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In 1932 my grandma crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge when it opened. She was being pushed in her pram (she was about 8 years old, mum decided). Today, 75 years later Sydneysiders, myself included, celebrated the anniversary by closing the bridge to cars and doing it again. Walking over the bridge was fun. The ABC had big speakers set up along the length of the bridge blaring historical spoken and musical passages which gave the impression of walking through history. They were giving out free caps in this hideous shade of neon yellow green. Almost everyone was wearing one, which made for an impressive sight as the hats flowed and surged. On the back of the cap was written “our bridge.” I have decided that “our” is the Australian national pronoun, as Australians take any excuse to claim ownership of family, celebrities, buildings, bridges or anything that hails from the land down under. There were lots of people, but it wasn’t over crowded. Kudos to the organizers for pulling it off. The state government has gotten a lot of flack over a few recent fiascos ahead of the state election, so I think they were holding their breath hoping that nothing would go wrong! (like when the QE2 and QM2 came to town and the city had no plan for the huge amount of traffic they caused, and last week when commuters were stuck on the trains for 3 hours because apparently there wasn’t an evacuation plan; good thing the trains weren’t on fire or anything). I’d like to be here in 25 years to do it again, celebrating the bridge’s 100th anniversary!
Melbourne, Day 2
On the second day we toured around the city. Oh, and my camera broke, the day before we were doing the Great Ocean Road! I couldn’t believe the horrible luck. I managed to pick up a used Nikon FM body in perfect condition to replace my FE. The FM is the mechanical version of the FE from the same time period. I could have probably gotten an auto focus camera new for less, but I had been enjoying the feel of my manual Nikon which hasn’t been getting much of a work out since I moved to Australia.
I shot three rolls of 24 in my new camera around the centre of Melbourne, and I felt like for the first time in ages I had gotten my camera legs back. Whatever that means.
Melbourne, Day 3
The next day we did the Great Ocean Road. It’s pretty. There are lots of flies. If you go you should arm yourself with some bug spray.
Melbourne, Day 4
Our last day in Melbourne was only a half day, so we didn’t do much. First we went to the Melbourne museum, where they had a blue whale skeleton. Actually it was a pigmy blue whale, named on account of it being small for the species. This is kind of funny because it was still enormous. They also had a vast collection of bugs. Some of them still alive even. Cicely came into the bug section to tell us that she wasn’t going to look at the bugs because they creeped her out, but by the time she was in she started looking around and didn’t seem so bugged out.
The computer geek in me enjoyed the CSIRAC, Australia’s first digital computer, and the worlds fifth stored program computer, and the oldest intact computer of either type in the world. Joe commented that “your” calculator probably has more computing power, to which I responded, “your” phone definitely has more computing power.
They also had an IBM PC... the original which was simply called a PC, because that wasn’t a generic term when it was produced. I think the oldest PC I ever used was an XT, which came out about two years later in 1983. The XT’s major innovation was that it had a hard disk, whereas the PC had two low density 5¼” floppy disk drives. In Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, they have a TRS-80. There used to be a whole room full of them at my elementary school. Stuff I used to use is now showing up in museums. What are the museum curators trying to tell me?
For lunch we had Mongolian Barbecue. It was pretty good and all you can eat, so I wasn’t hungry again that day. After that we took a taxi to the airport and flew back to Sydney. When I looked out the window as we were landing, I saw a Tangara, which exists (I believe) only in Sydney and I started feeling oddly nostalgic being back in Sydney. It was really nice being back in Sydney after being away fro a week. It feels like home here.
Sydney, Today
I guess that brings me to today. Brian is off to Fiji. Joe and Cicely are climbing the bridge today and we are meeting later tonight for dinner, along with the girl that I met at Thanksgiving. Joe and Cicely fly back to the states tomorrow, and I’m back to work on Monday.
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Big-ish News
Mar. 15th, 2006 08:10 amI had originally wanted to go to San Francisco and see Joanna and Padraic as well, but I needed a lot more time in Salt Lake to finish things up in America than I thought. Hopefully I will be able to see them on my next visit to America. It doesn't seem strange to talk about "my next visit to America," at least, not yet.
There is a wonderful view of the opera house and the bridge from our apartment. When I get a faster Internet connection I will post some pictures. Right now we are using some kind of neighborhood wireless connection which is real slow and tends to cut out from time to time.
The company my friend Mike works for just got bought by google[1], so now I know someone who works at google. They were already working closely with google, but I think this will be even better.
More later.
[1] http://www.sketchup.com/index.php?id=1439
