Brisbane weekend

It’s been a good start to the weekend in Brisbane: I finally got the new shoes I wanted, and I got a pretty sweet haircut (with straight-razor on the neck and a hot towel). It’s fun hanging out with the folks here, and good to explore this city a bit more. It’s beer and barbecue and sun and great, great fun.

Brisbane for the weekend

The last few days have been spent with the minutiae of address updates, bank card PINs, shopping, memberships, and so on. I’m trying to get all that stuff sorted before starting work on Tuesday. Also, we’re heading up to Brisbane tonight for the weekend to hang with Miss B and the She-Aussie (who’s visiting from London) and their associated spouses and family members. Fun!

Still more Australian observations

• This country makes some seriously good yogurt.
• The way people queue to get on a bus here puts the British to shame.
• Food prices are extremely high here, and have increased more than in any other OECD nation in the last decade.
• Lizards. Lots of little lizards, especially in our new backyard. They’re quite cute.
• Trees in Canada and the UK often lose their leaves each autumn. Many trees here in Australia seem to keep their leaves but regularly shed their bark.
• Spiders. Big and different. There was a honking big St Andrew’s Cross spider on our doorframe yesterday. There are even spiders that are specially adapted to hide and hunt from the loose bark of trees.

Running in the new ‘hood

I was a bit worried that our new place in Neutral Bay wouldn’t afford me good running opportunities. I like to run around large parks; being near the leafy greenness is soothing whilst sweating and gasping for air. It’s pretty residential, but pretty built up around here.

I’ve found a couple of decent spots, though. If I run a few streets to the east I can reach Cremorne Reserve, a thin strip of nature around one of the points in the harbour. It’s got a well-paved trail, is a few kilometers around, has lots of tree cover, has no cyclists, and boasts some great views of the harbour. Here are some people’s flickr pictures of the place and its views.

Cremorne Reserve. Photo by mswebersd via Creative Commons license

If I go to the west – as I did this morning – I only have to cross one main road and I’m in the backstreets of posh Kirribilli. Follow the water’s edge around and there’s a paved path and boardwalk that tracks across the water from the Opera House, underneath the train-and-automobile clatter of the Harbour Bridge, along the front of Luna Park, and over to Lavender Bay. It’s not so leafy green, but it’s a varied, interesting, changing-neighbourhood, dynamic run.

Lavender Bay. Photo by MD111 via Creative Commons license

And if I want to stay closer to home, or I desperately need to feel grass under my feet, then I can just run down to the bottom of the hill and run around Anderson Park a bunch of times.

Anderson Park. Photo by emmettanderson via Creative Commons license

I think these will be able to keep me running for the time I’m here.

CuBBYHOuSE at the Old Fitzroy Hotel

The Old Fitzroy Hotel is a pub in Wooloomooloo (central Sydney, for those readers who aren’t local). It’s got a small theatre in the back; it holds only about 50 people, and puts on small plays. One of our (few) friends here happens to be a tradesman who did some substantial work for the theatre, and managed to swing us a couple of tickets for a production the other night.

The pub was fun, full of locals as it’s not on any busy pedestrian thoroughfare or tourist circuit. After a couple of drinks and some tasty Thai food we slipped into the well-air-conditioned (whew) theatre.

The play was called CuBBYHOuSE. It was a wacky, hilarious, good-natured, two-person play. Surreal, musical, light-hearted, it made us all laugh out loud. It made fun of Aussies who move abroad, pop culture, Canadians, imaginary friends, and libraries. It was, ostensibly, about following your dreams. But mostly it seemed like a creative antidote to morose, heavy-themed art. Good stuff, and a fun, intimate venue.

CuBBYHOuSE performers Adriano Cappelletta and Holly Austin

New place in Sydney

The first 3 weeks we were in Sydney we were staying in a short-term (and pricey) serviced apartment. It was just someplace that would be ready to live in and make a base from which to explore and get set up and look for work and a mid-term place to stay.

Yesterday we moved into that mid-term place, a furnished apartment in Neutral Bay. It’s cheaper than the first place, much more comfortable, and suits us well for the time being. The lease only runs 3 months, then we can stay month-to-month from then, which makes it perfectly flexible for moving on if we wish (i.e., depending on where work ends up being for both of us, or what neighbourhoods we end up loving).

If you step out our front door, you can see the harbour, and sailboats. There are ameneties around, but it’s pretty quiet. It’s only a few minutes to get to the train or to the ferry. The backyard is quite nice. There are a few creaky corners, and some things that don’t work perfectly, but it feels like a good place for now.

Yet more things about Australia

• The whole world saw the deadly fires in Victoria last year, so the dryness and heat are no joke. In the wake of those events they’ve introduced a new level of fire risk – above Severe and Extreme – called Catastrophic. It’s been used in VIC and NSW the last couple of days. Living close to the coast, as I do at the moment, means it’s often 10 degrees cooler here than it is even on the other side of Sydney.
• .com.au is taking a bit of getting used to.
• Flies are really persistent here. Trying to wave them away rarely does any good, they’re right back in there. Or maybe they just like foreign food.
• I miss London’s Oyster card system for transport. There was a bit on the news the other night that Sydney’s been studying the implementation of an integrated transport card system for 9 years now. I hope they get that sorted out soon.
• I grew up in Canada, another country that has a history of European colonisation of a land that already had indigenous people on it. I’m sure it’ll take me years – if ever – before I understand all the social context and sequence of events that brought Australia and its Aboriginal people to where they are today. But the initial view I have is of a nation wracked with hand-wringing guilt over some genuinely extremely abhorrent circumstances. The previous federal government actually suspended its Racial Discrimination Act to intervene in the distribution of social security money in the Northern Territory (it was reportedly going to drugs and alcohol rather than food); there’s now pressure to reinstate the Act. Diseases like trachoma, easily treatable and wiped out in other developed nations, is still endemic in parts of Australia’s Aboriginal population. There are some tough problems with no easy answers, and I don’t yet know enough to say much about them.

Even more things about Australia

• There are a lot more people named Tim here than I’m used to. It seems to be a far more common name than it was in Canada or the UK. This site shows that the name “Tim” became popular here in the 40s, 50s and 60s, then dropped off. The full, and more common, form of “Timothy” became popular at the same time and remained so, only starting to slip down the name charts in the last few years.
• Although I hear that the country is fattening up, there’s still an inordinate amount of sport and exercise going on here. Every time I go out for a run there’s all sorts of organised fitness going on: cross-training classes, running groups, one-on-one fitness trainers, groups playing cricket, other runners, schoolkids playing soccer. It’s really good. In related news I’m considering running the Balmoral Burn in the autumn.
• As on my other trips here it’s the birds that are the weirdest thing to adjust to. There are a lot of birds, and many of them are completely alien to what I was used to in the other countries where I lived. There are plenty of different animals here in Australia, obviously, but the birds are the ones you see – and especially hear – every day. I’m still a little startled every time I see a white ibis in the middle of Sydney (which is pretty frequently, as they’re in every green space). Even that most globally ubiquitous of urban birds – the pigeon – has an odd-looking species here.
• There’s quite a lot of British TV here. Time Team was on today, as was Who Do You Think You Are?
• Superannuation is an awesome idea.
• Poker machines make me want to leave a pub. So do all those sports betting screens.
• Maybe I’ll get bored of it eventually, but so far the warm, sunny weather is reeeeally nice. I put together some climate stats on the last 3 cities I’ve lived in; they’re in the table below. There are some unsurprising things: London’s warmer than Ottawa, and Sydney’s warmer than London; there’s a lot of sunshine in Sydney. But there are some surprises, too: the peak temperatures in Ottawa are similar to those in Sydney (maybe summer won’t be so bad here); you don’t get the amount of rain in London as you do in the other cities.

Another tick in the box: employment

The Aussie adventure continues: I have a job! I start on 01 December. It’s at a much smaller outfit than the giant corporation I worked at for the previous 12 years, but it’s a role with lots of responsibility and promise and good people and cool things to be involved in. I’m pretty excited about it, and glad to know that some Australian dollars will soon going into my bank account rather than coming out.

I’ve now got nearly 2 weeks to enjoy Sydney in spring.

Glebe Street Fair

We seem to have arrived right at the peak of community festivals in Sydney. Today was the Glebe Street Fair. The street that defines the area – Glebe Point Road – was closed to traffic and featured hundreds of art, clothes, craft and food stalls, street performances, and other fun bits. We got to watch some buskers, saw a couple of musical acts, ate some gözleme and masala dosa, and got a good start on our Christmas shopping. Fun.

Glebe Street Fair photo from skamarkus via Creative Commons license