Australia day four – The party

We got up as usual only to find out that it was overcast and grey, not too hot then we thought. The moment we left our air conditioned hotel a humid wall of heat hit us, we went straight down to Darling harbour in search for a breeze. No chance, what would be a breeze turned out to be hot air coming out of a blow dryer.

Coffee in the cafe and a short walk around Cockle Bay Wharf turned out to be an extreme challenge to the body. We made it on to the ferry to Circular Quay, but even the ferry offered only light relief from the heat. From Circular Quay we headed straight to the first air conditioned shopping mall and then from mall to mall back to the hotel.

We just had time for a shower, and then we had to head back to circular quay to catch the ferry to Greenwich. We headed down to the hot dungeons of the underground train system to catch our train, only to find out that we had to take a detour back to central station to bet to the ferry. Despite all that we arrived at the ferry point on time; or that’s what we thought as we made our travel arrangements based on weekdays on a Saturday and we just saw our ferry leaving. The harbour looks like a boiling pot of water. No problem, we just take the train to Sydney north. Back to the station; another detour or full circle of Sydney city line how ever you look at it. We finally get on the train to Hornby and can see the dark sky and the wind building up.

Peter is picking us up from St Leonard’s. After dropping Louise at Crowther avenue, it’s off to the bottle shop. Half way across new south Wales to the bottle shop, we filled the car up with beer and ice; and returned to the venue of Ali’s birthday just before the rain started. Dodging in and out of the house, we mixed the ice with beer and wine bottles while Louise was preparing the Pimm’s. Thanks to the rain the temperatures dropped to bearable levels.

I was on duty to make sure Bella wouldn’t great everyone with too much enthusiasm when the first guests arrived. The evening stretched until late into the night meeting and chatting to Ali and Peter’s friends, every conversation starting with “How long are you staying?, Where are you off to next?, We heard about the weather in England, ..., etc.”. And everyone agreed that this was the hottest day in Sydney so far!

We had to help the taxi driver to get out of Greenwich and arrived back in the hotel just after one in the morning.