Mad Trip Day 18: Sydney

[galadriel1010]

All over Sydney there are posters for an opal shop where you can buy direct from the suppliers and get up to 50% off the tag price for them, because they don't have to go through resellers and they also don't have a street-level shop. I set off fairly early to find this place and this time managed to find it. It's up a narrow flight of stairs, three floors up, and they buzz you in, and then you get to the reception desk where I asked if I was in Narnia.

Apparently I was.

I got buzzed through into the next room and attended to by a nice young man, who was extremely informative about opal mining and the different types and where they're found and how they're formed, whcih was what I was really there for. I love rocks, me. And they are very pretty rocks. I wasn't planning to buy anything there, opals being a bit out of my price range normally, but I did emerge with a sparkle. I can't tell you much about it though, just in case the recipient happens to read this ;)

After the opal shop I went to the Australian museum and paid to get into the photography exhibition, which had come across from the Natural History Museum in London. The exhibition was the winners of the nature photographer of the year competition, and a good combination of interesting and informative. Some of the photos were beyond stunning, some of them were sad, some just made me laugh.

As well as the photography exhibition, I went to the Aboriginal history exhibition and the natural history displays, seeing the reproduction of the giant wombats and kangaroos, and the huge range of extinct animals that have been wiped out since European settlement.

The museum is just across the road from Hyde Park, and a block away from one end of Oxford Street. I did the tourist walk up Oxford Street and stopped for a while at the temporary art installation by the old men's toilets, which commemorates the start of the gay rights movement and the first Mardi Gras (I so wish I were here for Mardi Gras, but silly university gets in the way). Oxford Street is another of those gay places where I don't feel entirely comfortable because there's so many men around, but I still enjoyed wandering up and seeing the sights. One thing that often strikes me in Australia is the lack of rainbow flags. Maybe I'm imagining things, but I'm sure there's a lot more of them in the UK. Queen Street in Leeds is full of them.

I went to the Holocaust memorial in the park and then headed back down the street. I stopped into a bookshop, not because I wanted to look at books, but because there was a butterfly in the shop. When I tried to explain this to the shop assistant and realised that it didn't make much sense, I figured that I had heat stroke again, so I went to walk through a fountain.

I was egged on by this slightly odd guy, and we got chatting, as you do. We must have talked for nearly an hour, because he's an Aboriginal rights worker and travels all over the country giving lectures and working on a film about the ongoing abuses of Aboriginal rights. He was great to talk to, lovely guy, and it really was a cause for thought.

My skirt was soaked by this point, from walking throught eh fountain, but it dried out as I walked down Oxford Street to the Queen Victoria Building to meet lefaym. We walked down to the ferries, past a group of fancy dress partiers, who may well have been Oprah visitors, and stopped for an ice cream whilst we waited for our ferry to Manly. The view from the boat is gorgeous, and Manly is surprisingly built up and sweet. We got fish and chips and ate them on the sea from, then walked along the beach to the pool and sat to watch the light fade before we headed back to catch the ferry and go back to home or hostel.

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Comments

[bk_forever]

You're really meeting some interesting people on your travels!

Glad you found the opal place - that would have fascinated me! I've been collecting crystals and semi-precious stones since I was little and I've got hundreds. Only one small piece of raw opal though, as they are very expensive!

I would have enjoyed those exhibitions too, though not the heat you're getting there... On the other hand, considering how cold it is here and the fact we have no heating because the boiler behind our coal fire has sprung a leak, I could do with some heat. I'm freezing!