When you get off the ferry in the Sydney Harbour, all along the way to the Opera House there are dedications to well-known authors who are from or have spent time in Australia. It’s known as the Writer’s Walk.
It’s kind of like the Hollywood Walk of Fame, except way better.
I read about Forgotten Songs on the plane on the way to Sydney, and it wasn’t too far from Sydney Harbour, so we decided to check it out while we were wandering around one day.
It’s kind of hard to find, especially if you are me and are blessed with the combination of being utterly unobservant and also really terrible at directions. I consistently say “left” whenever I mean “right” and if I ever get a divorce, that will likely be the predominant reason.
Forgotten Songs is down a little side alley, over top of a cute little restaurant. I thought the exhibit was beautiful when I saw it, but since I’d only been in Australia a few days, the significance was kind of lost on me. As I spent more time there, and traveled away from the city, I started to notice the very distinctive and interesting bird calls of the native species.
I’m not much of a bird person, although I’m pretty sure I didn’t have a strong opinion either way until I moved to Hawaii, but spending four years dodging pigeons at every turn will put you off the whole species pretty quickly.
But even I had to admit that the bird calls we were hearing in Australia were very unique. There was an especially interesting one that sounds almost exactly like a woman screaming bloody murder, so that was a fun addition to the ambiance while we were sleeping in the car on deserted dirt roads in the middle of nowhere, but I got used to it eventually.
I’m not sure how long the exhibit will be there, but if you’re in Sydney over the next few months, stop in and check it out. You can learn more about the exhibit here.
The area to the right of the Sydney Harbour is known as The Rocks. It’s a nice area full of restaurants, park, museums, and street food carts, of which we took full advantage.
I ordered a beef and red wine pie topped with mashed potatoes that was heavenly, but I did have to fight off about 1,000 pigeons while I was eating. I felt like the Tuppins lady from Mary Poppins, but it was worth it.
We stopped in for a drink at the Fortune’s of War, which is apparently the oldest pub in Sydney, listened to some street musicians, including one playing a didgeridoo, and saw a restaurant sign for a special on kangaroo burgers, which is very common I realized later, but at the time I was a little bit horrified.
On a very windy August day, we took the ferry from North Sydney where we were staying, across to the Sydney Harbour to see the bridge and the Opera House.
It was pretty warm out, considering it was the middle of winter, so I crept up to the top of the boat for what I assumed would be a leisurely putt across the water.
I was standing there enjoying the view, when all of a sudden, the driver hit the throttle, and I was almost thrown over the rail.
I managed to get myself to a seat, and snapped some pictures of our journey across, but we were moving very fast, the trip across took about 3 minutes, and it was so windy that I pretty much had to keep my eyes closed the whole time.
By the time I climbed back down the ladder to disembark, I had black marks all the way down to my chest from my mascara running.
It was exciting to see the Opera House in person, it wasn’t as big as I thought it was going to be, but I feel like that’s pretty common. The Statue of Liberty always looks huge in pictures and videos, but then when I finally got to see it, it was definitely not as big as I was expecting.
It was also very busy, a couple of huge tour buses pulled up as we were arriving, and there were so many people there that we didn’t end up going inside.
We spent the rest of the day wandering around and exploring the city, and then took a beautiful sunset boat ride back across the channel.
loveliness. 