Wandering Hopefully

On the last couple of weekends I have spent a few unproductive hours walking through the streets of the city.  My conclusion, the city has a heck of a lot more streets that I realised.  Meandering about my state capital isn't actually something I do for fun.  Or at least it helps if I have a reason to do so.  Over the last two weekends the reasons to do so have been a non existent gully and a cat cafe.

For some reason a couple of weeks ago I googled "forests in Sydney".  Google in its wisdom directed me to a website extolling parks in Sydney.  One of these parks was called Flat Rock Gully and according to a helpful little map provided by one of the websites it was located in the Rocks.  A lot of other websites pointed out that it was actually in Willoughby which was a lot more plausible but I decided to believe the intrinsically unlikely one.

The Rocks, for those who don't know, is the site of oldest European habitation on the Australian continent.  It started off as a slum and maintained that status right up until picturesque sandstone buildings within a stones throw of the harbour became a tourist attraction.  Now its a tourist attraction.  Given two hundred plus years of intensive building, habitation and development one could reasonably assume that any once picturesque gully must long ago have been filled in, built over or turned into a sewer.  Possibly all three.  Such clear eyed reality didn't faze me at all.  I would catch the light rail into town, stroll through Barangaroo (currently the site of a major, public transport free development) and head into the Rocks where I would search for an intrinsically improbable gully in the most unlikely of places.

In retrospect if I do something like this again it probably wont be in mid Summer.  The day was hot and only the cool refreshing baths of sweat pouring down my body enabled me to go on.  Strolling across from Pyrmont I passed through Barangaroo and gawped at the tall buildings currently climbing to the sky courtesy of one of my employer's clients.  They look pretty impressive and the place will no doubt be amazing when its finished.  Hopefully this will ease the discontent of the forty thousand odd workers who are going to struggle to get there because of the aforementioned lack of public transport.

Public transport planning in Australia is very reliable.  We almost always cock it up.  I can't blame the developer for not considering public transport.  Their profit comes from leasable space in office buildings, they can hardly be expected to lay aside large slabs of territory for bus stops and train stations.  The state government (who should insist on such things) makes a point of not doing so.  Dark mutterings about corruption and selling out to corporate interests abound of course but I suspect it has more to do with simple incompetence than any sort of corruption. 

None of this worried me on my sojourn however, it was a walking trip I was taking and even property developers have realised that people will need to physically access their buildings if they want to see a return on them (although I'm prepared to bet this would be news to the state government).  Knowing roughly the location of the Rocks relative to Barangaroo I wandered in approximately the right direction stopping and retracing my steps only where I encountered bits that were still under construction.  Eventually I reached, not the Rocks but Millers Point which is sort of the Rocks lite.  From here a hot, sweaty climb over Observatory Hill would bring me to, well it brought me to Kent Street.  The Rocks was on the other side of Kent Street but between them lay eight to ten lanes of motorway heading over the Harbour Bridge.  The thing about motorways is that they rarely have pedestrian crossings.  They do however have underpasses and after a bit of hapless wandering around the carpark of the National Trust building I made my way under the motorway and past a number of open spaces for the public use should the public be able to negotiate their way around the maze of busy roads surrounding them.  Some of the public had indeed successfully achieved this, largely the homeless, substance abusing portions of the public.

With my journey behind me I stood on Gloucester St in the Rocks and finally had to acknowledge what I had known all along.  That Flat Rock Gully was in a park in Willoughby on the other side of the harbour and nowhere near the Rocks.  I walked down a narrow covered lane which occupied the space I was titularly going to.  A woman came out from one of the buildings facing it and lit a cigarette.  I was tempted to do the same but she was already looking at me oddly so I moved on before she called the police.

My next trip was much better organised insofar as I knew my destination actually existed.  I had gone out with friends to a Mexican themed pub in Surry Hills, I won't name it because I don't like it.  While stepping outside I had noticed that the building next door was Catmosphere, Sydney's cat cafe.  I made a mental note (and, amazingly, remembered it the next day) to visit. 

This would be an easy trip, a stroll up from the Capitol Theatre through Surry Hills.  In retrospect if I do something like this again it probably wont be in mid Summer etc etc.  By comparison with my previous journey this one was quite simple.  I had done the walk to the pub the previous night so I knew the way and I didn't have to walk under anything (except a railway bridge).

I don't know what I expected from a cat cafe but I had vague impressions of a sort of lounge room like space with cats sprawled gracefully over various surfaces and sitting in the laps of patrons.  Wrong I'm afraid.  Cats there were but they were in a large, fenced off room.  One could indeed take ones coffee into the room and enjoy a caffeine hit in the presence of felines but this actually had to be booked in advance.  For those who turned up off the street a cat free coffee in the front room plus the opportunity to press ones nose against the mesh and watch others interacting with the cats was the most that could be expected.  You can't bring your cat either as the owner sorrowfully explained to me.  Health regulations being what they are you just had to enjoy the cats that were on the premises.

I ordered my coffee and duly pressed my nose against the mesh.  The room was large and was occupied by about a dozen cats all of whom were doing their best to keep as far away from the human occupants as possible.  The unsuccessful ones were enduring grooming and stroking with a stoic dignity normally associated with indigenous cultures as their colonial oppressors take away the last patch of their tribal land.

It wasn't that it was in anyway cruel, the cats were all sleek, well fed and none of them seemed overtly upset by the goings on.  One just got the impression that the cats would have been even happier if all of these friendly, cat loving humans had simply pissed off.  I took the hint.