Day 68 (13 August): Winter at the Beach and in the Bush

Stepping off the plane in Sydney, Australia at 5 am, I was greeted by my Aunt Ellen and Uncle Bill at the airport as well as a southern hemisphere winter chill since it was in the low 40s. We drove to their house in Castlecrag in Northern Sydney where I took a brief nap before being treated to a champagne brekkie (as they call breakfast in Australia.) We then called my cousin Adrian who actually was in Washington DC with my grandmother and father as he is going to be there for a year, pursuing an LLM Degree at UVA Law School.

My cousin, James and I then went food shopping, for a lunchtime BBQ we would have at their beach house at the extreme Northeasten edge of the city in a very nice place called Palm Beach. After we'd come back with the supplies we took a lesiurely drive up the coast where we BBQed with some amazing ocean views and a selection of excellent Australian wines from Bill's cellar. On the way back to town we drove a different way that included going through the Kuringai National Park which has some classic Australian 'Bush' landscape, but no Kangaroos.

Within a couple of hours of getting back to Castlecrag it was time to strap on the feedbag again where I was force-fed some more excellent food and given even more Australian wine to sample. Since it was a Saturday night, and my cousin James had plans to go out with one of his multiple girlfriends that evening, and my aunt and uncle insited I go out, I called up one of the Australians I'd met earlier during my travels. We met up in a 'dodgy' (an Australian adjective with ambiguous meaning) bar but had a good time nonetheless.

Observations:
1) Australians like to drink. This unfortuantely was a constant theme throughout the day, although I am more impressed with Australian wines than I already was. Apparently there's a lot more to it than cheap Shiraz that makes it into the US. Most of the best don't make it over to home for me.
2) Mothers like to overhost, overfeed, etc. Not that I'm complaining since this has provided a nice break in my trip.
3) Sydney is the world's largest city, but only by land area. We drove for about 45 minutes to reach my relatives Palm Beach house and they already lived in the 'Northern Suburbs' which are well within the city limits.
4) Lack of highways. Despite its size Sydney has almost no highways and when they do they are almost all toll roads. Its pretty amazing how well traffic flows given the lack of highways.
5) Towns with similar names, feels. On the way to Palm Beach we drove by Newport Beach. From the glimpses I got out the window it didn't seem that far off of Southern California's Newport Beach (Orange County) in style, attitude, or culture.
6) Children living at home. This is a very common phenomenon in Australia until kids are in their late 20s. Part of why it happens is because of the high cost of living in Sydney. Another reason is that kids go to 'Uni' within striking distance of home, so there is no need to move out and no tradition of dorms, fraternities, etc. It seems to create a lot of awkwardness though, especially when the children have 'overnight guests.'
7) Politeness of a small town. Despite being in a major city, when we went shopping for the BBQ we had a number of long conversations with neighbors, shoppkeepers, etc. which seems to be a normal phenomenon here.