Bilpin – Pyrmont, Sydney

Had a lovely quiet night’s sleep and met some English people who were travelling around Australia for a year as well as NZ, Fiji and South America. They were two older couples staying in tents and had hired a car.

Carried on down off the mountain enjoying the tropical highlights of the magnificent bush. Passed through Richmond and surrounding towns. They were named by the NSW governor as towns in 1820. There are quiet a few nice heritage buildings located in these spots, but nothing really much worth staying.

We did however stop in at the Hawkesbury River Council’s Art Gallery in Croydon. They had the most fabulous Beanie Exhibition on. It was to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Beanie Fest from Alice Springs, that they decided to put together a fabulous exhibition of some of the winning hats over the years. They were made in a variety of ways using knitting, felt and other hand made techniques. It was the most fun exhibition I’d seen in a long time. We laughed our way through the whole room. They also had their own separate exhibition to run along side of it of their own knitting exhibition. They had a Knitters Journal; complete with a register of all who’ve made a stitch and a ball of wool and the needles to make a very long tube. Its quite interesting. They’ve filled several books of names and its about 1.5m long the knitted piece. There was also a fabulous commissioned piece by someone in Sydney of a Sunday dinner table. All the plates, knives, forks and spoons as well as all the food were knitted. It was so funny. I couldn’t believe it could be done. The artist didn’t have a pattern at all. She even made candles that were “lit” out of wool. Wish I could have taken a photo, but it wasn’t allowed.

Arrived back in Sydney around 3pm to start the unenviable position of trying to find a parking spot for our van for several hours, and one we could stay over night in. No mean feat! We drove around and around. Most of the spots we found were 3 hour parking or 2 hour parking with no parking after 7pm, or no parking from 11pm to 6am (to conspire against our good camper selves). Meanies! We eventually ended up in the very new Pyrmont development on the west side of the Cockle Bay Wharf area. Located about 800m from the National Maritime Museum, it was certainly a good spot. We paid for 2 hours till 6pm (as it was now after 4pm), and we could stay over night as long as we were gone by 7am. It was a 45 minute walk to the Sydney Theatre Co’s flash new building, and we discovered that there is 4 hour parking right over the road, so we would try there tomorrow night. Oh the joys of being 3.3m high!

We got a quick dinner and took our seats for the first night of The War of the Roses – Part I. They were a stellar cast, including “our Cate”, Blanchet that is. She played King Richard, which was quite interesting. The play is in 2 parts of 3.5hours each part. There was a short 20 minute intermission in the middle. I have to say it was long, but parts were very interesting. At the beginning of the third act, it was quite long and drawn out, and I guess some people were quite tired and quite a few got up and left. The girl next to me was fidgeting around in her seat and I could smell the cigarette breath on her so though she was busting for another fag and couldn’t sit still, and finally she left, leaving me room to stretch out my legs and have a bit of space. While it’s great to have a steep sloping seating arrangement, which gives the benefit of tall people not blocking out the view of the people behind, the down side is you cant put your feet under the seat of the person in front of you, and thereby stretch out a little bit more. The forth act bought the blood and guts and a very interesting scene we wont go into in public space, but it sure livened up the crowd. We enjoyed it immensely and were sorry that so many left early. Looking forward to tomorrow nights’ performance.