Sydney for Mardi Gras
13 March 2006
We have been quite busy since the start of the year. I had doubled the amount of overnight call I was doing for Caesarean Sections and labour epidurals as well as being allocated more on-call for cardiac surgery cases at St Vincent's. I have now realized I'm not as good at staying up half the night and still bouncing back the next day as I used to be, so I've reduced the on-call from the start of April. Jay has also been very busy; the work on a new game from Atari is getting more frantic as the release date looms.
Some of the teaching materials I have prepared have been taken up by a British anaesthesia website, so I had to make a serious-looking home page for attribution links. I figured it could also serve for patients.
On the first weekend of the year, we went with my mother to the Kinglake Raspberry Fair. Here she is with Jay as we are about to go picking. There was country music and every conceivable raspberry-flavoured product. They provided baskets for raspberry picking and we paid for the remaining (uneaten) raspberries in the baskets on leaving the farm. I don't think I'll be making a living as a raspberry picker as it took me about an hour and a half to collect 1 kg (2 lbs) of raspberries, worth about $10. I also managed to fall into a wombat hole.
Because of a peculiarity of tax-law here, it was significantly to my advantage if the new car went more than 4200 km by the end of March. This was always going to be a struggle as we live quite close to the work and the gym, so we decided to do a few trips out of Melbourne. In mid-January we visited Sovereign Hill in Ballarat. Here we are in the main street in the evening after the park had closed.
Sovereign Hill is a recreation of the goldfields of the 1850s to 1880s. The last time I visited was on a school trip as a 12 year old when all I remember is that I was wearing shorts and it snowed. This time I wore shorts again, but it was around 40C (105F). We stayed at the accommodation in the park, which fortunately included anachronistic airconditioning. We watched the evening "sound and light show" about the Eureka Stockade, a short-lived insurrection in 1854. The dramatization was quite interesting and Jay's parents had recommended it after they visited last year, but I don't think we were part of the target demographic.
It didn't involve a long drive, but on impulse we went to one of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's free concerts at the Myer Music Bowl. We had last been here for the dance event on January 1 and the crowd was quite a bit older this time. Hoang Pham was the pianist for Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. I was familiar with his background story as one of the ophthalmic surgeons I work with regularly is married to his piano teacher.
My sister was moving house from Canberra to Sorrento, so Jay and I drove to Canberra for the weekend to help her pack. I hadn't visited Canberra in about 20 years, so once we had packed all her stuff we visited the new Parliament House, opened in 1988 for Australia's Bicentennary.
Canberra is a planned city of about 320,000, laid out in 1912 by Walter Burley Griffin, a Chicago architect, in a series of circles and lines. The original plan had the parliament at the foot of Capital Hill so people could climb up above the parliament. By the time the definitive parliament building was constructed, it ended up being where the Capital Hill was so it was built into the hill. In the picture we are standing on the grass on the roof of the parliament, with the old parliament in the background (next to Jay).
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras was on the first weekend in March. This was very close to my mother's 60th birthday so we had a birthday lunch for her shortly before leaving for Sydney. We went to Sydney on the Wednesday before the parade in order to do some tourist activities as Jay had not seen much of Sydney before and our visit last year had been very rushed.
We had a great time as there were quite a few friends from the US in town, so we had plenty of company for our time there. Here we are at Darling Harbour with Pete and Randy from San Antonio and Richard. The weather was warm and humid and on Thursday we visited the Aquarium with them and also Alfredo who joined us later.
The Sydney Aquarium was well worth visiting, though the best exhibits were toward the end of the tour. Pete was not a fan of the freshwater fish, but the underwater hallways through the seal and saltwater tanks gave a spectacular view of the animals, particularly the large rays and sharks. The reef fish were also spectacular, in a display similar to the one we saw at Seaworld last July but not quite as large.
Later that day we climbed the bridge. The weather was clear at the beginning with views from the heads to Homebush but when we were at the top of the climb some rainstorms came through which was exciting. The wind was strong, but as there was no lightning, apparently there was no real danger. Coming down the lights of the city were coming on. We could also see Luna Park where we would be visiting on Sunday.
We went out briefly on Thursday night to Arq but did not stay out very late as we wanted to get more done during the day on Friday. We did have time to meet up with some more friends and have a dance with Jim, who came to visit us last October and who was starting a new job which kept him pretty busy during the day while we were there.
On Friday we went to the Botanic Gardens and to tour the Sydney Opera House. As we were heading down to buy tickets, a tour group including the guys we had seen the previous night came by so we joined them for the tour. Here we are in the foyer of the concert hall. Bill, Rich, Mark and Daniel from Oregon we had met the previous night. Mark and Bradley from LA it was a pleasure to see again. We all went to lunch together and ended up spending much of our dancing time over the weekend together with them, Richard, Alfredo, Randy, Pete and Jim.
That evening we were lucky to have dinner with Attila and Timo, who were in Sydney as Attila was returning from humanitarian work in Pakistan. We also saw Ken, a friend originally from Melbourne.
I had never stood at street level to watch the parade before. In
I was in the parade and the other two times I have been to Mardi Gras I did not go to the parade. While it was exciting to see the thought and enthusiasm which had gone into the parade floats and very pleasing to see groups such as the State and Federal Police marching, I must admit I enjoyed it more being in the parade than watching. It gave a little more distance from the drunk (but very supportive) straight people lining the route. Miraculously, Andrew, a friend from Melbourne who was in the parade, managed to pick us out of the crowd to say hello.
We went to the main party on the Saturday night. Jay wanted to wear "something fun", and we tried to choose something that would make it easy to find each other in a crowd. The outfits were very successful; I can highly recommend Nike yoga pants for dancing in. We saw a couple of the shows and spent much of the night dancing. The party seemed well-attended and the music was a lot of fun.
The following day we went to Toybox at Luna Park in the afternoon. It was a spectacular production and a beautiful location. There were pictures from the party on the Toybox website, but they didn't do justice to the lighting. We didn't take pictures of our own as we didn't carry a camera (there wasn't room in the pants pockets). After the party we had dinner as a group and went to rest up before travelling back to Melbourne on Monday and returning to work on Tuesday.
Now it's back to work for a few weeks while we look forward to a visit from a friend from San Francisco and also spending Easter at Sorrento with Saxon.
< Previous
Some of the teaching materials I have prepared have been taken up by a British anaesthesia website, so I had to make a serious-looking home page for attribution links. I figured it could also serve for patients.
On the first weekend of the year, we went with my mother to the Kinglake Raspberry Fair. Here she is with Jay as we are about to go picking. There was country music and every conceivable raspberry-flavoured product. They provided baskets for raspberry picking and we paid for the remaining (uneaten) raspberries in the baskets on leaving the farm. I don't think I'll be making a living as a raspberry picker as it took me about an hour and a half to collect 1 kg (2 lbs) of raspberries, worth about $10. I also managed to fall into a wombat hole.
Because of a peculiarity of tax-law here, it was significantly to my advantage if the new car went more than 4200 km by the end of March. This was always going to be a struggle as we live quite close to the work and the gym, so we decided to do a few trips out of Melbourne. In mid-January we visited Sovereign Hill in Ballarat. Here we are in the main street in the evening after the park had closed.
Sovereign Hill is a recreation of the goldfields of the 1850s to 1880s. The last time I visited was on a school trip as a 12 year old when all I remember is that I was wearing shorts and it snowed. This time I wore shorts again, but it was around 40C (105F). We stayed at the accommodation in the park, which fortunately included anachronistic airconditioning. We watched the evening "sound and light show" about the Eureka Stockade, a short-lived insurrection in 1854. The dramatization was quite interesting and Jay's parents had recommended it after they visited last year, but I don't think we were part of the target demographic.
It didn't involve a long drive, but on impulse we went to one of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's free concerts at the Myer Music Bowl. We had last been here for the dance event on January 1 and the crowd was quite a bit older this time. Hoang Pham was the pianist for Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. I was familiar with his background story as one of the ophthalmic surgeons I work with regularly is married to his piano teacher.
My sister was moving house from Canberra to Sorrento, so Jay and I drove to Canberra for the weekend to help her pack. I hadn't visited Canberra in about 20 years, so once we had packed all her stuff we visited the new Parliament House, opened in 1988 for Australia's Bicentennary.
Canberra is a planned city of about 320,000, laid out in 1912 by Walter Burley Griffin, a Chicago architect, in a series of circles and lines. The original plan had the parliament at the foot of Capital Hill so people could climb up above the parliament. By the time the definitive parliament building was constructed, it ended up being where the Capital Hill was so it was built into the hill. In the picture we are standing on the grass on the roof of the parliament, with the old parliament in the background (next to Jay).
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras was on the first weekend in March. This was very close to my mother's 60th birthday so we had a birthday lunch for her shortly before leaving for Sydney. We went to Sydney on the Wednesday before the parade in order to do some tourist activities as Jay had not seen much of Sydney before and our visit last year had been very rushed.
We had a great time as there were quite a few friends from the US in town, so we had plenty of company for our time there. Here we are at Darling Harbour with Pete and Randy from San Antonio and Richard. The weather was warm and humid and on Thursday we visited the Aquarium with them and also Alfredo who joined us later.
The Sydney Aquarium was well worth visiting, though the best exhibits were toward the end of the tour. Pete was not a fan of the freshwater fish, but the underwater hallways through the seal and saltwater tanks gave a spectacular view of the animals, particularly the large rays and sharks. The reef fish were also spectacular, in a display similar to the one we saw at Seaworld last July but not quite as large.
Later that day we climbed the bridge. The weather was clear at the beginning with views from the heads to Homebush but when we were at the top of the climb some rainstorms came through which was exciting. The wind was strong, but as there was no lightning, apparently there was no real danger. Coming down the lights of the city were coming on. We could also see Luna Park where we would be visiting on Sunday.
We went out briefly on Thursday night to Arq but did not stay out very late as we wanted to get more done during the day on Friday. We did have time to meet up with some more friends and have a dance with Jim, who came to visit us last October and who was starting a new job which kept him pretty busy during the day while we were there.
On Friday we went to the Botanic Gardens and to tour the Sydney Opera House. As we were heading down to buy tickets, a tour group including the guys we had seen the previous night came by so we joined them for the tour. Here we are in the foyer of the concert hall. Bill, Rich, Mark and Daniel from Oregon we had met the previous night. Mark and Bradley from LA it was a pleasure to see again. We all went to lunch together and ended up spending much of our dancing time over the weekend together with them, Richard, Alfredo, Randy, Pete and Jim.
That evening we were lucky to have dinner with Attila and Timo, who were in Sydney as Attila was returning from humanitarian work in Pakistan. We also saw Ken, a friend originally from Melbourne.
I had never stood at street level to watch the parade before. In
I was in the parade and the other two times I have been to Mardi Gras I did not go to the parade. While it was exciting to see the thought and enthusiasm which had gone into the parade floats and very pleasing to see groups such as the State and Federal Police marching, I must admit I enjoyed it more being in the parade than watching. It gave a little more distance from the drunk (but very supportive) straight people lining the route. Miraculously, Andrew, a friend from Melbourne who was in the parade, managed to pick us out of the crowd to say hello.
We went to the main party on the Saturday night. Jay wanted to wear "something fun", and we tried to choose something that would make it easy to find each other in a crowd. The outfits were very successful; I can highly recommend Nike yoga pants for dancing in. We saw a couple of the shows and spent much of the night dancing. The party seemed well-attended and the music was a lot of fun.
The following day we went to Toybox at Luna Park in the afternoon. It was a spectacular production and a beautiful location. There were pictures from the party on the Toybox website, but they didn't do justice to the lighting. We didn't take pictures of our own as we didn't carry a camera (there wasn't room in the pants pockets). After the party we had dinner as a group and went to rest up before travelling back to Melbourne on Monday and returning to work on Tuesday.
Now it's back to work for a few weeks while we look forward to a visit from a friend from San Francisco and also spending Easter at Sorrento with Saxon.
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