Twice Mice

Our last days in Australia were spent in one of my favourite cities – Sydney, New South Wales. The weather was gorgeous. It was warm and sunny, and the sky was almost impossibly blue. We decided to begin the day by taking in a bird’s eye view of the city from Sydney Tower. Strangely, one can no longer simply purchase a ticket just to the observation deck, one must also take part in the OzTrek experience, “an amazing virtual reality ride across Australia”. The only amazing part of it was how terribly our culture was represented to foreigners. Firstly, we were seated in a rotating theatre that used holograms to bring to life four “iconic” scenes – the outback, the beach, the rain forest, and the city. Now, while I am a big fan of holograms, even that wasn’t quite enough to compensate for the superficial representation of our land. The indigenous Australians got nothing more than a passing mention.

The best was yet to come. We were herded into the next room for “the largest simulated ride in the southern hemisphere”. After we sat down on our seats, the lap bars lowered from above to lock us in. Three minutes into the show, Adrian nudged the lap bars up, activating the safety feature and the movie aborted. After ten minutes of fussing around, they began the movie again, but again three minutes in a German tourist accidentally activated the safety switch and aborted the film. While they were again resetting the system a the tourist pleaded just to be let out, and said that he really didn’t need to see the show a third time. However, his request was ignored, and for the third time we were told to “have a Captain Cook at this”. When the film neared its end, the audience cheered, though out of a sense of relief, rather than enjoyment. Finally, an hour after we entered the tower, we were able to actually go up to the viewing deck and look out upon Sydney. It was quite beautiful, and I was able to pose with the tallest working post box in the Southern Hemisphere. Everest base camp, Shanghai, and Toronto all claim to have the highest in the world – I will have to investigate this further.

In the afternoon, we caught the Manly Ferry across the spectacular harbour. The Harbour Bridge and the Opera House dazzled in the sunlight, and the water reflected the azure light of the sky. We enjoyed a coffee at Manly Beach before heading back to Circular Quay. We dined on the harbour, soaking up the final rays of the summer light. Luckily, my mother was able to join us for our last moments in Australia, before Adrian and I emigrate to Belgium. Then, it was time for us all to take our separate paths. John was able to tick off his sixth continent, and we farewelled him before he flew back to the icy winter of New York City. Then mum, in turn, waved us goodbye as we left the country of our birth to try our hand at living in Belgium, via a stop over in Dubai.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 2:06 am and is filed under Australia.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.