A Rainy Day With Me, Myself and I

On Wednesdays I don't have class until 5pm so when I woke up earlier than planned I was going a little stir-crazy at the house since all of my roommates were out.  To remedy this, I packed a lunch, made sure I had everything with me for class later and took a bus into the city.  Although it was drizzling a little bit outside, I figured it couldn't hurt to take a day to hang out by myself in Sydney.

The bus goes straight to Circular Quay (pronounced "key"), the major ferry wharf in between the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.  I zipped up my rain coat and headed towards the water's edge.  Walking along the harbour I decided to check out the Rocks Discovery Museum.  Built right on top of the original colony, it was home to lots of information about Aboriginal clans and the original settlers.  One part of the floor was even replaced with plexiglass to show the original brick roads from the colony below the building.  There were artifacts of both the Cadigal people (specifically Aboriginals of the Sydney area) and of the convicts and free settlers who landed here from Britain.  I was interested to discover that life expectancy and overall health of the convict population were actually higher in the penal colonies than for their counterparts back in England.  Children born in the colonies were recorded as being taller, more athletic and stronger than their parents. The Australian people were essentially allowed to start over with whatever skills they had with virtually no competition to inhibit their business.  When new convicts arrived they were assigned to successful business owners as servants, essentially an apprenticeship, and then allowed to start their own business when their sentence was up.  Many of the convicts featured in the museum had been sent to Australia for very minor crimes.  One man, who was incredibly successful in the colony as an entrepreneur butcher had been sent there for being in possession of a forged 1 pound note.  Imagine being shipped (a full year journey) to the other side of the world for such an unimportant crime. The museum also had a photography exhibit with two full rooms of photos that had been taken in various places around Australia. I was pleased to find that I had been to most of the places in the photos, but now I'm wishing I had more photography experience so I could have captured those moments as artistically as these photographers had.

A rainy ferry ride; the Harbour Bridge in the background

After I left the museum, I wasn't really sure what I would do since I still had a lot of time before I had to be back on campus.  I wandered around for a while, watching people setup for the big Vivid Sydney festival, which starts this Friday and goes for the next 2 weeks and will more than likely be its own blog entry once we get a chance to check it out.  I found a sale in a store and bought myself a Sydney, Australia hoodie, which turned out to be a practical purchase since it got colder as the day went on.  Finally, I decided that I needed somewhere warm and dry to eat my lunch so I walked back down to the Quay and randomly bought a ferry ticket.  I found a window seat and rode the ferry to Manly Beach and back, killing a full hour while I ate, watched the changing landscape of the bay and enjoyed the ride, which was really more like a roller coaster since the weather was getting worse and the waves were huge.

When I got back to the city I ran through the rain and got on a bus to campus just in time for class to start.  Now I am listening to the increasing rain and getting ready to pack for this weekend's roadtrip; our flight to Melbourne leaves tomorrow night!