Note: Sorry, but we have few photos of Sydney and most of those are damaged. This occurred in our mishap on Fraser Island.
The only thing I can say about flying from Taipei to Sydney with a connection in Singapore is that the airport security officers do not much like to visually inspect photographic film. To obtain a hand-check of my photographic film, I had to dump all 70 rolls out of their double Ziplock freezer bags, and remove every last roll of 35mm film from the plastic cans. The security officer dourly inspected the collected film canisters, wiggled the little protruding strips of negative, and poked the transparent freezer bags marked "Fast Film" and "Slow Film". I was prematurely congratulating myself on passing this test when she came to my stash of 120mm rollfilm. Rollfilm comes factory-packed in sealed foil wrappers, each about the size of a roll of LifeSaver candy, covered with the manufacturer's logo - in this case, "Ilford FP4 Plus". This sort of film must not be often seen at Gate 7, Singapore International Airport, because my security officer glowered suspiciously and invited me to tear open the foil wrappers -- not a random sample, but every one. In the end, my expression of earnest imbecility was rewarded and I was permitted to sweep the litter of loose cans, lids, film, and torn foil back into the formerly tidy set of labeled freezer bags and continue on. Why did I bother with all this when the airport X-ray machines were all clearly marked "Film-Safe"? See Eastman Kodak's FAQ on airport x-rays for a discussion of the cumulative effect of x-ray screening. Since my film will be traveling through at least thirteen separate airport security checkpoints, it seems wise to request visual inspection when possible.
After we finally reached Sydney, the most surprising thing I noticed was that it was raining nearly all the time. This was surprising to the Sydney-siders, too, who complained about the peculiar weather and how it was raining out most of the Australia Day celebrations which, this being the usually benign summer season, had been scheduled for open-air venues. Even if I had not spoken to anyone, I would have guessed that drenching rain in January is unusual here, since whenever it rained we saw local residents trudging about in light shirts, soaked to the skin, with hardly an umbrella in hand.
As tourists, we had to be different, so we explored the city in Gore-Tex parkas and rain hats. Kathryn saw nothing usual about sitting in the puddle formed by her stroller seat, but we thought it was not ideal, so with a sheet of contractor's plastic sheet and the ever handy duct tape (see Handy Travel Accessories) made an inpenetrable stroller rainbubble for her. Whether it was the soporific effect of being in a cocoon of plastic with rain pelting down, or the lack of fresh air in her bubble, Kathryn dozed through much of our walking about Sydney. 
Walking is an ideal way to see Sydney, as the central city is quite small. Setting off from our hotel the first day we were surprised to find that after only a brief bit of walking we had traveled nearly a quarter of the tourist map of the city, and it proved perfectly feasible to walk from Kings Cross through Hyde Park, downtown, and Circular Quay, to the Rocks and back in a leisurely morning of exploring. Later we discovered the train which for less than $A1.20 took us the same distance in ten minutes, and the city grew even smaller.
In fact, we found that we could walk the whole width of our Tourist Map of Central Sydney in about 45 minutes.
After the fascinating novelty of Taipei, Sydney felt very familiar. A San Franciscan would hardly know he had left home. True, there is some Royal-this and Queen's-that, the pharmacies are chemists, the Burger Kings are Hungry Jacks, and you have to train yourself to look right and not left when stepping off a curb, but here in this medium-sized, English-speaking, modern Western city we felt very much at home. A Californian would likely find Sydney less curious than New York.
Elsewhere in Australia we heard people disparage the cutthroat hustle and crowding of Sydney and compare it to New York, but our frame of reference must be different. We found it a very pleasant, pretty place with no evident similarity to the Big Apple. Hyde Park, in the center of the city, is a beautiful green space with a central fountain, interesting sculptures, and the obligatory pigeons. Downtown is a mix of office buildings, historic structures including Parliament House, where we watched a video explaining Australia's Westminster system of government, and some good shopping on George and Pitt Streets (including my favorite all-purpose eclectica shop, Gowings on George St. which sells outdoor clothing, backpacking equipment, fishing tackle, travelers' books and supplies, sundries and underwear, collectible minature ships, model cars and airplanes, jeans, and expensive brass compasses and sextants.) The Rocks is a restored neighborhood of historic old stone buildings and cobblestone streets, now housing shops, restaurants, and art galleries. The waterfront at Circular Quay is a fine public space dominated by various views of the Opera House -- usually seen through mist and drizzling rain, in our case.
My favorite area was Oxford Street, which we happened upon while searching for a Saturday flea market. This long street is lined with artsy shops, alternative businesses, and funky cafes. We did find the market, but after a hour cowering under tarps amidst displays of handcrafted leather bags and other arts and crafts merchandise as the cloudbursts poured down, we decided to find a drier spot to shop.
Our lodgings were in the locally notorious neighborhood of Kings Cross. The Cross is a colorful area crammed with budget hotels and backpackers' hostels, clubs and restaurants, head shops, strip shows, newsstands, and money exchangers. The population seems dominated by student travelers, bearded bikers, barkers and streetwalkers, young kids sitting on the curbs smoking and drinking, and budget tourists toting dusty backpacks. When we first arrived in the area, fresh from the neatly dressed, polite, and uniformly Asian crowds in Taipei, I was struck at how motley the population appeared: the varied faces and skin tones, tinted hair, scruffy clothes and shirtless chests. After a day this human variety seemed perfectly normal again. It is also convenient to the trains and reasonably close to downtown, and hosts a dense selection of inexpensive hotels, cheap eating places, and other resources for the traveler, often on quiet tree-lined side streets, so we found it a fine base for visiting Sydney. Anyone comfortable with areas like Melrose Ave. in Los Angeles, Market Street in San Francisco, or Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley would find nothing untoward about Kings Cross. I didn't go out at night looking for dubious pleasures, and in the day the neighborhood was interesting to walk about it, especially when the skies cleared briefly.
In a fit of nostalgia, I visited some of the backpackers' hostels. They were too cramped and funky for a thirtyish couple with a little baby (and I was later to find that backpackers' hostels turn away travellers with infants, anyway), but I was wistfully reminded me of how I had previously travelled, with a backpack and delightfully few plans. Still, I appreciated the relative comforts of our little peach-colored hotel on a quiet side street (shown below): not luxurious, but boasting such amenities as secure locking doors and private bathrooms.
I occasionally got the sense that pleasant Sydney had its share of problems. The train had placards warning passengers to ride near the guard's compartment at night, and the train platform was marked "Nightsafe Area" to show where that would be. Twice I found myself in taxis, once in Sydney and once in a rather downcast suburb called Auburn, where I was looking for a computer store to replace my destroyed scanner, and both cabbies told me Australia's economy was depressed. The driver in Auburn explained that he held a degree in structural engineering but had never been able to find work, as the building business in Australia was depressed. The TV news was similar to what I was used to at home, with reports on the day's violence in the latest troublespot in the suburbs and, one night, a home invasion attack on a paralyzed man. But whatever troubles exist in Sydney do not seem to impact the typical tourist at all.
Unfortunately, our plans for strolling through the Botanical Gardens, seeing the Opera House close up, touring the art museums, and so on eventually dissolved in the wet weather. As the rain continued, we decamped and headed north for Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, while making plans to return to Sydney at the end of our Australian stay in hopes of finer weather.
Traveling on a Budget: As mentioned already, Kings Cross is a excellent area for budget travellers to stay. Our hotel (the Springfield Lodge) charged $A59/night (about $US46) for a spare but clean room with a double and a single bed, private bathroom with an oddly-shaped but usable shower, a small counter with sink and electric teakettle, and a single large window overlooking a sunny air shaft. Management was sociable and the hotel was convenient and quiet. Double rooms at the nearby backpackers hostels ran about $A38/night but were booked full, this being the high season in Sydney. Kings Cross abounds with cheap restaurants offering meals for around $A8 ($US6), and the train took us most places in Central Sydney for $A2 or less roundtrip ("return ticket".) However, fresh vegetables and fruit were quite dear: e.g., $A0.50 ($US0.38) per peach and $A7/kg (about $US3.20/lb.) for grapes.)
Another area in Sydney popular with budget travellers is Bondi Beach. This is a crescent-shaped sand beach, sandwiched between fine waters filled with some rather good surfers and a beach town of shops, restaurants, and motels. A nice place, but rather distant from central Sydney (a bus ride and then a connection to a train is needed), and it would not be my choice for a good base to explore the city.
Staying Connected: Compuserve has two direct nodes in Sydney. As our hotel had no phones in the rooms, we used an acoustic coupler to dial in through the lobby pay phone, after convincing the skeptical manager that we wouldn't rewire his phone in the process.
This was our first stop in a country that uses 220v household electricity, but to our pleasure it turns out that most modern electronic gear will accept input voltage anywhere from 110v to 240v (read the equipment label) so all you need is a $A10 plug adapter. In a pinch, simply twisting the prongs of a U.S.-style plug will allow it to fit into Australian outlets. But we also learned, to our dismay, that your typical travel voltage converter may be suitable for hair dryers and the like, but will quickly destroy electronics that require 110v: our handheld scanner succumbed after barely a minute plugged into one of these crummy little frauds. If you need to a voltage converter for electronics, go to a Radio Shack or similar place and get a true transformer, which will weigh about two pounds and occupy a fair bit of space in your bag. Better yet, bring gear that accepts variable voltage input.
Back to the Travel Page Index.
