journal archive

Disembarking at Sydney airport was straightforward, and no questions were asked to see if we were planning to stay for ever (this being, according to Australians, the desire of every sane person on the planet). We went to the arrivals area to meet Lynda. Luckily, only three-quarters of an hour later, Lynda decided to make a distinction between terminal 2 and terminal 3 and travelled the final 200 metres to collect us.

Dawn and Lynda caught up on all the things they had not spent hours on the phone discussing the last few weeks, whilst I was sat between, and interrogated by, Eve (age four) and Thea (age two).

Getting acquainted with Sydney was pleasant, including visits to Palm Beach, where Home and Away is filmed and walking around the harbour and opera house and botanical gardens (where the fruit bat invasion was particularly impressive.

Sydney seems a nice enough city to live near if you like that sort of thing, as most people seem to. There is lots to do and see and there is access to beaches all along the coast. The suburbs we saw are good for shops and amenities and access to the city, and additionally they generally have areas of bush co-existing with the residential areas, and therefore it is much more possible to get a sense of the original landscape if you make the effort than it is in British suburbs. However, we didn’t get any overall sense of anything about the city unique from any other thriving consumerist metropolis.