The child was quite small, and of an age when it would be an impressive thing indeed to see the elevator arrive, but what annoyed us was that it was not by itself. Mother and father were out there in the corridor as well, allowing the child to scream and run around, calling the elevator and generally be annoying to other guests. When we’d checked in, we’d found there were whole floors devoted to non-smoking rooms. We think it would be a good idea to install child-free floors as well. Is anyone out there in the hospitality trade listening to this? Or at least give us the right to bludgeon the stuffing out of parents stupid enough to let their child scream outside hotel rooms early in the morning when there is a whole city outside to run around in…

After a quick breakfast, we walked down to the bus stop in order to catch the 10:15am express to the airport to catch our 11:00am flight. We arrived at 10:05am, and patiently waited.

• 10:15am - no bus.
• 10:20am - still no bus
• 10:25am - still no bus, starting to get a little worried now
• 10:28am - should we take a taxi?
• 10:31am - bus arrives
• 10:51am - arrive at airport
• 10:52am - discover every check-in line is eight people deep
• 10:54am - manage to locate a supervisor who sends us straight to the plane
• 10:55am - reach gate of flight, notice ‘final call’ sign flashing
• 10:56am - checked-in, plenty of time, who was worried?
• 10:58am - seated on plane
• 11:01am - plane departs terminal
• 11:05am - safety demonstration as we taxi to runway
• 11:12am - sitting on tarmac waiting for take-off
• 11:16am - leave ground
• 11:17am - kid sitting in seat behind us starts to be a pain in the neck

Yes, we’d managed to be blessed with yet another darling brat who was evidently the apple of her mother’s eye, and a thorn in the side to all others. Initially the child restricted itself to jumping on the seat and holding the seat in front, often grabbing chunks of Di’s hair as it did so. A few dirty looks managed to get the mother to prevent that little trick, but it found another one.

Have you ever noticed how the tray on the back of the seat in front of you makes a funny noise when you unclip it and let it drop? See how the seat in front of you gets a jolt. What a fun game! What could be more fun than that? Why, slamming the tray back into the upright position, of course. Whee. There’s a game that can amuse for hours! More dirty looks to the parents, and that stopped after another 10 minutes or so.

Finally, the child tired of being captive in it’s seat for so long, and longed to be free. Allowing the child to run off a bit of steam, the parents let it run up and down the length of the plane aisle as that was the only major physical activity it could achieve within the plane. Nobody particularly minded the running back and forth, but everybody minded the fact it ran screaming down the aisle from the back to the front, stopped and laughed and yelled out over 30 rows of people to it’s parents to “LOOK! LOOK!” then ran back, screaming at the top of it’s lungs the whole way.

As it ran, every face in the plane turned to watch it, to find out who the parents with pathetic control over their child were, so it was not just us that were inconvenienced. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the cabin crew offered the parents a colouring book as incentive for the child to sit down. Unfortunately, we were on the descent into Melbourne by that time, and so five or six minutes after it got the book, and peace was in the cabin once more, it was time to put the tray back to the upright position.

This naturally was teasing the kid and it began to scream in protest when the marvellous colouring book and pencils were being taken away just after it got them. To be fair, we could understand the last protest screams - it would be seen as pretty mean treatment by the kid to have such a wonderful thing taken away so soon after it got it. As a result, we were not concerned that the parents put the tray back down again and allowed the child to colour all the way to the ground, ignoring the ruling about trays being upright during landing. We were just hoping there’d be some sort of turbulence that flipped the tray up and knocked the kid out in some sort of cosmic karma, but alas, that did not happen.

So, the SPOTD award had to be shared for this day to both sets of parents that seemed unable to look after their children. It has been a long-standing sentiment of ours that if you are going to breed, you should look after that which you have bred. A smack is not a bad thing. Neither is a sedative. In you don’t have it in you to do either, then please allow volunteers from the audience to offer their services in these matters.

By the way, some people feel we are being too harsh on such a small child and that it was not it’s fault, because all small children are like that. Firstly, they are not all like that. There were four other kids on the plane, only two rows from where the brat was, and not one of them made a noise, got out of their seat, whined or was a pain during the entire flight. The parents were attentive, and made sure their kids were well-behaved, and were highly regarded by us. Secondly, we are giving the SPOTD to the parents, not the children.

In somewhat more positive news about the flight back, there was no cloud cover, and we were able to see the snowfields, Eildon weir, towns, farms, and other distinctive landmarks which was very interesting. Usually there is nothing to see but clouds, which makes for a boring trip, so it was quite scenic as flights go, if a little noisy.

We arrived back in Melbourne at 12:20pm, right on time, despite being 16 minutes late leaving, and caught a taxi back home, dumped our gear and went straight back out the door to our various workplaces. Bother. Work is such a drag…

As we were going up the hill in the chairlift, another woman in the car looked down and said “oh, there’s a cow thingy!” pointing into an enclosure. We both looked down, and I corrected her, telling her it was a water buffalo. Di then pointed out a bit further away and said “that’s a cow”. Sure enough, there was most certainly a Friesian cow being used for some sort of farm animal demonstration. Trav found it most disappointing he’d not known about it, since he loves to go along to those demonstrations and find out what tourists are being told about cows. Inevitably there is something so off-track like “a lot of farmers in Australia still milk their cows by hand” that it provides a damn good laugh, if nothing else. Oh, and the chance to stick one’s hand up and ask difficult questions if the demonstrating person deserves it…*grin*

We spent the morning strolling around looking at the various animals and noting the differences between display design in Taronga Zoo vs Melbourne Zoo. It was all very interesting, though even the Zoo was closing off some exhibits to make them look better for the Olympic visitors.

That was probably the one thing about Sydney that stunned us more than anything else - a mere thirty days to go before the Olympics are held, and there is so much development and construction work going on that is obviously not going to be finished. Some things do need to be modified at the last minute, to allow for special Olympic driving lanes and the like, but things like the Zoo should not be doing modifications and closing down exhibits for visitors before the Olympics. Everyone in that zoo had paid good money to get in and see all the animals on offer, so it was disappointing to see even the Zoo had decided it was better to cater for the incoming two weeks of tourists, than the constant stream they get all year round.

Our SPOTD’s were found at the spider monkey enclosure. Two young men of limited intelligence were laughing and pointing to the monkeys, yelling “Hey, there’s my mum! Hi mum! And there’s my dad! And look there’s me! Hey! Hey dad! What are you doing in that cage?” All around the zoo were signs on nearly every enclosure telling people not to feed the animals, but of course, such signs are only meant for some people. These two men, for example, were exempt from that ruling. One of them told the other he was going to feed them a banana, and then hurled it into the cage. Naturally, this got the attention of the other spider monkeys and they all came racing over to get some fruit as well. Another banana got thrown into the cage, quickly pounced upon by another monkey.

The third and final banana was being watched by one monkey hanging out from a branch toward the men. They stood there saying “We’ll give you a banana if you clap! Go on! Clap! Clap!”, clapping their hands to show what they wanted the monkey to do. It was actually rather funny to watch two grown men clapping and encouraging the monkey to imitate them, all for the sake of a banana. The spider monkey looked at them bemused, then scratched it’s forearm while it waited for them to stop making that stupid clapping noise and throw them the banana. “No! Not scratch! Clap! Not scratch! Clap or there is no banana for you!” they instructed and, after a minute or so of them clapping, the monkey realised what it had to do. It gave a couple of quick claps, the men cheered and threw it the final banana.

They could have been offering worse than fruit to monkeys, so it did not seem worth saying something to them about not feeding the animals. Also, there was a zoo worker sitting behind them in a van, waiting for a concrete-truck to reverse out of the way, and if the zoo worker was not going to jump out and stop them, we did not consider it to be our responsibility.

After the spider monkeys, we wandered down to look at the farm animals. It was rather funny to see the difference between the signs used. On all the other animal enclosures, the sign was along the lines of : Red Bear (Ursus reddus) - Found only in south-east Asia, these bears live in community groups of six, hunting in packs. Their diet is mainly berries and grubs, but they will also attack deer and pigs if other food sources get low.

On the farm animal enclosures, the sign just showed a cartoon picture of the animal and said simply : Cow.

From there, we went and watched a demonstration of various birds of prey, which was quite interesting, and just as it finished, the skies opened, and the rain poured down. We decided we’d seen as much as we wanted to see anyway, so headed for the ferry and went back across the water to Circular Quay.

By this time, we were getting quite hungry, so we went to find some lunch. We knew it would be expensive to purchase food near the Quay, due to the proximity of such a huge tourist market, but we did not realise quite how expensive. We thought we’d just grab a pie for lunch, something simple. A pie retails in that area of town for $9-$10 each. Frankly, that was just ridiculously out of our budget, so we kept walking a block or so, then found a pub serving a plate of roast meat and vegetables for $10. Gosh - for $10 would we buy a pie? Or a roast dinner? No contest, and soon we tucked into a hearty plate of roast meat that was just perfect on a cold, wet day.

After lunch, we decided that it was time to make up for our last travel to Sydney, when we tried to get to the Sydney Harbour Bridge museum, but failed to get there because we took the wrong road. Once again, we took the wrong road. This time though, we simply asked directions, and got back on course.

The museum was actually rather disappointing. Like everything else in Sydney, it was under construction, but they were not going to be ready to open it until November or December at least. The entry price of $3.00 per person gave entry to the pylon lookout, and entry to the museum. Since it was not open, they were offering complimentary tickets to be used when we came back in December. We have no intention of going back in December, so asked if there was a cheaper price to just walk up the stairs and go to the pylon lookout, but there wasn’t. I imagine that they get asked that a lot by disgruntled visitors, but after walking all the way to the pylon, then up several flights of dark stairs, they figure nobody is going to stop 50 steps from the top for the sake of $3. It was rather irritating though, to have to pay for entry to a museum that does not currently exist.

Climbing up to the top of the pylon lookout, we huddled inside for a few moments due the pouring rain. From the room, we could see the suckers who’d paid about $110 each to climb up the arch of the bridge, and were getting absolutely drowned, with no hope of seeing the city for the rain and clouds. The wind was also very strong, so we decided none of them would really be thinking it was a good use of that much money.

After the rain stopped, we went out on the lookout and took a couple of photos before the cold wind made us go back inside once more. Downstairs in the foyer, we sat and watched a video of the construction work of the bridge which was quite interesting, but it had a terrible soundtrack. There was the original footage, introduced by a clear speaking narrator, then it cut to the reminisces of a fellow who was a supervisor on the bridge work back in the 1930’s. Aged in his late seventies when he did the recording, it sounded as though they’d got him to speak into a cardboard tube, at a distance of a kilometre away, underwater, with a mouth full of marbles. It was completely unintelligible, and we soon gave up.

Walking across the rest of the bridge, we went down to Luna Park to have a look, but it was closed. We had a desire to take another ferry ride, so we jumped on a bus to the only place we knew of a ferry stopping - Mosman Bay. After 30 minutes bus ride, we arrived at Mosman Bay, only to see the ferry just pulling out. Fortunately, we only had to wait 15 minutes for the next one, and we zipped back across the water to Circular Quay once more. Since it was almost dark by then, we decided to jump on the next ferry, and use it to cruise around and see the lights of the city, rather than pay an extra $20 each and go on a special cruise that would go past pretty much all the stuff we’d passed during the day.

Catching the next ferry to Rydlemere, we found out that the first stop was actually Milson’s Point, right next to Luna Park. We had literally been standing on the very wharf that the ferry pulled up to, but didn’t realise it was a stop at the time, due to the sign saying “private wharf”. Felt a bit stupid for taking a bus to a ferry when we’d been standing at a ferry stop, but such is life. We did get to see a bit more of the city than we would have otherwise.

The ferry was almost empty on the way to Rydlemere, but we stood out the front of the boat, on deck, since inside felt just like a bus, whereas standing on deck gave a much better view, and appreciation that we were on a ferry. Of course, being such a cold day, riding across water, into a cold wind, with a few flicks of rain still falling, it was abso-bloody-lutely freezing out there, and we were chilled to the core. Still, it was interesting. On the way there, Trav had been talking to the fellow responsible for putting the gangplank out to the wharf, and on the way back, since we were the only passengers, he offered to show us the area of the ferry out the back for crew only. It was quite interesting to see the size of the engines used to power the ferry, as well as the two 2500 litre fuel tanks. Okay, so maybe it sounds dull to some people, but it was somewhat fascinating to see the powerhouse of the ferry.

A bite of dinner was had at a restaurant on the Quay, which seemed confused about what sort of place it was. On the one hand, they had a number of waiters scurrying about, fetching drinks, happy to attend to your every need. On the other hand, the food was presented in large trays, and once you’d made your selection, they served it up on a plate, then popped it into a microwave behind them. It was all rather bizarre to watch what appeared to be a relatively upmarket restaurant nuking our meals like a TV dinner.

Since Sydney was, by that time, basically shut down, except for the hundreds of construction workers racing the clock before the Olympics, we went back to the hotel, and relaxed at the end of the day with a bit of television.

We did feel somewhat bad about taking the Qantas flight instead of Impulse, but we had worked our schedules out to get a break beginning Tuesday, and we were mainly going because of the cheaper rate. Why go to Sydney anyway? Well, here’s where it gets all kind of stupid-sounding, and makes us out to be quite bizarre…

Trav had built up a list of journal articles he needed but were not available at Melbourne University for one reason or another - either it was not held in any library on campus, or the journal series was held, but there was a missing volume containing a needed paper. With the fee for an inter-library loan being $6 per journal article, and a list of over 100 articles to get, the total cost of sending requests through the library system would be $600. However, to fly there and get the papers personally would cost $132, plus photocopying costs (which turned out to be exactly $51). Also, it allowed Trav to physically take journals off shelves, and read contents pages of journals published in the years before computer databases, finding obscure but relevant papers that existed but could not be found using an online literature search.

Ultimately, it turned out that since some references were not as interesting or relevant as their titles had suggested, or were not held at the University of Sydney either, so we ended up collecting 59 articles. Total cost of personally flying to Sydney and collecting articles = $182. Total cost if through inter-library loan system = $354. Much cheaper to go in person, plus there was a bonus day off in Sydney that we organised as well.

Getting back to the trip though, the main difference between Impulse Airlines and the established carriers of Qantas and Ansett is that Impulse do not have meals or in-flight entertainment. Given the flight between Melbourne and Sydney is only just over an hour, there really is no need for these things anyway. Qantas, however, even at the cheap rate was providing both. The breakfast we got served though would have been much better not being provided.

A disgusting combination of a small grey sausage lying in the messy goop of what appeared to be an omelete, but could have easily been some form of special effect from a sci-fi movie, and a chunk of tomato. Hardly an appealing meal, made even less so when it was discovered the omelette contained chunks of onion. Trav was curious as to exactly what it was called, so when one of the cabin crew passed, he asked. The crew member looked at it, wrinkled his nose and said he had no idea. He then asked another crew member standing nearby if she could recognise it, and she didn’t know either. The original crew member asked if it was nice, to which Trav laughed and responded it wasn’t, and after a couple of minutes, he reappeared with some bread rolls from the kitchen, as well as some jam. Sitting in the back row sometimes has it’s advantages, though being right next to the toilet is never that pleasant.

Our SPOTD was found at the airport, after we’d collected our bags and were trying to work out transportation to the city. We had the option of either going by bus or train, and were not sure which was the better option considering we wanted to use public transport later in the day to get to the University of Sydney. After all, even though the airport express bus was cheaper ($7 compared to $10 by train), if there was a daily ticket available at the train station, it would probably work out cheaper to take the latter option.

We were looking at the information boards when a “customer service assistant” (and I use the term loosely) from the rail authority came over to help us. We told him we wanted to go to the city, then on to Sydney University, and which would be cheaper - to buy a daily ticket each, or a single ticket to the city, then a return to the Uni or to take the airport express bus to the city, then train from there?

His response was mumbled and impossible to get a clear idea of what he was saying, but the phrase “get off between the city and Redfern” (the latter being a pretty rough suburb) came up a couple of times. Since there were a few stations between the two, and since we had no desire to be wandering the streets of Redfern in an obviously lost state, we ended up thanking him for his help (of which he was none), then walking over to the phone and calling the hotel where we were intending to stay for directions.

We actually got kind of lucky with the hotel. We had been reading a brochure about going to Sydney for winter (the city usually has an advertising campaign to lure all the tourists that just think “go to Queensland” in winter) and were expecting to pay $148 per night. When we rang, they told us the rate was actually only $138 instead, which was a saving of $20 for us. Hurrah. Considering Di wanted to break loose and spend the two nights in a swank hotel instead of a smaller one, to get it cheaper than we were expecting to pay was always going to be a good thing.

Upon reaching the city (we took the airport express bus), we checked into the Mercure hotel, then boarded a bus for the University of Sydney. After a little wandering around on campus (don’t ask an Arts student for directions to an Ag library), we collected journals and books, then began photocopying. Di was the lucky one to irradiate her brain all day, and Trav kept going out to retrieve more books and journal articles, bringing them back to the photocopy room for her to duplicate. (NB: It was indeed a very efficient system, and it should be noted that Di is a wonder-girl for helping out all day on a day off from her work. Grovel. Grovel. Grovel.)

After photocopying in two libraries from 11:30am - 6:00pm, we walked back to the hotel since it was not that far, and we thought it might be nicer to see the city at walking pace rather than zooming along. After a pleasant walk back, we dumped our stuff, and went off in search of the Wooloomooloo Waters hotel.

A friend Trav had made through internet and email over the past few years had just been in Sydney, all the way from Idaho. Unfortunately, due to the timing of our flights, as Bonita was flying out of Sydney at 9:35am and we were arriving at 9:50am, so we never got the chance to cross paths and meet in person. Oh well, we shall have to meet next year when we tour the USA. Anyway, whilst in Sydney, she had purchased a Sydney Pass, which allows unlimited travel on buses, trains and ferries through the city, as well as on a few other services, such as a return trip to the airport, etc.

Since it was a five day pass, and there was a day left on it, Bonita offered it to us, since we would be able to make use of it whilst we were there. We’d organised for her to leave it at the reception of the hotel where she’d been staying, and we’d pick it up from there. Looking at the map, we took a bus to Kings Cross, then walked down the street away from there to locate Dowling Street. In a little bout of confusion, we’d neglected to bring a map, but we knew where it was roughly located, and so headed that way. We quickly located it, and began to walk down it, only to find it was cut off after about 100m by another road that intersected with it and completely blocked it. We looked at the pitch-black park beside the end of the street that would presumably get us around the obstacle, and decided instead to walk back up the street and find a more lit route. We were, after all, not far from Kings Cross, and it’s not the best place to be stumbling about, lost in the dark.

We found a better lit street, and walked along it, then turned right, in order to intersect with the other side of Dowling Street we’d been unable to get to. The street was reasonably well-lit, but walking past groups of homeless men sleeping in the streets, the occasional syringe in the gutter and finding out at the other end that it too, was a dead-end street was not that much fun. Di was beginning to get rather frantic by this time, fearing that at any time we would be attacked and robbed at syringe-point, but to be honest, all of the homeless people looked like they were too busy sleeping and trying to keep warm huddled under moth-eaten blankets to bother with us.

We finally made our way out of the maze of streets and reached the correct end of Dowling St, and instantly spied the hotel. To our dismay, we found that the bus we’d been on had a stop right at the end of the street we’d wanted, at the end we’d wanted, but since that was not marked on the map (we checked when we got back), we never would have known anyway. For the record, it turns out that Dowling St is actually cut into three separate parts, although it looked like a person on foot would have no problems getting between one part and the other. On the map, it appears that a small section of grass lies between each part, and while cars could not drive the complete length of the road, a pedestrian would have no problems. That is a wrong assumption. Especially at night.

With our Sydney Pass now obtained, we boarded a bus and headed down to the Opera House and Circular Quay to have a look around at night, since we were so close. There was a small group practicing some sort of Aboriginal storyline street theatre in front of the steps of the Opera House, but like all street theatre and interpretive dance, it turned out to be extremely dull very quickly, so we moved on. Also in preparation for next month’s Olympic visitors, there was a trial run happening where projections of the Olympic flame, as well as other hues of green and mauve were being cast upon the exterior of the Opera House. It did all look very impressive, and should make the tourists take a photo or two.

At that point, it began to rain, so we grabbed some Burger King (it’s not called “Hungry Jacks” in Sydney), went to the hotel and fell asleep, both worn out from a full day of being on our feet, either walking, photocopying, or stumbling about in the dark back-streets of dodgy suburbs.