Thursday morning was our last in Manly. I started off the day badly, by waking Anne from a dream about Noah Wyle (Dr Carter from TV's E.R.). She was annoyed with me, and made that clear.
Still, we soldiered on and packed up our stuff. We've got rather better at packing our rucksacks, which is just as well since I was very bad at it at the beginning of our travels. However, I'm having trouble again, since the nice weather means my massive trainers go in my bag, rather than my small thongs. No no - you misunderstand: in Australia they call sandals and flip-flops "thongs". Took us a bit of time to get used to that.
Once the rucksacks were packed we lugged them to the ferry, then caught a bus from Circular Quay to Bondi, passing many of our old haunts on the way. We'd booked two nights in Bondi as a final beach-adventure in Australia. We had rather more time than we'd planned on this last section, so had some time to kill. This was mainly because it turned out that there was very little to see between Melbourne and Sydney unless you have a car. (Have I said that already?) Still, it's nice to take things easy for a bit and spend some time in Sydney.
When we arrived and checked in to the hostel, I thought we'd made a mistake. Most of the travellers here are so young! The travellers aged between 18 and 22 seem to have made a beeline for Bondi rather than stay in the city and they annoyed me almost immediately. Also, the couple in the room next to us are very noisy, and the girl has a potty mouth.
Aussies think Bondi is not a very good beach, and rather tacky. It is very touristy, but is a beautiful beach and the town isn't that tacky compared to tacky British seaside resorts. On Thursday night we ventured out to a bar attached to a different hostel and entered the quiz there. Despite only having a team of two, when most of the teams consisted of seven or eight people, we came third. However, there were no prizes for third place. Not to worry though, since we won a jug of beer on a "Who Am I?" round (I guessed Victoria Beckham!) and won over $30 on a "True or False" round. Yay! Since the beers we'd drunk cost $23 in total we were up at the end of the night. We returned to the hostel happy, and listened to the couple next door to us humping.
This morning we walked an hour down the coast to Coogee beach. We'd done this walk before when we first arrived in Sydney, and wanted to do it again as the views are pretty spectacular. Once there, we baked ourselves on the beach for four hours. I bundled into the sea and played in some enormous waves. I was taken under a few times and tightened my trunks as a precaution after they were nearly lost once.
A blue thing, which I thought was seaweed, floated towards me at one point. A guy nearby saw it and shouted to me to watch out. "It's a bluebottle, mate", he said, "If it stings you it will hurt." I'd read about these jellyfish and I realised he wasn't kidding. I left the water sharpish. I returned to the water later, and there were loads of these jellyfish washed up on the shore. I played in the waves a bit, but my fear of immense pain hampered my enjoyment and I returned to my book before long.
After a good, cheap lunch in Coogee, Anne and I walked back to Bondi, tired from too much sun and a little exercise.