- Travelogue pt 1
When I leave Yurong St, I climb the slopey hill passed the Christian Youth church opposite the recently burned out 2-storey. I'm soon facing Hyde park which see's flocks of gothkids every weekend and other dark fauna at nighttime - fruitbats and possums and the odd giant rat. If I take a right turn I pass by the Natural History Museum which has the largest privately owned precious gem collection in the world. One of my housemates, Brian has the smallest - he did a tour of an opal mine last summer and found a glittery spec. They let him keep it but it remains unpolished lest it dissolves.
Passing by the skate board plaza, which sits on top of a below-ground swimming pool, you soon reach the Sydney hospital which looks nicely colonial and is parked in front of the Domain - a large park stretching from Kings- Cross to the Opera house. I cut through the hospital into the domain to reach the National Gallery and it's free Wednesday films. Today it's Gus Van Sant's "Last Days" - film loosely based on Kurt Cobains last few days. It's pretty damn weird alright but nowhere near as lingering as "Gerry" which i saw on DVD a while ago. In both films there's lots of walking through closed in landscapes, which is fairly familiar to me now.
The gallery has been my destination a few times while in Sydney because it has this free cinema and 4 floors of contempory and not-so art so there's plenty to take in. It's also near the botanic gardens and it's giant spiders, lazy bats and greedy cockotoos. On a nice afternoon folks are either jogging or wearing suits on their work lunch break. Also nearby is the Crime and punishment museum, well worth a visit if only just to see the 3 sildeshow's depicting life in the early 20th century. The voiceover has a dark emotiveness to it that matches the early Sydney cityscape. One set of slides showed past convicts and gangsters, pimps and prostututes, all posing amazingly proud for the police camera, having probabbly never had their picture taken before.
Walking along the outer rim of the gardens and through the end of the domain brings you to the opera house which Clive James said looked like an old typewriter stuffed with oysters, which it sort of does. Behind that then is the harbour bridge which connect North and South Sydney. I wanted to walk across it so i went through Circular Quay and it's tourist throngs and negotiated my way through the hilly The Rocks area with its cafes and resteraunts. After a few flat-whites - delcious antipidion creamy coffee i set off across the bridge. The seaward side is form predestrians and the bay side is for bicycles and rollerbladers, all with trains and cars in between of course. It's a nice walk but a better cycle - being about a mile long it felt. I seemed to have timed my excursion with the passing underneath of the biggest container vessel which decided to annouce that it was leaving the bay with a equally massive foghorn roar that lifted everyone that was on the bridge about a foot. It was facinating then to see the ship glide by the opera house and dwarf it and to watch all the yaughts and ferrries avoid it's gargantuan wake.
If you wanted you could end your walk over harbour bridge with a trip down to the colourfull Lunar Park amusement strip but it really isn't worth the screaming local kiddies. Instead i cycled back over the bridge with dodgey breaks, beside a silver train depositing it's batch of salary workers southward and went for another flat-white before heading through the city back to Darlinghurst.
Passing by the skate board plaza, which sits on top of a below-ground swimming pool, you soon reach the Sydney hospital which looks nicely colonial and is parked in front of the Domain - a large park stretching from Kings- Cross to the Opera house. I cut through the hospital into the domain to reach the National Gallery and it's free Wednesday films. Today it's Gus Van Sant's "Last Days" - film loosely based on Kurt Cobains last few days. It's pretty damn weird alright but nowhere near as lingering as "Gerry" which i saw on DVD a while ago. In both films there's lots of walking through closed in landscapes, which is fairly familiar to me now.
The gallery has been my destination a few times while in Sydney because it has this free cinema and 4 floors of contempory and not-so art so there's plenty to take in. It's also near the botanic gardens and it's giant spiders, lazy bats and greedy cockotoos. On a nice afternoon folks are either jogging or wearing suits on their work lunch break. Also nearby is the Crime and punishment museum, well worth a visit if only just to see the 3 sildeshow's depicting life in the early 20th century. The voiceover has a dark emotiveness to it that matches the early Sydney cityscape. One set of slides showed past convicts and gangsters, pimps and prostututes, all posing amazingly proud for the police camera, having probabbly never had their picture taken before.
Walking along the outer rim of the gardens and through the end of the domain brings you to the opera house which Clive James said looked like an old typewriter stuffed with oysters, which it sort of does. Behind that then is the harbour bridge which connect North and South Sydney. I wanted to walk across it so i went through Circular Quay and it's tourist throngs and negotiated my way through the hilly The Rocks area with its cafes and resteraunts. After a few flat-whites - delcious antipidion creamy coffee i set off across the bridge. The seaward side is form predestrians and the bay side is for bicycles and rollerbladers, all with trains and cars in between of course. It's a nice walk but a better cycle - being about a mile long it felt. I seemed to have timed my excursion with the passing underneath of the biggest container vessel which decided to annouce that it was leaving the bay with a equally massive foghorn roar that lifted everyone that was on the bridge about a foot. It was facinating then to see the ship glide by the opera house and dwarf it and to watch all the yaughts and ferrries avoid it's gargantuan wake.
If you wanted you could end your walk over harbour bridge with a trip down to the colourfull Lunar Park amusement strip but it really isn't worth the screaming local kiddies. Instead i cycled back over the bridge with dodgey breaks, beside a silver train depositing it's batch of salary workers southward and went for another flat-white before heading through the city back to Darlinghurst.
posted by Alex Martinez at 11:55 PM
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