After 2 flights, totalling about 24 hours of travel, finally: arriving at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith airport. It felt like months ago that I left London Heathrow…

The first weekend I spent at my friends’ house. Where I saw my first spider… Very helpfully (and encouragingly?) I was told that it wasn’t that big. But surely: any spider I had seen so far was certainly smaller than that one! Judge for yourself:

The rest of the weekend was much better, I haste to add. My jetlag hasn’t been too severe, so could enjoy most of the church services. It is so nice to travel to the “ends of the earth” and meet fellow Christians, some of whom I knew already from when they lived in or visited the UK, but I also met many new friends.

House, Car, Phone…

On Monday I picked up my rental car, got myself an Ozzie SIM card and settled in my apartment where I would live in for the next 8 weeks. About that car… why are the wipers on the left handle (with which any normal car controls lights and signals), and the signals on the right one!? The number of times that I – completely unnecessarily – started wiping my windscreen instead of what I intended to do: communicate my intention to change direction to fellow road users…!

And people who know me well, know that I absolutely don’t like using a satnav. I must admit that I used it for the first few days to get to and from work and church, however, that didn’t last long (and I blame that short period of weakness on my jetlag…). Already on the third day to work I just forgot to put my destination into Google Maps before leaving. Upon realising, I decided I would just see how far I would get: and with having to turn around only once as I missed a left-turn, I got to the office. The route to church I’ve only done once with satnav – ever after I ignored it or didn’t even turn it on. So I’m happily back to my normal way of driving: look up beforehand where to go, and rather turn around once or twice than having to blindly follow a satnav and not knowing where I am…

First Visit To Sydney City Centre

My first visit to Sydney City Centre was on a cold, grey, drizzly Saturday, just over a week after I’d arrived. Actually, the weather had been like that for most of my first week – at least it made me feel very much at home: just like autumn in the UK or the Netherlands. The visit was rather short, partly because of the weather, but also because I needed to get myself an Opal card. For Londoners – that’s something like an Oyster card. The only trouble is that for some reason Opal cards are not usually sold at train stations…

So, once I had found out where to acquire this piece of plastic from, I travelled (in a nice, modern and comfortable train!) to the city centre to see the tourist hotspots:

Two important boxes ticked… although I may come back to take pictures in more Ozzie-like weather. I then walked round “The Rocks”: the place where the first British settlers – convicts and soldiers – step ashore in 1788, commemorated with a plaque near Circular Quay:

The initial buildings were made of very poor materials, and weren’t much more than huts. In heavy rain or wind they would collapse. The oldest building still standing is Cadman’s Cottage, built in 1816:

Sadly, many of the original buildings were demolished in the first half of the 20^th century, and the main street, George Street, is now a large, very touristy, market. But after walking round somewhat further, there is still history to be found:

Lachlan Macquarie, Sydney’s governor during 1810-1821, wanted to develop Sydney from a penal colony into a city, using the trading of wool and whaling and sealing to get wealth to the city. By the 1840s the convict transportation had stopped, and “The Rocks” became a fashionable area for merchants, of which the houses in the photo above are an example.

So far my impressions of the first week… there are a couple more things I wanted to share, but will do so another time.