Sydney Day 7

Friday after the usual routine, I headed down the hill to Central Station to meet Victor. I walked a slightly different way, which meant a small hill to ascend, and once inside because I used a different entrance, I was a bit confused. I called Victor and he was soon with me. 

We headed to a platform to catch a train south toward Wollongong but our destination was before then, the town of Thirroul, a small seaside town. It was a very comfortable journey, but not very fast as there were many many curves in the hilly terrain, limiting our speed. That's all the better for looking out the train window at the variety of scenery, through a national park and a few smalls towns. As we closed in on our destination the sea became visible, far down below us in the train. The train descended to a large flat plain on the sea's edge, and there we were, at Thirroul. 

One of us should have looked up directions first, and not waited until we couldn't find the club, our destination for lunch. We depended on the kindness of strangers to find our way. We had been confused as the electric map was sending us back to the station. It was correct, because we needed to use the footbridge over the railway line. We found the club and it was very pleasant and we had a nice lunch. Train intervals are limited as it is not a suburban service, so we kept any eye train times and were at the station in good time. Unfortunately rather than being a long train like the one we travelled on earlier, it was half the size, and the only seats were aisle seats. A few left the carriage at a station and Victor assertively snapped up better seats for our comfort and window views for me. 

It was just such a nice day trip through interesting countryside, with nice views, and in comfort. 

I bought a pizza for dinner, which was nice, but I could only eat half the pizza. 

It was hard to take decent photos from the train and the experience was my focus, rather than photos. 

We has arrived.

We walked through this small and pleasant park.

We found our lunch venue.

Meanwhile back at my digs, the Burdekin rooftop was deserted as the weather was not good.

No one likes bad wind. 

As I went to collect my pizza, this cafe that has been here for yonks has permanently closed, and many times Ray and myself sat out the outdoors tables watching the Oxford Street walkers pass by. I may have even had coffee with Marcellous, but more about him in the next post. The Asian woman who used to run the cafe, on her own as I remember, was of a decent age and perhaps retired. 

Oxford Street used to be called the Gay Mile. It is still quite gay, but not like it was in its heyday in the 1990s. 

This evening art class has been running for years too. It is always interesting to look in the window to see what art is being produced on the easels.

Feline Friday

I suppose Jass has been a resident here for two months. She has trained Phyllis and Kosov very well as her servants. Not so much the grumpy uncle, yours truly.

She visited the big wide world once, and was overloaded with information, scents and instincts, and so ended up in Kosov's arms. He is number 1 in her life, Phyllis number 2, and I am third. 

She likes going out on the balcony and her breathing becomes very rapid. She ignores my treaties to come back inside, and I've nudged her inside so many times, I only need to put a guiding hand near her now. The same goes for the landing. At times she will scratch at the door to out onto the landing. She has a bit of a sniff around, there are dogs and a cat next door, but mostly she sits and listens. She knows people appear from the lift, and is always hopeful when she hears it, that it will be Phyllis or Kosov. She is very adept at opening doors, and though she doesn't have a chance of opening a door with a door handle, she does know that the handles are related to door opening, and tries to reach for them.

She is certainly not a lap cat, but she does sleep on top of  Phyllis or Kosov at times. I keep my bedroom door closed when I am sleeping. She has stopped using my wardrobe and under my bed or doona as a safe space, but she does still at times hide away under a lounge room chair. 

Her litter tray has been moved from their wardrobe to the toilet, large enough for a wheelchair. She's perfectly toilet trained, although something got stuck a day or so ago, which she removed by scooting across the carpet. 

She has no interest in human food, and oddly doesn't like wet food, although we mix it in with her dry and she has to eat it. She likes her dental treats and tubes of paste. Given she has her own water fountain, she is no longer interested in water from the kitchen tap. The filter in the fountain needs to replaced regularly. After a couple of weeks, it had become slimy and I removed it. On one visit to a pet shop, I bought a new filter, but it was the wrong one. The lads cut it to make it fit, but it still didn't. $10 wasted. We tried again at the same pet shop, and Phyllis was convinced we now had the right one, at $17. I told Phyllis to open the box carefully, and he did. Just as well, as it was too big. I returned it, and bought the flea/worm treatment. On the receipt, the credit was for a 'water softening filter'. For fucks goodness sake, Melbourne has the softest water in the world. Filter not needed. 

She is certainly a cat with a lot of character and is very smart. Today we gave her the multi treatment at the back of her head for worms, fleas, heartworm. The week after next she is booked in for an FV vaccination.

She is very active in the morning after breakfast with a lot of chat, which becomes quite annoying. I sometimes amuse her with toys or red dot pointer. About 11am, it is time for her to curl up in an armchair and sleep into the afternoon. Her ears become tuned at about 4pm when Phyllis or Kosov might arrive home. There is more I could write, but I have bored myself, let alone you. 

I hoped to include a photo but as I write this, Phyllis is flaked out after a rough couple of working days, and a job interview. Hopefully he will send me a Jass photo when he wakes. 

Sydney thoughts and boobies

Sydney and Melbourne have similar population numbers, but within the Sydney city itself and its inner areas, the streets felt far more busy and more alive. Maybe it's that Sydney has warmer weather? I don't know. At times it felt crowded. Curious. 

Sydney's Metro train is amazing. There is a train every five minutes in the middle of the day. I think it becomes every three minutes in peak times. It is driverless, incredibly fast and passenger numbers have exceeded expectations. I loved it, except...

The seats are all sideways and the train's acceleration away from stations gives very strong G forces. The feeling is quite unpleasant. I'd rather face forward or backward than sideways. Just like London's DLR driverless trains, it feels odd as it speeds up at times, and then brakes, whereas if the driver in control, there would be coasting.

The seats are hard, and while the tracks are all new, the weirdest thing happened between Crows Nest Station and Chatswood Station. The train may have travelling at 100/60 and in my carriage, it was bouncing about every half second, you could say rapidly jiggling along. And, even though I have little interest in women's breasts, I could not fail to notice the women within my view had breasts jiggling up and down in tune with the train jiggling. It felt so unpleasant, and I thought at the time, unsafe. Are we about to derail? This is on new tracks, and in a new train!

The new and yet to be finished Sydney Metro is great, but the trains used are not. They are horrible, and to add, the air conditioning blows air straight down onto your head.

So after my visit to Chatswood I did not catch the Metro back to the city, but a stopping overground train. It was slower, but I was a tourist with time to spare. The seats were so comfortable, the train, smooth, quiet and no air blowing on me. 

A former Prime Minister, John Howard, lived in the suburb Wollstonecraft, and what a delightful station was that as they train paused. I was slow with the camera, but I did capture one view of the city from the train.  

And this one from the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Deer, oh dear

Some very unfortunate political play has happened over deer hunting. Let's begin with the fact that before white people arrived in Australia, there were no hard hooved animals in Australia. Cattle, horses, sheep, buffalo, pigs and deer were introduced by white people. While cattle and sheep are managed as farm animals, wild populations of horses, buffalo and deer exist. Horses and buffalo are partly controlled by government contracted exterminators, the others are not generally except by private hunters.

Hard hooved animals do terrible damage to our fragile environment and should be eliminated. 

Deer have no protection in Australia beyond cruelty to animals laws, except for in my state, Victoria. They are able to be shot by hunters, but otherwise they are a protected species. They are often hit by cars, causing terrible damage to cars, and I should think danger to those who run into them,  and aside from dingoes and wild dogs, they don't have a natural predator. Why has this protection nonsense just be reinforced by our state government? 

In my view it is solely down to the hunting lobbyists. They don't want to see the pest species eliminated because they won't be able to hunt them. The Labor(sic) state government has caved into pressure from the hunting lobby, over the environment and motorist safety, and it is a disgrace. 

With our preferential voting system, I've always voted Labor, or directed my preference to Labor after voting for The Greens. It will be a pointless exercise, but I will inform the Labor Party of my disgust and disappointment. If enough people do as I do, maybe it could make a change. 

My apologies if I've upset your Bambi feelings, but it is an important environmental and road safety matter, and we don't want to end up like Debby mentioned in her post referring to deer. 

Sydney Day 5 & 6

Wednesday was Manly day, meaning the F1 ferry from Circular Quay to the Manly wharf. The weather was very pleasant, sunny but not hot. After a train from Museum to the Quay, I think I went across on the Freshwater ferry. It shot across the harbour at a speed I've never experienced on a Sydney ferry, 40 km/h, 25 mph. The trip normally take about 30 minutes I think, took exactly 21 minutes. The return trip was much more normal at 25/15 and taking about half an hour.

Manly was very normal. I had rest on a seat outside the ferry terminal, and a couple sitting to my side asked me, just double checking, that The Corso from the protected harbour through to the open water beach was the direction they thought. The woman praised Sydney's public transport, which normally  would not please me but I took it as a credit to Australia rather than Sydney. After a pregnant pause, the woman asked me if I thought they were American. Err, I am so sorry. One hundred apologies. Yes I did think that. So you are Canadian. It transpired they were from Vancouver BC, and cruise ship passengers. But Vancouver has good public transport, I proclaimed. Well, yes, if  you live in certain areas. So that is much the same as here. So you have visited Vancouver? Yes, several years ago and we liked the city. We discussed accents; Australian, Canadian and New Zealand. That was nice encounter.

I had lunch at Fusion Point, cheap for the area, but perhaps not quite as good as it used to be. Armed with an ice cream in my hand, I sat on the South Steyne strip of parkland and observed the comings and goings along the beach. This story is quite true but for some reason no one will believe me. As I was taking a snap of the beach, this man stood up from the beach below the seawall and photobombed my snap. 

The harbour was as gorgeous as ever.

The photobomber.

Looking south from South Steyne.

It seems like a family group at the Quay.

After a drink at The Riley, dinner for the night was a half a leftover supermarket sandwich and leftover Thai food.

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Thursday meant more Metro investigation. I caught a tram from Town Hall to Wynyard Station, but before further travel, I sought out this odd but nice art installation in Angel Place, thanks to an idle remark by MC that he would be attending a concert nearby. Pretty cool, hey.

This is a nice big bush for your decking, near the birdcages. 

Exits from Victoria Cross Station.

The stations were all quite nice, this being Victoria Cross. But I do feel better about our soon to open underground Metro stations. Maybe they are ok too. 

I walked to Martin Place M1 station and caught a train to Victoria Cross on the north shore, and surfaced for a brief look around and to see the station, then the same at Crows Nest Station. Although I knew there would be a motorway around the outskirts of Sydney, or one somewhere, as I popped out at Crows Nest, I was next to Highway 1, the road that runs right around Australia, mostly near the coast.

There was some nice artwork outside the station, with a useful screen. You can note how frequent the Metro runs.

Back underground, it was to the original southern M1 terminus at Chatswood, with its combined Metro Station with a normal Sydney Trains overground station. A Middle Eastern cafe where Ray and I once had a nice lunch, had turned into a sushi bar. I walked on and found myself in the Victoria Avenue mall. The centre was lined with two rows of takeaway food tents, with the customers being Asian, and me white fella, was well out of place and vastly outnumbered. I rested for a bit on a bench, studying the way Asian customers interacted with Asian food vendors. I reached no conclusion, other than the interaction between younger Asian customers and the mostly younger Asian vendors seemed more friendly, than interactions with older Asian customers. I am a bit used to seeing that with older Asian people who seem offhand, even grumpy when they are being served in shops. 

But I is hungry. The was a drab shopping centre on one side, and a Westfield shopping centre on the other side. I entered the latter, looking for a food court. I saw some places, but nothing I fancied. Then I was very bad. I spied a KFC and indulged in original recipe deep fried chicken, chips and a thick shake. It was not as if I had been eating well, and this was a one off indulgence. It was a bad. I was feeling rather weary by all walking I had already done and made my way back to the station.

I dined at the Oxford Hotel that night, and you would think I was over chicken after my KFC, but no. At least there is something green on the tray. 

I will write a bit about my journey back in another post, with a comparison between the Metro and Sydney Trains. If bouncing breasts appeals to you, stay tuned.

Fed up with gambling ads

Gambling ads for horse racing have really stepped up a level, with seeing nicely dressed and groomed attractive men at a racecourse cheering on their favourite horse, well the one they hope will win. 

However, I am fed up with seeing the ads on YouTube and after a quick search, I found I can get rid of them.

This works for YouTube if you are using Google and logged in. Go here, https://myadcenter.google.com/customize and click the 'Sensitive' tab.

Monday Mural

With Sami, here is Monday Mural. 

"Phyllis, stop the car". I took a snap somewhere in Fitzroy. It is not a great work of art, but pleasant to the eye. I am not sure what the purple creature is to the left.

Sydney Day 4

A birthday card from Victor and his friend featuring cool cats. Nice.

I am travelling today to Parramatta and there are options, bus, no thank you, suburban train, the BMT which is the limited express Blue Mountains Train, or ferry up the Parramatta River. I chose the BMT and it was quite a fast trip to Parramatta. I caught a 440 bus to Central and I had to find the platform for the train. Central is a confusing station but the signage is excellent and as the train departed, Mortuary Station came into view. It hasn't been used for the named purpose since early twentieth century. 

Parramatta Square was quite pleasant, with St John's Church surrounded by a nice lawn.

I bought food and coffee at the Bourke Street Bakery, obviously an offshoot from the famous Bourke Street Bakery in Surry Hills. 

It was quite a pleasant space.

The Parramatta Rat Haus. I was telling the lads today as I am writing about this about the German name for a town hall. Phyllis told me the German name for ambulance, but I've forgotten

One reason for visiting Parramatta was to see its new tram line, the L4,  without a connection to the city.

It was a bit interesting in that it is powered partly by overhead wires and partly by battery. It is rather slow though.

 

It was a decent, and interesting walk in quite warm weather once I was back at Parramatta Square to the ferry terminal. God help you if you didn't have map or google. I saw no signage. I should have stayed on the tram for at least one more stop.

The ferry arrived at the Parramatta terminus, and turned around in the wide river basin. The ferries are part of the public transport system, so touching on your Opal card pays for your fare.

With earthen river banks, the ferry's speed is restricted until it reaches the walled river banks, whereupon it speeds up quite a bit.  

An interesting building along the way. Sister called me to wish me happy birthday and asked if I was on a ferry? How did you know, I replied. Well, that's what you do in Sydney.

We once lunched at the Sydney Rowing Club in Abbotsford, with Victor. This is not a flattering view of the rather nice establishment from near the river wharf. 

What is thing called love? Or what is this thing called, love? Or what is This Thing called, love?

Some colourful housing.

The ferry called at Barangaroo before my intended destination, Circular Quay. I decided to bail and see the new Barangaroo Metro Station.

I think the development of Barangaroo is quite good, from a wharf that used to be called The Hungry Mile. It was a decent walk from the ferry terminal to Barangaroo Metro Station, but mostly shaded 

I think Barangaroo was my favourite new Metro Station, but there were still a few to see, and see them I will.

I caught the M1 to Martin Place and then a bus home.

Dinner was again at the Thai restaurant at the base of the hotel, and I then dealt with all the kind birthday wishes on FB with a 'Like' on their sweet messages.