Sydney

We have arrived in Australia. After being invited in for a 'Pint Of Piss' by the Home Secretary, we made our way over to King's Cross, Sydney - a pole for skint backpackers and some of the seedier sides of society. After a few nights in the Central YHA (described by Lonely Planet as 'The Cadillac Of Hostels' - complete with swimming pool and sauna on the roof), we got set up with a room in a share house. Which turned out to be strikingly similar to the place I festered in as a student (Donnington Gardens to those who remember it). Slightly grotty, but entirely livable - at least the ceiling stayed intact in the kitchen, unlike the aforementioned hovel. Though going down to the 7-11 meant running the gauntlet of winking masseurs - as I trundled back from the pub a few nights ago, a low moaning saxophone raised it's eyes to heaven and wondered why it had been born under a bad sign. If that's not straight off the cover of a Tom Wait's LP, I'll eat one of the pastried bowel-worriers from Pie Face. Again.


Excellently there was no shortage of gig venues and indie clubs in the area. Left is a shot of some of the Jess Randall group - as seen at Love Jam, an all day festival over at Bondi. This group were one of my favourites, I'm a sucker for pretty much any music with good strings. It's amazing how quickly I've reverted to type now that I'm back in a Western country with a temperate climate for a while. Out with the sandals and shorts, hello to ill fitting jeans, Converse shoes, stripy shirts and hooded tops. All the better for watching live music and drinking bad beer. And we did plenty of that - although when I say "drinking bad beer" perhaps I should also mention that Australia is a prominent producer of some very fine wine, a fact I have taken full advantage of. Though I do not remember much of The Dolly Rocker Movement's set, The Astral Kaleidescope were Ace - it's been a while since I've heard some good drone-core.





In addition to some very pleasant beaches and music all-dayers, a favourite Sunday activity in Bondi seems to be the garage sale - the success of Ebay clearly demonstrates the universal desire to buy other people's old rubbish. I got hold of a copy of High/Low by Nada Surf for AU$2, an album I've had no end of difficulty tracking down at home. Aside from rocking out, we went to see a film called Ten Canoes, which explains a little bit about Aboriginal stories and pre-colonial culture. It was particularly interesting watching this after reading Guns, Germs And Steel, as it gave me a better idea of how hunter-gatherer societies may have functioned, at least in this context. Specific points of interest for myself were the structure of a polygamous society, and how warfare erupted and was handled. The changing attitudes towards the 'Sorcerer' of the piece - initially treated with fear and suspicion and how he eventually integrated himself with the rest of the villagers.

It hasn't all been drinking and unemployment, however. I made the mistake of thinking that once we got back to somewhere relatively familiar that there would be a lack of mental chewing gum for a while. That was before the disgraceful events around Lebanon kicked off - and it resonates particularly because of the large Lebanese population here. We've been to a couple of talks and marches, and it is heartening to see that there is a lot of sympathy for the plight of those displaced and killed in the time since these attrocities started. Especially seeing as memories of the Cronulla race riots are still very, very fresh. Something else to grumble over locally is the latent sexism that seems to pervade. To be fair, there's probably a large amount of this at home (mostly in moronic lads' mags and shite chart toppers), I just notice it here more because I'm in an unfamiliar area and trying to make observations on things. In any case, during a wander around the Royal Botanical Gardens, I noticed a sign explaining the difficulties in grass cutting for such a large area and how technology had improved things - fair enough. Whoever designed the sign is a master of irony however, because there was a picture of a buxom lady leaning over a dodgy old mower, showing the goods and winking - the caption was "We've come a long way from the 1970s". Well bravo. Or the car rental poster trumpeting "No Birds" - yeah, none of my business either.

In attempt to find something worthwhile to think about, we went to a talk entitled "The People's History of Empire", courtesy of Socialist Alternative. There were some interesting ideas, but we didn't realise it was actually their weekly meeting as well - so there was precious little discussion of the actual themes afterwards and too much on how great the new cover of this week's magazine is. Obviously any talk given in this context is going to have a heavy political bias towards the views of the group that's giving it, but it gave me another perspective to look at things from when reading about events in history. Although I'm not fully convinced that that an end to Capitalism will spell an end to war - in my (uninformed and unresearched) opinion, that seems slightly naive. War existed (admittedly on a smaller scale) long before Capitalism found it's feet, and all things point to it being around for a very, very long time. At the moment I feel like getting hold of a big textbook on something easier to understand than the inhumanity of the world ... like hyperdimensional trigonometry or astrophysics. At least it's nice and ordered and there's a set answer that you can come to through applied logic, totally divorced from reality. Not statistics though - that was always boring as shit.

Alice Cooper knew what he was rattling on about in Lost In America - moaning about not being able to get a job or a car because one depends on the other. The best solution he comes up with is to get a girlfriend and sponge off of her - unfortunately we decided to do things the hard way. This meant doing a Responsible Service Of Alcohol course that (in theory) would kick in the door of opportunity for employment. The course itself was basically familiarising ourselves with the booze laws of New South Wales (which seem to be slightly stricter than the rest of the country), and getting an idea of where one stands on dealing with tired and emotional customers. One thing that struck both of us is how confrontational some of it (at least on paper) seemed to be. If someone's had too much, that's it - they have to be asked to leave. No suggestions of soft drinks or slowing down, that's it. It is different in Victoria, however, and that's where I will be looking for bar jobs anyway. After the formalities, I opted to go out for further practical investigation in the field with a couple of people from the course - which was soon paired down to two blokes from Dublin and myself having Guinness races in Scruffy Murphy's. All good stuff, right up until the point where I was treated to a tirade against the English (fair enough, I can see why some of our actions through history would get some people's goat, especially our nearest neighbours). It went on for entirely too long to feel comfortable, however - and eventually led on to some racist meanderings about South Africa with Islamophobia for pudding. Righto, see you later then.

Other things that kept us out of trouble :

The Sun and Planet gear, part of the Boulton and Watt Engine on display at the Powerhouse Museum. Built around 1785, the third in production and currently the world's oldest surviving example - described as "the most significant technological artifact to reach Australia". Seeing it in motion was extraordinary.









The locals are fairly deprecating about their landmarks - no "Big" Ben or "Grand" Palace here. Indeed, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is known as "The Old Coat Hanger" - in the spirit of things, I've re-named the Opera House "The Fab Kebab".







Having a Captain Cook over Manly bay













What do we want ? PINTS ! Morton shows his disdain for pitiful "Standard Drinks". Solidarity !



















A surfer at Bondi beach, wading out to join his mates.









I cannot wait to get in the sea ...











Ha ! Who would have thought it ?
















Some scenes from the Royal Botanic Gardens - the Succulent Garden was particularly interesting. A great number of cactii and aloe, striking in the winter light.