Australia They

Apart from the show, the Opera House itself was worth a visit. Modeled after architect Utzon's repeated nightmares about turtles having orgies, it sports 1,056,000 ceramic plates from Sweden, and inside there are four concert halls, which only parts of the year are used for operas. Instead, they let people like Arnold Schwarzenegger come here and compete for the Mr. Olympia title. And that's all you need to know about the Opera House.

I did a one-hour cruise in the harbour for AU$10, which was nice, but not very exciting. Been there, done that. A walk around Circular Quay was more interesting. The best part was a 54 year old Aboriginal who was playing the didgeridoo for five seconds at a time, in between stopping to yell at people who stopped and looked at him. And if someone took a photo of him, he would get up, run after them and demand money, or else he would personally skin them. Looking like he would know how to do that, people paid up. Then there were the usual gang of buskers, playing the bagpipe, whipping cigarette butts out of each other's mouths, jugglers, human statues and so on. There was even a drunk guy playing the air guitar while asleep. People threw coins at him, although I think he wasn't really intending to put up a show, just being very, very drunk.

A walk through The Rocks was nice. It's a good old harbour area, with nice, old buildings, a horrible gift shop and an interesting observatory on the top of the hill. Going down on the other side gets you to Darling Harbour, which sucked. There's a lousy amusement park, a huge conference center and very expensive hotels and shops. But there's a good aquarium, where AU$10 will let you see what it looks like when sharks are coming at you from every angle, as you can walk around in the middle of a huge tank of sea water with lots of sea life in it.

After a couple of nights in Kings Cross I got in touch with Gordon, who was a Canadian that moved to Sweden to study in Australia. Don't ask me how that works out, but now he lived in a nice flat in Goulburn Street, fairly central in Sydney, and we had been e-mailing a little bit back and forth, and he was nice enough to let me stay at his place. The books in his shelves showed a bit more variety than the ones at the hostel, and it was way cheaper too. And then I went to Bondi Beach. It's very much like Venice Beach in Los Angeles, with a heavy vapour smelling of coconut oil hanging over it. The people on this beach does not go to th McDonalds at the beach for the food, but because of the many mirrors on the walls there. I was slightly out of place, but ventured into the sea to take my first few swimming strokes in the South Pacific here. Cold sea, hot sand and Swedish girls who agreed with me in that backpacking in Australia can be a bit of a disappointment after South-East Asia. I wasn't the only one who thought the average backpacker in Australia to be a halfbrain on a drinking tour of the East Coast, and I found some comfort in that.

A few nights outside of hostel accommodation was lovely, and my host was definitely a fullbrain. I tried not to be in his way, though, and the next day I went on an AU$48 minibus trip to the Blue Mountains. Good bus, good driver, bad weather made the view non-existent most places. Normally, the blue you'll be treated to if you go here is everything that looks bluish in the distance when viewed through the air here, which is full of some kind of blue, evaporated oil from the eucalyptus forests. To me, though, the only blue I saw was a large nest of a bower bird, built by a very large number of blue drinking straws from a nearby outdoor fast food restaurant and some yellow real straws. According to the guide, the male bird that collects the biggest pile of blue things and builds a nest of it will get to date the most gorgeous female birds. I wish it would be that simple in real, and I guess, in a way, it is. Except human females will be attracted to anything expensive, be it blue or not. Anyway, it would be easier if we could just build a pile of straws and put pictures of it on the Internet, or something, and then we'd be happy men.

Fog or no fog, the steepest railway in the world was running down the side of the Blue Mountains, at an angle of 1,27:1, or 52 degrees. Actually, going through the mist in that thing must have made it even better than if it had been a clear day, it felt very strange. But not really a mind-blowing experience. We gave up on the last few planned view spots, and headed for the local bar in Katoomba instead. It was full of funny-looking men in blue boiler suits and pink, knitted headwear and really thick glasses. They were drinking beer from very big glasses while they played the pokies and tried their best to get lucky with the three Japanese girls from my minibus tour. The collision of cultures was devastating.

Saturday morning Gordon took me sightseeing to the markets in Glebe and Chinatown, a good way to discover that junk in Australia is like junk in Europe. Having concluded with that I had a nice cup of hot chocolate at Badde Manors, while Gordon got his hair cut for AU$5 in five minutes by an incredibly efficient Turkish part hairdresser who probably spends a good part of the year working with cutting wool off sheep, judging by the way he cut hair.

At Dymocks, which is a good chain of bookshops, I bought several books on philosophy. It was now less than four months until I had to go back home and pass a couple of exams that are required in order to receive a government study scholarship in Norway, the money that was paying for this trip, really. To even out the intellectual level of the day, in the evening I saw a soccer match between Australia and Norway. We lost, 1:0, but it was interesting to see how Australian hooligans obviously had been to training camp in England. They had the red flares, the bald heads, the Union Jacks and lots of money to spend on beer, and they did, until they started throwing things at the small group of Norwegians present and then promptly were escorted out of the stadium by eager policemen.

The next day, January 26, was Australia Day. It's a good day to be in Australia, not least because while many shops are closed, the museums are open AND free to visit. I started out in Australian Museum in Hyde Park, waiting for some light rain to stop while I browsed through opal fossiles, rocks, animals, rocks, dinosaurs, rocks and a temporary exhibition, "Sex - It's only natural", and it really was. Outside the streets began to fill with smiling people with Australian flags. Except that Australians of course do not dress nicely on this day either, it was much like Constitution Day on May 17 back home in Norway.

As a geek, I was happy to discover The Powerhouse, another free museum on this day, where they showed precious items like an IBM604 computer from 1946 and old PCs running "educational software" that is not quite state of the art anymore, so that impatient children soon start hitting the computers with hard objects to try and force them to be faster. Apart from that they had steam engines, space shuttle cockpits, condoms, haute couture, instruments and ethnical displays here, making it all seem slightly chaotic. But hey, it was free!

In the evening there was a big show in Darling Harbour, broadcasted on TV to the whole nation. I got there early and found a very good spot from where to see it all. After a while 249,999 others joined me, making this possibly the biggest crowd I'd ever been part of. The show was hosted by national swimming heroine Samantha Riley and a Bruce Something, and they introduced one politically correct music performance after another with small fireworks and smiling water skiers in between, with lots and lots of commercial breaks. I liked it though, standing among so many apparently happy people. Towards the end of the show five clearly inebriated, young males came up to the front and started discussing how they best could improve their chances of becoming national TV stars. Jumping into the water struck them as their best bet, and they started arguing about who would go first into the water. After five minutes of quarreling I suggested that since the rest of us wanted to see the show, would they please get on with it and jump, or else they might as well go somewhere and have another beer. That was all the motivation they needed, and off they went, drowning a 500 dollar watch in the process, only to be quickly picked up from the water by a police boat. Somehow I don't think they acquired much fame from that.

The big finale of the evening came when all the artists that had performed throughout the show gathered on stage and sang the national anthem of Australia (NOT Waltzing Mathilda, believe it or not), accompanied by an amazing display of fireworks coming off Harbour Bridge and the rooftops of the skyscrapers surrounding the bay. Very spectacular. And then I started walking back home, with the 249,999 others. Suddenly I heard someone saying "Sorry, excuse me, sorry, sorry" behind me, and turned around to look into the eyes of a long-haired scamp who was leading a big, black jacket with feet through the crowds. I recognized him as Johan Olav Koss, Norwegian 3 times Olympic gold medalist and current boyfriend of Samantha Riley, trying to get her home and laid as quickly as possible, I guess. Anyway, we had a good conversation, I think, which went something like this, except it was in Norwegian:

"Koss?"
"Uhm... Yes?"
"Ah. Go Norway!" (and I waved with my backpack with a Norwegian flag on it)
"Ha ha. Go Norway. But we didn't go to good yesterday" (of course refering to our common cultural background from the soccer match against Australia the day before)
"No, but it was well deserved. The show tonight was good, though"
"Yes, damn good fireworks, wasn't it?"
"Right. Well, goodbye"
"Goodbye"
And then Koss and the jacket walked onto a yacht in the harbour and I never saw them again. Then I found my way to Gordon's flat. I didn't even need a map to do that anymore, so it was definitely time to move on to a new place.

The last thing I did in Sydney was to go for a walk in the city's bothanical gardens. It's a very nice park, and full of tasty herbs and strange fruits, too. And if you eat them, you will get just as sick as I got after visiting here. And just as sick as I got after visiting the bothanical gardens on Sentosa Island in Singapore. I'm a slow learner when it comes to this, I have to admit. Anyway, I survived, but my stomach had a rough 13 hour ride on the nightbus to Byron Bay.