Day Trippers

As the number of weekends I have left in Australia dwindles, Adam and I are trying to get in the last few tourist activities in before I head back to the States. This past weekend we traveled over to Cronulla Beach, the location of recent race riots. Prior to the riots Cronulla was a very popaular and busy beach. Many of the local business have lost a lot of revenue this year and when Adam and I went to visit the beach was fairly quiet.

The 2005 Sydney race riots began with a mob confrontation which took place near the beachfront atCronulla. On December 11, 2005, approximately 5000 people had gathered in an ad-hoc protest to "reclaim the beach" from recently-reported incidents of assaults and intimidatory behaviour by individuals from certain groups of non-locals, most of whom were identified in the earlier media reports as Lebanese Muslim youths from the western suburbs of Sydney. The crowd had assembled following a widely-reported series of earlier confrontations, and an assault on three volunteer lifesavers which had taken place the previous weekend. In the week leading up to the major incident of the 11th, these confrontations and the subsequent circulation of anonymous calls (spread via mobile phone text messages and other means) to gather at the beach were the subject of much publicity and media commentary.

From the beach we travelled via ferry up to the town of Parramatta. Parramatta is a western Sydney suburb. It is located 25km of Sydney's CBD. Situated on the banks of the Parramatta River, it is a major government and commercial center, sometimes called Sydney's "second central business district". In Paramatta we took a couple of historical walks, one along the Paramatta River where there is an Aboriginal art display of the history of the area and the other in the town where there are many buildings still standing from the early 19th century. Sadly, the buildings were closed so we couldn't go in and explore which would have been wonderful.

From Paramatta we travelled to Olympic Park. While I am a huge fan of the Olympics, it's really boring to walk around a deserted sports park. That evening though a charity rugby event was being played at the Telstra Stadium and Adam and were able to get tickets. I have to say Australians do take their sports seriously. While neither of us were up on our rugby rules we had a fantastic time watching the St. George Dragons and the South Sydney Rabbitohs (I kid you not but people we waving flags of little white fluffy rabbits). While rabbits don't conjure fierce fighters the Bunnies actually came from 2 goals down to win the game 14 to 12.

The weekend came to end with a visit to Luna Park and dinner at Ripples (thanks to my beloved friends at colleagues - see photo below). The origins of Luna Park go back to Coney Island, New York, where in the late 1800’s a number of competing amusement parks sprang up. In 1903 an amusement park on Coney Island was opened and called Luna Park in acknowledgement of their successful ride. Soon Luna Parks spread throughout the world. American showmen, brothers Herman, Leon and Harold Phillips with J.D. Williams, opened Australia’s first Luna Park at St. Kilda in 1912.