Weekend in Sydney

We arrived in Sydney late friday night. It was a smooth flight thankfully and also pretty quick. The luggage also came off pretty quick which was annoying cos they had a tv with the rugby on so I'd have been happy to wait for ages.

Caela's place was out in Balmain - a suburb just west of the main city and it took about half an hour to get there from the airport. Her directions had mentioned the car-park looking like the bat-cave and when we arrived it was really clear. The drive headed down into the carpark that had been cut into the rock so it looked like you were driving into a cave. Only thing missing was the waterfall.

The apartment was owned by her work and they were allowed to use it at weekends and it was a pretty impressive place. It had three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a large kitchen/dining room/living room area with a huge tv and computer. The balcony had a wonderful view over the water.

We were all fairly crowded in there as there was Caela, Caela's boyfriend John (another Brit), Dave K, Eleri, two of Caela's friends from Melbourne - Irene (who was actually Canadian)and Katherine and two of Irene's friends from Canada: Ryan and Shannon who were on their honeymoon. So in total there were ten of us: two Brits, one Aussie and seven Canadians.

We stayed at the apartment chatting and drinking till about 1 when we hit the sack. Most people were getting up early to go and do the Harbour Bridge climb anyway although that didn't include me cos I've already done it once.

I managed to sleep through everyone leaving in the morning so Dave, Eleri, Katherine and I had a leisurely start to our day. We grabbed a taxi into the city centre and met everyone in the Rocks at a pub. They'd just had a lunch so we grabbed a few beers and joined them.

We pretty much had to prise ourselves away from the pub to go and actually do something so we wandered through the Rocks market (I nearly got left behind due to chatting to a very friendly ginger tom cat) and then down to Circular Quay where we booked ourselves on a harbour cruise tour. and had an ice-cream too. Macadamia Nut. Very nice.

The cruise took about an hour (or one beer depending on which way you look at it) and took us out around the Opera House past the Botanical Gardens and Lady Macquarie's chair. We hugged the southern part of the habour before heading across to that bit where they stuck the HMAS Australia mast (I'm sure they said why but I confess I wasn't listening) past Johnny Howard's place and the Governor General's (who had a much nicer place) and then under the Harbour Bridge for about a second before going back under the Harbour Bridge and then on into Circular Quay. Got some good pics too which I'll upload when I can find a computer to upload them. But hey the net's only $2 an hour here.

Headed back to the apartment after loading up with BBQ stuff and then, funnily enough, had a BBQ. And some beer. Ended up playing blackjack before heading off to a bar somewhere in Sydney for a few hours. Fairly entertaining night but that's all I'll say.......

The next day had, understandably, a slow start. In fact the morning just didn't happen. However, the afternoon saw the two Daves, Ryan and I head to the SCG to see Manly Sea Eagles play Parramatta Eels (that's Rugby League for you non-sports people). It was pretty cool to arrive at the SCG - although it was smaller than I expected. It's right next to Aussie Stadium too (Sydney Football Stadium). We got tickets ($22 a head) and went in. The tickets were general admission but we had pretty much free rein as we were so early. We got there with 10 minutes still to go in the first half of the Manly - Parra reserve game - just in time to see Parra score a converted try to make it 16 all at the break. Our seats were just on the try-line and also next to this old guy who was supporting Manly and making very loud comments all the time. He was very entertaining particularly when they brought out some of the members of the '76 Grand final sides and the announcer asked if anyone had been there. Bet you can't guess who was?

Anyway, the reserve game was pretty entertaining with the Manly half-back binned for smacking someone in the face, and Parra ran in two tries to have a comfortable lead. Manly brought it back to 6 points with a try of their own before Parra got a penalty to make their lead 8 points. Manly then pulled off a quick re-start to reclaim the ball and went over in the corner and then grabbed the winning try to win by 2 with about 17 seconds left on the clock.

The main game didn't dissappoint either with Parra racing to a 16 point lead (16 Keen not 18) and went into the break at 16-10. Manly levelled at 22-22 with about 20 minutes to go and then we had a cagey to and fro for a while before Matt Orford landed a great drop-goal under pressure. Parra went back down and the other end and Tim Smith skewed his wide to give Manly the win 23-22.

OK everyone who tuned out for the rugby can start reading again.

We got back in time for a rushed dinner and to say good-bye to Irene, Ryan and Shannon who were catching a flight to Melbourne then the remaining six of us headed over to Manly and to the Quarantine station.

A bit of history first. The Quarantine station was established in the early 1800s to house people who had arrived on a ship that had disease on board. If one person had disease then the whole ship was quarantined - separated into healthy and sick people. It only closed in 1984. It was a real exercise in learning as they knew very little about disease and how it was contracted and some of the measures they took did nothing. There were also some really poor decisions such as burying people right next to their fresh water source!

The station was, eventually divided into different classes - to reflect the tickets purchased for passage and naturally we spent most of our time going through the third class and third class steerage areas during our ghost tour as this is where the conditions were worst.

The main difference on this tour was we had equipment with us and I managed to get to carry one of the EMF (electro-magnetic frequency) detectors. As with the Port Arthur tour I'll put the ghost sightings and stories in a separate post.

We started at the Admin block which is where the Doctor who looked after the third class lived. As soon as we entered there was a really strong smell of chemicals which the guide assured us wasn't normal. One of the other EMF readers got a strong reading and the guide used her stronger, more localised reader to get a real anomaly in the centre of the room which then vanished.

From there we went to the third class dining quarters and on the way Caela got a reading on my meter but it vanished fairly quickly. The third class dining quarters sat on the hill with a view over towards Manly. It was a large open room with a cellar where the kitchen was located. We all trooped in and the guide explained some of the history and stories of the place. Just as we all headed to the kitchen my EMF reader got a really strong reading for a few seconds. We stopped to try and locate it but it was gone fairly quickly. It was as if a spirit was materialising every so often just to check on us.

My overall impression of the site was that it was a lot calmer and more peaceful than last time and most places felt very serene.

The exception was the asiatic quarters where, due to the White Australia policy, non-caucasians lived in very cramped accomodation. We had two strange occurences here. One, which was only heard by Dave K and I (because we were right at the edge of the group and closest to the sound) was two or three heavy footsteps on the veranda. We went over and tried to recreate the sound later on and stamping our feet on the veranda made the same sound.

The other was more strange and heard by the whole group. Just as we were finishing up there and preparing to move on there was a sound that sounded like a door opening. It was a higher pitched noise like a creak. I went over and tried to recreate it by moving objects about but couldn't recreate it. To be honest, even the description of it as a door creak doesn't feel quite right.

From there we headed down towards the wharf and into the shower blocks where they used to head to straight from the ships and had to shower in Carbolic acid. Again the shower room felt a lot more peaceful this time and there wasn't any activity other than the guide scaring Eleri and Caela by banging the shower door at the end of a story. Us men weren't scared... (OK so I knew it was coming).

Next stop was the hospital which involved a walk up a steep path to a rocky outcrop where both hospitals were situated. Unfortunately one had burnt down due to an electrical fault. The hospital did have an atmosphere in it but I didn't pick up any EMF readings. Intriguingly the guide wouldn't come in but more on that later.

We did have another Possum experience and they were very active even if the spirits weren't.

Our final stop of the day was the morgue which was a small building with two rooms. One had a bench and various instruments arranged on it and the other simply had the concrete slab with grooves down it for various liquids to run off from.

We had one more 'experience' when passing the admin block, my EMF reader maxed out very briefly and I was unable to locate the source as if a spirit had rushed past.

It was quite a labourious trip home via the Manly ferry and it was about half midnight by the time we got back to the apartment and we all still needed to pack.

An early start this morning and Caela, Dave K and Eleri headed off to the airport and Dave and I headed into the city with a grouchy cab driver (he had the airport booking but we swapped taxis).