We’d both separately been to Australia before, co-incidentally both in 2003, and had visited Sydney – Debbie for a bit longer than Steve who only did it as a day trip. Debbie felt that she had a lot of unfinished business with the city and wanted to spend a decent amount of time there, but our delays in Queensland due to cyclones meant that we could only spare 5 days. Still loads of time for a city hopefully – Steve thought that 2 days would be more than enough!

Our train into Sydney from Katoomba (Blue Mountains) was good but a bit delayed and we decided to continue by train one stop from Central to Town Hall rather than take an Uber to our accommodation. Debbie had desperately wanted to stay at the 5* Sydney Intercontinental, especially as she has a suite upgrade voucher, but common sense prevailed and we booked Rydges Darling Square Apartment Hotel – a place suggested by our friend Lisa – in the CBD, right on the train and tram lines, adjacent to both Darling Harbour and Chinatown and about 1/3rd of the price of The Intercontinental. Our studio apartment was huge and really very good for the price (£130/night, amazing considering that it’s in the middle of Sydney), and an apartment gave us more flexibility too.

Bucket list item no.1 – an opera at Sydney Opera House. Both Turandot and Madam Butterfly were being performed during our stay but we’d seen the latter so Turandot was booked for our first night. Debbie hadn’t appreciated that the iconic aria Nessun Dorma was from this opera, Steve’s view remained that Turandot is a very long opera with just one good aria. Whatever! It was a brilliant experience, a modern production with spectacular staging. and the South Korean tenor was superb. Debbie is now firmly of the view that she FAR prefers male operatic voices to female – the soprano playing Turandot sounded like a scalded cat whereas the soprano in the role of Liu had a far nicer voice. Some opera-goers were in their finery, we were in the best we could manage, and the people in front of us didn’t even return after the interval.

On the way to the Opera House we’d caught the gigantic Disney Wonder cruise ship leaving port, with ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’ being played by the ship’s horns. We weren’t sure whether this was correct/permitted maritime conduct as the COLREGs state that the horn is a safety device not an entertainment instrument, and technically this is misuse of a navigational signal, but apparently cruise ships sometimes play short melodic sequences during sail-away from port, usually in controlled harbour environments and in co-ordination with port authorities. Who knew? A new one for us sailing geeks!

Bucket list item no.2 – Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. Steve had done it during his 2003 visit and didn’t want to do it again – partly as his lung condition makes climbing hills/steps more of a struggle and he didn’t want to hold everyone else up, but more likely that he was too tight to pay the pretty steep £200 for the pleasure. Debbie’s not exactly fit or quick at climbing but thought she could probably manage it, and she has never been accused of being tight with money, so a place was booked for a 13.05 departure. Steve said he’d wait in the park near Circular Quay, read his Kindle and take photos of the small dots climbing the bridge from around 13.30. That was optimistic as the check in, safety briefing, breathalyser testing, kitting up and ladder climbing practice took almost an hour and the group of 14 climbers didn’t even leave the building until 14.00. Despite being securely harnessed and hooked on to a safety line, as she walked along a long, narrow raised platform underneath the bridge, before even starting the climb, Debbie suddenly thought ‘Oh sh*t, what if I’m terrified and can’t do it?’. An odd thought from the girl who has done a bungy jump and skydive, but she wasn’t almost 60 then! Anyway, after climbing 4 long ladders we were up onto the bridge and there was no going back. In short, there are probably no words that’ll come close to adequately describing how incredible it was – the climb was a series of steps which gradually became less steep as we approached the summit of the arch, the stairway was wide and felt very safe and the views were out of this world. At various points the climbers were sprayed with water as it was a very hot day – apparently climbs continue up to temperatures of 40 degrees and wind speeds of 100Km/hr, come rain or shine, but never when thunderstorms are forecast. At various other points the group leader stopped to take photos of every climber, often asking for ridiculous poses which Debbie politely refused to do! After a good half an hour at the summit, waiting for the earlier climbing group to take their pictures and move on, it was time to descend and although quick ir was probably more difficult and un-nerving than the ascent but still brilliant. On return to base around 16.00 we needed to safely remove the kit, get out of the overalls and collect the photos. Debbie retrieved her phone from the locker and found that Steve had been panicking about where she was and had gone back to the hotel in case she was there – but was thinking of phoning the hospitals as perhaps she’d been taken ill with heatstroke. He’d been watching groups going up and down and had expected Debbie to be back at the park within a couple of hours at most – the silly sod hadn’t heard when Debbie had told him it was a 3 hour experience! Anyway, utterly brilliant and a must-do for anyone visiting Sydney who isn’t too afraid of heights.

We used the ferries in Sydney as a cheap way of seeing the city and harbour from the water – Darling Harbour around to Circular Quay was a short ride under the Harbour Bridge towards the Opera House, and the more impressive Manly Ferry took us 20 minutes across the harbour and gave magnificent views back to Sydney. Manly Beach is lovely and just a short walk from the ferry, but during our time in Sydney it was closed on numerous occasions due to shark sightings (a kid had been attacked there a couple of weeks earlier).

Bondi Beach was a little less easy to get to but Debbie was insistent that we had to see it, so we took the 5 mile or so bus ride from the CBD, seeing some of Sydney’s suburbs along the way. Paddington looked lovely – trendy boutiques, wine bars, restaurants and pilates studios – rather like Chiswick! Bondi is a huge and very lovely beach with loads of shops, bars and restaurants nearby and well worth a visit, but we’d decided to walk some of the Bondi-Coogee coastal walk as far as Bronte Beach. Initially we passed the splendid Icebergs Pool – one of Sydney’s most iconic ocean baths, a tidal pool complex featuring a 50m lap pool and smaller pool carved into the cliffs – a similar concept on a much grander scale than Brixham’s Shoalstone Pool! A mile or so of rugged coastal scenery took us around to the much smaller but just as beautiful Bronte Beach (Debbie only wanted to go there as our Guide Dog puppy was named Bronte) – a nice place to grab a good Brazilian lunch and relax on the sand for a couple of hours. Actually Bronte also looked like another nice suburb of Sydney as we passed through on the bus en route to Bondi Junction – and a quick shopping stop for Debbie to purchase an ultralight packable down jacket from MacPac, on a half price offer, and may be useful if temperatures dipped when we got to Tasmania – before catching the train back to Town Hall.

But thankfully we did get the opportunity to meet up with Auntie Mo. She’s not actually a relative but a very long standing friend (and almost family) who Debbie has known for more than 25 years and stayed with during her 2003 Oz trip with Pippa & Steve Beswick. Mo is Steve’s sister and has lived in Oz since 1969, although we see her most summers when she comes ‘home’ to Warrington for 3 months. We say ‘thankfully’ as Mo is the busiest 82 year old we know and luckily had one day free during our time in Sydney to meet up! She suggested lunch at the revolving restaurant at the top of Sydney Tower and SkyFeast was an excellent venue – a delicious buffet with seafood and meat stations so Debbie got more Moreton Bay Bugs AND the roast beef dinner she’s hoped for in the Blue Mountains, unlimited wine packages, an incredible bird’s eye view of Sydney and a fabulous few hours catching up. We walked Mo to her bus and saw her off with the promise of seeing her again in the UK this summer.

Given our proximity to Chinatown we were determined to get a decent Chinese meal, as this is something that’s increasingly difficult to do at home and XOPP certainly scratched that itch.

We did need to do the mundane stuff like laundry while in the city, and strangely there weren’t any laundromats nearby. We had too much stuff to pay hotel laundry prices and were considering taking an Uber to the nearest bagwash, but then the hotel mentioned the ‘laundry buckets’ – fill a big laundry hamper and it’ll be washed, dried and returned same day for A$75 (about £40). Our initial response was ‘no chance’ but then we had a word with ourselves and re-evaluated how much our time was worth, especially when we had limited time somewhere we’ll probably never return to – so basically everything we had with us was stuffed into that laundry bucket to ensure we got our money’s worth with 10.4Kg of dirty washing! (note Steve’s Qatar PJs – not a patch on Emirates’ luxury loungewear!)

Sydney was much nicer than Debbie remembered, and we both very much loved the city on this visit – some great shopping, magnificent buildings (Queen Victoria Building – QVB – is a stunner), good transport infrastructure (we mainly used the tram – known as Sydney Light Rail), The Rocks area is great for drinks and arty shopping, the Botanic Gardens are vast and beautiful, the beaches are fab and the bucket list items are amazing. It’s a city that we agree we could happily live in. Sadly we ran out of time and didn’t manage to get to the new Fish Market though 🙁

But time to grab an Uber to the airport for our flight to Tasmania, where Debbie was star-struck (and doing some secret squirrel photography) while Steve had no idea who Pat Cash was….