Day 13 - Sydney
A
day of beaches. Rupert had announced that he wanted to try surfing, and
the rest of us thought this might be an amusing spectacle, so where else
to go but Bondi? Sadly, the surf school had started some hours before
we did, and anyway was full. And otherwise Bondi is pretty charmless.
Lots of women with dayglo bikinis and infeasibly deep tans. Lots
of muscly blokes using their large surfboards as phallic symbols.
But no surf, so no-one upside down and naked. As Patrick said, the
place is much like Marbella without the Watney's Red Barrel. So we
moved on.
The next place down the coast is Coogee. Fundamentally quite similar, though without quite as much posing going on. But it does have a rather good pub, which did us some very nice lunch in the sun. And a beer or two (except for Rupert, who drew the short straw and had to drive).
After
that, we felt we should do something more strenuous. Well, slightly,
anyway. So we moved on to the shores of Botany Bay, where Cook is
said to have first landed, and various labelled rocks commemorate where
he collected water, parked his boat, took a leak, etc, etc.
Moving swiftly on took us to Cape Solander. Named after one of Cook's mates, it's notable mostly for some quite impressive rocks, allowing Mark his daily quota of precipicies to approach in search of the perfect picture.
iii
Poor
old Fred was, for the first time, feeling a bit unwell and had decided
to leak a quantity of fluid over the road. After a bit of a rest,
he seemed all right, so we carried on. Perhaps he just needed a piss....
And finally a trip back through Sydney's rush-hour took us over the famous
bridge, and back to Bankstown to sample the local (Vietnamese) cuisine.
By arriving at 7:55, we just managed to get in before they shut (Bankstown
isn't a great place for nightlife. Or even for evening-life). But
a good meal was had by all, even if some of the ordering owed more to guesswork
than anything else.
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