Last Monday I got a ticket for a concert in the Sydney Opera House. It was the third concert I have visited here in Sydney. The weather was nice and warm, the sun was brightly shining and we had a very good time with friends. The way from Circular Quay to the Opera House is always very nice and uplifting, but now -because it was really warm, or just the time of the year - you could find a lot of flies or at least they found you, and did not want to let you go. The OZ-flies stick to your clothes, to your face, and you are not able to chase them away.

Like everybody else who lives here, we could tell you a lot about the Opera House. On one hand it almost feels as a kind of kitsch, but on the other hand you only can love it. You know, I can not imagine Sydney without this building. We like it in the sunshine or in the evening in the floodlights. Either nearby or from far away, so from everywhere it is very eye-catching. The only time when it was a little bit disappointing to us, was when we had such a close look, that we could touch it. Then we realised that it is a large monument, built in the sixties and made of concrete and covered with bathroom-tiles.
Arriving at a concert for the first time also makes you a bit disappointed, when you see that the entrance is under the big stairs. It is dark there, and you can find more concrete inside too. But if you reach the lookout point and the windows, you will have a spectacular view over the city. That is the Sydney we love very very much.
So about the concert…This is my personal experience, and I really do not want to say any bad things about the Opera House. But there is a high risk that you will meet a lot of tourists wearing jeans and T-shirts, sometimes you can see a cyclist as well. It is one of the most famous opera houses in the world, so maybe a lot of people - who generally do not use to go to concerts - go to have a nice experience. Especially, if the program contains a famous work like Vivaldi`s Four Seasons.
The ensemble Europa Galante`s performance was passionate and enjoyable. I do not know why, but every time I was here, I felt that no matter how old and sad the music was, it always seemed very modern and happy in the Sydney Opera House.
The musicians played very well, and maybe it could have been a very nice concert too, but unfortunately it was not. And it happened just because of the public and the Opera House `policy`.
People who do not use to go to concerts clapped their hands when they were not supposed to, and the ensemble had to wait for them, more than what was convenient. But the thing that I really can not understand is why the Opera House ushers let people in when there is a short pause between two pieces. It is evident that they will not find their places in the dark, especially if it is so easy to sit on the wrong seat. This is what happened on Monday too. People coming late started to explain to others that they were sitting on their seats, and it was so annoying and disturbing during the concert.
But of course difficulties continued after the interval. People sitting behind us were chatting too much, too loud sometimes, but I did not believe when they started to sing or lilt the Four Seasons. That was the moment I could not be astonished any more. It was like a real parody and I almost had to laugh about the whole situation.

I think this was only an accident-concert, where also the finale was a bit weird, but hopefully it is not the trend here.  Maybe it happened because the ensemble and the public were not enough in harmony.

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On the day you arrive in Australia, one of the first things you notice are the different birds, different plants and trees and even a different smell in the streets. If you have grown up here, you probably are used to all of this, but for the rest of the world the Australian birds seem large, beautiful, maybe a bit aggressive, but especially loud, very loud!

You never know what you can expect, because the only birds looking familiar are the pigeons and seagull, the rest is almost undiscovered territory. Any sound can be related to anything.

One of my first impressions kept me awake for quite a while. It was literally the first day I moved to Australia and I did not have a place to live yet. I stayed in the lodge of my work, which is in a nice suburb of Sydney with many trees. Early in the morning I woke up, still with a jetlag, suddenly realising that the place is surrounded by monkeys! Now this is kind of weird: you are in Australia, so you can expect kangaroos, koalas, dangerous snakes and spiders everywhere, but no monkeys.

The next morning someone made sure, that there are indeed no monkeys, the sound was from a kookaburra. How do you say? You have to repeat this several times and ask how to spell the name of this bird. The sound of the Kookaburra is getting familiar now, you can hear it almost every day and I actually like it, but still the first thing that comes to mind is “monkey-bird”.

Try to say: “Oeh-Ah-Ah-Oe-Ah-Oe-Ah-Oe-Oe-Oe-Oe-Ah-Oe-Ah-Ah-Ah”.

Now repeat this several times as fast and as loud as you can with a high voice and put in a few more “Oehs” and “Ahs” randomly.

This is more or less the sound of a kookaburra, now if you want to check how you are doing, or you are reading this in your office, and you feel a bit embarrassed to making yourself look like a fool, here is an example of the kookaburra sound.

The kookaburra is very popular animal in Australia, and is “used” in many places. There are post stamps with kookaburras, and the Australian men’s hockey team is better known as “the Kookaburras”.

• For more information you can see Wikipedia.

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Earlier this year we spent a week in Perth. One day we rented a car and set forth to the Pinnacles Desert which is located in Nambung National Park. Getting to the Pinnacles means a three-hour drive to the north about 200 kilometres above Perth. After we passed the vineyards in the Swan Valley, we drove on the Brand Highway through empty fields - often with a vision of burned trees. We often saw died kangaroos along the way, so called ‘road kills’. The roads are very good there by the way.

Near Cervantes there is a beach called Jurien Bay, where we wanted to jump into the Indian Ocean or at least swim in the turquoise water, but either the white sand on the beach or the ocean was fully covered with black seaweeds. No worries, we had a very delicious BBQ instead and lots of fun with our friends there. There is a free public barbecue table at the beach, which is very practical.

After lunch we went to Lake Thetis - which was created approx. 3 or 4 thousand years ago -, and where you can solely find a kind of stromatolites, whose structure is similar to of those lived a few hundreds or thousands years ago on Earth. Here you can read more about them, and there is useful information on this picture as well.

Time went fast so we had to hurry to the Pinnacles, because we wanted to spend there some time before sunset. In this desert the sand is yellow like mustard, but the reason this place is so popular is because you can find thousands of little pinnacle-columns. The tallest pinnacles reach 4 m high! Here you can read more about their creation, which is a really interesting process. You also find there an aboriginal tale related to this desert.

The tour through the Pinnacles Desert is about 3 or 4 km long, which you can do by car or on foot, but generally everyone takes the car.  The road is marked by stones on the side and you can drive only in one direction, but you can stop where and whenever you wish. You will realise others going and stopping repetitively, making photos meanwhile, and running back to the car to continue their way.

It is worth waiting for the sunset there because that it is one of the most spectacular moments in this place. As the sun is setting, the colours of the sand and the sky change every minute, and the shadows of the pinnacles are getting longer and longer. What is also very amazing, is the atmosphere and the sound effects in the desert. It is a very quiet place very far away from any towns, not to mention, that there are only few animals, so no loud cockatoos, no parrots, no crows… The Pinnacles Desert is perfectly silent.

The sunset was extremely beautiful as the sky was burning in a more and more dark red colour. This one-day journey from Perth was really perfect and we certainly wish to go back again sometime.

• It is worth to travel there between September and October, or at least when it is spring time in Western Australia, because of the stunning wildflower season.

• Pinnacles Desert is in Nambung National Park and open all times through the year, the costs are 10 AUD per car.

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The first thing we felt after arriving in Sydney, was that we really wanted to know everything about this country. We wanted to learn the way people live their life, how they are thinking, and about their culture and habits as well. One of my friends suggested reading Down Under by Bill Bryson, which was actually a really good idea. Meanwhile more of our friends - mainly non-Australians either - were also talking about stories told in this book. It is a relatively well known and popular work of Bill Bryson both among Australians and among travelers. Unfortunately we have not read other books of him yet, but we certainly can recommend you this one. Bill Bryson has a good sense of humor, and gives quite a lot of information about places and the local life, general habits, etc. You feel as if you were there and as if he tells exactly the same as what you felt in those places/situations.

If you wish to laugh while reading about his journey through Australia - from Sydney through Perth to Darwin and Queensland, etc. - then take this book and start it. We are looking forward to your opinion and we are curious to hear your stories too.

Here are some quotes to get you in the mood:

“But then Australia is such a difficult country to keep track of. On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight from London reading a history of Australian politics in the twentieth century, wherein I encountered the startling fact that in 1967 the Prime Minister, Harold Holt, was strolling along a beach in Victoria when he plunged into the surf and vanished. No trace of the poor man was ever seen again. This seemed doubly astounding to me - first that Australia could just lose a Prime Minister (I mean, come on) and second that news of this never reached me.” (p. 15.)

“This is a country that loses a Prime Minister and that is so vast and empty that a band of amateur enthusiasts could conceivably set off world`s first non-governmental atomic bomb on its mainland and almost four years would pass before anyone noticed. Clearly this is a place worth getting to know.” (p.18.)

“Five hundred miles from any real town to east or west, a hundred miles from he nearest paved highway to the south and over a thousand to the north, Cook (pop. 40) exists solely to water, fuel and otherwise service the trains that pass through. Beside the track stood a sign that said: `No Food or Fuel for Next 862 Kilometres` - rather a daunting thought, what?” (p. 61.)

“But all of these are as nothing compared with the delicate and diaphanous box jellyfish, the most poisonous creature on earth. We will hear more of the unspeakable horrors of this little bag of lethality when we get to the tropics, but let me offer here just one small story. In 1992, a young man in Cairns, ignoring all the warning signs, went swimming in the Pacific waters at a place called Holloways Beach. He swam and dived, taunting his friends on the beach for their prudent cowardice, and then began to scream with an inhuman sound. It is said that there is no pain to compare with it. The young man staggered from the water, covered in livid whip-like stripes wherever the jelly-fish’s tentacles had brushed across him, and collapsed in quivering shock. Soon afterwards emergency crews arrived, inflated him with morphine, and took him away for treatment. And here’s the thing. Even unconscious and sedated he was still screaming.”(p. 84)

(Bill Bryson, 2000: Down Under)

• Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. He is a best selling author of humorous books on travel, the English language and on Scientific subjects. Some of his famous titles are “The Lost Continent”, “Made in America”, “Notes from a Small Island” and “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. Down Under is also published as “In a Sunburned Country”.
• More information can be found on the official Bill Bryson website, or on Wikipedia

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