I don’t think I ever really understood how many chores were involved when it came to kids. There’s the big ticket items you’re prepared for (nappies) but the one that kills you is the relentless tidying and cleaning, every meal (that’s three meals a day, plus snacks) results in food all over the floor, there’s sand from the sandpit on every conceivable surface and just a non-stop accumulation of train tracks, fire engines and diggers cluttering up everything. The good news is that all these hours of tidying, sweeping, mopping and cleaning gives me plenty of exercise (although it’s probably undone by the wine that’s consumed while the chores are being done), it also gives me a chance to mentally switch off and listen to some podcasts and the first cab off the rank is almost always Hamish and Andy, but more about that later.
Back in May I headed over to Sydney to photograph a wedding, I’ll be blogging the wedding shortly but this post is about what happened in the lead up. I flew over on a Thursday, arrived mid-afternoon and headed to my AirBNB in Marrickville, just a block away from the jazz club where the wedding reception was held. After dropping my bags off I headed out to do a little location scouting and to sneak a peek at what Sydney had to offer. One thing Marrickville had to offer was incredible Vietnamese pork rolls and after devouring one for afternoon tea I headed off to the ceremony location at the University of Sydney followed by the CBD with my little Fuji X100s, a perfect travel camera that also has a place for weddings. I ultimately walked for about 4 hours just exploring things on foot and making the occasional photo, it was the type of thing I basically never do in Adelaide and it was so incredibly liberating, I didn’t have a care in the world.
The next morning I awoke with one thing on my mind. Vietnamese. Pork. Rolls. Once that itch was scratched I suddenly had a day to myself, so with no particular agenda I once again roamed the streets on foot with my Fuji looking for interesting things. As luck would have it the Head On Photo Festival was on so I hit up a bunch of exhibitions as part of my day.
It was a perfect autumn day so I decided to take the ferry over to Manly to spend some time on the water. I’d just missed a ferry and the next one was coming half an hour later so I decided to stroll around circular quay towards the bridge to kill some time. As I was walking past a series of ridiculously talented buskers I heard some fairly loud music off in the distance, as I walked closer it became apparent that it was a band playing “Never tear us apart”. I didn’t give it much thought as I walked closer, they sounded pretty good but there was an interesting house to my right that I was a bit pre-occupied with. Once they stopped playing I eventually turned my head to discover it was bloody Hamish and Andy doing a soundcheck for their Logies spit roast party later that day! There was no one around, just me and the guys hanging out like a bunch of old friends with nothing but 10 metres of concrete and a 6 foot fence between us – as if that fence could ever tear us apart.
I took my ferry over to Manly and returned a couple hours later when the party was in full swing.
I arrived just as they were about to start their song for real, there were audience members greasing up Hamish’s body (I was a bit behind in the podcasts so I didn’t really know what that was about) and everyone was at their instruments. Amazingly I was able to walk around the back of the stage and get super close to the action, the aforementioned fence was blocking my view but I was able to hold my phone up over my head and snap off a few quickies before security asked me to move back.
All of a sudden it was twilight and I found myself taking photos of the Opera House. I told myself I wasn’t going to do this, the most cliched Sydney photo you could imagine, but I just couldn’t help it, it’s such a gorgeous building and when conditions are perfect you have to make photos.
I was so exhilarated I needed an enormous $7 ice cream cone to calm me down. After such an incredible two days with exactly zero responsibilities I then had to turn my mind to tomorrow’s wedding, but more about that soon…
