Week 9

Recovery

 Still in recovery from the heavy Saturday night/day of my birthday the week started off pretty quietly. A walk around the city during the day was followed by a visit to the cinema to watch Blood Diamond.

The following day was England’s next one day game against New Zealand, me and Dal plotted up in the Star Bar whilst Johno & Jacko went to do the OZ trek up Sydney tower, the highest point in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s a needle-like column which has an observation deck and revolving restaurants. It can be easily spotted in any Sydney skyline pictures. The OZ trek is a 3d simulator which takes you on a virtual ride around Australia.

Meanwhile England’s chances of getting to the final of the one day series were getting slimmer and slimmer as New Zealand were piling on the runs. Jacko and Johno joined us in the star bar and it wasn’t long before we were all drowning our sorrows as the story got worse. England lost again and we made our way home a very unhappy bunch.

Braving Bondi

On the move again as we were making our 2nd attempt of staying in Bondi. This time we went with the safe bet of staying at the YHA, well known for their cleanliness. The weather had turned a bit and with quite a few clouds in the sky we opted for a game of cricket in the park rather than staying on the beach. We decided to treat ourselves in the evening and went for a really nice Greek meal and then onto BB’s bar, where there was a live singer (not that he was very good), and some very comfy seating.

Finally!

England –v- Australia in a game we simply had to win and the thing that had kept us in Sydney – surely they owed us something, just one win that we could witness. First we made our way to Kings Cross to have some lunch, the $10 steak in the Bourbon. England had won the toss, had an Essex player (good old Ravi Bopara) in the team, the sun was shining so we were setup for a prosperous day. It got even better before we took our seats as we bumped into the Viking – Graham Gooch entering the turnstiles. When we did sit down England were Comfortable at 56-0. An exciting last 10 overs saw us finish on a very decent score of 299 and it was game on.

What a great start it was with the ball. The boys were still queuing up for their pizza as we struck twice in the first two overs to the delight of the many England fans in the crowd. The wickets kept coming at regular intervals and when Symonds went off injured and Bopara took the wicket of Hussey it looked like there was only going to be one winner. The Aussies in the crowd started to sneak out (such bad losers) and the inevitable yet unthinkable happened, England beat Australia for the 1st time on the tour and more importantly we were there.

To celebrate we made the short journey to Oxford Street and to our surprise managed to get into a funky little bar called Fringe even though we had our thongs (flip flops) and shorts on. Lots of good tunes and plenty of drink consumed we soon mingled in with the crowd and found ourselves dancing the night away.

Coastal Walk

Our last day in Sydney and with the sun shining it was perfect conditions for me and Jacko to do the Coogee/Bondi coastal walk. Johno and Whitto went into Bondi Junction to do a bit of shopping. We got a cab to Coogee and decided to do the walk from South to North and end up back at our base. As we had already been to Coogee we started our walk straight away after some lunch. The first beach along the way was Clovelly Bay, very popular with the locals as it’s a narrow, scooped out beach that’s excellent for swimming. We had to be careful in the water though as there were quite a few blue bottle jellyfish that have a nasty sting. We then passed a massive graveyard on the cliffs which had headstone dating right back to the 1800’s. We then came to Bronte which boasted a man-made seawater swimming pool and two small rock pools, where you could see many different small fish. The last beach we came to before Bondi was Tamarama which has a lovely small cove consisting of volleyball courts and BBQ areas. This was my Favourite beach on what was a beautiful walk.