Well, you don’t turn 55 every day and being the younger partner – that’s me – I thought it best for a fun filled, action packed Sydney weekend. The appropriate shade for an autumnal double celebration – Bobby’s birthday and Easter.
The sensational Jersey Boys, at the Theatre Royal in the heart of the city, topped the list. The show is brilliant – energetic, colourful; a visual and musical feast chronicling the ups and downs of Frankie Valli and his band The Four Seasons. Part concert, part biography, a fast paced story of Italian boys from the wrong side of the tracks, writing their own songs and inventing their own sound, based on the catchy lyrics of Bob (Gaudio) and Frankie’s falsetto voice to become one of America’s biggest pop sensations ever. The stats alone are impressive endorsement – nine million theatre patrons and over 175 million records sold.
“You're just too good to be true.
/Can't take my eyes off you.
/You'd be like Heaven to touch.
/I wanna hold you so much ...”
Oh what a night … get the picture
24 hours later we sat in the comfy, soft lit 360 Restaurant and Bar atop The Tower – Sydney’s tallest structure – 250 metres (over a thousand feet) above the CBD on a clear night, the spread of the city resembling a giant sparkler. Oscar’s words echoed across the table as we dined on fresh Salmon and Barramundi, crème brulee and chocolate mousse, NZ wine and sparkling water while enjoying the ever changing view courtesy of the restaurant’s revolving floor. A floating romantic treasure, how come had we not visited this enduring Sydney 80s icon before?
Earlier, the day began with a flat white, hot chocolate, apple Danish, bacon and egg rolls and a short train trip to Circular Quay – one of the world’s best located stations; overlooking Sydney Harbour, the enormous expanse of its steel Bridge, fluted sails of the Opera House and steady procession of ferries and small craft crisscrossing the water.
Leaving two of Australia’s icons behind us we headed for a third …. Bondi Beach…. taking the scenic route by ferry, stopping briefly at Garden Island, Double Bay and then Rose Bay, our destination, the scent of the ocean adding a special sweetness to the air. A taxi called, within ten minutes we were at the beach. What Clifton is to Cape Town and North Beach is for Durban …. Bondi is to Sydney. The quintessential Australian urban beach (sorry Queensland but it is).
We had come for a walk, not a swim, even though the sunshine, turquoise tinted ocean and mild conditions remained a tempting inducement to change into our bathers carried in my rucksack. Heading south along the coastal footpath, part of the Bondi to Coogee Walk, we absorbed the great views of the sea and popular neighbouring beaches of Tamarama and Bronte.
Along the way the pristine pools of the Bondi Icebergs Club where membership is attained by swimming three Sundays out of four during the winter months of May to September, over five years. An arduous challenge? Obviously not when you discover the club has over 600 members.
The pathway hugged the coastline, the sandstone cliffs sculpted into pleasing shapes by the forces of nature over the millennia; to Mackenzies Point, and onto Tamarama beach, the morning’s first beach volley game under way on the soft white sand while surfers took to the sea with their boards offshore. Bobby took a breather while I walked onto Bronte Beach and the Waverley Cemetery; an eerie archaeological landscape of marble tombstones running to the edge of the cliff. The resting place of many famous Australians, including Dorothea Mackellar, whose My Country was the most popular poem of its time…
.
“I love a sunburnt country,/
A land of sweeping plains,/
Of ragged mountain ranges,/
Of droughts and flooding rains./
I love her far horizons,
/I love her jewel-sea,/
Her beauty and her terror -/
The wide brown land for me!”
It was the love of her jewel sea that kept me company as I progressed to Clovelly Beach before returning to Bondi and the Hurricane Grill, Bobby and I tucking into South African style burgers with monkey gland sauce – that typical Saffa sweet and savoury BBQ sauce. Renowned for its racks of succulent spare ribs, boerewors and steaks – in gigantic portions – I was offered, and accepted, a spare rib from a fellow patron at the table next us (neighbourly Easter goodwill in action).
A bus to Bondi Junction, a train to Circular Quay and we were back at the waterfront now humming with people. The air filled with the echoing amplified throb of didgeridoo’s mixed with guitar strings and the commentary of street performers on high wires or juggling swords, fire sticks … even a chain saw. Our interest lay in more sedate and quieter visual pursuits entering the Museum of Contemporary Art – our first ever visit – to see the work of legendary American photographer, Annie Leibovitz. Anyone who has ever picked up a Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair magazine will be familiar with her striking celebrity images; a nude pregnant Demi Moore among the most memorable. The show contained much of class – Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Day Lewis, Queen Elizabeth II – however Bobby and I found the overall arrangement of mixing Leibovitz’s private family snaps, generally no more than postcard size, among the lavish and large celebrity pics, a distraction. For us the formula didn’t work.
Kissed by the sunburnt country we made our way back to our hotel the elevated attraction of The Tower next on the evening’s menu. On a day when transport included a train, boat, taxi, on foot, all that was left was to take to the air … a vertical 250m lift into sky would do
To the final morning … ANZAC day … solemnly revered throughout the country. The day …. wet and grey …. but clearing. A good time to bypass the street parade and visit the Archibald Portrait Prize 2011 exhibition at the NSW Gallery (with parking right outside the front door )
The Archibald is Australia’s most prestigious annual portrait prize and this year’s entries are stunning. Over 700 original works reduced to a refined field of 41, the worthy winner Ben Quilty’s large portrait, essentially the face, of Margaret Olley, the colourful artistic legend now in her eighties. The painting remarkable for capturing Margaret’s likeness with minimal thick brush strokes combined with vast areas of unpainted, white space.
Much like the Jersey Boy’s this year’s Archibald is first class – Barbara Tyson’s painting of Quentin Bryce, our Governor General, The Country’s Woman; Tim Storrier’s self portrait, Moon boy and Sonia Kretschmar’s, mystical portrait of Cassandra Golds (The heart of things), personal favourites.
The show a perfect exclamation to our weekend’s activities.
Time to head for home …
One more detour to come. Usually it takes a good hour to drive out of Sydney on the 3½ hour trip home. The last western Sydney suburb on route, not renowned for anything special, is Campbelltown. It does have a Spur – one of three in Sydney – so breaking convention we stopped for an early lunch at the Mustang Spur.
What is a Spur? They are a chain of South African Steak Ranches, started by Allen Ambor, the first opening in Newlands, Cape Town in 1967. Today there are over 200 scattered across 28 countries. Bobby used to work in one! A nostalgic twist to end our trip. The cosy ambience may have been lacking, the familiar décor, warmth and colour absent …. the burgers, however, were spot on. The slogan on the menu cover, A taste for life, said it all, it summed up our weekend really … some things endure … a good marriage, the music of Frankie Valli, the visual splendour of Sydney Harbour, the tangy flavour of a Spur burger … a taste for life, indeed.
Thomas Graham
http://www.showbiz.com.au/jerseyboys/?&gclid=CPjb1PTvuKgCFYgdpAod4VRTCQ
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/archibald-wynne-sulman-prizes-2011/
http://www.cntower.ca/360_restaurant/overview/
http://hurricanesgrill.com.au/
http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/city-guides/sydney-walking-tour-3/
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/archibald/2011/entries/28931/
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