Sojourn in Sydney, Day #3 of 6: There's Something About Manley

Awoken at 8am by the following plot-setting exposition from Scottish Dave: "Steve, when you leave the house to come and meet me at Circular Quay to go snorkeling at Manley this afternoon - can you bring my rucksack with you? I'm leaving it right here, just by the door. You won't forget it now, will you? It's got all our snorkeling gear in it."

I gave him the thumbs-up sign, ignoring the fact that he had, in just 4 sentences, written an entire sitcom for me to act-out.

Dave had headed off to work, so once I'd surfaced, showered, got in the laundry, done the ironing and eaten, I duly caught the 501 bus into town. Sitting next to me was a guy who's name was Bragg. He was related to several famous people who were also called Bragg, most notably Melvyn.

Reaching Circular Quay, I met-up with Kevin and spotted Scottish Dave heading towards us. Well, you know what the first question out of his mouth was.

By the time we were on the ferry, he still hadn't got over it. "I can't belieeeve it - you made the thumbs-up sign and everything!"

Arriving at Manley, we hit the local supermarket for supplies.

After the checkout, Kev and I also put the shopping in his sports bag, purely so that we could later pretend to Dave that we had left it behind in the shop.

Having enjoyed some Wotsits that were called Twists, we went to a Burger King joint, which was called Hungry Jack's.


Apparently, when Burger King first invaded Australia, some tiny outfit was already using their name, hence the change. I told my usual anecdote about eating at a place in Ethiopia called Burger Queen, where they provided a complimentary fly-swat with each meal. It didn't let me down. All this and Scottish Dave totally bought that we'd forgotten the shopping bag. We were laughing like stupid little boys. Things were definitely looking up.


Walking up to Manley Park, we watched a storm begin before meeting Dale who, living practically on the deserted Shelley Bay, had all the snorkeling equipment in the world.



Despite the breaking storm, we met Fionnuala, we swam, mucked about, took a photo of ourselves with a girl we didn't know, retired down the pub, listened to girl and a very angry-looking guy sing Everywhere You Go Always Take The Weather With You in cabaret, walked along Freshwater Beach, saw a crab and retired again to another pub in town, this time the Ship Inn. Here we met Sonia, Mary-Ann and Rita, the latter of whom decided to start having a go at me about Britain's bad track-record at weather. Clever girl. And the subject had only cropped up because of the storm raging outside.

(day #1 here)
(day #2 here)
(day #4 here)
(day #5 here)
(day #6 here)