"Kin's Kin" on Beach Rd.

Flying from Mauritius to Sydney, Australia we got to gaze at the full moon lighting up the night sky as we moved 7 hours into the future. So, after leaving on Thursday afternoon, we arrived at 6 on Friday morning, January 5. My second cousin (my dad's cousin's son; our grandmas were sisters) Toby Monson, while not from the Beach side of the family lives on Beach Rd., and although neither of us could remember having met before (possibly at a family reunion long ago), he and his friend and housemate Shannon were super generous and friendly during the time we stayed with them. When we thanked him for hosting us he quoted a Michael J. Fox movie line "Kin's kin." Plus, since Toby works for a travel company called Let's Trek Australia, affiliated with Trek America (and knows our Backroads leader Allison!, for those readers from the Alaska trip), he was able to give us tons of great suggestions and set us up with tours for the rest of our time in Australia.

After sleeping a few hours, we set off to explore downtown Sydney. I was surprised by the look of Toby's neighborhood: most of the houses were brick, many in Victorian style with beautiful ironwork trim. Toby's had an added organic feature of at least 4 to 5 huge spiders that built webs every night on the front porch and sidewalk, so that we had to duck going out. Mysteriously, by morning the webs were gone (we said maybe the spiders took them down). Sydney (and later Melbourne) felt very different from the large cities in South Africa: very clean, totally safe feeling, and good public transportation.

Getting off the train at the Circle Quay stop downtown, we walked around the harbor, took photos of the Opera House and walked across the Harborside Bridge, where we saw groups of people strapped on with safety equipment doing the 4-hour climb to the top of the bridge. That night Toby showed us the family history research he's done on the computer program "Family Tree Maker," and we added Rachel's vital stats to my entry.

The next day (Saturday), Toby drove us to the nearby Blue Mountains, where we saw the 3 Sisters rock formation, and took a short walk down and "the world's steepest train" (like a roller coaster) back up the mountain. Getting on the train was difficult as we had to physically restrain a group of Chinese tourists from taking our seat from us! That night we enjoyed Rachel's birthday present from her parents- tickets to The Marriage of Figaro at the Opera House. It was a beautiful production in an amazing building--at night it looks a little like a cathedral with the lights from inside.

On Sunday we went to the Bondi Beach market, with all the latest in retro clothes fashions, and Rachel found a great red, white, and black dress. That afternoon Toby fired up the barbecue and we hung out with his friend Dennis, who's part Aboriginal and owns a dijeridu and art making company near Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia. We tried kangaroo steak: red meat which has a sweet taste a little like ostrich--I liked it, Rachel not so much.

On Monday we visited the Hyde Park Barracks, a very good museum in a building which housed first the convicts transported to Australia from Britain, and later immigrant and poor women. We walked through Hyde Park and the row of giant fig trees, as well as through the Strand arcade--while suburban malls and shopping centers are becoming more popular here, we were surprised to see so much shopping downtown. For our last night in Sydney we (mostly Rachel) made a delicious dinner of shrimp curry, salad and peach pie.

The next day we visited the Powerhouse Museum, a combined science/natural history/children's museum, on our last morning in Sydney before heading to the airport for our flight to Melbourne; we'd planned to take the bus but the flights were $50 (Australian) cheaper! Getting around in Australia is similar to back home; it dwarfs even the distances between places in South Africa, which were probably the longest we've had on the trip otherwise.