CHAZ AND MAZ DOWN UNDER 2012

FOURTH HELPX – SENSATIONAL SYDNEY MAY 2012

SHOWS, BOOKS AND NEW FRIENDS

We did quite a lot before heading to our fourth Helpx in Sydney. We drove through the desert to Uluru. When I say desert, it wasn’t sand as we imagined it was going to be. The deep red earth was covered in beautiful trees, grasses, and shrubs. There was lots of roadkill – kangaroos, cows, sheep etc – by the huge road trains that thunder up and down that road. We saw dingoes, emus, snakes, a 7ft centipede train, and gorgeous little spinigrass mice. Uluru was spectacular and one of the most spiritual places I have visited. En route to Uluru, we stayed in a place called Coober Peddy where people lived and worked underground. No wonder they looked depressed. It was a big opal mining area, and I bought a pair of earrings, which I still wear today. We then stayed in Adelaide. It was lovely being back in the city after being in the country enjoying good coffee shops, the hairdresser, and the cinema. We did a bike ride but as I am wont to do, I fell off and ended up with bruised ribs. Luckily, the UK has a reciprocal medical agreement with Australia, so I didn’t need to pay for my hospital visit. Lastly, we hired a campervan and drove round New South Wales. It was a basic model, but it did the job and was a good first experience. We visited Port Stephens, Nelson, Port Macquarie, Waterfall Highway, Bellingen, Tamworth, Dorrigo National Park and Newcastle. We saw dolphins, flying foxes (bats) and heard some exotic bird sounds in the sub-tropical forest we walked through. Campsites in Australia were good with excellent facilities, including bbqs so I came to understand the term ‘throw another shrimp on the barby’ by the end of the trip.

We arrived in Hornsby in our campervan and met our host Jacqui on the street. She was out picking some flowers for our arrival and looked a bit taken aback when we drew up in the campervan. We explained we just wanted to leave our bags before making the journey into Sydney, which we did. We then set off, hoping the drive back to drop off the campervan would be less terrifying than the journey out, and it was. Charlie, despite the narrow lanes and poor road systems, is becoming an expert at driving in Australian cities. Then back we went on the train to Hornsby, excited by the views of the famous harbour bridge and the opera house and wondered what this Helpx placement would bring.

What can I say? It was fantastic. Jacqui is a very interesting woman and an inspiration. She has been a widow for 30 years and brought up her family of 3 boys on her own. She will celebrate her 70^th birthday in August and is training to do her first marathon! Seeing her so dedicated to her training regime and her diet made us decide we had better do some exercise as we are putting on weight. She has lots of interesting friends and we got to meet one of them on our first night when she had him over for dinner, the first of many dinner parties. She invited me to her book group, which was held in one of her friend’s flats in the heart of Sydney. The group were reading 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith and were delighted that a Scot had come to their meeting. I had a great time enjoying the fantastic views over the city at night plus specially prepared Scottish fare such as smoked salmon, haggis, Scotch silverside of beef etc. As everyone was to bring something, my contribution to the feast was Cranachan. Jacqui is widely read, and I think has books on every subject as it seemed whenever we asked about something, she had a book about it, or she would go to the library and get us one. She is a most generous and kind host.

Her son Matthew, who has Down’s syndrome, was a delight. Befriending Matthew was part of our duties and going for days out allowed us to get to know him much better. We enjoyed the trips out we had with him to Manly Beach and Woy Woy, where we enjoyed wonderful fish and chips. He also loves films, and we enjoyed watching videos such as Ironman and Being Human with him and Charlie also went to the cinema with him to see the Avengers. Jacqui has ensured that Matthew has a full life. He works in McDonalds 2 days a week, regularly attends the gym, goes to art class and has had his work exhibited. (Jacqui and I are still friends on FB so I asked if it was okay to put Matt’s photo on our blog, so she sent me an up to date one of him starring in a fashion show as above.) One of Jacqui’s other sons, Dave, is a professional musician, so we went to see him a couple of times in nearby Chatswood. He has a great voice and is very easy to listen to. He is one of the many Australians who surf in their spare time, and he told us he got quite badly bashed up when he jumped into the water from rocks rather than from the beach. We saw a lot of surfers doing this when we were in Bondi, which incidentally deserves its iconic status.

Our days off were on Mondays and Tuesdays and we took advantage of being close to the city to go into Sydney and experience all it has to offer. We became quite the culture vultures and went to the theatre several times. We saw Macbeth in the Opera House, Looking Through a Glass Onion in the Princes Theatre and an Officer and a Gentleman in the Lyric. The writers’ festival was also on, and I went to the Opera House to see Jeanette Winterson (and got her to sign her autobiography) while Charlie went to the Australian, a famous Sydney pub. We visited the barracks where the men who had been transported from the UK were kept when they arrived in Sydney and visited the Sydney Art Gallery, which was wonderful. We also dined in Circular Quay and Darling Harbour and what a spectacular setting for dinner. Sydney is such a vibrant place and being surrounded by water makes it even more beautiful. I think it has taken over from Melbourne as our favourite city. We also went to Paramatta for the day and saw a fish ladder like the ones they have in Scotland, only they are not for salmon but for pike, I think. There were quite a lot of fish that had missed getting up the ladder that we were told would probably end up in a restaurateur’s pot. Paramatta had a huge ethnic population and the Anglican Cathedral had services in about 5 different languages. There are lots of Asian people in Australia because of its proximity to Malaysia, China, etc.

Did we do any work, I hear you ask? Well yes, we did. As well as befriending Matt, Charlie did the gardening and enjoyed being up a ladder again, cutting trees this time rather than hedges. Jacqui has quite a large garden with lots of trees where lots of parakeets gather and make a hang of a noise at night just before sunset. Meanwhile, I did some housework, fed the cats (Kenya and Suki) and did a little cooking.

Next time final HelpX in Queensland.

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