Top 10 Things We Didn’t Know About Sydney Before We Lived There
- Kelly McKenna
- Jul 24, 2017
- 4 min read
1) It’s absolutely full of hills – I don’t know why, maybe it was all of those years watching the cameras pan over the opera house and the bridge on NYE, but I always thought of Sydney as a fairly flat city. Honestly, everywhere we went it felt like we were constantly walking up a hill. In hindsight this was probably a good thing as with the amount we ate and drank the 2 months we were there, they would have been rolling us onto the plane to Bali…
2) It rains A LOT – there is an ongoing battle between Sydneysiders and Melburnians about which is the greatest city in Australia (in a strange and unexpected twist Brisbane is actually our favourite, but more on that later) and one of the things Sydney always seems to have on its side is the incredible weather. We were treated to an absolute belter of a summer and actually were there for for the hottest January night on record (it was 31 degrees at 1am!), but Sydney has some unbelievable downpours. Statistically it is actually a wetter city than Melbourne, who’d have thunk it…
3) “There are bats the size of cats that fly in daylight and can see” – actual direct quote from my journal. The Pteropus poliocephalus, more commonly known as the grey-headed flying fox or Australian fruit bat is one of the cutest animals we’ve met on our travels. Take a look at these photos and decide for yourself. Our first encounter with one of these little guys was when one flew out of a tree almost directly into Richard as we were walking home from doing our shopping. We were both so shocked that we nearly fell over and were in a bit of disbelief that it was actually a bat. A few days later we were chilling out on our balcony watching the sunset and a whole heap of them flew over our apartment. At first I was convinced they were birds and actually ridiculed Rich a little bit because ‘bats don’t fly in daylight, silly’. Guess who was actually the silly one when we did our research…
4) Busses generally run to their own timetable – despite having a bus stop less than 50 metres from our front door, we regularly missed the bus as they just seem to run to their own times. If they get to the stop early and you’re not there, they just continue on with their journey. Fortunately, unlike back at home where there might be one bus every half hour, or even every hour, in Sydney you can be fairly sure you’re not going to have to wait much more than 10 minutes until another one appears.
5) They don’t have double decker busses, but they do have double decker trains – continuing with the public transport theme in two months I didn’t see a single double decker bus, but there were plenty of bendy busses which excited me 🙂 In a complete reversal from life back in the UK, double decker trains are incredibly common in Sydney. If this news report is anything to go by, however, Sydney public transport will look very different the next time we visit…
6) They have purple trees – well purple blossoms anyway 🙂 The Jacaranda tree looks absolutely stunning in Spring and Summer and it is still overwhelmingly the image that enters my mind when I think about that first flight into Sydney to start our new life.
7) You can take a 6km coastal walk from Coogee Beach to Bondi Beach (or vice-versa) – and it is truly one of the most beautiful picturesque walks we have ever been on. It takes you past five stunning beaches where you can stop for a breather or play in the waves as we did at Tamrama Beach, and even passes a stunning cliff top graveyard.
8) Sundays are HUGE – for some unknown reason, ‘Sunday Sessions’ are massive in Australia. Makes no sense to me either since pretty much everyone is at work on Monday, but you’ll find most places in Sydney will play live music and people will be drinking late from about 5pm onwards on a Sunday. Our favourite place for a Sunday Session was Coogee Pavilion which is a building with three different levels and always seems crazy busy. Drinking is sadly really expensive in Sydney pretty much across the board, although I would compare it to London prices so if you’re used to drinking in London you’ll be good to go…
9) Traffic lights are SLOW and jaywalking is pretty much illegal in New South Wales (must be more than 20 metres from a controlled crossing to cross the road without using the lights, fines are upwards of $70 if caught) – which ultimately leads to plenty of people stood at pedestrian crossings waiting for the little green man when absolutely no traffic is coming. Infuriating for us, normal life for Sydneysiders.
10) Public transport is AMAZING – yes we’re back on PT again. Buying ‘Opal Cards’ was genuinely one of the best decisions we made in Sydney. You will hear a lot of Aussies complaining about their public transport, but honestly they don’t know how good they’ve got it. It’s ridiculously cheap to travel in Sydney with caps on daily, weekly and monthly fees, half price travel after you’ve completed eight journeys in a week (effectively to and from work Monday-Thursday) AND you can travel anywhere with unlimited journeys for just $2.50 on Sundays. Seriously, the UK could learn something from this.
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