Sunday, June 04, 2006
Sydney Trip: Day 6
We had to wake up early in the morning to catch the train back to Sydney. Had a short debate on whether to buy tickets or not. After all, you don't need them to board, and we have a TravelPass to get out on the other end. In the end, integrity won and we spent another $9.80 per person on train tickets. We booked ourselves into the Sydney YHA again, and found a relatively cheap food court in Chinatown for lunch. $6.50 for a very large plate of rice and a mountain of beef.
Went to visit the famous Bondi Beach next. We had to take at train then transfer to a bus. Luckily there were very clear signposts. The beach looked just like the pictures I had seen of it, except for the number of people. The postcard pictures always show a huge crowd enjoying themselves, I guess they took the picture during the height of the summer holiday season, but when we went, the beach was fairly deserted.
We spent a long time watching the surfers and the waves crashing onto the shore. Here's another pic of the beach, from a vantage point closer to the water. If you look at the larger version, you can see that the little specks far off at the other end of the beach are people. As we didn't have anything else planned for the day, we slowly strolled to one end of the beach. CH did some crazy things, he got chris and zq to do push ups with him on the beach. zq also ran at a huge group of seagulls and made them fly away, haha. chris mentioned that this would be a nice place to watch a sunset, but we pointed out to him that the sun set in the other direction. Still, he proved to be right.
Next we climbed the slope up to the cliff walk and followed the trail to the headland. Although there is usually a safety rail, in some places it's absent, allowing you to climb down onto the rocks. ch seemed a bit crazy that day, and led the way down onto a rocky section of the coast. We stopped there for another break, and took a few photos. Now that wasn't as simple as you might think. There wasn't enough flat space to set up the tripod and take a group photo on the bit of rock we were on. On the seaward side, there's another rock, but we had to cross a gap too large to jump. To do so, we had to climb down to a little ledge, walk along it, then cross the gap where it is narrower and climb onto the other rock. Unfortunately, those pics are with kev and I haven't got them from him yet, so I've got nothing to post here. We all did that and took a group picture on that much flatter rock.
We then got the idea of putting the tripod on the seaward rock while we took a picture of ourselves on the landward side of the gap. Since kev's camera only had a 10 second timer, someone had to press the button then scramble across the gap and into position within 10 seconds. We timed CH and he managed to do it, so we set everything up and took the photo. Before ch pressed the button, we warned each other not to blink. CH pressed the shutter, and performed a great feat of athleticism scrambling across safely. Upon checking the photo, we found that Murphy had not been idle, for lo and behold, zq had blinked!!! His eyes were shut. Ch nearly wanted to throttle him there and then. So we had to do it all over again. This time, he didn't blink, or he would probably have taken a little saltwater bath. Anyway, zq has a history of blinking during photos. He does it regardless of shutter speed. He can do it with long exposures or with short ones. I'm pretty amazed. How do you time a blink so your eyes are closed in the same 1/640 of a second that the camera takes the picture?? I've heard rumours that he can perform this feat at even higher shutter speeds. However, he tells us that he's now being more careful not to blink and he was less blink prone in future pictures, so maybe he's getting better.
There was another funny thing that happened before the photo incident. CH was the first to climb to the seaward rock, and went even further by climbing onto a low lying cratered piece which was sometimes flooded by a big wave. He wandered onto it, despite seeing a wave wash over it and the craters full of water. He went to the end, turned back and waved at us. I went down near the start and kept an eye on the sea. It was bound to happen sooner or later. A large wave hit and water started flooding onto the rock. I was near high ground and got out of the way easily, but CH had to hop frantically onto the dry spots with the water nipping at his heels all the way. He barely scrambled up in time, but got his jeans slightly wet from a puddle. Didn't get that on video because chris had kept the video camera at the 1st sign of possible rain and hadn't taken it out again. Being CH, he just had to go back to get a photo taken, but this time we warned him when a wave approached and he was able to get back with time to spare.
We continued walking along the trail towards the headland. The view was great, there was a beautiful sunset and we even saw a rainbow. I shall let the pictures speak for themselves.
After it got dark, we took a slow stroll back towards the shops, had some ice cream, then took public transport to the Lansdowne Hotel, which CH's friend had recommended for its cheap (by Sydney City standards) meals. We had dinner there, then bought so much chocolate from Coles that one of the natives commented about it, haha. We were buying for family and friends and had just dumped them together in the same basket, so it looked like a lot.
Went to visit the famous Bondi Beach next. We had to take at train then transfer to a bus. Luckily there were very clear signposts. The beach looked just like the pictures I had seen of it, except for the number of people. The postcard pictures always show a huge crowd enjoying themselves, I guess they took the picture during the height of the summer holiday season, but when we went, the beach was fairly deserted.
We spent a long time watching the surfers and the waves crashing onto the shore. Here's another pic of the beach, from a vantage point closer to the water. If you look at the larger version, you can see that the little specks far off at the other end of the beach are people. As we didn't have anything else planned for the day, we slowly strolled to one end of the beach. CH did some crazy things, he got chris and zq to do push ups with him on the beach. zq also ran at a huge group of seagulls and made them fly away, haha. chris mentioned that this would be a nice place to watch a sunset, but we pointed out to him that the sun set in the other direction. Still, he proved to be right.
Next we climbed the slope up to the cliff walk and followed the trail to the headland. Although there is usually a safety rail, in some places it's absent, allowing you to climb down onto the rocks. ch seemed a bit crazy that day, and led the way down onto a rocky section of the coast. We stopped there for another break, and took a few photos. Now that wasn't as simple as you might think. There wasn't enough flat space to set up the tripod and take a group photo on the bit of rock we were on. On the seaward side, there's another rock, but we had to cross a gap too large to jump. To do so, we had to climb down to a little ledge, walk along it, then cross the gap where it is narrower and climb onto the other rock. Unfortunately, those pics are with kev and I haven't got them from him yet, so I've got nothing to post here. We all did that and took a group picture on that much flatter rock.
We then got the idea of putting the tripod on the seaward rock while we took a picture of ourselves on the landward side of the gap. Since kev's camera only had a 10 second timer, someone had to press the button then scramble across the gap and into position within 10 seconds. We timed CH and he managed to do it, so we set everything up and took the photo. Before ch pressed the button, we warned each other not to blink. CH pressed the shutter, and performed a great feat of athleticism scrambling across safely. Upon checking the photo, we found that Murphy had not been idle, for lo and behold, zq had blinked!!! His eyes were shut. Ch nearly wanted to throttle him there and then. So we had to do it all over again. This time, he didn't blink, or he would probably have taken a little saltwater bath. Anyway, zq has a history of blinking during photos. He does it regardless of shutter speed. He can do it with long exposures or with short ones. I'm pretty amazed. How do you time a blink so your eyes are closed in the same 1/640 of a second that the camera takes the picture?? I've heard rumours that he can perform this feat at even higher shutter speeds. However, he tells us that he's now being more careful not to blink and he was less blink prone in future pictures, so maybe he's getting better.
There was another funny thing that happened before the photo incident. CH was the first to climb to the seaward rock, and went even further by climbing onto a low lying cratered piece which was sometimes flooded by a big wave. He wandered onto it, despite seeing a wave wash over it and the craters full of water. He went to the end, turned back and waved at us. I went down near the start and kept an eye on the sea. It was bound to happen sooner or later. A large wave hit and water started flooding onto the rock. I was near high ground and got out of the way easily, but CH had to hop frantically onto the dry spots with the water nipping at his heels all the way. He barely scrambled up in time, but got his jeans slightly wet from a puddle. Didn't get that on video because chris had kept the video camera at the 1st sign of possible rain and hadn't taken it out again. Being CH, he just had to go back to get a photo taken, but this time we warned him when a wave approached and he was able to get back with time to spare.
We continued walking along the trail towards the headland. The view was great, there was a beautiful sunset and we even saw a rainbow. I shall let the pictures speak for themselves.
After it got dark, we took a slow stroll back towards the shops, had some ice cream, then took public transport to the Lansdowne Hotel, which CH's friend had recommended for its cheap (by Sydney City standards) meals. We had dinner there, then bought so much chocolate from Coles that one of the natives commented about it, haha. We were buying for family and friends and had just dumped them together in the same basket, so it looked like a lot.
posted by cosine @ 10:51 PM 
