Circular Quay, 28th December 2008
The temperature has hit 43 degrees today in Penrith (west of Sydney), and here in Meadowbank we have seen 33. Poor Penrith, 33 is almost too hot to bear so I cannot imagine 43.
I am quite fortunate in that I miss the worst of it - my office has air conditioning currently set at a comfortable 22 and my journey to work takes place before the heat really sets in. Walking home from the train station was like walking in an oven though.
Mark is less fortunate and has no such access to air con. Also less fortunate are those living near bushland - with humidity dropping below 30%, the news on the radio at work is constantly updating on the uncontrollable fires currently burning to Sydney's north, threatening homes, wildlife and national parks.
The one small upside to all this heat is that washing hung out on the line dries in less than 30 minutes.
My friend Fran came to stay a couple of weeks ago! Over the new year. It was fun. She arrived on 29th December at 6am, after 3 (!) flights (Manchester-London-Bangkok-Sydney). We went for tea at the Hilton after I finished work (a nice place for a city-located cup of tea), then pizzas at home and sleep. I worked the next day, and then came New Year's eve!
We headed for Balmain East at around 3pm with beer and wine and peaches and many other exciting treats in our cool bag. I had worked in the morning so I caught the ferry over from Circular Quay, which was absolute chaos as it seemed almost everyone in Sydney was trying to get out to the harbour wharves. People were actually fighting to get onto boats. Fortunately I managed to get onto one before too long and joined Fran and Mark at Balmain. We set up our camp and waited! It was a hot day but fortunately as soon as the sun went down it was quite cool. And it was such a good atmosphere, so many people all along the front, young people, families, everyone, and there was no trouble, everyone was all happy and singing and chatting and sharing beers.
The first fireworks were at 9pm, then the main event at midnight! Photos at Flickr and here's my video of the event:
The original is quite good quality, but I had to squash it loads to get it on youtube so sorry it's a bit fuzzy :(
Happy New Year!
Another fun thing we did with Fran was go to bill's in Darlinghurst for brunch on the saturday. I had a lovely scrambled eggs on sourdough (oh god I love sourdough, why does UK not have more sourdough??) with avocado salsa and a lovely pot of earl grey. Fran and I are both big Bill fans from watching him on Saturday Kitchen so it was quite exciting and definitely somewhere to revisit.
No comments:
Post a Comment