Saturday, 1/16/10: Last full day in Sydney; Balmoral Beach

Today is our last full day in Sydney. Tomorrow afternoon we’re flying home, back to reality and our Northern California winter. The weather these last two days has been wonderful; overcast and slightly breezy in the morning, with a little more sun and heat in the afternoon.

Heather, Katrina and the two younger offspring (Elena and Lucy) are off to the shops to buy stuff for our beach picnic later today. We’re planning on going to Balmoral Beach located in the spiffy suburb of Mosman, not far from Willoughby where the Ellises live. Thanks to its scenic location on Middle Harbor, it’s been popular with locals since the 1920s, with buildings such as the Balmoral Rotunda and the Bathers Pavilion dating back to that decade. It’s amazing how many beaches there are in Sydney, both harborside and along the ocean. I’ve never seen a city that has that many miles of shoreline—Sydney Harbor alone has over 150 miles of shoreline and 35 miles of city beaches! And that doesn’t include the Pacific Ocean beaches stretching from Palm Beach in the north past Bondi, Tamarama and Bronte in the middle to Cronulla in the south.

Maps © IA Connections Sydney Australia

We got to Balmoral at 11ish, and to our surprise found a prime parking space. Reflecting the upscale nature of this slice of paradise, the fee was AU$8.00 for the first hour and AU$6.00 for each additional hour—certainly the highest we’ve paid so far but soooooo worth it.

There’s a large grassy area studded with palm trees between the houses, street and the beach proper, and we staked a claim to a shady spot for our picnic. The adults shared a chilled bottle of Audrey Wilkinson 2008 Rosé from the Hunter Valley (north of Sydney) and a very tasty basil-and-cashew dip that Katrina had prepared this morning while the kids quickly wolfed down their sandwiches and then headed off to go swimming.

As you can see from the photos below, the beach is picture perfect: fine sand with a pinkish tinge, turquoise water, sensuously nestled in this protected spot on Middle Harbor. Actually, there are two beaches, separated in the middle by island-like Rocky Point from where you have beautiful views of Middle Head across the harbor and the bush-like Grotto Point Reserve to the north.

In the photos below, you can see the Bathers Pavilion, originally built in 1921 as a changing shed and after a multi-million dollar renovation now a fine-dining restaurant. The setting is so timeless that it’s easy to imagine Victorian-era couples in their finest dress strolling arm-in-arm down the promenade.

 

Balmoral is certainly no secret to Sydney locals. Next to our picnic spot, a group of people set up for what turned out to be a baby shower (complete with white table cloths and origami table decorations, not to mention tasty looking nibbles and cakes). Further down the beach, next to the Bathers Pavilion, there was a wedding in the Rotunda, located in a shady spot between huge trees. But the park and beach weren’t crammed with bodies, which I really appreciated. Since Balmoral is located on the North Shore, I’m not sure how many tourists actually make it here. For purely selfish reasons, I want Balmoral to remain as it is now, and not turn into another Bondi. (I’m sure zoning laws are on my side.)

I’m so glad that we saved this excursion to Balmoral until the end of our trip because it provided a fitting finale. Having seen quite a few Sydney beaches, both on the harbor and on the Pacific Ocean, Balmoral is hands-down my favorite. That’s quite a feat in a city that has more natural beauty than any other I’ve ever visited.

For dinner, we went to Bill and Katrina’s favorite restaurant in Willoughy called Bombe Alaska. It’s run by a Chinese couple, but the food is French/international fusion. The meal we had was not only delicious but also slow and relaxed, and it gave us a chance to celebrate our visit and the bond between the Bock and Ellis families. We were at the restaurant for a good 2 1/2 hrs and by the time we’d walked back home--just up the a couple of blocks--we all felt sated and content. Really, the perfect note on which to end our trip.

Tomorrow will be packing, maybe a last-minute walk, and then it’ll be time to head the airport for our flight home. I don’t expect that saying goodbye will be easy.

Friday, 1/15/10: Luna Park & Darling Harbor

Today’s morning outing was to Luna Park, an old-fashioned amusement park at Milsons Point, right at the base of the Harbor Bridge. Fashioned after the original Luna Park on New York’s Coney Island, Sydney’s Luna Park opened its doors in 1935 and has been a beloved attraction for locals ever since. It offers a wide variety of rides, from a roller coaster (looks tame, but according to Heather is anything but) to a Ferris wheel to bumper cars and a carousel. Since my stomach doesn’t take kindly to the kind of violent agitation inflicted by roller coasters and the like, I opted not to buy a pass and instead watched the others being subjected to various kinds of abuses by mechanical contraptions. Apparently nobody was worse for the wear, just the opposite. Judging from the grins and happy faces, I’d say a very good time was had by all.

Here is the entrance to Luna Park. I don’t know about you, but I find the giant mouth swallowing people a bit diabolical.

 

Heather and Elena riding a bumper car.

 

Sophie, Lucy and Elena on the carousel.

 

Elena, Laura and two Luna Park employees who seem to have escapes from the set of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.

In the afternoon, Bill dropped the four Bocks plus Sophie off at Darling Harbor, a large pedestrian precinct just west of the Central Business District. Darling Harbor was originally part of the commercial port of Sydney and had become derelict by the 1980s. Sydney poured millions of dollars and huge amounts of design genius into the redevelopment of Darling Harbor, and as far as I’m concerned, their efforts were hugely successful. Darling Harbor is now home to a variety of shopping and entertainment centers, including the world’s largest IMAX screen (where, of course, Avatar was playing), the Sydney Aquarium, Sydney Wildlife World, the Powerhouse Museum, the National Maritime Museum as well as large outdoor spaces for playing and just hanging out. The waterfront setting is spectacular, with the high rises of the Central Business District providing a stunning backdrop. We only spent about four hours there, but I could have hung out all day, just walking around, watching people.

Granted, Sydney is a unique city with geographical features that virtually no other city in the world can offer, but even our lowly Sacramento could have something along the lines of Darling Harbor if they ever put their minds to it (for example in the old railroad yard adjacent to Old Sacramento).

Here are just a few photographic impressions of Darling Harbor, in no particular order.

When everybody was hot and tired, we decided to hop on the ferry across the harbor to Milsons Point (where Luna Park is located). The ferry didn’t just zoom across the harbor just instead bounced around to four other stops, which was a lot of fun. As I’ve said before, riding the ferries has been one of the highlights of our time in Sydney, and I was so glad that I had this final opportunity.

Here are some views of the Harbor Bridge and Opera House from the ferry (top) and from Milsons Point (bottom).

 

After dinner, we went over to friends of Bill’s and Katrina’s for dessert (merci mille fois for your warm welcome, Eleanor and Alain) and then Katrina took me around to Blues Point and Milsons Point for one final shot at photographing the skyline at night. Writing this, I feel bittersweet, knowing that we have only one full day left in Sydney. Over the last three weeks, Sydney has become home away from home, and I fallen head over heels in love with this city.

  

Thursday, 1/14/10: Smiggle & Art Gallery of New South Wales

Last night’s thunderstorms continued on and off until early morning. We woke up to cool temps and overcast sky. Took it easy so the girls could do their homework and projects, and then went to Smiggle, an Australian stationery store chain catering to pre-teens and teens with very colorful paper products and accessories. The Ellises had brought us miscellaneous Smiggle products over the years, and Laura and Elena were excited to see a Smiggle store for themselves. The Smiggle range is rather limited, but every product comes in a variety of trendy colors such as pink, purple, apple green, cyan blue and black. I bought four large paper clips for myself, not because I have a real need for them but because they were the cheapest items in the store at AU$0.50 each. The girls got a few things each; luckily we were able to steer them away from the more expensive items :-).

After lunch, Heather and I went off on another solo outing. Bill not only graciously agreed to watch Laura and Elena but he also took us to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in the CBD. The Art Gallery of New South Wales is a very large art museum displaying all kinds of things, but it was their collections of Australian and aboriginal art that Heather and I were mostly interested in. The paintings of the early settlement period by European immigrants were interesting and often quite beautiful, especially the romanticized scenes of a pre-colonial Eden, but what fascinated me the most was the aboriginal art, ranging from bark paintings to burial poles and more modern art on canvas. The dot painting style arising from the Papunya Tula Art Movement of the early 1970s was a particular highlight. I don’t profess to have even a rudimentary understanding of the symbology and iconography, but many of the works we saw have such an innate beauty that I was able to relate to them on a purely aesthetic level.

We also took in the collections of early Japanese and Chinese art, but soon after we reached sensory overload and decided to head outside. The Art Gallery of NSW is located on the edge of the Royal Botanic Garden so Heather I decided to explore some areas we hadn’t seen yet, including the palm grove, one of the oldest parts of the Royal Botanic Garden.

 

As we were enjoying the many tropical and subtropical plants, we couldn’t help but notice what we initially assumed was the squawking of many hundreds of birds. A look up into the trees revealed something else entirely. What we had thought were birds were in fact, hundred and hundreds of flying foxes—large fruit bats weighing as much as 2 lbs with a wing span that exceeds 3 ft. They roost in the many palm trees in the palm grove and in other areas of the Royal Botanic Garden, and at night venture out in search of fruit and pollen. In fact, these were the bats we had seen a couple of days on our walk across the Harbor Bridge. Seeing these bats hanging upside down from tree branches—some completely still, others twitching, others flying about and screeching—was a completely surreal experience, reminiscent of a bad horror movie of the 70s. What made things even more immediate was the smell—or should I say stench!—of all the bat poop.

After our close encounter with the flying foxes, we walked back to The Rocks and did some window-shopping, marveling again at the high prices of opal jewelry and aboriginal art. Instead of retracing our steps back to the Circular Quay train station, we ended up walking across the Harbor Bridge for the second time this week. The sky was still overcast so the light was too flat to take pictures of the Opera House, but it was still a fantastic experience walking on one Sydney’s best-known landmarks enjoying perfect views of one of the most beautiful structures in the entire world!

From Milsons Point we again took the train to Artarvon, our “home station”, feeling like veteran Sydney commuters by now. Sydney is a large city, but getting to know your way around the central core isn’t difficult, and the public transportation system is excellent, with many trains, ferries and busses connecting the suburbs to the CBD.

Wednesday, 1/13/10: Blue Mountains

The thunderstorm last night went on for quite a while. It was still in full force when Heather and I went to slept, but this morning it looks like it never happened. The weather is sunny, with some puffy clouds. Still fairly cool and a bit of a breeze—lovely. I wish I could bottle this perfect weather moment and unleash it as needed when it’s 90+ degrees again and humid as Hades.

Today’s outing is to the Blue Mountains, a huge area of rugged tablelands, sheer cliffs, raging waterfalls and inaccessible valleys densely covered with eucalyptus forests. The Greater Blue Mountains Area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site comprising seven national parks. It’s located a couple of hours west of central Sydney.

The drive through the western suburbs of Sydney on the Great Western Highway took us by the site of the 2000 Olympic Games. The stadium is huge; it held over 110,000 people during the games but Bill said that the stadium was modified in later years and now doesn’t hold quite that many people. It’s still used extensively for sports and other events. We also saw the Sydney Ikea store, which seems immense; bigger than our West Sacramento Ikea for sure. Other than that, there wasn’t much that distinguished one suburb from the next. I’d hate to live that far away from my job, but the situation isn’t any different in U.S. metropolitan areas.

Once we reached the Blue Mountains, my enjoyment of the drive was marred a little by the endless construction that’s going on to widen the road. Apparently the Blue Mountains are very popular with Sydney residents and tourists alike, and the existing 2-lane road infrastructure isn’t enough to cope with the number of vehicles. Small towns that would otherwise have been enjoyable to drive through and maybe walk around in are now large construction sites with road workers, temporary traffic lights and an ugly, dusty appearance. It’s all temporary but for now, the area isn’t looking its best.

Eventually we reached Katoomba, with a population of about 7,500 by far the largest town in the Blue Mountains. Our destination was the Three Sisters, the most famous rock formation in the Blue Mountains. I had expected a winding mountain road which eventually ends at a scenic viewpoint, but the reality is that you drive through a residential section of Katoomba and, wham!, the road ends and the viewpoint is right there, at the edge of town.

We parked our car a little ways away from the viewpoint to avoid paying for parking (outrageous at AU$3.80 for the first hour, and AU$4.40 for each additional hour; more even than in Sydney) and dragged our overheated bodies along a dusty residential street. It’s ironic that we chose today to go to the Blue Mountains because we thought we would escape the Sydney heat; the temperature in Katoomba according to the outdoor thermometer of our rental van was 33°C (92°F). While the humidity was still higher than what we’re used to, it wasn’t as humid as in Sydney.

The view was absolutely spectacular. The Three Sisters—Meehni, Wimlah and Gunnedoo—feature prominently in a legend that talks of three sisters who fell in love with three men from a neighboring tribe, but marriage was forbidden by tribal law. Battle ensued, and the sisters were turned to stone by an elder to protect them, but he was killed in the fighting and no one else could turn them back.

Unfortunately, mid-day is not the best time to photograph the Three Sisters (sunset seems to be the best time of day, judging from the postcards I saw at the Visitor Center). But since that’s the only opportunity I had, here’s my meager photographic haul.

We were all exhausted so we volunteered to part with our money for some outrageously priced “gelatto” (somehow using the Italian word is always an excuse for charging more). Here’s best friends Sophie and Laura enjoying their ice cream and posing in front of a giant Christmas koala.

 

After leaving Katoomba, we decided to swing by Wentworth Falls but unfortunately, the actual waterfall was practically dry. I’ve seen pictures that looked spectacular, but mid-summer is definitely the wrong time of year.

However, what I did enjoy were the views across the Jamison Valley. The deep sandstone cliffs and the eucalyptus forests (blue gum) that seem to go on forever are amazing. I’ve seen so many eucalyptus trees by now, and yet I can’t seem to get enough of them. Gum trees are uniquely Australian, and I like everything about them: their bark (or lack thereof), their stature, their open growth, and of course the heavenly smell of their leaves.

If it had been just the adults (i.e. Heather, Bill and me), we might have explored other areas and trails in the Blue Mountains, but the kids were so exhausted that we decided to head back towards Sydney.

We were able to check off one of the remaining items on my must-see list, the Anzac Bridge. When people think of bridges in Sydney, the invariably think of the Harbour Bridge, which is stunning. However, I find the Anzac Bridge, which I had glimpsed in the distance on several occasions, to be just as beautiful. It spans Johnstons Bay between the suburbs of Pyrmont and Rozelle near the Sydney Central Business District (CBD). I don’t know who designed it, but it reminded me strongly of Santiago Calatrava’s designs.

 

Driving through the CBD on the Western Distributor (with intrepid Bill Ellis at the wheel), I was busy snapping impressionistic shots of reflections of and in high rises. I can’t remember the names of the buildings, but I love the patterns.

Finally we reached the eponymous Sydney Harbour Bridge, truly one of the most beautiful bridges I’ve ever crossed. Heather and I walked across it last night, but unfortunately the view of the bridge from the pedestrian lane isn’t as impressive as it is from the car lanes. Here are two rather abstract/geometrical images that I particularly like.

 

6:26pm now, and the weather is gray and overcast and probably in the mid-70s. I’m loving it! Bill and I swung by the bottle shop to pick up more beer and wine. I was determined to try some wines from the Hunter Valley, just north of Sydney, an area Bill and Katrina, wine aficionados that they are, aren’t very familiar with. I picked up a bottle of 2009 Tempus Two verdelho, and I thought it was excellent. Tropical notes of grapefruit and guava, with a very pronounced citrus finish. VERY nice. I’ll be taking a bottle or two home.