4th January 2010
This morning the weather was looking better, so our trip on the Ferry to Manly was back on. Sydney has a travel ticket which gives you unlimited use of ferries, trains and buses for a day so we bought one of these each from Central Station and set off for Circular Quay on the subway. The ferry terminal is right next door to the train station at Circular Quay, and the ferries to Manly are very frequent, so we didn’t have long to wait before we were on the boat, and being whisked across Sydney Harbour to Manly. It is about half an hour ferry ride to Manly and offers some excellent views of the Harbour Bridge, Opera House and Sydney skyline along the way.
Once we’d docked at Manly we took the short walk down to the beach, which was pretty busy with sun worshippers. My main memory of arriving at the beach (my first beach in Australia) was that within minutes of getting there, a young girl was being pulled screaming out of the water by her Dad. From the amount of noise she was making and the way she was holding her hand she was obviously in rather a lot of pain. Her Dad carried her off towards the lifeguard station, and shortly afterwards an annoucement was being made over the beach tannoy that there were Blue Bottles in the water (a type of jellyfish, also known as a Portuguese Man o’ War) and that if you were stung there wasn’t really a great deal you could do about it, other than rinse it under fresh water, and after 45 minutes to an hour the pain would go away. Great - my first experience of an Ozzie beach is poisonous stuff in the water!
We walked along the beach for a way before taking one of the side streets and cutting in to the town to find the hostel that Claire lived in when she was working in Sydney just over ten years ago. It didn’t take her long to find it - more through luck than judgement I reckon - it was bright yellow which I’m sure helped!
Once we’d found the house we made our way back to the ferry in order to get back to Circular Quay where we took the subway to Hyde Park, where the ANZAC Memorial is.
The ANZAC memorial was built after the First World War to commemorate those who died but has since been expanded to remember all Australian and New Zealand forces who have died in conflicts around the world. It serves as the focus for ANZAC day in New Zealand which is similar to our Remembrance Sunday. The focal point of the memorial is a stunning, yet thought-provoking bronze statue of a young emanciated warrier being carried from battle on his shield. This represents the sacrifice made and a lost generation of young. Above the statue are the names of the various battles fought by ANZAC soldiers and a ceiling of gold stars. The gold stars were sold to people for a couple of dollars in order to raise money to finish the memorial when it ran into financial difficulties. On the ground level there is a photographic exhibition looking at Australian wartime experiences along with a really interesting film about the memorial.
As we’d bought the one day travel pass, we decided that we’d take the ferry from Circular Quay round to Darling Harbour as our last ferry ride of the day. This was a smaller boat that the Manly Ferry one, and was completely dwarfed by a massive cruise liner that was moored in Circular Quay, towering high above us as we wizzed past it.
The first stop was Milson’s Point, where the Luna Park is, just the other side of the Harbour Bridge and on the opposite bank from the Opera House. We’d had a clear view of the Luna Park and the massive lit up face all evening whilst we’d be sat waiting on New Year’s Eve, so decided we’d jump off here for an hour for a look around before catching the next ferry on to Darling Harbour.
We didn’t venture in to the Luna Park - the people dressed up in costumes and blaring music was enough to put us off - instead we wandered around the waters edge in the sun taking in the sights. And getting yet another, completely different view of the Bridge and Opera House. Before long it was time to head back to the dock to catch the onward ferry to Darling Harbour. This took us on a bit of a roundabout way to Darling Harbour, making another couple of stops along the way, and allowing us to see a bit more of Sydney that we wouldn’t otherwise have done.
Once at Darling Harbour we stopped in at one of the many harbour side restaurants before slowly making our way back to the hostel.