Cockatoo Island, Meat Pies, & (a) Manly Beach! Sydney (February 19, 2016)

Reading Length: Afternoon Cuppa Tea

Davin Reporting:

    The first order of the day was returning the rental car.  Kristin stayed at the hotel to do some apartment related work that had gotten delayed by our out of town trip.  After taking a large number of pictures of the car from absolutely every angle (not taking any chances with these sleazy rental car companies), I set out for the Hertz Artarmon office.  This drive actually ended up being rather problematic, because my cheap ass phone’s GPS program would not start navigating.

    I knew roughly where I was going, but I had to keep checking my lap to see what road I should turn down.  Normally I would not drive like that, as it is somewhat unsafe, but I was already underway before realizing the problem and there was no good place to pull over.  Finally my phone started working when I was like one block from my destination!     

    Also when I was nearly there, I tried to change lanes when a car was in my blind spot, and I got honked at.  It wasn’t actually anywhere near to being an accident as I always change lanes very slowly, giving the other driver plenty of time to warn me off.  All the same, it struck me that it would have been incredibly ironic to drive for three days without issue, even on mountain roads with wildlife bounding across them, only to get in an accident literally one block from turning in the car!                                
    Dropping the car off went with no particular issues, although I insisted on watching the return guy check the car’s condition.  I did find a tiny micro SD card sitting in the center console of the car during my final search (I had placed it there a couple days ago, at the time thinking it was a bad idea, and it almost was!).  I then grabbed the bus and train back to the hotel where I met up with Kristin. We set off together, and hopped on the Ferry for Cockatoo Island.

    Cockatoo Island has a long and varied history.  It was first used as convict barracks for people who continued to cause trouble after arriving in the colony.  There actually isn’t a whole lot left that dates back to that era, since the island has been re-purposed multiple times since then, but we saw the guard post and what remained of the isolation cells.
 

    One interesting thing from that time were the silos built to store grain that were carved out of solid rock.  The Sydney government intended to use them to store grain, but they never ended up seeing much use because the British government forbade their use after awhile for some economic reason.  Apparently to make the silos a convict was lowered down inside and not let out again until he’d reached a certain quota of rock quarrying for the day. 

    Some of the rock the silos were carved out of was later removed, partially exposing several of them, so we got to see their size.  They were huge!  The idea of someone hacking them out of solid rock using only manual tools honestly strikes me as being absolute hell.  I guess that was one job you didn’t want to end up assigned to!  Near to the silos we also encountered a number of nesting seagulls, which were actually quite aggressive toward us for being in the vicinity.  (Kristin Interjection: “I hope you enjoy my picture of cute baby seagulls!")   
           

    Another story about the silos relates to when they were briefly in use.  A set of three men were sent down into one of the silos to gather grain, but after a while they started to complain of feeling lightheaded, and eventually they stopped responding.  Another set of three men were sent down to see what happened to the first, and they were discovered to have lost consciousness.  The first three men were hoisted out and recovered, but tragically the ones who were sent in after them also lost consciousness and ended up dying (maybe no one else was willing to go down inside?)!  I guess the grain must have broken down, releasing some sort of noxious gas– maybe carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide?

View towards downtown from Cockatoo Island

    At other times the island was used as a school and dormitory for orphaned boys, where they were taught nautical skills (although many did not end up finding work), and also a school for orphaned girls (the conditions of which sounded exceptionally poor).  In more recent times, the island was used as the primary Australian repair depot for Allied ships damaged during WWII, and there were some large cranes still on display.  I believe the island continued to be used as a ship yard until more recent times, but now it is only home to a few offices, restaurants, a camp ground, and the museum.         

    Ultimately, we actually didn’t end up having the time to complete our audio tour of the island, as we had planned to try some meat pies from a restaurant suggested by one of Scott’s friends, who is Australian.  Getting there meant taking a nearly one hour bus ride, which in itself turned out to be a bit of an eye-opening experience. 

    Because it was basically rush hour, the entire bus filled up with people not only sitting, but also standing.  I’ve seen that before, but what was interesting is that once the bus is full, it apparently doesn’t bother stopping at stops it passes, unless someone wants to get off there.  It makes sense, but it means that people at later stops can end up waiting a long time as bus after bus just passes them by since they are already filled to capacity.  (Kristin Interjection: “It reminded me of the UCSD shuttle bus ride that I took into campus from the nearby La Jolla mall. Same exact policy. I always thought it must suck to live closer to campus!”) Overall the bus did not strike me as an especially great mode of transportation in Sydney. 

    At “Sylvia and Fran’s The Upper Crust” we ordered a number of different meat pies.  To be honest, we were not impressed with most of the pies, especially the standard minced steak pie.  The minced steak was sort of like a pasty, but it had gravy that didn’t really improve the taste, and it was served without ketchup.  (Kristin Interjection: “It also lacked many of the standard beef pasty ingredients: potatoes, carrots etc.”) Some of the others we tried were decent, but basically bland– and that is a problem since the filling basically determines whether the pie is any good. 

    That being said, the “Butter Chicken” meat pie was excellent!  I don’t know exactly where they got the name from, because it’s basically an Indian chicken korma curry inside a pastry shell, and obviously you can’t go wrong with that!  If I lived in Sydney, I probably would stop by to get a “Butter Chicken” pie every so often, but otherwise would not bother with meat pies too much.  (Kristin Interjection: “We both gave the Butter Chicken meat pie two thumbs up!”)       

    After briefly stopping by a local beach where the water was strangely brown and dirty looking, with a lot of sea weed floating in it, we grabbed another bus to Manly Beach.  Manly Beach got its name from Captain Arthur Phillip, who named it for the local aboriginal people’s “confident and manly bearing”.  I briefly waded into the water, and verified that it was indeed warmer than the water in San Diego. (Where isn’t?  Alaska?  Antarctica?)  That being said, the surf didn’t seem quite as good as at some of our local beaches. 

The ugly beach

    So, the big question is whether the beach indeed lived up to it’s “manly” billing now that the indigenous aboriginals of the area have been replaced with a collection of Sydneysiders.  The answer was soon forthcoming when, at 6 P.M., the lifeguards made an announcement that they were leaving for the day.  They strongly recommended that people get out of the water due to dangerous current conditions that had been in effect all that day.  Yet, despite the lifeguards’ strenuous pleas, not a single soul could be seen to budge even an inch toward shore!

Manly Beach!

    I conclude that a display of such blatant, testosterone-fueled disregard for life and limb attests to the beach being most manly, indeed!