The Best Thing I Didn't Do in Sydney

As I mentioned before, we breathed a sigh of relief Monday night when we landed safely back in Melbourne from Sydney, especially as we walked past a massive queue of Jet Star passengers patiently waiting to find out when they would be able to depart. However, we soon found ourselves in a queue of our own due to an accident in the middle of the Bolte Bridge, which I have heard is supposed to be Melbourne's answer to the Sydney Harbor Bridge. This comparison, I can now report authoritatively, does no favors to the former. There we were, however, and in an attempt to quell the growing discontent and retaliatory elbow jabbing in the back seat, I began a family discussion of the best and worst of Sydney according to the Wilkin family.

Traditionally James has not participated in these sorts of discussions, in spite of encouragement. This time, though, he not only had a best and a worst, but an entirely new category. "I want to tell the best thing that I didn't do," he insisted. He held firm in spite of his siblings' assertions that such a thing was not possible, proclaiming, "The best thing I didn't do was go up the Tower!" We had to acknowledge that he was right. He had been talking about going up the Cindy Tower for days leading up to our trip, and due to the rainy weather, we did not feel it was worth the money to make the ascent. The Centrepoint Tower that he had hoped to climb can be seen in the center of the picture below.

As for his best and his worst, James also had an answer that required very little contemplation on his part. The worst was "the longest walk across that bridge." That bridge would be the aforementioned Harbor Bridge, and he did make his way across with Ross while the rest of us climbed one of the pylons to get a view of the city.

Father and son on the dreaded walk:

Contrary to what he would have you believe, James did not walk the entire distance.

Is it possible? Can it be true? Yes, I am sorry to say. The next picture shows Ross, his first time on Sydney's famous bridge, on his blackberry.

After spying on Ross and James and failing to get their attention a second time, the remaining children and I returned to taking in the views of the city. The 200 steps up proved well worth the effort.

We stayed right in Circular Quay, seen above, which made it very easy to get around on the city's government-run ferries. The ferry trips would be the "best" of Sydney for both Ross and myself. For one thing, after buying our train tickets from the airport, they cost no additional money, and three of the children rode entirely for free for the whole weekend. That might well be the only economical part of our trip. Keeping our four children fed proved to be rather more expensive than we would have liked.

When pressed, Katie admitted that she also had something for the "best thing I didn't do" category. She would have loved to climb the bridge itself rather than just the pylon. I looked into it, but it had a minimum age of ten years, required three hours, and cost over one hundred dollars per person. She had to content herself with waving to those who did get to climb.

If you look closely, you can see more climbers, this time at the summit, just under the flags below.

Since she didn't get to climb the bridge, Katie decided her favorite thing in Sydney was learning about how the bridge was constructed. It went up during the height of the Great Depression, and when it was completed in 1932, it was the world's largest spanning-arch bridge. Sydneysiders were rightfully proud of their accomplishment. Today it is the fifth longest, but remains the widest and the tallest of its kind. Known locally as the Coathanger because of its design, the bridge affords truly spectacular views.

Amazingly to us today, the workers on the bridge wore no safety harnesses of any kind, nor were there any safety rails in spite of the dizzying heights. Sixteen men died during construction.

After conquering the bridge, we finished the afternoon by hanging out in the Rocks, an area that used to be the slums of Sydney but has now been transformed into a tourist mecca. Here we found a candy store that had been recommended to us, and James later affirmed it was by far his favorite part of the weekend, his personal "best of Sydney." We watched the making of passion fruit candy, sticking around long enough to try a free sample once it was finished. The whole process from liquid syrup to hardened candy took about twenty minutes.

The bright yellow goo was expertly stretched over a metal hook until it was a nice creamy white color.

At the end I was the lucky recipient of the "leftover lolly" made from the discarded bits. All of the kids were naturally quite jealous. In the end we smashed it into pieces which were consumed over the next twenty-four hours.