January 2008 Archives

Yesterday we arrived in Sydney around 7am… after 29 gruelling hours of travel!! We had to take all of our worldly possessions with us on the plane, so we had 8 bags (4 giant rolling suitcases, 3 overstuffed backpacks, and a laptop bag) with us. We took the CityRail train from the airport to Circular Quay and thankfully someone helped us manhandle all of our bags onto the train before the doors shut! From Circular Quay, we lugged our bags to the wharf where we caught a ferry across Sydney Harbour to Manly Wharf. We took turns guarding our bags, so that we could go out on the top deck and take looks around our new home city. The ride took about 30 minutes, and we passed right by the opera house before landing at Manly. Then I gave my cousin, Paddy, a call and she came by and picked us up.

The rest of the day was low-key, we settled into her place, searched around on the internet for flats, and tried not to fall asleep. We arrived on Australia Day so in the evening we had a barbeque with Paddy’s flatmates. A very nice (but very sleepy) first day in Australia.

I slept solidly last night and didn’t end up getting out of bed until 10am or so (that’s 3pm PST). I was all for lazing around the house for another day, but Kara wanted to get out and see something, so I said “if you plan it, I’ll go.” She talked to Paddy, and decided that we’d go down to Manly Beach for a look around. We caught the bus near Paddy’s place and eventually made it down there after some bus confusion. Once there, we walked down the Corso (a pedestrian walkway) from the bus stop to Manly Beach.

As this is Australia Day weekend, there were lots of races (swimming, rowing, etc) taking place on the beach. There were people all lined up on the shore watching, as announcers on loudspeakers shouted out the race results. The beaches were mostly closed to random people, so we walked along the beach on a nice pedestrian path until we reached Shelly Beach. Here there were no organized sports, so we walked to the water and stood in the surf a bit to feel the water temperature (maybe a little colder than Maui winter temps, but definitely not bad). We explored the park and discovered a nature walk in an area called the Cabbage Tree Reserve. Lots of nice sea cliff views and a short bush walk. There were TONS of freaky spiders everywhere, we assumed they weren’t poisonous since people were walking all around them. We also saw a blue tongued lizard just hanging out under a tree, it looked a lot like this! Then we walked all the way back, had a lunch of doner kebab, and then caught the bus back to Paddy’s.

This evening we went to a nice dinner party at Paddy’s friends’ house. We chatted about all sorts of things and had a yummy dinner. Now we’re back at Paddy’s house, it’s past midnight and I’m ready to hit the hay (or whatever they call it down here).

Yesterday morning Paddy took us on bush walk down to Bantry Bay. We didn’t see any new animals, but it was cool walking through different looking bushes and trees. The walk was almost all downhill to the bay, which meant the hike back was a serious climb. Later that day she took us to Fairlight Beach, a cute little beach with a salt-water pool off to the side. There was a nearby reef, so I borrowed a snorkel and mask and swam around a little bit. I saw a few new-to-me fish which was pretty cool!! We had a BBQ at night for dinner, and I was put in charge of the grill. I had no idea what I was doing, but somehow the lamb steaks, pork chops and corn on the cob turned out all good.

Today Kara and I got a ride from Owen (Paddy’s flatmate) down to the UNSW campus. The campus is pretty compact, and I was afraid at first that it’d be reminiscent of PSU. But there turned out to be plenty of green areas and pleasant open spaces. There are a lot of cool looking buildings too, so overall it's a pretty neat looking campus. While there, we opened a bank account, I got my student ID card, and we ate our packed lunch at a picnic table. Then we walked east off campus through the Coogee suburb. The road we followed eventually ran into the shoreline at Coogee Beach, so we turned north and followed a pedestrian path along the coast. We ended up following the path (which is called the Eastern Beaches Coastal Walk) for 6 km all the way to Bondi Beach. The walk took us past places like Gordons Bay, Clovelly, Waverley Cemetery, Bronte Beach, Tamarama Beach, and finally Bondi Beach. Once at Bondi, we caught a bus back to Circular Quay and then rode the ferry back to Manly. We didn’t end up getting back to Paddy’s until 6:30pm or so and we were worn out from the giant walk!

Tomorrow we’re going back to campus for the ‘Arriving and Surviving’ orientation class that all international students must take. Should be helpful…

So here’s the deal... It’s too cool that we have a place to stay while we’re getting settled, but it’s REALLY far away from the Uni. It takes us about 1.5 hours of riding public transport to get from here to there, and that puts a damper on our apartment search.

So yesterday we went to the Arriving and Surviving class (which was mildly useful) and then hung around the neighborhood waiting for the nearby hostels to open so we could see if they had any vacancies. We figured that we could stay nearby for a week or so to make our housing search a bit easier on us.

Since the class ended around noon and the hostels didn’t open until 5, we decided to waste away the day at Coogee Beach. It’s a 30 minute walk (mostly downhill) from the Uni, so it’ll be our home beach while we live here, and that’s fine by me because it’s a nice beach! A lot of the beaches here are very large, and this one was no exception. We mostly basked in the sun and read our books, but occasionally we’d cool down in the surf by getting tossed around by the strong waves.

At 5pm, we stopped by a few hostels, but the cheapest place we could find was AUD $75/night (weekly rate). So we walked back to the Uni bus stop and rode buses and a ferry back to Paddy’s place.

Today we called the cheapest hotel that we found yesterday and booked a room for a week. It’s a bit spendy on our budget, but we’re anxious to get into a place and we’re hoping that being nearby will help us find a place quick. We did a bunch of other administration things: ordered health insurance cards, cancelled our car insurance for the Jeep, cancelled our US cellphones, wired money from our US bank to our Aussie bank, etc, etc.

Around 3pm, we had enough of this serious stuff, so we headed out to the Manly area for some snorkeling. Owen dropped us off at Manly Beach, and we walked over to Shelly Beach where we saw a bunch of snorkelers on Sunday. Along the way, we saw a bunch of lizards so we took a few pics. At Shelly, we saw a bunch of new-to-us fish, and there were quite a lot of underwater plants as well. After some exploring, we headed back to shore to warm up on the beach for a while. Then we walked over to the swimming area right next to the Manly Wharf to do some more snorkeling.

I had read that there are seahorses and cuttlefish to be seen at the Manly shark net, so we put our snorkel gear back on and swam out to it (on the people side, not the shark side!) I didn’t see any seahorses, but I think I might have seen a cuttlefish through the net… Unfortunately I didn’t stay out there long because I kept seeing little jellyfish floating in the water and I didn’t know how dangerous they were. I definitely want to go back there some time, the net was pretty cool looking underwater, and there were lots of fish and stuff hanging around eating the algae that grows on the net.

Tonight we had our first Sydney thunderstorm! More lighting and thunder than I think I’ve ever seen before, very cool!

Tomorrow we make the trek back to Randwick (the suburb near the Uni) to check into our hotel room. Fingers crossed on finding a place soon!!!

I posted pictures from our first days in Sydney and yesterday’s snorkeling trip in the gallery. But then you should be checking there regularly with the ‘Photo Gallery’ link to the right.

And with that said, here are a few differences between old home and new home that I’ve noticed so far…