Travelling Post 22 - As I left Sydney, stuff to (hopefully) make you jealous

On Tuesday 6th February at around 13:30 precisely 3 months and a couple or so hours after my plane landed in Sydney airport, I left Sydney on a Greyhound bus. My destination - the rest of Australia, or more exact Canberra for 2 nights and 2 days and then Mildura for some exciting fruit picking work. All that you know about but I wrote the start of this post before I arrived in Mildura and liked it, so didn't change it.

I do need to tell the story of how I got to Mildura, but I'm gonna jump around with the narrative and talk about my last weekend in Sydney. On Friday you all know I went to the cricket, I just wanted to point that out again (and we won the triangular series which is pretty fantastic), on Saturday all 6 of my housemates and I had a barbie in a local park. We tried to have it by the beach but it was too busy so we walked 2minutes further along the coast. What was great about it, apart from the company (I now have new readers so felt the need to compliment them in an effort to keep them reading), was that the BBQ was free - sadly though not the food. The local council provide free, electric BBQs to all and sunder to come along and use, I think that is a novel concept and use of public money, plus the picnic tables there have company so aren't so lonely as their British counterparts.

On Saturday night Eleanor and I went to watch Michael Parkinson present the Sydney Symphony Orchestra play music from the movies. From the moment the SSO played the Parkinson theme tune as Parky entered the Concert Hall I knew I was going to enjoy myself. It was such a relaxed atmosphere even with the place packed, I didn't notice an empty seat. Parky was his usual charming self, except he did swear once which was all well and good he was talking about his first newspaper article in which he was given a byline and there was a miss print of the word electronic clock at the end, it was then he, albeit briefly, mentioned sex toys. I did crack up laughing but I was also disturbed. He told other stories about his father, and Dudley Moore, his love of cinema and the music of cinema but the star of the show was the Symphony. They were simply superb, and they were there as entertainers and knew it. By this I mean I was expecting a barrier between the Orchestra and the audience, I was expecting and uptight conductor that would create some sort of imaginary wall between us and them. Perhaps this is due to the fact that many musicians (and yes I know I am generalising) do have superiority complexes. Instead what we got was an overly friendly and smiley conductor, thoroughly enjoying his work, bouncing about in his podium and even getting some audience participation - we whistled when music from the Bridge over the River Kwai and the Great Escape was played.

Well I was gonna detail my trip to Canberra and how I came to Mildura but that can come later.