5th Sept - Sydney

We made ourselves popular in our dorm room by setting our alarm for 7 so we had time to sort out the SIM card before going on a tour. At least we only disturbed 4 other people instead of the 30 others we were meant to share a dorm room with.

We booked in for another night at reception and were thankfully allowed to stay in our current room instead of moving to 'The Church'.

We met the tour guide, Matt, at the Town Hall and were shepherded around with about 20 other people. We were introduced to St.Mary's Cathedral, the largest post-WW2 cathedral in the world, which was only finished in 2000, when the Olympcs came to Sydney.

Next, we saw a Queen Victoria statue that originally lived in Ireland. They didn't want it and so it was kept in storage for 40 years before being shipped to Australia and finding a new home outside the Queen Victoria Building (QVB) shopping centre.

Nearby was Queen Vic's dog, who guarded a wishing well raising money for charity and who had been given a voice by a popular Oz radio presenter to encourage people to donate.

We walked through QVB, looking at a few items of interest and were told about a letter that Queen Elizabeth II had left last time she visited. It was addressed to all the people of Sydney with a caveat that it could not be opened for 99 years. Matt and I entertained ourselves with the idea of what it might actually say.

Next major stop was Hyde Park, where there was a fountain that had been designed to signify the unity between Australia and France but seemed to be adorned using figures from Greek mythology, with Apollo looking rather grand on top!

We looked at Hyde Park Barracks heard a bit about Governor Macquarie and the first proper hospital that he wanted to have built because he had a vision of New South Wales becoming more than a penal colony.

The British Government refused to provide any money to build the hospital but Macquarie was determined and so garnered funds by promising a monopoly on rum production to a few major businessmen.

Some of the hospital still provides medical care but, since it was so extensive, the South Wing was commandeered by government to become the first mint in commonwealth outside of the British Isles and the north wing became parliament house.

After telling us more about Sydney's best practical joke and the locations which had been used in a number of films, we went to Australia Square to have a quick rest break and meet Bob: a very lifelike sculpture of a guy reading a newspaper, created by one the Johnsons (from Johnson & Johnson pharmaceuticals) who had been cut out of the will to the family fortune and so had to make a name for himself.

The rest of the tour explored 'the rocks' area at Sydney harbour, including some pubs and stories of 'pressganging', the bridge and how it was hated, and the Opera House - which the architect never saw completed after he was screwed over by the government.

We sat and made some phonecalls to Colleen and Anna before running into a lady we'd met on the tour called Andrea. She was very nice and was in Sydney with her husband and was just keeping herself entertained while he was at a conference. She had been a teacher before she retired and she loved to talk, so we listened to stories of her career and her own children before getting so hungry we needed to leave.

After lunch (oh Asia we do miss your food but I can't say it felt too awful to scoff a subway!), we walked the 1.3km over Harbour Bridge to the little town on the North Shore. We wanted to take a look at Luna park but there wasn't enough time so we just did a circuit and headed back over the bridge in time for the evening tour.

The tour guide initially came across as a quite a quiet, measured guy but as soon as he started guiding, he kicked into life and became this over-animated, squeaky, arm-flapper who constantly used upspeak, making everything sound like an indignant question. This was particularly emphasised when he was making a joke and Matt was soon squeezing my hand in anger.

He did show us some really great parts of 'the rocks' but we couldn't focus as much on content as we did tone. We saw some 'tiny, historic, terraced houses' the same age, size and build as ours, and wandered some of the smaller lanes hearing about the gangs and goings-on that used to occur there. We heard about the conditions that people lived in, the ways the convicts prospered (especially Mr Cobb, the butcher) and the dangers to sailors entering the area.

We walked past a number of pubs laying claim to being the 'oldest public house' in the area, the locations of public hangings and area of expensive redevelopment, including some flats on the wharf that would set you back over $14 million dollars for one apartment.

The last major stop was outside the observatory, where we got a lovely panoramic view of the city at night. We'd both become pretty tired of trying to tune in by then so all we remember is a hazy story about how instead of having the cannons pointing out to the sea, they had them pointing inwards to protect themselves against the convicts.

We supermarket shopped on the way back to the hostel and cooked and ate amongst the bustle of drunken 20-somethings who were earning more money than I was by waiting tables and typing up documents. Jealous? Me?