The Australian Chronicles

By Mary Ann Kerzel

A Trip to Sydney

We left Melbourne in a drizzly rain and headed for M-5 (Australia’s new super highway), one of only two highways from Melbourne to Sydney. Boy, David has gotten pretty good at getting around the city. This will be a great trip. The National Highway was not like I-95! It was one lane each way much of the time. You call that a super highway!

There were no easy on easy off exits for food, gas or lodging, instead you had to wait for a service plaza. Of course the service plaza is out in the middle of nowhere and miles from the highway. Yes, just to confuse things you have to go through a traffic circle to get into the plaza.

As in the states there are signs with symbols and signs with words. In Australia it appears that falling asleep while driving is worse than drunk driving. We only saw a couple of “No Drink Driving” signs but there were signs all over warning you that the police were watching for “sleep drivers” and that you should take breaks every so often or get a room and go to sleep. “No Sleep Driving”, “Sleep Driving Kills”, ”Police Checking for Sleep Drivers Ahead”.

Once out of the city there isn’t much traffic at all. I saw more sheep than cars. I spotted a yellow sign with a black object on it that resembled a flying saucer. It took awhile to figure that one out. Then there were the signs with what looked like a tuning fork either right side up or upside down. Depending on which direction it pointed it was meant that two lanes went to one or vise versa.

You know the deer crossing signs with the black silhouette of the leaping deer on a yellow background. As I was watching the Kangaroo crossing, Wombat crossing, and Koala crossing signs pass by I thought of the deer crossing signs at Christmas time when people put a big red nose on the deer, transforming it into Rudolph. I can see a big red nose on the Kangaroo! It wouldn’t work on the Wombat or Koala but the Kangaroo, perfect!

Time to start looking for the historic town of Glenrowan. Yes we are in the right place. There’s Ned right there! I’d recognize that armor anywhere! In front of the café is a gun pointing, armor clad, 16-foot replica of Ned.

Glenrowan is the scene of Ned Kelly’s last stand against the police in the pioneer days of Australia in the late 1870’s. Ned Kelly has become a folk hero from the wrong side of the law. He is best remembered for his homemade armor, fashioned from iron plow parts. It featured a helmet that looked like a bucket with a slit to see. There is a replica of the Kelly home-stead/museum, gift shop and café, all filled with Ned Kelly souvenirs, memorabilia and photos.

Canberra was the next stop. We were looking for the National Aboriginal Cultural Center in the capital city of Australia (Canberra is in the state of Australia Capital Territory). We almost missed it! After touring a small dinosaur museum, there it was in a small corner room next to the gift shop!

When we got to Sydney we spent two days but only one as tourists. We had a spectacular view of Sydney’s Harbor Bridge and the Sydney Opera House from our hotel room, the best that anyone could hope for. I could hardly believe we were actually there.

We really enjoyed the whole Sydney Aquarium experience. We spent the whole day there.

We had time to walk over and check out the Sydney Opera House. It was like a dream come true for me. I have always loved that building and now I was actually right there. It’s one thing to view it from magazines and television but being there in person was incredible. It’s like meeting your favorite movie star. Now I have my own photos to draw and paint from.

From the Opera House we had a good view of The Harbor Bridge and could actually see the people from the bridge tour standing on top. WOW!

In south Florida we are so used to looking up and seeing lots of sky. Not so in the heart of downtown Sydney, when you look up you see buildings and more buildings. With over 4 million people, many very tall buildings, narrow streets full of heavy traffic and everything jammed close together, you feel so tiny and closed in. I think I liked the outback and tableland better.