From Kiama we left on the last leg of our journey in Australia which would take us to Sydney. The scenery started to take on a much more urban appearance as we passed through Woolongong, even though we were still maybe 70k's away from the city. We'd checked the map the previous night and decided to detour through Cronulla and then onto Botany Bay, where Captain Cook had made his first landing on Australian soil. It was here arguably that Australia's modern history had begun and I felt it was something that I just had to see, having so much admiration for those early explorers. I have to say I was a little disappointed when we got there. As with all places of relatively modern historical interest in Australia, the site was incredibly understated. The visitor centre was small, with nothing particularly interesting to see. The actual landing place marked with nothing more than a 10 x 8 brass plaque. Admittedly, there are some bland older monuments, behind the site in the park. But still nothing to evoke any feeling of the point in time when a nations culture was literally turned on it's head and changed forever. I've heard so many Australians say to me that they feel there is no history in Australia and little culture - I just can't believe what i'm hearing. There is so much here; it's just terribly understated. I'd wager that if you'd walked along Botany Bay without having any prior knowledge of it's historical importance - you'd probably walk straight past the monument and plaque without giving it a second glance - what a shame. However, I still found the site pretty amazing, after finding the freshwater stream where Cook re-watered the Endeavour (overgrown and full of litter), we waded out and stood on the small rocky knoll where Cook had moored his boat before wading a few feet ashore to the mainland. Once the screaming kids had buggered off and a few empty McDonalds bags had floated past, we sat and tried to soak up the atmosphere of the place. I felt strangely proud to be English - but kept a lid on it, as I know we're not allowed to do that anymore, things being all 'PC' and that these days. In fact I considered a clandestine mission to climb the empty flagpole there and tie my huge St George flag to the top - great idea. Sarah reminded me that I wasn't 18 anymore and would probably break my neck - what does she know. We walked back to the van - but I know I could have made it, only thing is I realised somebody had to drive the van and I'd probably need all my energy for that, otherwise I'd have climbed it - honest!
After a night in a lay-by close to Cronulla we packed the van, gave it a quick fettle and headed of into Sydney to drop it off back at the depot. Needless to say, within ten minutes of hitting the city we we're totally lost - even holding the map the right way up didn't seem to help. We got to the depot with ten minutes to spare - after that they'd have been able to charge us an extra $10 an hour! Despite doing nothing but curse the damn thing for the last eight weeks we were both a little sad to see 'Venus' go, all said and done, it had been a bloody good laugh I guess. After sorting a few refunds and out here and there for the leaky roof etc, we pulled on our backpacks and headed over to the train station. We'd secured a room in the Kings Cross area of Sydney and it only took us half an hour or so to make our way over there. For those of you who've visited Kings Cross you're probably laughing already. For those of you who don't let's just say if it had a twin town - it would be Nagasaki. 'The Cross' as it's called is the home to Sydney's population of druggies, prostitutes, down-and-out's and any other type of wierdo you could imagine. It's also the central Backpacker district too and despite first impressions has a strange allure. Our room was great, it cost us $250 per week, was clean and had en-suite and a kitchen. The downside was that it was only after the second night we realised it was above a nightclub - for around 16 quid a night I knew there had to be a catch. After a few nights we got used to the 'boom-boom-boom' coming from below and actually booked another week as we really like the room, plus we were slap bang in the middle of everthing. We'd also checked other accomodation out and nothing came close to the room we had for the money.
Rather than blurbing on about what we did day-in-day-out in Sydney, I'm just going to say that we had a great time here. The City is everything you can imagine, busy, bustling and awake 24/7, in some respects it reminded me a lot of London. Of course we visited all the touristy spots, the Opera house (which is much less spectacular than you'd imagine), the Harbour Bridge etc. Bondi was a bit of a disappointment, really run down and pretty grotty. The world's most famous beach and it's just a mess - what is going on here? Manly however was much nicer. We took a ferry over there, realised why sandwiches are called sandwiches after dropping them on the beach then came back - great day. We even bought a Didgeridoo and I gave those bastards in the room above a blast at midnight after waking us up at 6.30am when they left for work - ha ha.
There just so much I could write about Sydney, we couldn't have ended our travels here in a better place. Even the sun came out and we got sunburnt before leaving - what a contrast to a few weeks earlier when we were in the Snowy Mountains! From here it's on to New Zealand. We're going to be staying with our friend Bek in Auckland and hopefully we're going to try a get some work to fill up the travel coffers.
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