Today I discovered my love of Australian surfing….men. Australian surfers are all I expected them to be: tall, thin, tanned, shaggy hair, and let’s not forget the accent. Our surfing expedition took place on the famous (at least in Australia) Bondi Beach. We headed there on the bus amongst blue skies and hopeful hearts that we wouldn’t get rained on like we had the previous two days in Australia. But by the time we drove across Sydney to reach the beach the skies had opened. We were soaked before we even got a proper hello, I mean g’day, from the surfers. We split into two groups, one group to try surfing first and the other to learn about the history of the Australian surf rescue. I went with the latter group, and this is where I met Adrian. I was like Matt, Marc, who….? Adrian was definitely meant to be my one true Australian love. So we sat down for a demonstration on life saving skills in the ocean, and Adrian asked for volunteers. This is when I curse the fact that I was with children and couldn’t be a volunteer; however, this did give me a good excuse to get a lot of pictures of my new love, I mean, I totally had to make sure I got pictures of the kids, right?
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| A rainy Bondi Beach |
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| Adrian giving a surf rescue lesson |
After our demonstration we headed to the surf shop to get our wetsuits, and at this point we were all soaked through our clothes, and shivering in the 50 degree weather, and we were expected to go into the ocean? We got into our wetsuits and headed to the ocean, and I was feeling quite nervous about getting into the water with the huge crashing waves.
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| Wetsuits on and ready to go! |
Nervous until I saw the surf instructors, and then I realized that it probably wouldn’t be so awful to drown, if those were the guys that were going to save us. My group got split into 5 smaller groups, and I got put in the group with Jack and Brody. Brody was about 6’4″, tall and muscley thin, and Jack had a foreign accent so I was really excited to be learning to surf with them. Unfortunately, as the lesson went on, I noticed that the other groups were having a lot more fun, running to the ocean and all giving it a try over and over, while Brody and Jack made us line up and go one at a time. We only got to try to stand up on the boards three times, though I definitely learned the steps to surfing, if you’d like to learn:
Step one- lie on the board, toes at the end of the board, hands flat on the board under your belly.
Step two- push your upper body up, so you look like a seal.
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| Me mastering step two- and check out the hot surfer behind me! |
Step three- butt in the air, making a triangle with your body to the board.
Step four, put your dominant leg forward, foot to the side, and then bring your other leg forward, in front of the other leg).
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| Look! We all stood up on our surfboards! |
So Brody and Jack took turns taking us into the water, waiting until a good wave came and then set us off. I kept thinking of the steps in order, but before I got to step three I was back up to the sand. It was definitely a good time, but I was disappointed that my hot surfers had absolutely no personality at all. Nice eye candy at least, and after our lunch I was reunited with Adrian when he presented me with a certificate naming me an official surfer. And just a side note, though we surfed in the cold rain, the ocean water was definitely warmer than outside air.
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| Confident pre-surfing picture- totally gnarly bra! |
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Surf’s up dude!
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Look at me go! After only three tries!
What’s not to love about Australian surf boys I ask you? |
After our surfing lesson we drove back into Sydney to go on a history walking tour. I really didn’t know a lot about the history of Australia, so I found it very interesting. For instance, we saw where Captain Cook and his traveling crew first landed; we learned about the Sydney harbor bridge being built (like it was built during the depression and though it didn’t pay much and was a very dangerous job people loved the job because at least it was guaranteed employment). Most interesting in my opinion was visiting “The Rocks”; these were the first homes of Sydney, mainly for the prisoners. In case you didn’t know, Australia was first used by England to hold the prisoners, because the jails were overcrowded in England. And these weren’t big crimes; for instance, shipped over was an 8 year old girl whose crime was stealing another girls dress. So the prisoners came over on the ships along with the soldiers and the settlers, and they were in charge of building the city. In fact, on many of the original buildings you can see the markings from the sandstone being scraped by hand. Back to the Rocks, here you could visit the remains of some of the original houses of Sydney, though they were considered the slums, built around 1788 in the sandstone rocks.
     I would love this to be my daily running path!
Getting our walking tour of Sydney
Harbor bridge and an interesting art exhibition
Artwork depicting the original occupants of Sydney- the prisoners & the original gangsta- not!
First occupants of Sydney- The Soldiers
First Occupants of Sydney- The Settlers
The Rocks
Learning about the Rocks history
Standing in one of the Rocks original houses- we barely all squeezed in!
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After the history tour we got a behind the scenes tour of the Sydney Opera House. I consider the Sydney Opera House like the Eiffel Tower- I’d never get tired of seeing it. We got to go into three concert halls in the Opera House, though there are five theaters in total in the Opera House, as well as behind the scenes where usually people don’t get to visit. The Sydney Opera House was built with the intent of having two main theaters, one that was intended for orchestral music and one for operas. In the orchestral hall there is an organ that is 3 stories tall, the largest of its kind in the world with over 10,000 pipes, and only gets used for special guests- it took two years originally for it to get tuned.
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| The Sydney Opera House Organ |
We also learned about the building of the opera house. The roof is made of shingles that never need to get cleaned. Jorn Utzon created the design, which broke the rules of the architecture contest for the Opera House, by making the two theater rooms next to each other instead of in front and back. It was originally going to take 5 years and 7 million dollars to build, but ended up taking 14 years and cost 100 million dollars.
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| Hallway in the Opera House |
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| The self-cleaning shell roof |
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| Opera House at night |
We finished our day by visiting an Opal museum and then dinner.What a busy day in Australia- and I know there is a lot more business to come!
Catching Katie 