Suggestions for a day or two of exploring Sydney but not the usual tourist areas we will seeing.
 

We will be in Sydney for four days on arrival and three days before departure. Other than the usual Sydney sights + a day trip to the Blue Mountains (using Alan's suggested itinerary), can anyone suggest places of interest to visit in and around the city that are not on the usual tourist path that might provide a nice experience.

When in Ireland last year an Irish resident suggested a park at the edge of the commercial and shopping area (Grafton Street)where we could people watch at lunch time. Also an upscale seaside village community close by. They were among the highlights of our trip.

Can you make suggestions for an interesting experience?

1.
Take the ferry to Manly, cross the road and walk down "The Corso" to Manly beach and have a surf if you wish (dressing sheds available) then turn right past the Surf Club and follow the delightful path to Fairy Bower. There are cafes and sculptures and free swimming baths on the way, and another non-surf beach at the end, for snorkling or swimming. Cross the beach and climb the path up the hill for a good but short bush walk, and a great view of the cliffs and pounding surf from the top.

2. Ferry ride to Parramatta , under the Harbour Bridge and up the Parramatta River. Parramatta is a very multicultural city, and the second oldest white settlement in Australia.

3. Take a scenic train ride to Newcastle,get out at the beautiful sandstone-edged Hawkesbury River. Here you can ride the Riverboat Postman delivering the mail every day. Or get out at Gosford Station,a typical country town only an houir from Sydney, or continue to Newcastle.(2-3 hours) Newcastle Station is right in the city, still mainly monocultural, and easy walking distance to the surf, free ocean baths and great scenery. For a shorter trip, get out before Gosford at WoyWoy, and have fresh take-away fish and chips from the river-edge co-op. Delicious!

4. There are tours of the Rookwood Necropolis for something really different, but I wouldn't do this on a hot day.

5. Don't worry too much - you'll find lots to do however long you stay. People are friendly and generous with advice. Enjoy!

I agree 100 per cent with what Carrabella has recommended.

The Hawkesbury River area and surrounds are really magnificent.
You can hire canoes, or as she said take boat rides along the river .

I also think Fairy Bower is well worth the the walk.

I hired a boat recently to take me all the way to Parramatta and it was worth every cent.
The views of the bridge, the harbour side Mansions, great way to spend three quarters of a day.

If you want a very very very good restaurant, try Wild Fire on the Quay.
Take an out side table.
The food is nothing short of superb.
You are so close to the Opera house you can almost hear the door man asking for tips.
Seriously, the views of the Opera house from Wild Fire are as good as any where in Sydney.

Some thing else you do not see here on this Forum, is Palm Beach. Take a bus, better still hire a car, take a full day out there. Do all of the beaches along the Northern Peninsular to Palm Beach. Avalon, Bilgola, Palm Beach, great beaches, restaurants, golf clubs. Definitely worth a day or two. Wonderful place to rent a house for a week. Lots of Australia?s take their annual leave in these places.

Just one question for any one who has the information.

Carrabella, said Parramatta was the second place settled in Australia.
Can any one tell me the first place a white settlement was constructed in this country. ???

Michi, those suggestions are all great, and I'd like to contribute an idea or two as well.... however, I have forgotten from your "other" post just WHEN you will be coming to Sydney, and I do think that this would be a big factor in the right kind of advice (for instance, the walk from Manly to Fairy Bower would lose a lot of its charm in mid-July, but an evening by a log fire in Blackheath may be just right for that time, but not so good in February). Please give us a few more details (with apologies for my bad memory) and also tell us more about your interests (for instance, you may enjoy hiring that car that jj727 mentioned and visiting a couple of country towns -- Wiseman's Ferry and St Albans spring to mind --for a view of Australia that the tourists NEVER see).

Sorry I forgot the time of travel; I know it's important. We will be in Australia in April.

Arriving Sydney 7:30 am April 2
April 2-6
Leave for Tasmania morning of 6th.
Leave for Cairns April 12
Return Sydney
April 19-22 (leaving for home on 23).

Thanks for the information so far, sounds good and will take suggestions with us.

I am redoing the question since I neglected to give helpful information. Can anyone suggest places of interest to visit in and around the city that are not on the usual tourist path that might provide a nice experience. I like the suggestions already put forward and will print and pack with our luggage.

We are seniors 71 and 77, in good health and in quite good physical shape. However, heavy hiking, scuba diving, and other strenous activities are out, but light hiking, simple bicycle travel, trains, ferries, streetcars, buses, taxis, and walking and experiences are in. Golf and Wine tasting are out. People watching is in. Driving our 16-lane major highway through Toronto does not scare us; driving on the left does. We will not be renting a car.

Arrive Sydney 7:30am., April 2, depart April 6 for Tasmania.
Tasmania four day tour, followed by two free days
Cairns, Pt. Douglas for six or seven days seeing usual sights with days of rest
Arrive Sydney April 19 depart April 23

We will do the usual Sydney sights and visit the Blue Mountains (using Alan's suggestions). I will do the bridge climb. My husband is a history buff and I like experiences but we are open. A Catholic church (no cathedrals please) where we might attend mass would be nice. We are staying at the All Seasons Premier Menzies which I believe is quite central.

Thanks for answers so far and I hope this helps.

"...can anyone tell me the first place a white settlement was constructed in this country" - jj727, is this a trick question? If you mean a permanent settlement as distinct from drop-ins by Dutch, English and Malay seafarers, I'd have to say Port Jackson (Sydney) with the arrival of the First Fleet commanded by Capt. Arthur Phillip on 26 Jan 1788. Now I'll bet you're going to trump me.

Depending on the answer, the third place settled (1792 I think) was my home town, Windsor, about 55 km NW of Sydney. That area (the Hawkesbury Valley and Kurrajong Hills) is a pleasant place to potter around. It's still largely rural and nicely scenic, especially if you drive up to Kurrajong Heights, part of the Blue Mountains but further north than the area in which Katoomba is situated. It's also the same Hawkesbury River that runs into Broken Bay north of Sydney, but further upstream. For that matter, it's also the same river as the Nepean, which is crossed on the way up to Katoomba but which wears a different name because early explorers took it to be a different river.

The Hawkesbury still contains remnants of our early colonial history including the impressive Georgian-styled St Matthew's Church, Windsor, which was designed by the colony's first architect, Francis Greenway, an emancipated convict and the adjacent rectory, said to be haunted by the ghost of its first rector, Samuel Marsden, a.k.a. "the flogging parson".
Greenway also designed St Phillip's Church at the top of King Street, Sydney.

Australia's oldest church, Ebenezer Presbyterian, is still there too. As a personal aside, visitors can give a nod to the tomb of my ancestor Captain John Grono, who helped to found the church and who named Milford Sound and other features in NZ during early sealing and trading voyages that pre-dated permanent British settlement in NZ.

This isn't really useful advice if like Michi you won't be driving, but as I haven't yet seen the Hawkesbury district mentioned on this board I thought I'd take this opportunity to give the ancestral stamping ground a plug.

Besides, I have to wait too long between posts asking for information about Canberra.

Now, can anyone can confirm Bill Bryson's story that escaped cows actually succeeded in crossing the rugged Blue Mountains before white explorers? (If they didn't, don't tell me - I have enough Irish blood not to want to let the facts get in the way of a good story.)

Michi, your hotel in Sydney is 20 ft from the escalator which goes down to the underground railway and links up with everything at Circular Quay. Also down on the 2nd level I think of the railway is a late night supermarket and other little food outlets so if you want something in your room for nibbles you have that readily available.
The Menzies is not 5 star but it is comfortable and I actually like staying there even though there is not much in the way of views.
Over the road and up a bit up on York St ( I think) there is a nice Japanese cafe which is where I go for a meal when I am at the Menzies.
If you have a Seniors Card then take that with you because I think you can still get very good concessions on transport around Sydney with that - used to be about $1 per day unlimited travel - which is why you would want to travel to the Blue Mountains on the train apart from that fact that its the best way anyway!!!

I would be very much in favour of Carrabella's idea of taking the train up to the Hawkesbury River and doing the postal run - that is absolutely lovely

Hi Michi , I have included a couple of supermarket addreses for you here.
I was recently staying in a very good hotel at the Quay.
The beers in the mini bar were around $11.00

The small super market across the road sold me Penadol for nine dollars.

At the pub down the road, beers were 11.00 for a six pack.

At coles I paid $4.50 for the same Penadol.

Before Neil from where ever he is from starts having a crack at me about the obvious Beers, Penadol, joke.

No the Penadol were not for me after drinking the hotel mini bar dry. lol


Woolworths Limited
Cnr Park & George Sts Sydney NSW 2000
ph: (02) 9264 1927 Supermarkets & Grocery Stores



Coles Express
580 George St Sydney NSW 2000
ph: (02) 9269 0910 Supermarkets & Grocery Stores


Coles Supermarkets
Shop 36 Retail Concourse Wynyard Station Sydney NSW 2000
ph: (02) 9299 4769

>>>>>>A Catholic church (no cathedrals please) where we might attend mass would be nice.<<<<<<

Michi, this is off topic for Sydney, but if you're into Catholic churches, be sure to look out for St. Mary's by the Sea in Port Douglas. It's a tiny little church on the western side of Port Douglas (between the "downtown" part of PD and the dock where the Quick Silver boats depart for the Great Barrier Reef). Be sure to go inside the church and look at the view through the window behind the altar.

jj727 - You've revealed it - you're not from Oberon at all - PEnadol - you're a Kiwi!!

Michi:

RC churches (other than St Mary's Cathedral) in the city are:
1. St Peter Julian's, 641 George St (Chinatown) - tel 9211 4976
2. Marist Chapel, 3a Young St, The Rocks - tel 9247 9292
3. St Francis de Sales, 10 Albion St - tel 9212 2145
4. St Patrick's Church Hill,
20 Grosvenor St - tel 9247 3516

If you go to www.whitepages.com.au, search on "catholic church" and scroll down to "Diocese of Sydney" then look under "city" you'll find the full listing including Mass times for (1).

If you're staying at the Menzies, the closest would be Grosvenor St, followed by The Rocks.

By way of general info - businesses throughout Australia are listed at www.yellowpages.com.au, which also provides a map function.

Site for some info. on the Riverboat Postman ishttp://www.australianexplorer.com/tourist_attractions/brooklyn.htm

It leaves each day at 9.30. I can look up a suitable train for you, if you like.

There is a large commuter catamaran which goes up to Parramatta.

April weather should be delightful!

Neil, you are right - Sydney is of course the oldest. Tasmania was the next state settled, Port Arthur out of Hobart was the penal colony. Michi, you will certainly go there. I enjoyed reading your history Neil. How lovely to have illustrious ancestors.

Hi, michi!

You've picked a great month -- so mild and perfect that virtually every suggestion made to you will be applicable.

I understand what you say about driving on the wrong side, and I felt the same way when I was in the USA. The one really down side of that decision is that I don't know any other way to get to Mt Wilson, which is a jewel of a place, but in April is better than the Crown jewels! It's only a few minutes' drive from Mt Victoria Station in the Blue Mountains -- please consider, when you train it to Katoomba (the seniors pass beyond Emu Plains, which is at the foot of the mountains, will cost you$AUD2.20), using up part of yyour dayu to train it just a few stops further west, to Mt Victoria, and then splurging on a taxi to drive you to Mt Wilson. The village itself is tiny and old and traditional, but in April it's a riot of colour which is the closest thing you will ever see in Australia to Maine or Vermont. Take a picnic lunch and sit in the park amidst the carpet of gold-and-brown leaves, and take lots of photographs, which your friends won't believe you took in dry Australia.

Catholic Churches -- now you're talking. Don't go to ANY of the ones in the CBD. Go to St Bede's, in Pyrmont Rd, Pyrmont. You can walk there from the city by crossing the Pyrmont Bridge (which goes to the Maritime Museum and the Casino, then just walk around to the far side of the Casino. St Bede's is nearly as frar as you can go along that road, and it's so small and so old you might miss it if you don't look carefully (I bet the thousands of tourists who visit the Casino, almost opposite, have never even given it a glance. Built as a sailor's church, it is a hidden treasure which will make you think you've stepped back 150 years. I guess Father Peter Fitzgerald has left it by now (though, when you ring 9660 1083 to check the Mass times, it wouldn't hurt to ask -- I bet he's give you a special welcome if he knew that you'd come half-way round the world to attend his Mass), but when he was there the Church was a special place indeed, as he could say Mass in English and Auslan (Australian Sign Language) simultaneously!) This is a great place, and EXACTLY what you meant by "off the beaten track" and "where other tourists have never been".

More suggestions to follow -- I need to give this some more thought. But put St Bede's on the top of your list, and your history-loving husband will thank you forever!

Thanks, Carabella - but I didn't mention the less-than-illustrious forebears who arrived in chains - like the horse thief who married the aforesaid sailor's grand-daughter, and the servant girl who participated in the infamous riot at the Female Convict Depot in Cork in 1827. Nothing like family history research to start the skeletons rattling in the closets.

Would I be right in thinking that Neil is a rabbid, socialist left, anti-British/establishment Irishman? Now, talking of racism.................

Not sure if the above comment is just banter or a serious comment. If serious, I think the word "racism" is not the correct word in this instance.

CBD. Used so often I'd like to know what it actually stands for. I've looked to no avail other than finding a disease by those initials. I think it has to do with the city area and not the suburbs.

While in Ireland, a handful of us visited Cobh where millions of immigrants left with hope for a better life. Although little was left of the site, just being there was a touching experience.

Love places like supermarkets and other suggestions being raised. My highliter is running out!

>>>>>>CBD. Used so often I'd like to know what it actually stands for.<<<<<<

Central Business District = downtown :)

That was banter, Michi, or "stirring", something of an Australian pastime. Well, I think it was (see below).

Re your Cobh experience, Australia also had many Irish immigrants during and after the Potato Famine and like California stimulated by the Gold Rushes. Most of our earliest Irish (and English) arrivals, though, didn't come here of their own free will. An excellent novel dealing with the experience of the Irish "political" convicts, by the way, is "Out of Ireland" by Christopher J. Koch, a Tasmanian, and he provides a fascinating re-creation of early Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). If you have time, could be good preparation for your visit - Koch (who also wrote "The Year of Living Dangerously") is a very classy writer indeed.

Liz, I wish that my form was as interesting as all that! Regrettably I can't help you with that application form for the Australian chapter of the Provisional IRA you've been looking for. Pretty boring, really. Ancestry mainly English - anti-British no, anti-anyone no. Lapsed Anglican, leftish and republican, but I only froth at the mouth when it's a full moon or when when I drink a beer too fast. Too old to be a SNAG and my family actually has dark suspicions that I'm becoming a Tory in my old age - very hurtful for a veteran of the Great Vietnam War Moratorium March of '70. How cruel the world is.

Catholic church

St Brigids 14 Kent st The Rocks

Have a drink with half the congregation at the captain cook hotel across the way.

John, what about the other half of the congregation - why wouldn't you drink with them? Or do they patronise another pub? Surely they're not Methodist moles?

You poor old bugger Neil - how utterly boring! I reckon I did my bit against the Vietnam war in my own way. I had the ear of a medico who used to do the examinations for eligability in my home town and would you know that all those people who were my friends were too ill to go? Just shows what a pathetic circle of friends I had eh!
I reckon too that I should be allowed a shot here and there at the Irish seeing my maiden name was Devlin and I once was neally as rebellous as my name sake - Bernadette. However as one gets older one tends to step to the right more and more ( depending on what is happening with the pensions and superannuations etc ) and I have even been heard to preface a sentence with "in the good old days..........." I think the shift to the right is more of a rebellion against my children in my case and/or their compatriots and a real shift against political correctness - well it is for me.
I actually went to a Pauleen Hanson rally at the Gold Coast and the reason the Asian press wrote so much was that they were allowed to be on the stage with their video cameras. It was much more of a press beat up than anything and I actually went to that because it was most anti-establishment to do so. I went with three other great senior heros, one guy who was a Veteran of WW2 - another old age pensioner and a guy who was against gun control. The Veteran was arrested because he attacked one of the rent-a-crowd because the person called him a facist pig - unbeknown to the r.a.c person he was also a black belt. Anyway we sprang him out of clink and got into the hall on time, sang some stiring Australian patriotic song, listened in surprise that there was actually no really bad stuff said by poor old Pauleen, just missed out on getting arrested again because some poor old lady was harassed by a camera reporter which made her fall so we had a "go" at his camera and I managed to get on all the TV channels that night and even on Qantas Air in the morning.......sigh! this is my one and only claim to fame and my only scrape with rallying. We were going to let the tires of the R.A.C bus but cops were everywhere so went home instead. Since then I have changed the colour of my hair and don't hang around with old aged pensioners any more because they really can steer you away from the straight and narrow.
Poor Pauleen, as you know, went on and became more unhinged, thinking that she had the backing of the people and coming up with more and more stupid ideas. Anyway at least if we can't have Prime Ministers who have affairs with their staff or prostitutes to keep us giggling when reading the newspapers we have Pauleen who, in just being herself, is a laugh a minute.

I think you've trumped me, Liz. Sympathetic doctors are always a big help, especially to those spry people with permits to park in the "disabled" spaces at the supermarket.

Maybe these digressions from the normal run of advice will interest visitors who like to get to grips with the culture of the country they're visiting. Hope so, anyway.

For anyone confused by Australian politics, it's pretty simple, really. The Liberal Party is conservative and the Labor Party is liberal. The National Party is confined to rural areas. The Australian Democrats are nothing like the US Democrats. The One Nation party is nationally divisive. The Greens are like other Greens. The Republicans have no similarity to their US namesake, as their sole mission is to sack the Queen.

We borrowed the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy from the UK and our federal structure, complete with three levels of administration, from the US.

The Governor-General doesn't actually govern anything. He's nominated (in practice appointed) by the Prime Minister and so can be sacked by the PM, but he can dismiss the PM too, so if there's a falling-out it might come down to who can get on the phone to Buckingham Palace first. In fact, in 1975 the GG dismissed the PM without asking the permission of the Queen, who is supposed to be Head of State, and got away with it because while the Constitution doesn't say he has the power, it doesn't say that he hasn't either.

We don't have hanging chads, though. That's because voting consists of writing numbers beside candidates' names in the order of your preference. This makes for an interesting count, and we get more for our money - if your preferred candidate gets fewest votes and is therefore eliminated, your vote flows on to your second- preferred candidate, and so on.

Australians are also confused by Australian politics, which is why our governments encourage us to participate by fining us if we fail to vote. In Australian parlance this is known as an appeal to the hip-pocket nerve.

Just realised my last post was misleading - voting as such isn't compulsory in Australia. What is compulsory is that you have to turn up at a polling booth, have your name ruled through in a copy of the electoral roll and take your voting forms from the returning officer. You can then proceed to write obscenities on them, if that's what you want to do, and in fact some do.

Once, as a party scrutineer, I found that one disillusioned citizen had written across his ballot paper, "The only person who knew what to do with politicians was Guy Fawkes!"

(If you didn't do English history, in 1605 Fawkes led a botched Catholic plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The politicians got their own back and he was hanged the following year.)

Hi - let me second JJ727's comments about Sydney's northern beaches - do try to see them - they leave Bondi and Manly (I know Manly is north, but not north enough) for dead. There's a restaurant on beach at Whale Beach, called, strangely enough, The Beach Restaurant. The Newport Arms is a famous pub in a terrific setting overlooking Pittwater on the western side of Newport.

Well, watching an Australian election would be an "off the beaten path" activity. Are there any scheduled for mid April? Can visitors vote?

At our Democratic caucaus, really a primary organized by the Democratic party, it was possible to vote multiple times, so I could have given any of you an extra ballot.

AndrewDavid

Multiple votes? Looks like I've been trumped again. There used to be a saying, "vote early and vote often", but it was never legal. Some recently-deceased citizens not yet deleted from the electoral roll have been known to cast one last vote - that's party loyalty for you. But visitors can't vote, I'm afraid.

Primaries are one complication we don't have. The prime minister is by convention a member of the House of Reps. As with the British system, the government falls when he/she can no longer command a majority in the House. As for elections in April, I'm not sure when the various states are likely to go to the polls. With the exception of one state, or maybe more, can't remember, there are no fixed terms - the PM can call an election if he comes up with what sounds like a half-decent excuse and the governor-general (the one we can't find at the moment) agrees.

When that happens we don't get much more notice that the time it takes the Electoral Commission to organise the logistics (6-8 weeks maybe) - there's no point in giving your opponents too much time on the soapbox.

There are six states and two territories. A federal election is expected to be held around November. The federal government has been a Liberal-National party coalition since 1996 while all of the states and territory governments are Labor. Ideologically, if you think Republicans vs. Democrats you won't be too far off the mark. A significant difference is that the "religious Right" in Australia is nowhere near as big an influence as it is in the US.

As a follow-on to the last little sermon - I meant to say that in Australia the religion, or lack of religion, of a party leader has never been a deciding factor in his/her success.

We did have one successful PM (Bob Hawke, the son of a Congregational minister) who confessed to being a (reformed) drunk and adulterer, and I think he didn't make any secret of his agnosticism. He was forgiven because he was entertaining, and is partly remembered for calling a persistent questioner a "silly old bugger". Perhaps he learnt this phrase during his time at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (but probably not from that other well-known Rhodes Scholar, Bill Clinton).

If Parliament is sitting you'll be welcome to visit and observe a daily ritual known as Question Time. Government MPs ask Ministers questions known as "Dorothy Dixers", so called because the Minister has fed the question to the questioner in the first place. By contrast Opposition MPs who ask questions have their parentage, loyalty and personal morals brought into question. In Canberra, Question Time is what we threaten small children with if they misbehave, but we never follow through with the threat because it would set them too bad an example.

You might think from all this that the general politeness that characterises debates in the US Congress isn't reflected in Australia. You'd be right.

I can't resist quoting from a couple of past PMs to pass on some of the flavour:

Interjector (to PM Menzies): "Tell us all you know, Bob. It won't take long!"
Menzies: "I'll go one better than that: I'll tell you all we both know. It won't take any longer."

PM Keating, on being asked if a former opposition leader (Andrew Peacock) might be about return to the role: "Not possible. A souffle doesn't rise twice."

PM Keating, responding to the said Andrew Peacock (yes, during Question Time): "Mr Speaker, I have to say that being attacked by the Leader of the Opposition is rather like being savaged by a dead sheep."

Peacock was thought by some to be a bit of a fop, squired Shirley MacLaine for a while and was christened "The Sunlamp Kid". Ended up as Ambassador to the United States.

Unfortunately such exchanges are rare and never equalled the one between two members of the British House of Lords in the 18th century:
- "Your Lordship will die either on the gallows or of the pox!"
- "That will depend, Sir, on whether I embrace your Lordship's principles, or your Lordship's mistress."

Absolutely unbeatable.

Neil, Do you mean to tell us after loosing your tallest mountain, you've now lost your governor general?
Rather careless don't you think?

AndrewDavid

There's a lot of land to watch and only 20 million of us to keep tabs on things, but I agree we get careless from time to time. But you can easily lose a governor-general if you're not watching (and who is?). We lost a prime minister, Harold Holt, once - he went for a swim off a beach in Victoria, and we never saw him again.

As Bill Bryson recounts in his book "Down Under" (I think it's published in the US as "A Sunburnt Country"), a Melbourne acquatic centre was named after Holt. A pretty dry touch (sorry about that).

President George W. Bush was obviously alert to the danger that the Aussies might inadvertently mislay him when he visited Canberra a few months ago. He brought several 747-loads of assorted guards, reporters and assorted minders along to keep an eye on him, supplemented by Royal Australian Air Force FA-18s. The Chinese president breezed in a few days later, but obviously nobody had told him of the dangers. He even took a risky boat ride on Sydney Harbour.

Well - you've all given me a good laugh! I wonder how Michi's going?

Michi who?

I think Neil has been off his medication too long - hi nasho mate!

Recently here on the forum we have bashed the staff member of a major airline because the staff member or
the passenger checking in was having a bad day. We will never know which, as it is a one sided argument.

We have condemned a large hotel in the middle of Sydney because the hotel staff made some patrons walk
up seventeen stories with their luggage.

We have bad mouthed an other hotel because it,s management made patrons sit out side the hotel for twenty
four hours before they would hand over the keys to their rooms.
(You know about that one Alan)

We have bashed a small town in the blue mountains ( oberon ) for no other reason than they have only one motel.

We have bashed an other hotel up North because they blow the leaves out of the hall ways too early.

Pat wants to start a fight with me because I,m a Kiwi and I can,t spill ,Woops I mean speell peeenadol.

A lady came on to the forum asking about places tourists do not go much.
( Michi ) Well Her and her Hubby are,
I think 71 and 72 years old or similar.

Since she asked that fateful question we have told her about Pauline Hanson, ( who ) Menzies ( who ) Guy Fawkes
( well Ok ) some one else, that was attacked by a dead sheep, the Vietnam war, HA !!! I did my bit !!!
FA-18 super hornets,
PEACOCKS AND BLOODY HAWKE'S,
Keatings Scum Bags,Dorthy Dixer,s renta crowds, black belt,s, explanations of the political systems in Ireland, England and Australia.

Are you still there Micki, and are you still reading, or have you nodded off.

There was an interesting movie made about us once, you might like to watch it if there are any copies left in
existence.

It,s called They're a weird mob.

You might learn more from that movie than the book by Koch ? Did I spilled that correctly ?

Suggestion for a day or two of exploring Sydney:

Meeting Alan, Liz F., Neil oz in person!!!

Well Leniram, Alan and LizF are meeting next Monday so if Neil would like to leave the hallowed halls/walls of Pollywood we can have a menage a' tois du Fodors ( my computer won't do those fiddly bits up top those letters). Unfortunately as "They're a Weird Mob" was only written about Aussies we can't invite old jj727 if he's a kqey weie, cause we may only be able to get fushn'chups 'fer lunch.

Neil,
If we bring George back w/ us in April, do you promise to loose him? I imagine Michi being Canadien might find that as entertaining as we would! And certainly not the usual, bridge, opera house, Spit to Manley walk routine to set us poor tourists to.

Perhaps since loosing things is a national pastime for you Down unders, we tourist could be set on a sort of reverse scavenger hunt where we loose things rather than find them. In that way we'll feel like locals, definetly not the usual tourist thing.

In the last few months I've lost my car keys., shopping list, right to operate a motor vehicle in California and hopefully my younger brother. I'm currently working on loosing Mt. Wheeler our tallest peak. I think I can sneak it over the border to Colorado , the night of the next full moon.

AndrewDavid

PS to Michi: johnj has recommended to us , off the beaten track , sailing on Pittwater. It looks beautiful in pictures.

Pittwater is beautiful and certainly worth a sail on.
Bring George as we Rednecks in Queensland will sort him out for you. Probably could do with a George in some ways since we lost our Redneck leader some years back. Pollys have never been the same since!

You all have definitely made my day!!

Liz, it's greast to see you back offering your great, dry humor to all. I'm not quite certain if I'm listening to Aussie humor with Neil or a bit of the Blarney from his Irish ancestors.

Please don't stop!! Oh, and where's Alan?