Martin had suggested that as we hadn’t seen the QVB or the Botanic Gardens that it might be a good plan to spent a second day in the city and then depending on how the time went, take a ferry to Parramata. This sounded a plan and also gave us an excuse to be Daytrippers – Sunday driver –No!
The cheapest way to do Sydney travel is to get a weekend ticket for $2.50 each and to travel wherever you want on the trains and buses. Sadly today being Wednesday we were too early! Our Daytripper ticket cost us $18 each and gave us the freedom to travel all day as we chose on the spur of the moment on trains buses or ferry’s.
But before leaving home let’s see if we can contact one of my Cubs from Vigo Hawks Cub Pack.
We managed to call his home number but unfortunately for us Richard was in Melbourne for a two day course and he wasn’t getting back home until around 10:30pm on Thursday. He did suggest we meet up at Manley Quay for kayaking, which he does most mornings, I believe. Trouble is Manley is at least 1½ hours away, and he starts at 06:30. Hmm, perhaps not!
We head off for Central on the Northern Line and see a whole different aspect of Sydney. Being the railway area it is slightly seedy as all city railway centres are. I’m not sure why this is other than it being a melting and meeting pot for society in all its guises.
Sydney has the oldest street in Oz called George Street and this is the one we need to walk down to get to the Victorian area of the city where the Queen Victoria Building and the Town Hall are magnificent edifices to the opulent excessive of that age. QVB is a magnificent trading place which the mercantile forefathers went to town on. Today it is a bijou shopping mall with time on its hands for all those who want to indulge.
We had iced coffee and then took a trip up the old elevator lift to explore further. Convenient facilities are located on the 1st floor. This is where Margery lost her camera! Doh! She left it hanging in the loo! “Oh dear what a calamity poor old camera is lost in the lavatory”! We only realised when about to take a photo of an incredible clock a couple of minutes later.
You can tell by the levity that this story has a happy ending! I wouldn’t be joking if it was still lost! We managed to find security and reported the loss frankly not expecting to see it again, but as it happened it got home before we did courtesy of another guardian angel who handed it in and Martin for very kindly collecting it.
Rather cheesed off, M and I carried on with our day as planned, by first visiting Hyde Park. The Catholic Cathedral St Mary’s is located in the Park and it leads through into the Botanic Gardens where we see flying foxes (biggest variety of bats): hundreds of them hanging out in the trees trying to keep cool and complaining noisily about the heat and the humans (school parties etc) below!
Having exhausted the Botanical gardens – including Ron sampling all the edible herbs! – we made the most of our day tripper tickets and took the ferry round to Darling Harbour. This is part of the main Sydney waterway, but a separate part with swish cafes and restaurants around it as well as a wildlife centre, aquarium, Imax cinema, beautiful fountains..oh yes, and a huge Macdonalds! Needless to say we give this one a miss! It would, however, have been very rude to pass the Italian ice cream parlour, as we’re sure you’d agree!
This Harbour is very much a commuter port as people use the many ferries that leave from here to travel home from work – sometimes to collect a car further out of the city, but many with bicycles that come onto the ferry with them. We join the commuters to try a different way home – across the harbour and up the Paramatta river to Olympic Park. This is where much of the Sydney 2000 Olympics were held, and is still almost in constant use – the Aussies being sport mad, of course! It’s a spectacular set of stadia set on the riverside with parkland including some Mangrove swamps around it. It’s also conveniently 20 mins from where Martin and Elizabeth live! Even more convenient when you realise that Elizabeth has just been recognised as an athletics official in oz, so spends a great deal of time here!!
On the way home we stop to pick up Ryan from Cubs. The scene is similar to those around the world, I imagine with parents waiting outside ready to take charge once again of their offspring. Curiously we were all invited in as there was a message for the parents. Baloo was going back to the UK, and Akela was away on work business 3 weeks out of 4. The Wednesday cubs will close unless a female leader and another leader are found. Coincidentally, Martin (Wood Badge, ex Akela and 10 year service) has been having some problems getting the Group to accept him as a trained leader. The equivalent of their GSL wants him to do all his training again and this situation, not only being ludicrous, has gone on for the last 18 months with Martin saying he wasn’t going to do it, which in the circumstances you can’t really blame him for!
That’s not the end of the story, Martin being Martin has written to NSW HQ and has very recently had a reply which sounds promising. What is being proposed is a personal profile interview and then picking up on any specific needs. Common sense at last. We hope everything progresses smoothly for Martin and all the young people who would miss out on Scouting in the event of closure of this Cub pack. It was interesting seeing the similarities and differences in the closing ceremony. It shouldn’t take Martin any time to lick them into shape!
Oh well, early to bed as we have an early start tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment