Two rivers and 'thirteen hours on a bus'

So, on Wednesday me and Adam and David and Peter went over to the Nepean River. There was a rope there, hanging from a really tall pine tree, which people use to swing over the water.

Afterwards we got some lunch in Emerton and got some groceries, and I got a Mounty County t-shirt.

Yesterday (Thursday) morning Adam and Kristen were flying to Bangkok, to do some English teaching in Klong Toey with UNOH, and visit the Thai-Burmese border. So I caught the train into town with them when they went to the airport. When I got into town I headed down to Hope Street in Woolloomooloo, to see if Bryan or Heather were there, so I could give them back their house keys from six months ago. Saw this, coming into Woolloomooloo:

Had a cup of tea with Bryan at Hope Street's Back Shed Café. I told him about how I got stuck in Albury all day on Monday, and it turned out that he had driven from Wodonga to Sydney on Monday so I could've gotten a lift with him if I'd known! Bryan asked if I wanted to stay at their place that night, so I could catch the bus from Central Station on time, which was nice. (I'd been expecting to have to stay at one of the backpackers, or fork out for a hotel room.)
Bryan was telling me that they've had some residents wanting them to move their Sunday breakfast and church gathering inside, rather than having it out in public space, where a lot of their community sleep. So they've been trying having the breakfast inside (in another building that the city council is letting them use) but they're not too keen about having the church gathering inside.
So when Bryan went back to work I took all my stuff up to Bryan and Heather's house in Glebe.

Afterwards I walked back into town and wandered around the Botanic Gardens, and into Circular Quay.

Got on the ferry and went to Parramatta.



Got on the bus this morning (Friday) back to Melbourne at 9am. Stopped in Canberra. Saw purple and yellow fields around Gundagai.

Stopped in Albury. Got to Melbourne about 9:45pm.

Difficult journey

So I found the journey to Sydney on Monday night/Tuesday morning pretty difficult! I was really, really tired, but I couldn't sleep because the seats were pretty uncomfortable, and the bloke who was asleep in the seat next to me kept elbowing me, and there were two old ladies sitting behind me arguing and complaining about goths and washing machines and stuff all night long. So I was pretty angry and tired. I was thinking I should probably have got a first class ticket instead of economy, so I could sleep. And we arrived in Sydney about two hours late.
So I had some breakfast at Central Station, and got a ticket for Mount Druitt, called Adam on a public phone to tell him when I was getting there, but couldn't get him. Got on the train to Mount Druitt. On the train I emailed everyone at Urban Seed asking if they could find out from Shobie (who's been working there on Tuesdays) her brother John's address (because Adam lives with John) and email it to me. Also looked up how to get to their street, because I could remember the street name. Got off the train at Mount Druitt, and went into the shopping centre to find somewhere to sit down and check my emails. Samara said she'd messaged Shobie. Walked half the way to Adam's house in Bidwill, and while I was on the way Adam came past and picked me up. (So I emailed Samara, who messaged Shobie, who messaged Adam's housemate Paxo saying I was in Mount Druitt, who told Adam. And it turned out I hadn't been able to get him on the phone because he can't get much phone reception in Bidwill.
Adam was working yesterday afternoon, delivering pizzas. (He said the other day one of the other drivers got a rock thrown through the window of the delivery car.) So I went for a little walk around, saw kids riding dirt bikes (one of them was way too big for his bike - he was having to stick his legs out the back so they wouldn't touch the ground) and got a spring roll at the shopping centre in Blackett. Came back to the house, and watched this with one of the kids from the neighbourhood documentary about a family who lived in a haunted house. After that we went with John and his kids, Kshama and Kiera, and Kristen (she lives in the house too, and used to live at Noble Park when Adam was there) to the Penrith Panthers (an NRL team) to play arcade games.
Today I think we're going down to the river.

Albury tomorrow

Going away at about 8:30 tomorrow morning. Catching the train to Albury. Still not very organised. (Wasn't able to get a ticket for the Albury to Sydney bit today.)
Been thinking about where I'm going to live next year.
Bought a tripod yesterday.
Lost my phone today (I think it is at Uncle Phillip and Auntie Wendy's house) so I am going to have a phone holiday too. A bit annoying though, because it means I have nothing to wake me up in the morning, so I am having to stay up all night, because I won't wake up early enough now, I've been up to late packing.
Anyway, should be good!

Going to Bidwill

I'm on leave next week. And the week after. I'm going to Bidwill (near Mount Druitt, near Blacktown) in Sydney. Also going some other places. Hopefully can do lots of photography. Should be good!

The rest of the Sydney trip

Been back from Sydney for just over a week now, but haven't blogged about the rest of the trip. I've been a bit distracted. (Mehrin and I are going out!)
Anthony Venn-Brown (founder of of Youth Alive, now a gay ambassador) came and spoke to us at Hope Street's centre in Darlinghurst (where 35% of people are gay) came and shared his experience of being a gay man in the church. One thing he said that impacted us a lot was that Christians think the GLBT community are conspiring against the church, trying to undermine Christian values and trying to make it harder for Christians to practice their faith in our society. Anthony said that the GLBT community has pretty much the same suspicions about the church, and that both groups need to be in dialogue, so that they can realise they're not out to get each other.
Took these pictures one night when me and Dave went for a walk around the Botanic Gardens and Circular Quay:

And these are pieces of a puzzle I found that had been dropped in the street in Glebe:

Mostly the aquarium

Been at the Hope Street centre in Darlinghurst today:

And tonight I spent about three hours at the aquarium, which was very relaxing.

I'm in Sydney

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.

Apparently Sydney wants to become civilised?

No more Sydney...

Didn't do much on Friday, because it was raining heavily all day in Sydney. Ended up just hanging around the backpackers, reading Life, the Universe and Everything, listening to Hilltop Hoods, and watching/making fun of Windtalkers with some English backpackers. Wrote a little bit too, including this, which I don't think is finished:

It's a present

It might seem to us like this leaf's been thrown away.
That doesn't mean it's rubbish.
It's probably not going to make us any money.
But we don't have to sweep it away out of resentment.
What would make us think we had the right to do that anyway?
It actually contains a secret message. It's probably not a message any of us will ever consciously understand very well. But we don't need to understand it, just to receive it. The deep, buried bits of ourselves know what to do with it.
It's going to self-destruct. But that will take a while, and it's components will go back down into the earth to feed other messages.
So it's not rubbish.

Friday night I went down to Circular Quay, even though it was still raining a bit, and took a few long-exposure photos.



Saturday morning I met up with Dave (a friend from Ballarat who now lives in Sydney) and hung around the city and Circular Quay and had lunch. It was raining a fair bit still.

At one point on the plane flight back to Melbourne there were ice crystals forming on the outside of the windows. It was pretty cloudy where we started the descent, and it was a little bit turbulent.
I'm glad I'm back now, because I've missed everyone.

Pop art and street art

Moved my stuff to the new backpackers. Seems a lot cleaner and tidier, and it doesn't smell. There seems to be a lot of students staying there.
Ended up wandering around Surry Hills today, and eventaully finding Paddington. Was a lot of street art in Paddington, compared to anywhere else I've been in Sydney.

Found a gallery of this pop artist called David Egan who does paintings and silk screen prints based on U2 songs.