Sky fades to pastel as the sun sinks west. City lights twinkle in haphazard fashion, playing illuminated noughts and crosses on towers of glass. A glow shimmers off the water as a ferry glides through. There is a hum and buzz and the squawk of a seagull, amplified many times over by that of a hen party. Glasses clink under the off-white orbs of an opera house. We have cocktails. And toast the Sydney sweet spot.
It takes a while to get there, and a great deal of patience and effort and cost. Sydney is not the easiest of erstwhile friends, rarely offering a simple parking spot or vacant intersection or route untainted by a hefty toll. And, rather than chill things out, Easter seems to exacerbate them, as everyone wants to do the exact same thing in the exact same place.
Undeniably the city is at its most accommodating on a ferry, but you have to first get to the ferry and then hope you can get on. Yet, aboard, the veer right around Bradleys Head never fails to provoke a slight tingle, a just about pinch yourself moment of relief. An unfolding panorama of a city skyline flanked by prized jewels. You can see this feeling on the face of others too.
Rewind a few days and it’s not too dissimilar a mixture of frustration and delight in the Blue Mountains. Even on a weekday the lookouts are popular and – in parts – pricey. Staying here overnight helps, day trippers dissipating and local councils offering a rare parking freebie after six. With the going down of the sun, remnants of hubbub coalesce on top, gazing over the edge at that most natural of wonder. Space.
The Blue Mountains proves a good Mum spot. Many of the best lookouts are easily accessible. There are countless cafes for coffee and chocolate and cake. There are – of course – snapshots of a landscape that will etch memories for a lifetime. And there is the option to embrace a range of these vistas from a cablecar or railway. Swiss style.
Scenic World is exactly the kind of tourist trap I would normally tend to avoid. But with exaltations from that pioneering election night loser, Portillo, and the benefit of easy accessibility and free parking, it proves a no brainer. A cool cloudy start up top breaks as we plunge rapidly down into the Jamison Valley, courtesy of the much proclaimed steepest railway in the world. For once, not only the Southern Hemisphere.
The experience is akin to the dive of a rollercoaster, including that initial gentle roll forward that kids you that this is all going to be rather pleasant and somewhat overhyped. But hold on folks, and hope your bag and walking stick is tethered. All this is quite surreal when you look around and realise you are not hurtling toward a gaudy pleasure beach but gazing upon a UNESCO world heritage listed wilderness.
Down amongst the millions of trees there is now a boardwalk, complete with fairy lights and Gruffalo trails and scuffling lyrebirds. This links up with a cablecar which can take you back up top, where you can either plunge down ad nauseum (we go one more time) or take another cablecar over a small canyon carved by Katoomba Falls. Up here you can also buy many, many varieties of cuddly Australian marsupial in the gift shop or even some stodgy pizza. We opt for a more refined lunch in nearby Leura.
After lunch we make note of places for a potential afternoon treat. In between food, a stop at Sublime Point for another sublime view. Only here we were stung by parking for a mere 20 minutes and a rockiness just a little too severe for Mum. The pain eased by an overdose of chocolate back in Leura.
I wouldn’t say all we did was eat and congregate atop spectacular viewpoints. But with evening light fading within the Grose Valley and a quick stop off for megalithic outlooks at Evans Lookout, the day culminated with leftover chicken and salad at Govetts Leap. Peace and serenity among the drama, a fitting end to wild Australian majesty fading into the dark.
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Coming down the mountains was a quiet affair, the back road via Bell and Bilpin feeling remote and sombre as clouds lowered upon densely clad hills. Fine drizzle intermittently coated the windscreen, necessitating frequent adjustment of wiper speeds. It wasn’t as inspiring as I would have liked at Mount Tomah, the Botanic Gardens offering mediocre coffee among a commendable variety of plants, not quite dazzling in an autumn peak. For the first time on Mum’s trip, a pervading feeling of winter crept onto the horizon.
A scrumptious apple crumble slice lifted spirits in Bilpin, even if we sat and ate it in the car, British style, as rain gathered force. It was only a passing shower, a few more grazing the route down into Sydney, where summer swiftly returned. Here at last to a city high on bucket lists and – on balance – rightfully so. Especially when you can find that sweet spot.
Sydney attracts people from all over the world and high among them are the Irish. It was a very large coincidence that a few weeks before, flicking through TV channels in despair, I stumbled upon Sydney Weekender. A largely vacuous program plugging the merits of Sydney and surrounds, a feature on food options alerted me to Big Dave’s Chipper. Big Dave himself was the star attraction, promoting his authentic and barely nutritious Irish cuisine and what looked like ‘proper chips’. The chunky sort that may just come with ‘proper vinegar’ if, like Mum, you protest loud enough.
We sat and ate them overlooking a choppy ocean near Maroubra. This meant accumulation of tolls that continued apace all weekend, transitioning from south to north to south to east and inadvertently through city tunnels. We were staying north, up on a hill among lush ferns and frangipani with rainbow lorikeets for curious company. A quiet Ramsay Street in the suburbs a short drive from Manly, with free, on-street parking.
Manly itself was another matter. A fine place to feel and smell the ocean air, to breathe in Australia with its surfboards and vitality and golden prospects, so enviable in many ways. A drawcard for many, many people on a Good Friday, transported by frequent ferries and occasional bus services and millions of cars. Cars congregating along every single street, making it especially challenging to find an empty spot and jump on a ferry into town.
I circled for a good 30 minutes before luck came my way, and achievements followed, namely parallel parking a hire car on a steep slope in a four hour space little wider than a hire car. It was a decent walk to the ferry terminal from here, but close enough to launch a foray onto that harbour, around Bradleys Head, towards that iconic skyline. Docking at Circular Quay to mill around like everyone else, ants drawn like honey to the white shells of an opera house.
So much for people escaping Sydney over the Easter holidays. They were all here and pretty much everywhere else too. A few escapes into the bush provided some relief and – on terra firma at Bradleys Head – million dollar views without million dollar parking. Our lodgings also offered a breather from being one of the tourists. All too briefly a place we could pretend at living a privileged Sydney life.
While it was tempting to linger on the deck with the lorikeets, Easter Sunday was the last full day of Mum’s visit to Australia. There was one gaping hole to be filled, one superlative cliché to pop in the bucket. For any Brit, Australia is as much about Bondi as it is kangaroos and cork-strewn hats. Sweltering in late summer heat, thousands of people browning and reddening and frolicking in the surf.
We stopped for little more than 30 minutes for obligatory photos, before heading to Watsons Bay for what I envisioned would be a fine, lazy lunch. The reality proved a no-go, an impossibility, a narrow isthmus way beyond capacity. So a quick brainwave drove me towards Bondi Junction and the Southern Hemisphere’s most scenic Westfield food court. It was blissfully quiet here and easy to park too. Suspiciously so. Westfield was closed, and by now travellers were getting a little hot and bothered.
And so, just down the hill from our Airbnb, we resorted to some takeaway at two in the afternoon. I know the Koreans love this stuff for Christmas, but I hadn’t really imagined we would be having KFC as Easter lunch. It was hardly living the glamorous Sydney life. And while hunger ensured it went down with satisfaction, I was keen for this whole game to be lifted.
Cue a post-nap turnaround, an ‘ah f*ck it, let’s get an Uber, and have some cocktails.’ Dropped off close to Manly Wharf, squeezing on a ferry again, passing Bradleys Head, entering Circular Quay as the sun heads under the bridge and towards the horizon. A table underneath an icon, a bustling hum, a squawking seagull, twinkling city lights. Cocktails and snacks and a cool relief of a breeze. A sweet spot amplified by all the love. Park right here.
While memories can be magnified or maligned by multiple visits, there is something special about breaking new ground. A stop around South West Rocks and Hat Head National Park provided many highlights, one of them being that this was new territory for me, Dad and the car. We all quite liked the drive alongside the Macleay River, with its green watery pastures, tiny weatherboard towns and cowbirds. We all liked a lot less the potholes around the national park campground by the beach. We were fond of the lighthouse and its views, but not so keen to traverse a rough track to some mythical walking trail. Still, if we hadn’t switched to a different walk we might have missed the sun going down. Everything works out for the best in the end.
The beach is pitch black barring the beam of light circling upon the lighthouse. The sound of waves suggest ocean somewhere vaguely nearby, a roar magnified without any other disturbance at night. The sea breeze is cooling and evaporative, seemingly keeping the blood-sucking bugs at bay. The fine sand sustains a tripod and the sky offers an infinite, ever-expanding canvas. The photos may not have turned out brilliant, but the shared experience, the learning, the new adventure was. I daresay it was even better than Eastenders. And on that bombshell, bom, bom, bom, bom-bu-bu-bu-bum.
Indeed, many visitors were lured by the smells of the Cailler chocolate factory in Broc; so much so that we skipped the long wait times and went straight to the chocolate tasting (i.e. shop) instead. One bar later we were getting off the train in Gruyeres, straight opposite the fromage factory and down below the castled old town. Undeniably cheesy with a touch of theme park, it is nonetheless a fine spot in which to amble and eat a random picnic from the Coop.
Retracing some of the route back into the French speaking side of Switzerland, train seven rolled and lulled its way to snoozeville, climbing up through a hole in the rock to emerge way above Lake Geneva. The descent was disorienting as the lake shifted from left to right and eventually lapped at the foot of Montreux. What better way to stretch the legs than to walk along the lake shore in the early evening sunshine, ambling towards a Legoland castle jutting out into the water?
Following an epic day cruising the rails of eastern Switzerland, the next day – Sunday – proved a quieter affair. I mean, it did start with a train, the Lausanne metro transporting us to a dormant university campus and close to more lakeside ambles. Lausanne was emerging to life in its dog walkers and cyclists and rowers and barbecue in the park chefs. It was still rather quiet, in a Canberra-like kind of state.
The trip from Montreux up to Rochers-de-Naye would cost an arm and a leg in itself. Better than cramp and a heart attack that would be the inevitable result of trying to make this journey on foot. Old and old at heart alike were more than happy to board the open air carriages, passing the raffish suburbs of Higher Montreux, up through clusters of chalets and expensive hotel restaurants commanding views of the lake, into pine forest under deep blue skies and out into open meadows way up high. At around two thousand metres in height, panoramas of Switzerland and France abound.
gbpilgrim 