Being manly in Manly

Yeah. I know. Must try harder with my post titles.

Back to dear old Circular Quay today. The plan; well, now that the sun was out in style it was time to hit the beach to really work on those melanoma. It was a toss-up between the famed sandy stretches of Bondi or the slightly less well know town of Manly - seven miles from Sydney but, as their pithy promotional tagline put it, 'a thousand miles from care'. Not great for the elderly or infirm looking for a nursing home then.

We went for Manly over Bondi because (a) it meant another ride on the ferry and, perhaps more tellingly, (b) I felt there was less chance of a profusion of bronzed and hunky surfer dudes queuing up to kick sand in my face.

So Manly it was, and after a later-than-usual start (Bollywood cocktail hangover, anyone?) we got ourselves down to Circular Quay for the ferry. Mrs V queued for tickets whilst I took charge of Tizer. As the queue for tickets was quite long I decided, in something of a masochistic vein, to check out what the resident didgeridooers were doing.

"This is track 9 - Jambawonga Sky," they announced before letting rip with the 'doo (I rather hope that's what proponents of said instrument call it - it works for me). The tinny backing music, the native rhythms, the guttural emissions of the 'doo - sorry, but it still sounded just like Forest Illoowaloo to me. What was it I was missing? I mean, I like to think that I have a wide and varied taste in music, from pop to Puccini and rock to Rachmaninov. Hell, I even 'get' jazz. But the 'doo, as yet, escapes me.

I was shaken from my reverie by my good wife who'd bought the tickets for the ferry, which was boarding in 10 minutes. She had just one question: "Where's Tizer's shoe?". Shoe? What shoe? I looked down to see my recalcitrant daughter tugging manically at her one remaining sock. The shoe she'd just removed and one sad looking sock were in her lap; the shoe belonging to her other, now bare foot, was nowhere to be seen. If this wasn't one of her favourite tricks - usually reserved for the moment before boarding a boat of plane, or performed somewhere in the depths of Marks & Sparks on a busy Saturday afternoon - I would have sworn that it was a reaction to the music, and that she was trying to get out to dance barefoot on the kangaroo skins and get down to the 'doo.

Well, could we find that bloody shoe? Increasingly irritated questions passed between us; queries such as "Well how far can it have gone?", "Can you remember where you were stood?" and "When did she last have it on?" proved as futile as they sounded. We even peered into the oily waters lapping the side of the quay to see whether she could have kicked it off, Jonny Wilkinson style, into the harbour, but nothing.

In desperation we resorted to asking Tizer herself: "Sweetheart, where's your shoe?", to which - in answer - she held up her remaining shoe, before chucking it out of the side of her pushchair. Smart kid. So there was nothing else for it but to head back up to the hotel for another pair of shoes.

It was turned one o' clock in the afternoon by the time we got back down to the quay (after stapling Tizer's only remaining pair of shoes firmly to her feet), but luckily the next ferry was just boarding so we headed straight for it. Purely out of curiosity Mrs V asked the girl at the turnstile if she's seen a child's shoe kicking around. Of course she had. One was handed in half an hour ago after some kindly gentleman found it. The arse. Ah well, at least we didn't have to add a pair of shoes, along with our two jackets, to the list of clothing articles missing in action so far on this trip.

The ferry ride over to Manly was great. It's on a much bigger boat than the one that took us over to Taronga, although still in public-bog beige 'n' green, and it takes the best part of 40 minutes. Once again, wonderful views of the city and really great value when you compare it to the tourist charter boats that ply much the same route, but for considerably more dosh. The only difference with the ferry trip is that it's minus the tinny and annoying 'commentary' you get on the tourist boats. Oh, and you're much less likely to come across an out of work actor dressed up as Captain Cook, but that can't be entirely guaranteed.

Arriving in Manly in time for a late lunch, it strikes you as a pretty pleasant seaside town. Set on a peninsula with the harbour on one side and the Pacific on the other, it's two promenades are strewn with cafes, bars and surf shops. I'd probably want to avoid it on a night though. As nice as many of the bars looked in the sunshine, the boards outside advertising happy hours, two-for-one drinks deals and 'Drink The Weight Of A Pommie Bastard For A Dollar' promotions seemed to suggest that it might be in danger of turning 'a bit lairy' after dark.

We stopped at one of the cafes on the Pacific side for a sarnie and an ice tea and watched the surfer types going to-and-fro with their boards tucked 'neath their arms. All very Australian. Watching the people go by in the afternoon sun, the surf crashing against the golden sands of the beach opposite, it suddenly struck me as a terrible shame that this was, in fact, deepest December and our dear friends and family back home were braving freezing fog, scraping ice from their windscreens and enduring endless Christmas TV ads for Argos and WH Smith. Fair brought a tear to my eye, so it did.

We'd had plans to meet an old school chum of mine in the evening - Julie, a resident of Sydney now for some nine years - so with time passing through our fingers like so many grains of metaphorical sand, we fast-footed it onto the non-metaphorical variety (though not before buying Tizer the essential bucket and spade). Six sandcastles and a quick paddle in a surprisingly nippy sea later, we wrestled our screaming toddler back into her pushchair ("More seaside, daddy, more seeeeeesiiiide!") and made our way back to catch to the ferry.

More beautiful views of the city were enjoyed on our trip back, then straight up to the room for a shower and change before meeting up with Julie. It must have been six or seven years since we'd last met up whilst she was visiting the UK, so it was terrific to see her again. What Julie lacks in stature she more than makes up for in personality, and it was a pleasure to catch up with her, discuss old times, slag a few mutual acquaintances off and introduce her to Tizer, who'd been specially trained to deliver a nice, clear 'How do you do?', though we're still working on her curtsey.

Call me a sentimental old fool, but I think it's good to stay in touch with people who you were friends with in the days when Fairground Attraction were still in the charts and we were worried that the Ruskies might nuke us (although on that latter point, watch this space...). Helps to put things in perspective in this fast-paced world of iPods, the internet, mobile 'phones, Al Qaeda and 'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here'.

Julie took us to a pizza place on Circular Quay, all but a stone's throw from the god-awful restaurant we'd eaten at the previous night. This place, however, was great and proof positive that locals usually know where the best food is. Excellent pizza - complimented by a big fave out here of rocket, pear and parmesan salad - and a good bottle of Merlot from a half decent wine list.

We bid Julie the very fondest of farewells after a truly cracking evening, with a promise to try and catch up later in our trip when we're closer to Sydney again. Then bed for Tizer and a couple of drinks in the Club Lounge for me and the Mrs. It was a pleasantly mild night so we stepped onto the balcony for a filthy cig and gazed down on the lights of Sydney.

We had flights to Cairns on the morrow, then onward to a steamy five days in Port Douglas, so it was nice to sip a G & T and recap on the trip so far. And yes, there was just a slight sense of foreboding, as the flight to Cairns was to be no normal flight for us. Oh no. This flight was going to be in Economy...

Say Taronga, Be Happy

Time to take to the water today and catch the ferry from Circular Quay over to Taronga Zoo. It's years since I've been to a zoo; the last time must have been as a kid on one of our holidays to Newquay. This was the 70s, you understand, so my memories are of chimps in small cages throwing poo at each other and tatty polar bears going slowly mental in concrete pits. Not that we let that detract from our fun, as I say, it was the 70s...

Taronga Zoo is a zillion miles from this, with a guiding policy of conservation, education and animal welfare and, more importantly - a really cool cable car to the top of the zoo. Avid readers of this blog (at least those who haven't allowed the tedium to drive them to the verge of dementia) may recall our aborted attempt at visiting a mountain-top Buddhist monastery in Hong Kong, only to be usurped by a suspended cable car service (pun unintended), so we were hoping this might make up for things, if only in a small way.

We breakfasted once more in the Club Lounge on top of the Intercontinental. As I've mentioned before, the views are just stunning from up here, with the harbour bridge, opera house and all of Sydney laid out in front of you and I would, under normal circumstances, claim that I couldn't think of a better spot to partake of breakfast. Then I realise just how spoilt rotten we are this month, as I recall thinking much the same thing only a few days ago whilst tucking into my Shreddies and toast, gazing out over Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong from the comfort of the Four Seasons Executive Lounge. Tough call. Let's just say that this is the kind of life which could be very, very easy get used to.

So after breakfast we headed down to Circular Quay, from where the majority of ferries depart for both commuter and tourist trips across and around Sydney Harbour. Being such a hive of tourist activity it's deemed the perfect spot to get together with your Aborigine mates and showcase your latest CD of didgeridoo related music.

"This is track 3 - 'Forest Illoowaloo'", they'd announce before treating us to a dose of didgeridoo accompanied by a tinny backbeat on their stereo. "You can buy the CD here, today," they'd tell us to intermittent applause, "for only 12 dollars - that's half the price you'd pay for it in the stores". They sell this stuff in the shops? The mind boggles. They'd also invite members of the public to "Come down and sit on the kangaroo skins with us, have your photo taken", but people weren't exactly elbowing each other out of the way to take them up on the offer.

Still, a man's got to make a living, so I take nothing away from them. My only real bug-bear is that each time we passed by they'd be announcing another track from their CD: "This is track 7 - Narabagga Desert Sunset", or "This is track 4 - Canyon Warralongoo". But you know what? They all sounded just like Forest Illoowaloo to me... Maybe didgeridoo music is an acquired taste which I've yet to tune my ear to. I'm in no rush to start tuning, to be honest.

So, we bought our tickets for the ferry and the zoo (you can do both at the booth on Circular Quay) and filed onto the boat. Intriguing colour scheme that they've gone for with the ferries; beige and green - kind of post-modernist public toilet. Although it was bit grey and windy it was still pleasantly warm and as the ferry set out across Sydney Harbour we got - yet another -cracking view of the opera house, then of the city as a whole as we made away towards Taronga, some 20 minutes over the water.

The zoo is sited on the side of a hill overlooking Sydney Harbour, and the feted cable car takes you all the way to the top so that you can saunter back down on foot past the mightily impressive array of animals. We started with the kangaroos (well, we're in Australia, it seemed like the right thing to do), then discovered a fascinating 'little fella' called an echidna. Looks like a porcupine. Walks like a porcupine. Hell, it even tasted like a porcupine (I jest). But, no relation whatsoever to a porcupine. Although a mammal, it's one of only two types of mammal that lay eggs - the other, of course, being the duck billed platypus, pub quiz fans. So, take that Creationists.

Post lunch the weather started to hot-up, our first real taste so far on this trip of some conventional Aussie heat. And yes, this time I gave myself two coats of factor 30, so no more sunburnt-Pommie-bastard-tourist impressions. We then hit the chimps, giraffes, elephants, a strangely bashful orangutan, a couple of crocodiles and a pretty decent selection of big cats (sleeping) before finally succumbing to complete animal overload. We were done; animaled out; you could have taken me to the dodo enclosure and I don't think I'd even have taken the cap off my camera lens. We still had a taste for cable cars though, so we hiked - unnecessarily - up the hill just so we could take the sky-rail back down. Just a pair of big kids (and one small one).

The ferry back to the city was wonderful. The weather had improved in leaps and bounds and the view of the harbour with the sun glinting off the waves and bouncing off the arcs of the opera house was as if it had been cut-and-pasted straight out of the Australia Tourist Board brochure. It's at moments like this that you realise why everyone goes on about Sydney as much as they do, and I was almost glad that it'd taken a day and a half for the weather to come out in style. Plowing our way over the water in the late afternoon sunshine and seeing the city laid our around the harbour in all its splendour was one great big Aussie smack in the gob. Marvellous stuff.

Back at the hotel, and after a few restorative glasses of Bimbadgen Shiraz in the Club Lounge (it's an outstanding wine - get some), we remembered we'd booked ourselves a (poor, unsuspecting) babysitter for the night so hurried off to change and get Tizer ready for bed.

We had a pleasant night out, marred only by the fact that we'd not reserved a table anywhere. The waiter in the lounge tried his best to get us into a fish restaurant in The Rocks district, but to no avail, so we ended up in an 'Italian' joint on Circular Quay. You remember Circular Quay, don't you? The place where the didgeridoo players play samples of their wares for the tourists. Well, guess what: this is not the place to eat if you like - well - food, really. Calamari that was, in texture, more like fish-flavoured rubber and a tough old piece of veal that I think had been beaten to death with a didgeridoo. Awful.

The evening was saved by an after-dinner saunter up to the Shangri-la Hotel to try out their cocktail bar. The music was a bit 'doof-doof' but the view was good and the girl who made our cocktails was delightful and clearly as mad as a bag of wasps. We went for the Bollywood - a combination of ginger vodka, lychee liqueur, muddled lime and chili. With a lychee on a stick to garnish. Sounds vicious, and it is, but very, very tasty. Two was enough to sedate a rhino, and it has to be said put a pleasant enough smile on this old soak's face. Rest assured, we slept well, and woke with slightly thick heads and ginger and lychee burps in the morning.