Breakfast at Mo’s and a gentle descent into the City
By the time we surfaced after a wonderful sleep we were famished, so the location of Mo’s Restaurant on the corner of our block was perfect. I have to mention the orange juice because it was so smooth and whirred to the texture of pale orange cream.
Refreshed and nourished we wandered along the shiny tiled pavement beneath a generous green canopy in Hyde Park and after a first glimpse at a flock of black beaked ibis grazing in the Botanic Gardens made our way in to the lofty Cathedral alight with golden colour and still decked out for Christmas.
A vast Christmas tree with beachball baubles dominated a shopping precinct further down and the in between Christmas and New Year sense of excitement was pervasive – a city in waiting. The stately buildings are a mix of classical, art deco and modern with lots of those lovely wedgy multi storey buildings tucked into the corner between two closely angled roads.
As you can imagine and in these temperatures we had by now developed quite a thirst so stumbling across a nineteenth century bar just up from the circular quay was timely. Funny name for a beer I thought ‘one hundred and fifty lashes’, lashes of the fluttering eyes type? No, lashes of the agonised convict type. A liquid reminder of Australia’s past.
Circular Quay is the hub of the river and land coming together. The train service passes frequently through here and right up through the CBD linking not only all the popular places in the city but also connecting with the out of city routes from Central. Numerous ferries nudge eachother for their position on the quay and move in and out smartly at surprising speeds, all watched over by the fine single arch steel girder bridge, apartment and office blocks and of course the beautiful opera house, its pearlised tiles catching the sun’s rays.
It is hard to imagine these days how the old wharf front looked from the early days of European settlement through the changes brought about by expansion, then the demolition during the bubonic plague days in the years just before and just after 1900, so it is very handy that the civic authorities cover walls with photos of how it all once looked. With landfill the original wharf side streets, like Sussex Street are now set back from the water’s edge, and the rat ridden tenements are almost a thing of the past.
Around the corner from The Ship Inn, (we’ll make a point of going in there when we return in Zoonie!) is nice little Silvester Street where there is a Spanish Tapas Bar. We sat outside enjoying a light lunch watching posh cars coming to and fro from the Avis Car Hire centre underneath the high rise block opposite. Rob’s back was a ticking time bomb. He strained it while lifting the outboard motor off the transom and then carrying it up the pontoon to the car and has felt the pain ever since.
Back in our little room I unloaded our small Aldi shop so we could have evening meals and breakfasts with our feet up watching the box.
Between a Rock and A Hard Place.
But this evening we met up with Alison and Randall and their friends back down at a little preserved cottage, Cadham’s I think, for a guided tour around The Rocks, the historic area occupying a steep hill between Circular Quay and Darling Water and it was once a very ‘hard place’. The rapid growth of the population and the hyper busy industry of distribution from and to the numerous visiting ships meant a vast shanty town had grown up around the wharfs with the inevitable damp and squalid environment conducive to disease and death. In the little alley named ‘Suez’ Canal it was something sounding very much like Suez that ran down the street into the water.
The Bubonic Plague, one epidemic thought to have come from Mauritius, was an unwelcome visitor on numerous occasion up until 1925. Although there will always be rats near water and waste The Rocks is now a popular area for locals and visitors to meet and chat in the numerous bars dotted between stylish modern and restored homes and hidden drainage.
We rounded off the evening by squeezing our six around a tiny table in the heaving Glenmore Hotel, recommended to us by our lovely young tour guide as home of the best veggy moussakas in town. The big family next to us left so we launched ourselves onto their tables and cleared their mess away just before supper arrived. And the moussaka lived up to its well-earned reputation.
The next morning Rob was in agony. We made it down to Sussex Street for a little exploration of the now faceless junction with Erskine Street, then I hailed a taxi up to the ER next to St Vincent’s Hospital and there we remained until late afternoon while Rob underwent his examinations and awaited the result of various tests.
The outcome was 15 strong painkillers and some suggested exercises.
“So my sweet, the next time I suggest you wait till I get back from wherever so I can help you lift something, what will you do?” Blank expression in response. “The same thing eh?” I query.
“It’s a man thing!” He replied.
Next day preparations were well advanced for the New Year’s Eve Fireworks. Rows of jolly blue loos standing ready, barricades everywhere cordoning off areas for those willing to pay up to $250 for a view, $460 with a seat and a meal. Temporary water fountains to keep the masses hydrated. As we sat outside the Australian Museum we started wondering where to position ourselves for the event, silly to be here and not see one of the world’s best NYE celebrations.
Kookaburra sits in the old Gum Tree
In the Australian Museum we discovered how artistically talented are the aborigines. By coincidence Rob and I had both visited the Dreamtime exhibition in the Hogarth Gallery in London years ago and I remember the ‘Pointilist’ designs and how they incorporated the startling clash with newcomers into their culture by painting on car doors etc. Just look at the shell work on the bridge and Opera House models. Same kind of thing.
And how well the headdress fits Rob! Then we had our first close up of the Kookaburra with his punky top knot and were delighted to see Brian (a Booby bird) behind glass, no more pooping on our bimini!
We also came across the apology, for the inhuman treatment of the aborigine people by the white intruders into Australia, which hopefully provides a basis for a better future relationship.
All this museum perusing had given us a thirst. The view of the Cathedral was taken as we sat on the sunny museum veranda sipping iced mochas before wandering slowly down through the Botanic Gardens towards the shore and our first glimpses of the elegant bridge across water and a gentle recline on Mrs Macquarie’s seat ( a past governor’s wife) followed by some wonderfully cold beer in the shade of an accommodating tree near Busby’s Bar, listening to a Kookaburra on a branch above us and watching the traffic on the water.
Onward to an exhibition of carnivorous plants in the Calix display area. Aren’t they attractive little blood suckers! Some of them are man-made in glass, thought I’d better clarify that. I mentioned Peter Wohlleben’s books on the secret lives of animals and trees to the volunteer on duty as they are as intriguing as these little beauties, I hope he enjoys them.
Everywhere of interest is so accessible in Sydney either by train or foot. Just a few minutes of easy walking later we were in the company of the beautiful Opera House with its pearlised tiled giant ‘shells’. There are some things we are leaving until our visit in Zoonie later this year and one is attending a concert within this unique building, we hope. Zoonie will be happily at anchor in one of the nearby bays. It was fun to rekky the area for a few months time, more on that later.
For now it was time to return to our little room for a rest. Rob’s back was doing well on the codeine tablets but we didn’t want to push it as the big evening approaching the New Year was coming up. So with a couple of frozen meals heated in the microwave and a glass each of Aussie wine we relaxed on the bed watching TV. Very ordinary!
Boom Bang a Bang
It wasn’t just the flaming red water beneath the black night sky above that filled with sparkling colour right up to and over our heads, it wasn’t only the explosions of colour from the bridge a mile or so away up the river to the fireworks barge, one of the six that were divided three above the bridge and three below on our side that filled our little world with psychedelic colour, it was also the SOUND.
Teams of echoing kettle drummers were in the hills all around us bombarding our eardrums with their wonderful belly trembling resonance everytime a fistful of fireworks exploded. The inanimate pyrodynamic performance went on for what seemed like ages but was around 15 minutes.
And this was the third show we had that evening. Early on while it was still daylight the kettle drummers were preceded with nature’s own show. Fork and sheet lightening slashed and blanketed the darkening sky over the land around the bay and those kettle drummers practiced hard for their final performance at midnight. We wondered if rods of rain might spoil the show but if the arousing sight of mounted cavalry charging across the stage at the Edinburgh Festival a few years before, the floodlights reflected in the pouring rain over their king sheet sized banners flying in the wind was anything to go by, it would enhance man’s creation.
In fact that show ended neatly before the ‘warming up’ Childrens’ Firework Display, for and not by children. Yes we were so lucky to be with dear friends Alison and Randall, aboard their lovely Tregoning, with a fine view and watching three displays.
Earlier in the day we received the eagerly awaited text from Alison to say that they had successfully moved Tregoning from her mooring buoy jut around the headland to the anchorage in Athol Bay and Randall was ready to come and collect us from the ferry terminal half a mile away. As our boat pulled in alongside Randall motored underneath the terminal structure to a safe little purpose built embarkation point, and we were able to clamber down the stainless steel ladder into the tender. What we omitted to do was swipe our credit cards over the Opal Point to pay for the trip. We would have to remedy that the next morning by swiping it twice.
I wondered how we would fill the time between the early afternoon and midnight. But with Randall’s sister, Martha and their two friends Jan and Michael to chat with, meals to prepare and eat, then games to play, the evening was soon upon us.
I went with Alison in the tender to chat with cruising friends on their yachts known to Alison since they had sailed to Vanuatu and New Caledonia and one or two we had met in Marsden.
All the while more yachts were arriving giving us some fine entertainment with their variety of anchoring skills. “You are going to have to move. My plotter shows we have not moved from our original anchor spot and you are dragging, come aboard and see for yourself if you like,” Randal said with his usual calm courtesy. So this particular chap upped his snapping chain and shifted a few metres away, dropped the hook while he was still moving and never reversed a little to bury it.
Others vessels had released just enough chain to reach the riverbed, no ‘three times the depth for the chain length and then let’s take her gently astern till it bites’ with these city slickers, just chuck it over so it stops us and hope for the best. But there was little wind to worry about and surprisingly little roll. I guess the ferries, now full with eyes popping guests, were cruising slowly around after their day of speedy, energetic deliveries were over. They all sported pink lights and plodded gently around the central bay area in a pretty, circular procession giving their guests a 360’ view of the goings on.
All the super yachts were moored over the bay so they wouldn’t block our view with their massive hulls and our view was enhanced by the silhouetted masts and rigging between us and the bridge. All through the evening one yacht, the one with the blue lights around the guard rail, motored slowly backwards around our area so the guests could sit in the spacious cockpit and watch the show with a clear view to the stern. Made intelligent sense to me and she obviously motored backwards with more finesse and directional control than Zoonie.
Just before midnight we all celebrated together with a glass of bubbly and shared a wind down chat as the doors of the old year locked behind us and we were now firmly in 2019, despite reports that the fireworks on the bridge allegedly spelled out WELCOME TO 2018.
Rob and I shared the saloon table berth with Alison nearby on a settee berth while Randal rested in the fresh air of the cockpit and the others had the cabins. Together we had voyaged into the New Year without so much as raising the anchor.
The next morning, after a breakfast banquet laid on by our lovely hosts, Alison motored us back to the quay to catch our ferry and pay for the previous crossing and I managed to pick out Tregoning in the mass of yachts that were still there as we passed through the fleet on our way back to the city.
The weather was beautiful, polished to sparkling by the rain the night before, so we mingled with everyone taking in the atmosphere of the surroundings and supped an iced mocha to refresh the easy journey back ‘home’ for a rest before seeing what the evening would bring.
