Sydney Visit January 2008

We flew to Sydney for the opening of an exhibition in which John has some work. He was selected to represent the North Coast Institute of TAFE in a state wide exhibition of graduating ceramics diplomats. We visited our friend Elfriede in an aged care hostel as soon as we arrived. As on previous occasions, she did not look like she was enjoying the tele when we arrived, but her look of thunderous denial transformed into sheer delight and utter surprise when she recognised us. We took her to lunch at the local soccer club. Her appetite for Chinese has not diminished one bit. She offered to carry our bags for the rest of our trip, and back to Mullumbimby as well, but we, regrettably, had to decline her offer. We left her at the hostel and headed to the Blue Mountains, where we stayed with Steve, a potter friend of John’s (Trish was off rowing in Tamworth.) Dinner was grilled snapper and mango salsa. Yuuum. Next morning it was back down to Gomorrah. I remember thinking as we trained past some of the ugliest urban clutter imaginable (well, in this country, anyway) that the people who live there must think they have no choice. And I thought of our friend in the hostel (who really does not have a choice) yet who keeps herself looking like she’s ready to meet that new man who will sweep her up in his arms and…. and I realised that she does not live without hope. Next stop was the hotel we booked on the internet the night before we left. The picture was of one of those grand old palaces on Broadway. When we got there, the hotel was actually in the building next door. You can guess the rest, but at least the room was clean. John thinks it is probably a brothel. We did a lot of walking in Sydney – in the RAIN!! Did someone say drought a few months ago? Gosh, if only we had one day to dry the washing! Anyway, after taking the train to Bondi Junction we found ourselves in my old stamping ground – where I lived in my misspent youth, before I went soldiering. I really could not recognise the place, but the food we had in the Oxford Street Market was really nice. From there we walked to a gallery at Charing Cross (hey, we’re still in Sydney at this point – not London!) where John made a new best friend who sooooooo wants his work. Actually, I saw some work there (2D) that I really liked, but I remembered just in time that we don’t have any spare wall space. Back to the hotel and on to the Clay Workers Gallery in Glebe for the opening, on the way to which I was startled to find myself walking along William Henry Street, another place of misspent youthfulness (as distinct from youth) which is mentioned in one of last year’s blog entries. The opening went like a Harley… (remember this one from last time I used it?)... better than a Triumph. John’s work was right in the centre of the very small room with the work of six other graduates from across NSW. I liked the work of two of the others; the remaining four were clearly competent and probably very good – they had to be to be there – but did not grab me. One of them in particular, stuff about mermaids, made me homesick for Byron Bay. Um, actually that would be more sick than home, and I don’t mean sick the way a twenty-something would. The artiste arrived fashionably late and before she got through the door John said “Here comes the mermaid.” Yep, it were her. We were joined at the opening by Steve and Suzie, another potter friend, also from the mountains, with her husband and son who is starting this year at East Sydney Tech – now the National Art School – where I spent three weeks in that misspent youth alluded to earlier. We all adjourned to one of the plethora of restaurants in Glebe for a post show knees up. Good food, goof fun, good night… well, not so fast, because afterwards we walked back to our hotel through the most astounding variety of night life. I thought about the bleak back yards we looked into on the train and realised that what I was seeing in Glebe-by-night was probably what people who live in the Grimlands see themselves as being part of. To some extent they would be right. Living in Mullumbimby means that we could only ever be tourists in the fleshpots of Gomorrah. Frankly, we have the better deal, but I could handle living nearby in the mountains – back to which we headed the next morning, to stay with Suzie and Don, who, being political animals, were still partying post-election. We were joined for dinner by my friend Penny, who on account of John Howard’s inflation rate, is now probably Tuppence or maybe Threepence or even Sixpence. We dined on a delicious beef ragout followed by melt-in-the-mouth meringues. Yahoo!! Mountain Due!!! Next day it was back down the mountain and off to the Art Gallery of NSW. We deposited our bags in a locker at a backpackers joint – Central railway station no longer has lockers as a precaution against terrorism – and went to China Town for Yum Cha – um, that should be Yum Yum Cha. We took the train to St James and walked through one of the many underground walkways in which we had encountered buskers, some of them really good – one of them astonishing – and from there across Hyde Park, past the Archibald fountain and St Mary’s Cathedral, both places I frequented in that aforementioned youth, to the Domain, where a lone soap box haranguer lectured himself on some obscure issue; and, finally, we arrived at the Gallery, guarded by heroic horsemen of romantic antiquity, where we took in the Sidney Nolan Retrospective. Wow!! And other shows, during which I realised that merely being a tourist in Gomorrah has its drawbacks. The taxi driver who took us the very long way to the airport to catch our return flight lives in Ocean Shores half the year and Sydney the other half. The conversation was a revelation. I can’t remember what about, but it was. Our plane was delayed by a storm, and when we did finally get on board, we were delayed a further 90 minutes because they couldn’t get fuel – the depot had been struck by lightning: so they said, anyway – I didn’t believe them – I reckon it was because all departures had to be rescheduled. We arrived at the Gold Coast with not enough time for the plane to return to Sydney before the curfew. You may have heard that the same thing happened again in Sydney a couple of weeks later and the passengers, instead of being accommodated in a hotel were turfed out onto the street for the night. Jet Staaaaaaaaar!! Oh and Macquarie Baaaaaaank – who own Sydney airport!! Ah, capitalism.