We arrived in Sydney in the mid afternoon, Paul & Kerri didn't seem to be on speaking terms so I went off to arrange some accomodation for us and then as the other two were concentrating their entire energy on ignoring one an another I found us some transport to the accomodation as well.
After the success of our apartment in Melbourne I had booked another apartment with the same company just outside the Sydney CBD.
I had arrived in Sydney from the UK during my previous Australian holiday and remembered I had been very excited and spent the day cycling around trying to find Bondi Beach. Paul and Kerri didn't really seem very excited to be here, I had no idea what they were arguing about but it made trying to work out what to do quite a difficult process with every suggestion being met with offhand non-committal grunting. This continued all the way back to the hotel where I booked myself on the Sydney Bridge Climb experience which the other two thought would probably be "rubbish". Eventually we decided to go somewhere in the Blue Mountains the next day, it didn't seem to matter to anyone where especially so we picked hotel which came highly rated in our rough guide which gushed over it's period charm and delicious jam scones.
I thought getting out of the way of Paul & Kerri might be a good idea so intimated that I was off out for a look around, Paul decided to come with me to finalise the as yet sketchy plans for our next few days. I thought that dealing with just one of them might be more productive than dealing with them both together so we headed off to find an Internet cafe. Luckily there was one just around the corner.
Paul left to get back to his arguing with Kerri so when I arrived back a bit later on Paul was suggesting that it might be a good idea to have something to eat and Kerri was suggesting that she didn't need any food and would just sit in the hotel room. Eventually she was tempted out by the thought of Cider and drinking.
Outside the weather had changed from slightly humid and cloudy into an absolute torrential downpour, luckily I had an umbrella which I had gallantly lent to Kerri to stop her retreating back to sulking in the hotel room.
It continued raining all the way through our meal, Kerri just drank Cider, but luckily calmed down again when we went off to find somewhere to have a drink. We ended up in a kind of flapper and firkinesque Irish pub and had a few drinks while Kerri began to become more talkative and less argumentative. Because it had stopped raining when we left we left my umbrella in the bar.
I was up quite early the next day because I had to be at the Sydney Bridge Climb office at 10 'o' clockish for my Bridge Climb, it warned that being late would forfeit the $40 or so it cost so I had no intention of being late. Paul was just stirring as I was leaving so we arranged to meet up at the car hire place later on in the afternoon and dump the bags with reception at the hotel so we could come back and collect them later on.
The walk down to the harbour bridge was nice, everyone else was obviously rushing about to get to work whilst I just sauntered, soaking up the sights and sounds. It took 45mins or so to reach the Bridge but I was still early for the climb so I had a cup of coffee and a cigarette in a pub looking out at our side of the bridge.
The bridge is a huge steel arch spanning Sydney Harbour and carrying a road and a railway from one side of the harbour to the other. I could already see some groups on the top looking like little stick people waving there arms.
The Bridge Climb experience is ruthlessly efficient, climbers are grouped up into groups of around 15 people who then progress from one processing area to the next. First is the form signing and breathalyzer tests ( no drunks on the bridge ) followed by a succession of kittings out as you are given boiler suits, helmets, radios, anoraks, gloves, carabiners, belts etc etc. You aren't allowed to take anything onto the bridge so the kitting out includes every possible thing you will need to face the elements on the bridge.
It took around an hour for the preparation but eventually we were able to start. First of all a quick jaunt up numerous staircases and then out onto the metal girders linking up with the main arch. Whilst we had been inside getting kitted out it had began to rain, quite heavily.
There is no real climbing involved in the bridge climb, there are little walkways and gantries allowing access to all areas of the bridge and these are what we stuck to. To begin with we were under the road and railway but then climbed up a narrow staircase which emerged between the railway tracks. Excitingly a train rumbled past just as we emerged into the main force of the rain.
From there the climb up the main arch begins, you climb up on one side and then traverse the top of the bridge to come down the other side. Since no one is allowed to bring there own camera their is a highly organised system of photos taken at various points up the arch and at the top. This turns the climb into a very long process as each group waits for the preceding groups photos to finish before moving into position for its own photos.
Due to the, now very heavy, rain we couldn't really see that far although we were assured that on good days you could see the blue mountains from the top. Nonetheless the wind and rain added their own drama to the event and watching the shipping plowing through the choppy waters of the harbour was fun.
Eventually having passed the mid climb photo opportunity we arrived at the main photos at the top. To be honest the photos were really just an annoyance, it would have been more fun just being allowed to wander around on the top looking around.
By the time we reached the bottom the rain was once more absolutely torrential, pinging venomously of the steel girders and rivets around us. De-kitting was a lot quicker than than on kitting up had been and were soon funnelled into the gift shop. Since I hadn't brought anykind of rain coat with me I bought a souvenir umbrella and headed out to find the car hire place and meet Paul & Kerri.
Sydney was virtually underwater, my feet were soaked by the rain anyway which just made it easier to wade through the puddles and lakes which had formed on the roads and pavements. In a forlorn hope that this might just be a shower I stopped off at a cafe to have a lasagne even though I was already quite late for meeting the others. The rain didn't stop and when I arrived at the Hertz office half an hour later I was soaked to the skin.
The other two had a little wander around and a look at the Opera house before being caught in the downpour at which point they had caught some buses to arrive at Hertz.
Once again the Hertz people ignored their rules that people hiring cars should have held a driving licence and so before long we were in posession of a large white Nissan.
The rain had brought on an almost complete gridlock to the roads and by the time we had eventually crawled back to the hotel to pick up our bags we were well into the 'rush hour' which just made the situation all the worse. Paul was driving, I was navigating, Kerri was dozing in the back and the rain was getting heavier and heavier outside.
We didn't really have any sensible maps of where we were going to or the roads through the Sydney suburbs so getting out of Sydney turned into a bit of mission not helped by all the roads being virtually stationary and some of them having disappeared altogether under water. Eventually we fought our way out and found a road heading in roughly the direction and the traffic began to start moving properly again.
With only the extremely vague map in the Rough Guide to go by I was quite impressed I managed to navigate us through several of the towns I was aiming for and eventually onto the main route into the Blue Mountains through Katoomba. As the rain began to ease off slightly ( it was still very very heavy by any normal standards ) we stopped off for some Pizza in a rather grotty chip shop and arrived at our Hotel around 9PM.
The hotel did not look anything like the description in the guide book, the first thing we saw was the giant room entirely given over to pokies and large screen TV's showing various horse races. Most of the money the hotel had had clearly been spent on this room since everywhere else looked pretty run down. Our rooms were even worse, mine had a huge hole in the floorboards barely covered by a threadbare rug which looked like someone had tried to set fire to it at one point. The bare bulb dangled on it's cord from the ceiling whilst the walls still had rusty fittings for gas lamps. I don't think the room had been decorated since around 1860 and the holes in the window were letting in a lot of wind and some rain. It really was horrible but the bed clothes were even worse and carried a multitude of nasty looking stains and rents.
I threw my stuff into the room and headed immediately into the bar to have a few drinks. Paul joined me a little later and guessing that if their room was anything like mine Kerri would probably not be in a good mood I attempted to divine our chances of having a fun evening. When Kerri did appear she wasn't in fact in a bad mood and after a few warm up drinks we spent the rest of the evening in the bar getting drunk and spent a quite pleasant evening laughing at the video jukebox which was playing every single record by some atrocious homegrown australian diva.
Despite it being freezing cold in the room and the horrible showers being a chilly walk down the corridor I was anxious to be out of the horrible room as swiftly as possible so positively leapt out of bed and down to the bar to see what my options for breakfast were. I wasn't hopeful.
The rain had turned into a constant drizzle but there was a nice outdoor area half of which were covered by a wooden roof. The only breakfast option was pies but they were apparently homemade pies so I had one of those and a coffee. The pie was delicious so I had another whilst waiting for Paul and Kerri to put in an appearance so we could plan our activities for the day.
A while later Paul turned up but wasn't tempted by any of the pies, a while later Kerri turned up and we decided to go into Katoomba and see what walks we could go on around the mountains. Before we did any walking Paul had apparently decreed that Kerri needed a whole new hiking outfit, Kerri was less convinced that she needed anything so we spent an hour or so visiting various outdoor shops where Paul attempted to convince Kerri to buy various items of outdoor clothing which was a course of action that appeared to me as an impartial observer not to be going down too well. Eventually we ended up in a supermarket where I bought a new pair of trainers and Paul bought Kerri an emergency survival poncho.
Katoomba has a tourist info centre and a huge lookout over the forest below, a long way below. The Blue Mountains form the inland boundary to Sydney and in the early days of the settlement presented an impassable barrier to exploration inland. Initial attempts at finding a route through them all ended in failure and were based on the belief there may be a route through the valleys. In fact the only route through the mountains is the ridge along which had driven the previous evening, which Katoomba is built on. When the explorers finally discovered this route they found what looked like thousands of miles of prime farmland, indeed they also found large herds of cows which were the descendants of a small herd which had wondered away from Sydney one night many years before and had managed to find there own way around the bottom of the mountains. Unfortunately this discovery was made in an especially rainy year and when in its normal state the area is more like a desert than anything else.
The lookout in Katoomba offers a huge panoramic vista over a vast Eucalyptus forest and masks the dangerous ravines and chasms with which the area abounds. Despite being only a 3 hour from Sydney a large percentage of the forest is still completely unexplored and more or less impenetrable ( helicopters are no good because of the deep ravines ), 10 years ago scientists accidentally discovered a grove of trees which they realised were trees which were supposed to have been extinct before the Dinosaurs evolved but which were happily growing here. The location of these trees is a closely guarded secret.
There seemed to be some unwillingness to agree to any plan of action from the other two but eventually we decided to walk down to the valley floor and walk along to a funicular railway which went back up the cliff a couple of miles further along the ridge. To reach the valley floor we had to descend an immense staircase which curled around the back of an outcrop of three breakaway pillars from the cliff wall. It took a good 20mins to go down the stairs and I dread to think what it would be like going up them.
At the bottom matters reached a head between my intransigent comrades and Paul walked swiftly off along the path. Kerri and I dawdled along in his wake looking for wildlife. We didn't see a single living creature apart from a spider and 1 bird later on in the walk.
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