So my dreams of diving Vanuatu were dashed, but I think I’m glad they were. The five weeks I now have in Oz aren’t nearly enough time to see the east coast – three would have been nuts. The flight from Christchurch to Sydney was uneventful, and I chose my hostel by finding one that offered free airport pickups. So I saved myself a $20 train ticket that way, but ended up in a very mediocre hostel. It didn’t really matter though, as I didn’t spend much time there anyways. After dropping off my stuff I set out to grab dinner and wander for a bit. An amazing falafel made the dinner part great, but the wander was more on the “interesting” side of things.

The neighbourhood where I stayed, King’s Cross, caters to two distinct and disparate groups of people. On one hand, this is Sydney’s backpacker mecca, home to endless rows of nearly-identical hostels, cheap eateries, budget travel agents, and whatever else backpacking vagrants require. The other element that dominates King’s Cross is sleaze. Interspersed among the hostels are nearly as many strip clubs, porn stores, and massage parlours, while strung out strippers seem to outnumber backpackers on some blocks. I got harassed by three hookers in the first 10 minutes of my wander, and eventually decided to loop back to the hostel and leave the exploring until morning.

Sydney reminded me a lot of Boston – small and dense. The sidewalks, though much wider than we have in Toronto, were more crowded than anywhere I’ve been before, but despite this I was able to pretty much walk the circumference of the city in a day. King’s Cross is on the outskirts of the city (call it Yonge and Finch I guess) and, setting out by nine, I was able to get all the way downtown to the two famous Sydney landmarks before noon. The Harbour Bridge was far more impressive than I was expecting. Despite being what I would typically write off as a concrete and steel monstrosity, the bridge somehow managed to look good anyway – aided by the smooth lines of the cables and the ornate patterns in the girders. The amazing panoramic view of the city didn’t hurt either.

I spent most of my time crossing the bridge gazing across the harbour at the Opera House, and from up there it looked just like I expected. Getting closer, however, I found that it lost most of its charm. A huge flight of stairs wrapping completely around the land-facing side just gave a sense of poor planning and inaccessibility, not the grandeur they were surely hoping for, and the illusion of the sails turned into the reality of poorly maintained sheets of rusting metal. I have a feeling that the new ROM and AGO will fare similarly, and it makes me wonder if we would marvel at history’s great buildings if the people who built them were “sophisticated” enough to move beyond stone.

I decided to wander around the Botanical Gardens for a while before heading to the Sydney Aquarium, and I’m really glad I did. The coastal boardwalk certainly lived up to its billing as the gardens’ highlight, while a small exhibit illustrating the history of the Aborigines was informative without being preachy. My favourite part wasn’t mentioned on the map though – there were three trees in the middle of the gardens that were positively teeming with flying foxes, a large fruit eating bat. There must have been hundreds of them squawking and chattering to each other, and every once in a while a tree’s worth would erupt into flight in response to some perceived threat. The hundreds of bats would then circle the trees, their wing beats creating a roar down below, until landing back on the roost. It was a promising start for seeing Aussie wildlife.

Last stop of the day was the Sydney Aquarium – I felt kind of silly paying to see, behind glass, fish that I would surely be seeing while diving in the coming weeks, but I couldn’t resist. Awesomely for me (though I’m still a bit puzzled it), the focus of the aquarium was on the freshwater fishes of Oz, particularly the rainbowfishes. I recognized several of the species from the aquarium trade back home, but can still not figure out why some of the most impressive species haven’t been exported. It’s not like they’re rare over here – several of them are commonly used as baitfish by fishermen. Maybe I’ll try to import a couple bags… There was also a large dugong display, housed in a floating building out in Sydney Harbour. I was surprised that the harbour water quality was good enough – maybe dugongs are just tough buggers. Considering that diving with these guys was to have been the highlight of my proposed hop to Vanuatu, I was glad to at least see them in captivity.

My final day in Sydney allowed me to investigate the subway system of the city – I love reminding myself how much the TTC sucks. The Sydney trains obliged totally – cheap, clean, fast, and well-signed, my double decker train ride from Kings Cross to the central bus terminal was a breeze. Considering that a slower (same distance though), more crowded (and I went at 5:30 pm) trip in Toronto would cost nearly three times the cost, I once again must conclude that there is something horribly wrong with our priorities, execution, or both back home.