. The rain will probably be warm, and you'll probably be bone dry and steaming within two minutes of it stopping anyway! On my first full day in Sydney, I took an orientation tour which promised to briefly show me the sights and then leave me to find my own way back to anywhere I found inspiring. Our driver took us across the famous harbour bridge to Milsons point, from which panoramic views of the harbour and opera house could be seen, and across the Spit Bridge (which, disappointingly, was not crowded with people spitting over the side) to a small district called Seeforth. We drove through scenic Manly, where our driver thought it important to point out the Manly Girls School, which sounded to me like a finishing school for Tom-Boys, as well as showing us the surfing beach at Bondi.
I have to say that Bondi Beach impressed me a lot more than it did when I was here in 1995. For some reason, I remember being distinctly unimpressed after what everybody had told me about the place - but it's obviously been cleaned up quite a lot since then and was actually quite impressive. Nevertheless, it's still nothing like the huge mile long strip of golden sand covered in bronzed bodies and surf dudes that we are led to believe from well edited television, and in my opinion there are better beaches than Bondi even round the Sydney area, but nevertheless I had time to stroll along sweating buckets and doing some western style shopping which I haven't managed to do for a while. The orientation tour finished with a drive around the inner city including Kings Cross, the entertainment centre and casino at Darling Harbour, Chinatown and various other places which I made notes to visit over the next few days if I got the chance. The tour also included a harbour luncheon cruise at which the driver introduced me to another passenger called Monica (As in Monica from Friends, as opposed to Monica from the Whitehouse, she was keen to point out), with whom I shared a meal and discussed the best places I should see while I am here as it turned out that she had already done most of it and was on her way out of the country as I was on my way in. The captain, with only a massive amount of prompting from us, allowed Monica and I onto the bridge and probably broke every rule in the book by allowing us to take it in turns to sail the boat around for a bit. The captain seemed very much to enjoy us both having small panic attacks every time another vessel or the Sydney Harbour Bridge came anywhere within a mile or so of us! Yesterday, I wandered down to The Rocks , the old area of Sydney harbour front, to see if it was as I had left it. All the memories came flooding back as I walked along George Street, through the shopping district to the harbour - Circular Quay was unchanged, apart from a few new hoardings advertising the Olympic Games for Sydney 2000. Circular Quay is where all the ferries go from, backs onto both the Opera house and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and very much represents the modern waterfront entertainment and shopping side to Sydney. The Rocks , on the other hand, is Sydney's birthplace and as such is full of beautiful old buildings proudly displaying plaques dating them or showing off previous occupants. Most, of course, are now occupied by modern shops, chic boutiques and roadside coffee shops - but local planning rules don't allow much change here so the area retains pretty much it's original charm even if you know there's a McDonalds hidden away inside one of these old buildings. The Rocks is very much the side of Sydney that I would like to see more of, it represents the world that is being pushed aside and trampled upon by modern skyscrapers and high-rise apartment blocks. There is a square here, where a band plays at lunchtime to locals and tourists drinking Cafe Late outside coffee shops or browsing the shop windows. Even McDonalds has seemingly decided to pander to local sensibilities, and has opened up a McCafe here where you can buy French pastries and cakes so you can pretend to be posh for a moment while eating your Big Mac. There are only three places in Australia where you do not actually own the land you live on - The Rocks being one of them. Due to it's historical value, the government can technically come along and turf you out whenever they like in the interests of keeping the area looking the way they want it - so it's no good trying to turn your charming cake shop into a nightclub. There should be more places like this, more governments willing to think along these lines and keep these places from being lost - although it hasn't always been this way. It seems almost unthinkable now, strolling through the cobbled streets, that it was as recently as 1970 that the Australian Government were seriously planning to tear the whole area down and build office blocks - and only an outcry from just about everybody in the hemisphere caused them to instead declare the area as historically significant and move on to some other harebrained scheme. This from a government which, until recently, imposed a blanket ban on buildings over 4 stories within the city for aesthetic reasons. In fact, the famous Park Hyatt Hotel in The Rocks is only 4 stories high, can only accommodate a select few at a time, and will cost you several hundred dollars a night. So there go my plans for a night in the nice part of town! I strolled around the Quay in the afternoon and looked at the Opera House, although to be honest it does suffer rather strongly from the fact that its image is on every card and every picture of Sydney you are ever likely to see. Unlike the Grand Canyon or the Great Barrier Reef, it just isn't one of those places that looks that much more spectacular in person - you really can't say "Ah, but wait until you see the Opera House for real" because it pretty much looks exactly as you had expected it to and can be something of an anticlimax. In the typical surreal style I've come to expect from Australia, the Opera House was designed in 1957 by a Danish architect called Jorn Utzon, who made a few basic sketches, sent them in to a competition and was presumably totally blown away to find that he had won the opportunity to design what would become one of the world's most well known and photographed landmarks. The problem was that this all went to his head a little and his final design turned out to be far more complex than anyone had imagined - it was over two decades before the Opera House was finished, during which time those in power changed and Utzon found himself arguing about his designs with people who didn't like them much. As a result, and also partly because Utzon's original design was too costly and too complex to build as he had envisioned it, what we see today is an amalgam of his ideas and a total redesign of the inside which probably doesn't bear much resemblance to the original vision. I came back along George Street, crossing onto Liverpool Street and making my way to Darling Harbour. I hadn't realised how near it was to Circular Quay - about a ten minute walk. When I was here a few years ago, my hotel was so close to the Quay that I nearly always took the ferry. Darling Harbour was originally designed and built as recently as 1988, and is the ultra modern side to Sydney. This is where you will find a multitude of shopping opportunities in the Harbourside Centre, a behemoth of glass and metal that manages to dominate an entire side of the harbour and contains a whole level of little Cafes and restaurants, each representing a different country and cuisine. I had hoped to pop in for a Coffee and Croissant in a quiet corner of France, but for some reason the entire complex was closed off and covered in scaffolding and builders drinking tea as is so often the case when I really want to see something - so I strolled into the harbour front park and sat on a bench by a fountain in the middle of a lake, baking in the heat and watching people whiz by on roller-skates. Australia has an amazing way of making you never want to go home.
New on the harbour front since my last visit is the IMAX theatre, and apparently a new multi-million dollar Night-club which has just opened, but they've obviously spent so much money on the insides that they haven't thought to leave any over to make it visible from the outside in any way, so after spending an hour looking for it I gave up. The guy at my hotel reception - fountain of all knowledge - tells me that the club holds 2500 people and is the place to be seen in Sydney. Always assuming it wants to be seen itself. One thing I've noticed since arriving in Sydney is that the advertising on hoardings and bill-boards for the 2000 Olympics seems to have become a lot more low-key than it was the last time I was here in 1995 - rather strange considering just how close we're getting to the event. At the moment, most of the hoardings are advertising the upcoming Gay Pride Mardi-Gras, which will be happening at the beginning of February - there is very little mention of the Olympics at all. So, have I got anything bad to say about Sydney? Well, the only thing that has put a damper on my visit so far are the profusion of notices pinned hap-hazardly on every wall of every building around Paddington, Oxford Street and the outer suburbs which read " Have you seen this girl? Last seen vicinity of Hyde Park. Parents desperately worried. Please call… ".
This does bring me back down to Earth. For all its good points, in many ways Sydney is no different from any other big city the world over.My complete journals are at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and /globalwanderer2

Built between 1817 and 1819, the Hyde Park Barracks is one of Sydney’s most popular historical attractions. The barracks provided lodgings for convicts working in government employment around Sydney until its closure in 1848. It now serves as a museum. Exhibits educate visitors as to the daily lives of Sydney’s convicts through video, photos, artifacts, and much more. Guided and group tours are available upon request or visitors may tour on their own. The museum is open daily and a small entry fee is charged.