An Early 23rd

Well, not that early, only 17 hours earlier than my actual, US time, birthday. But I did get up quite early to do the morning 1Cover sing, which was fun, if a little tiring. Then I dashed home to shower and head out again to meet Kayleigh at Circular Quay. We took a ferry to Watson’s Bay, where my friend Shaun (of Nottingham and the Coogee hostel fame) said there were nice views and good fish and chips (my main interest). Here are a few more classic “I’m in Sydney” shots.

We started by taking a walk to the other side of the little bit of land that is Watson’s Bay (it’s actually a narrow area on the edge of the harbour but still connected to the city-side of Sydney, so we could have taken a bus there, but the ferry was a lot nicer and quicker). There was a walk you could do up to a lighthouse, but we didn’t make it there because we were too hungry and wanted to get on to the meal, but we did catch a few nice views of the real ocean (vs the harbour) and saw a bay where a ship was wrecked in the mid-1800s.

 

They dredged up the anchor and left it there as a memorial, and it was shockingly huge and heavy looking. It made me wonder how any of the ships floated at all with such a big thing strapped to them, and also how they got the anchor back up once they wanted to leave (bringing new meaning to “weighing anchor” lol). I should have gotten a person to stand next to it to get the size variance in the photo.

We headed back to the wharf through a little rainforest path that showed us a few nice buttress roots and impressive trunks, and were very excited to stand in the queue at Doyle’s for our luncheon. I went for the gold and got a full seafood basket, which included fish, chips, scallops, calamari, and prawn (I only got one, which was too bad because it was really good). I topped it off with a ginger beer and it made for a splendid birthday lunch!

While we were eating we chatted with an older couple from the UK who were visiting their son who lived in Sydney with his (Australian) wife. To be fair, Kayleigh did most of the talking (as one Brit to another) while I concentrated on devouring my feast and keeping the seagulls from joining in. Fed and watered, we lounged by the wharfside beach bit for a while to digest.

It was a very nice day but we didn’t have any swimsuits, so we had to make the best of wading, although suffered from sunburn later (just a bit on the back of my legs at the waterline). I can’t say that I’ve ever been sunburned on my birthday before, so that was actually kind of funny. We poked around the rocks to see critters, but only saw some tiny shrimpy things and a few hermit crabs, and lots of potentially dead and most definitely razor-sharp oysters stuck to the rocks. 

At one point a boat hove in and deposited a few swarthy Australians with some large fish that they had just caught. One leapt ashore and ran off with his fish (I got a photo first) and the others took their fish to a pile of sandbags in the middle of the water and proceeded to gut and fillet the fish then and there. 

This made for entertaining beachside viewing, but we were running out of time before we had to catch the last ferry back (we had to work at 5) so we walked around a bit more, first in the nearby park where we saw some of the silliest pigeons I had ever seen (except that I think I had seen them three years ago at some point, but whatever). Behold, crested pigeons!

I don’t know if the photo captures it well enough, but they have a spike sticking straight out of their heads! Ridiculous! We also saw some normal rainbow lorikeets (see them all the time, but they’re still pretty), here’s a slightly blurry photo.

I got another photo of a dozy sulfur-crested cockatoo, this time in a twisty tree.

We tried to make it to the lighthouse again, but we got confused about the right path to take and instead had to turn around at this cove beach area, that looked really lovely and calm and a very nice place to swim if only we had swimsuits and a bit more time!

We made it back to the ferry no problem, but it was delayed coming into the harbour, so we both had to rush off back into the city. We got celebratory birthday gelato first (I got grapefruit and lemon/mint, which was really tasty if a bit sour). I almost didn’t make it to the afternoon 1Cover caroling in time, but I saw them right before they were leaving and they waited while I quickly threw on my onesie and raced out to Pitt Street Mall. Coincidentally, that was the day they filmed the video, so it was a good (?) thing I made it back in time.

I made us get fun group photos, one of which I’ve already posted.

After singing I wandered back through Pitt Street Mall to see some of the buskers (there was a famous guy who was like a runner-up on “Australia’s Got Talent” or something like that, one of the girls was ogling him as we walked past to go sing, but he had left by the time I came back). It was pretty hectic and there were a few people performing, but nothing that caught my interest long enough to hang around.

I chilled in the apartment for a bit and then decided that I was not giving up on my birthday just yet, so I wandered off to Scubar, a backpacker bar that’s attached to one of the nicest hostels in town (the YHA one) and happened to be pretty close to my roomshare. I figured that people there would be willing to chat with random fellow-travelers, which was true. I befriended a few Canadians (one from Montreal, one from Vancouver) who were recovering from jetlag, and then we found some Italians and Swiss. At around 11pm I celebrated the fact that I was now officially 23, as per US time and my specific time of birth (3:52am, which translated to 10:52pm on the 13th in Sydney). We then danced at a club for a while before I decided that I had fulfilled my birthday-celebration duties and was absolutely too tired to do anything else.

I enjoyed a glorious morning the next day where I slept-in, ate some of my yeast pancakes with special double cream (which is divine), and relaxed as part of my birthday-in-America time zone. Here’s my favourite photo of the day (excluding the fish-and-chip one) taken at one of the paths at Watson’s Bay. Look, it’s me and Kayleigh sitting there between the palms (except not…). Gorgeous!