Australia diary
3 - Ferries & Art Gallery
June 9, 1998
I take the ferry to Darling Harbour, walk around, taste some Japanese food, find an aboriginal owned shop in the mall (called Gavala). Then I find the Chinese Garden of friendship, a beautifully woven maze, with lots of nice views in an enclosed garden. From time to time your gaze goes far enough to remind you are close to the Central Business District.
The entrance of the garden has lots of buildings, and the back has more vegetation. A dragon wall depicts the red Guangdong dragon and the blue New South Wales dragon. Water is everywhere, very still or cascading, crossed by many bridges.
The buildings have lots of openings to frame the landscape, with various shapes: round, octagonal, looking like an archway…
I taste Poh Erh tea in the Tea House, with chinese pastries. Then I go back, crossing Chinatown to get downtown on foot.
June 10, 1998
I walk to the supermarket, taking my friend’s dog along. I then decide to make the most of the last day of my blue weekly travelcard…
I take a bus ride downtown to meet my host, we get fish and chips from the food court I discovered on the first day (food courts are a very good idea, they gather many different food-vending shops around a big area where you can sit and eat regardless of where you have bought your food). Then, to Circular Quay. I start with a first ferry ride west to Woolwich, deeper in the harbour, passing under the Harbour Bridge. Old warehouse piers are being renovated on the other side of the bridge. There are also nice houses on the coast, on the steep shore, with a boat “parked” in the backyard.
I get back to Circular Quay, take another ferry to Rose Bay (eastbound this time). In Double Bay, an interesting building: you park on the roof, at street level, then go down to your flat with a bay view. In Rose Bay, it starts raining, I find where the seaplanes that hover above the city nest.
I catch a bus to Watson’s Bay, a very nice place. The sun is setting and rain falling over the downtown and CBD. I get soaked, take a bus back and get soaked again while waiting for the ferry to get back downtown, and email my friend’s mother with a French cooking shopping list.
June 11, 1998
Laate start…
I go downtown to find a special treat for an Australia and ski lover: ski trail maps of Australia, found at Map World in Pitt street, where I discover a shower curtain with a world map centered on Australia. Interesting to see a different layout of this map.
I walk around, across the city, through parks where ibis feed, to Sydney Hospital and Martin Place, then to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. There’s a very nice temporary exhibition of Aboriginal Emily Kame Kngwarreye, called “Paintings from Utopia”. Among the other works on permanent exhibit, some nice contemporary concepts, a painting of Scottish ox in the mountain, with the mist rising. No admission fee for this museum!
We have a night out, with a drink at the Sheraton on the Park, and then we go to a disco where singer Kelly Llorena is giving a mini-gig to promote a new CD.