Touristy Tuesday

Tuesday was the first day that Mike and I were on our own without our local guides Tyler and Bella. Tyler had taken off on Monday to celebrate American president's day and my American birthday. We started our day with eggs and more thick-cut strip and Canadian bacon hybrid. We then set off for the CBD to see the sights by land that we had previously only taken in from the harbo(u)r.

Sydney has a delightful public transportation system. Perhaps it was just the contrast with DC's transit system, which has deteriorated in the last decade to the point that trips will randomly yet repeatedly take four times the normal length, trains only come every 25-30 minutes outside of rush hour (when they would routinely run every 6-8 minutes between the hours of 5 am and midnight or later in the early 2000s), and occasionally kills people with incompetence.

We were able to take a short bus ride to Bondi junction, where we caught a punctual, clean, and new-looking train a few stops to the CBD. Our destination for the morning was the Sydney Botanic Garden, situated on the site of the first garden planted by the convicts and crew of the "first fleet" that sought to colonize Australia some 200 years ago.

The garden offers a free walking tour at 10:30 every day. It turned out to be more of a moseying tour, as our guide and a few of our fellow tourists looked to be around 80 years old. Still, he had accumulated a vast amount of historical and horticultural knowledge during those decades, which he eagerly shared with us. We saw many plants and animals that are known only in Australia, as well as many that were brought over by Europeans for aesthetic or agricultural reasons. One of the most intriguing species to me was the strangling fig. This tree had developed an evolutionary hack to deal with the thick canopies of the Aussie forests, which blocked most of the light making it to the forest floor. To get around this, the fig produced seeds that were attractive to local birds, who would then deposit the seeds higher up in the canopy. The fig tree had the ability to start growing in open air, and send leaves up from the host tree top to collect sunlight. It would then send roots downward until it reached the ground, essentially standing on the original tree's shoulders to get some sunlight in its early days. It continues to send down roots around the host tree until it has completely smothered it, and eventually the host dies. It creates intriguing visuals where you can see the trunk of a dead or dying tree surrounded by the tentacle-like roots of the strangling fig.

Strangling Fig

I am familiar with these types of initiation rituals

Our intrepid guide

Interesting factoid: when the stone cutters would cut their stones at the quarry, they would mark it with their personal insignia to ensure they received the proper credit

Along the walk he pointed out a web with some kind of horrible-looking spider in the center of it, about the size of the palm of my hand. I missed the name of it, but I’m pretty sure this was my first up-close encounter with one of the many species of flora and fauna in this country that could kill me.

Deadly Fauna

The largest vertical garden in the southern hemisphere

Outside the Opera House

After the tour, we left the garden to head into the CBD and meet Tyler for lunch. He took us to a nice Vietnamese joint and then a coffee shop. He also gave us a quick tour of his office. He works at a startup fintech company, and his office very much had that internet startup vibe to it. Huge Apple monitors at the workstations in an open-floor layout. Giant bean-bag chairs for the meeting room. Cool artwork on the walls.

After our office tour we set out to explore the Rocks, which was the sight of the earliest white settlements in Australia. There were some cool pubs and restaurants, but overall we didn't find much to do or see here. We stumbled upon "the big dig," which is an archaeological excavation display sight that preserves some of the foundations of the original stone houses built in Sydney. This was cool in theory, but just seeing the vague outline of what used to be a wall and a few informational signs about what random former convict and family that lived there was not all that exciting.

We moved on to the Opera House, and took a lap around the structure to check it out from close-up. The only way to get inside was via a $35 tour, which we decided to forgo, as it was getting late in the day and the line looked to be mobbed by Chinese tourists wielding video cameras. We cut back through the botanic gardens to our next destination, the parliament house of New South Wales.

Celebrating the Year of the Dog

CNY Sydney 2018

After a very limited screening procedure, we were allowed to enter and headed right onto the floor of the upper house chamber. Parliament was not currently in session, so we were able to have a look around on our own. We also checked out the Jubilee Reading Room, which was decked out with old books and large globes. 

In the upper house

Sweet globe in the Jubilee Reading Room

We then headed to the lower house chamber, and had to wait to enter until a German tour group had left. Once they had, we were treated to a private tour by one of the guard/guides. Learning that we were Americans, after joking that we wouldn't be allowed in because of this, he handed us an informational sheet breaking down the differences between the government systems of our two countries. Australia has a federal system of state and national governments, like the United States. But the structure of each of those governments is more akin to the British parliamentary system, with a prime minister at the head. The states do have governors, but they are representatives of the British monarchy and are largely ceremonial in purpose now.

In the seat of power

Power Sharing

The lower house. Akin to our House of Representatives

After we concluded at the parliament house, we caught the train back and met Tyler at his flat. We quickly cooked up dinner and headed to the Bondi Bowls Club for some lawn bowling.

Lawn bowling is very similar to bocce, which is why I was so intrigued. I majored in bocce at the University of Miami, with a minor in business administration. I continue to play in a weekly bocce league 3 seasons out of the year in DC. Suffice it to say, I’m a fan of the sport. For those who aren't familiar with the game, bocce is played by throwing a golf-ball sized "palina" down a roughly shuffleboard-sized court, which then becomes the target. The teams then take turns tossing heavy, quarter-bowling-ball-sized balls at the target ball. Closest to the palina wins the round. If you’ve been watching curling in the winter Olympics, it’s basically the same thing except on grass, and with a moving target.

Lawn bowls works the same way, but has the added twist that the balls are weighted on one side. This gives their path a curvature once tossed, adding a whole new element to the game. It definitely took some getting used to, but eventually I felt like I got the hang of it. The biggest hurdle for me was not the unbalanced weighting of the balls, but the unbalanced weighting of the bowler (i.e. me). Lawn bowling is required to be played barefoot, which I fancied, as I much prefer that to any other foot-state. To protect player's feet, there was a rule against bringing glass onto the court with you. Why they chose to serve beers in glass drinkware with this rule in place is beyond me, but the net result is that you had to bowl with your left hand unnaturally empty. Drinking and bowling in bocce is such an inseparable aspect of sport that I had no idea what to do with my idle hand. Bowling without tipping over due to the lack of an anchor-beer took some practice to get a feel for.

Shooters shoot

Once it got dark we headed inside, where bar trivia was underway. We had already missed the first round, but upon hearing the questions and answers, we decided we needed to school these fools. We entered the "comp," as Aussies call a competition, and managed to climb our way to a 3rd-place finish, despite not having garnered any points in the first round. Granted, there were only 5 other teams competing, but the finish was good enough to win thirty dollars worth of vouchers for our next visit to the Bondi Bowls Club. Elated by our domination of the later rounds, we split a couple more pitchers between us and called it a night.