It’s 30 Minutes in the Life time again, and our little group seems to have got down to 2 of us, so just a heads up my blog will be a lot longer than 30 minutes.

You may recall that during Covid (2021), Richard was diagnosed with a melanoma. Actually more than one melanoma, and I started pushing for him to make a visit to see his mom who lives with his sister in Australia. Up until now (2023) his results has been positive. He has shown signs of being NED which means no evidence diagnosed. In 2022 we were asked by Amy and Daniel to go to Macedonia. Having done that trip, Richard finally decided to he was ready to go to Australia. But only for 2 weeks. Yikes only 2 weeks…. I seriously tried to make it longer but he wasn’t budging.

Richard has not physically seen his mom since 2007. Zoom calls happen but that is not the same. He has not seen his sister and husband since 2011 when they traveled to the US. We have not seen our nieces since they were 7 years old and they are now in their 30’s. And he has not seen his brother for a number of years as well. We got to see all but his brother, who lived on the other side of Australia.

But there is also another side for me wanting to go to Australia. Both my fathers parents were born in Australia. My grandmother was born in Mackay, and his father in Chippendale, Sydney. For the longest time, I have wanted to visit Sydney. When I was in my late 20’s I asked my father to apply for an Australian passport. He was not interested. I tried to make him see that it was not for him, but for me, but he died without applying for one. In the end, we moved to the USA as Richard was offered a job there. So it was kind of surreal to be in Sydney knowing that this was the city of my grandfathers birth. In addition, his mother was born in Redfern and his father in Seven Hills. I am sure today they areas are nothing like they were back in the day of my grandfather’s youth but it was good to see something of where he had lived.

I had done a fair amount of research and come up with some plans of things I particularly wanted to see, or at least try and see them.

On map number 1, these where what I had selected to see:

1. The Opera House from the Botanical Gardens near Mrs. Macquarie’s chair.
2. Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair.
3. The Opera House
4. The Customs House (given that my grandfather was an emigrant)
5. Circular Quay
6. The Rocks
7. Sydney Harbor Bridge
8. Restaurants
9. Photo spot for the bridge and the theme park across the canal
10. Renewal project which is a 22 hectare waterfront precint. Shops and Restaurants, and you can catch a ferry from that point.
11. Observatory

On Map number 2 these were the places I had listed to view:

12. George Street

13. Queen Victoria Building (Beautiful architecture)

14. Sydney Tower (restaurant right at the top)

15. Pitt Street Mall.

16. Hyde Park – Memorial Garden & Sculpture

17. St Mary’s Cathederal – Gothic style church.

18. Anzac Memorial

19. China Town

20. Chinese Garden of Friendship

21 Darling Harbor area

22. Restuarants.

23. The Green Line that took us back to the Hotel.

While I may not have done them all, I felt like we managed to get through quite a bit.

Sydney, Australia… I believe I fell in love over the course of 5 days.

Day One we arrived at the airport at 7am, having travelled around 32 hours from the time we left home to the time we arrived in Sydney, exhausted and sleep deprived. I do not sleep on flights and so I was surely dragging. As I mentioned in the previous blog, Australia has a long long list of what you can and cannot bring into the country. If you are planning on traveling to Australia, make sure to check out that list. Also do yourself a favor and get a doctors letter for prescription medication, they will ask for it. We did, so all was good.

Walking into the terminal there are about 8 check-in machines and people standing in line. Once you get to the machine you scan your passport, answer some questions, and it issues you with a card. You then take that card and enter it into the pass through and you by pass the immigration process. However, my card did not work. I had to go to a counter and a very friendly lady checked me through. We then had to pick up our luggage and go through border control. We had put our prescription medication into our check in luggage, so we had to dig it out and put the doctors letter with it. I feel like having shown them that, they were happy to let us go through.

Next we headed for the train. We had done some research and knew that we could use our American Express card for transportation, instead of buying one of their transportation cards and then having to top it up every time it got low. And yes there is a bank fee, but it was minimal and worth avoiding the possibility of having to leave money on a useless card. Interesting system they have there. They have a tap in and tap out system. So when you go through the station gates to get on the train you tap your credit card. Then when you get off at your station you tap your card again. That then defines your fee. It is so efficient and really works well. This system applied to all the transportation we used in Sydney. The only thing that was a little annoying about that is that I needed to have my credit card handy all the time and my wallet was in my backpack.

Our hotel, The Mercure Hotel, was situated pretty centrally and we got off at the Wynyard Station stop and walked a block to our hotel. Of course getting there at 8am means we are super early. We were unable to check in until 2pm. Fortunately we were able to drop off our luggage. That meant we were zombies going on a walk, or at least that is what it felt like. What I did not realize was our hotel was on a hill. So wherever we walked we were going downhill leaving, and uphill coming home. What to do, where to go? Seemed like the closest was Darling Harbor. So off we went and walked around. I had listed a number of places of interest on a map and Darling Harbor was one of them. We walked all over, took a wrong turn and landed up in places where I had planned to go on a different day.

It was finally close to 2pm so we headed back to the hotel, got checked in and into our rooms. We were able to have a shower, feel a little more human. I thought we would catch a nap but nope, Richard wanted to continue exploring. So off we went.

According to the New South Wales gov website “The Rocks was given its name by the members of the First Fleet, who, on 26 January, 1788, were landed on the rocky peninsula on the western side of Sydney Cove. This was the site of the first convict encampment, military camp, bakehouse and hospital.”  To read more about this interesting area check out this link.

Back up the hill we headed, after missing our street, and finally to the hotel. I was super tired and ready to put my feet up. However we were also hungry and we wanted a early dinner, bed was calling.

Exhausted we decided to head back to Darling Harbor for dinner. Little did we know that the place had siesta time from around 3-5pm. That may not sound bad, except that by 5pm we were in bed, asleep.

Totally exhausted we headed back to the hotel. After the 32 hour travel, my knee was worrying me and all this walking and going up and down hills just aggravated it. I was glad to get back to the hotel. We decided to share a pizza at the hotel and then crash. The pizza was an interesting combination of cheese, pepperoni and what tasted like Worcestershire sauce or on second thoughts it may have been mango chutney. It wasn’t a bad taste but definitely different.

Sleep came super early. As I mentioned 5pm and we were both lights out. The time change and jet lag were not fun, but more about that next …..

Up next we get to watch the sunrise over the bay, explore Circular Quay and it’s surrounding area and head off to walk from Bondi Beach to Bronte.

Stay well

My friend Lupji from Lupji Photography is co-blogging with me today. Don’t forget to check his blog to see what he has been up to.

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