Got up early yesterday morning to catch the bus to Avalon Airport with Sarah (from Seeds in Bendigo). When my hand luggage went through the scanner, they said they weren't sure what was in it, and they wanted me to open it up. So I opened it up, and asked me if there was perhaps a binder in there, and I said there wasn't, but I realised I had a steel ruler in my pencil case, so they had a look in there, and there was a craft knife in it, which I hadn't realised when I packed my pencil case. So they had to chuck that out. Oh well. It turned out that one of Sarah's friends from uni just happened to be on the same flight as us, which was a pretty big coincidence.
Bryan picked us up from Sydney Airport, and drove us to Surry Hills, to Lauren's place, where Sarah is staying this week, and we dropped Sarah off there. Took this picture near Lauren's place:
Then Bryan took me to his place in Glebe to drop off my things (I'm staying with him and Heather). We had lunch there, and then went out to the Hope Street centre in Woolloomooloo.
We met up with Dave (my housemate) and the other people who are visiting Hope Street for the week. It turned out my friend John (from uni in Ballarat)'s sister Kim is also visiting Hope Street this week.
In the evening Colin (the director of Hope Street) showed us around Woolloomooloo and Darlinghurst a bit, including Kings Cross.
Late in the evening we went to a food van in Woolloomooloo, to see what it's like eating there. It was really different to what i expected. In my first year at Urban Seed some of us spent a fair bit of time hanging out with people at the food van at Flinders Street Station, and generally there weren't heaps of people, and it seemed like everyone knew each other, and there was often a kind of boisterous atmosphere. At the food van we went to last night there were heaps of people, and there was a really long queue, and everyone was very quiet and serious, and not many people were talking or even making eye contact with each other.
I was really surprised to see that there were a lot of people sleeping out in Woolloomooloo, in fairly big groups, just out in the open. You don't really see that anywhere in Melbourne. Most of the others slept out with them last night, some of them under the railway bridge, some of them at a library, and some of them at 'Kiwi Park' (a lot of New Zealanders sleep there). I slept in Hope Street's Backshed Cafe, which was still outside, but it was enclosed. I was pretty exhausted from working all day at Urban Seed the previous day, and then doing my cleaning work, and then getting up early yesterday morning to fly to Sydney. I still didn't sleep much. Some of the neighbours were playing Pokémon very loudly, and there were trains going overhead regularly. At about 1 am someone outside was shouting very loudly, 'WAKE UP YOU F***ING HOMELESS PEOPLE! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!'
This morning we went to the free breakfast which Hope Street runs, in Tom Uren Place, just outside the centre, and then hung around for Street Church, under the jacaranda trees. This afternoon I'm just having a rest. Might visit Café Church in Glebe later.
Tomorrow we're going to be at the Darlinghurst centre.
