 |
| First view of the Harbour bridge and Opera house |
(...by Jemma)
We took a coach to
Sydney, deciding not to stop in Canberra. As we passed through
Canberra on the coach we could see we made the right decision! The
coach journey itself wasn't actually too bad. The seats aren't as
comfortable as South America, but it was only 14 hours, which seemed
like nothing after 20+ hour journeys we'd done before. We arrived at
around 10pm, and realised we hadn't really planned how to get to the
hostel. Luckily it was quite straight forward, and after a short trip
on the light railway and after asking a few people we found our
hostel. We stayed in Eva's Backpackers in Kings Cross which was a
really nice hostel with private lockers and bedside lamps (you really
start to appreciate the little things!) We had a lovely nights sleep
and woke up all ready to see Sydney. On Saturday we had arranged to
meet Jenna's friend from Contiki, Paul, and his friend, so we set off
walking into Sydney. We walked through a big park past Wooloomooloo
harbour, and as we rounded the corner saw our first view of Sydney
harbour bridge (the coat hanger) and the Sydney Opera House. It was
one of those 'Wow! I'm actually here!' moments for us both, and I
think I took around 30 photos. We continued to walk round to Circular
Quay and saw a huge cruise ship in the Quay. There were lots of faux
aborigines playing the digoreedoo and posing with the tourists. It
reminded me of Cardiff Bay a bit, but more upmarket. We met up with
Jenna's friend Paul and went for a walk around The Rocks, which is a
very historical part of Sydney.
 |
| With Paul and his friend |
The next day we had a
lie in and then tried to find a doctors for Jemma's foot because she
was in a lot of pain at this point from a bite that had become
infected in Fiji. We found the doctors but they told us we would have
to obtain a medicare certificate first from an office in town and
that this could only be done on a week day (it was a Sunday). So
Jemma just had to bare the pain a little longer and we wandered down
to Darling harbour for a look around. By now it was mid afternoon and
we had wasted most of the day trying to sort out medical stuff. We
got to Darling harbour just in time for a massive thunder storm and
had to shelter in the cafe next to the Aquarium. I guess we sat there
for about 2 hours and didn't see much of Darling harbour in the end.
The annoying thing was that I was very scantily clad because when we
had set off that morning from the hostel it had been blazing
sunshine. This meant that when it rained on us I was absolutely
freezing and had no coat or anything to keep me warm. I sensed at
this point that I would not thank myself for running about in the
rain in shorts and flip flops but I had no choice. After two hours of
non-stop rain and sitting bored in the aquarium, we decided we would
just have to make a run for it and began the 40 minute walk back to
the hostel. Luckily it stopped raining but I think by this point the
damage had been done and all I wanted was a hot shower.
The next day we decided
to begin the feat of getting Jemma's medical card so she could see a
doctor. This was no easy task. We needed photocopies of visas and
passports which we had to buy internet credit to print from offline.
We also needed to fill in forms and were sent back and fro from
various offices, before eventually being told by one lady that due to
her heavy work load, we would not receive the medical card until 3
days later as the office had too much work to process so we should
come back in three days and Jemma could see a doctor then! Jemma was
quite happy to let this lie but by this point, having wasted a whole
half a day queuing in lines at the offices, filling in forms, running
in an out of internet cafes and printing forms, I wasn't about to be
told that I would then have to wait 3 days before the card would be
processed. After Jemma walked out the office and told me what the
woman had said to her, I calmly marched back in and said that three
days wasn't good enough, that the feet were infected and needed
urgent attention and would she kindly point me in the direction of
somebody who didn't have such a heavy workload and could help me. We
were given directions to another office in the middle of a shopping
mall and within 30 minutes, the nice lady in the next office had
sorted it all and we had the card: All we needed now was to take it
to a GP. The whole morning had been such an ordeal, I said to Jemma
that I sincerely hoped I wouldn't get ill because I didn't want to
have to go through it all again to get me a medical card.
The next day I woke up
with tonsillitis and we had to do it all again. As I wrote on my
previous blog entry, what then followed, was three days of the most
severe pain in my life – lying awake all night in bed sobbing
because I couldn't swallow. (Jemma by the way got antibiotics for her
foot off the doctor who had a 5 minute policy – if the doctor took
over 5 minutes to assess her she would be charged more so he didn't
even ask her to take her shoe off – he just said 'I am guessing you
have a nasty bite that is infected, I'll prescribe some antibiotics).
Anyway, the next day, I
somehow managed to get out of bed, crying with pain and we did the
long 40 minute walk into the city centre to get my medical card, with
Jemma practically carrying me half the way. Once we had my medical
card, we went back to the same doctors (mistake!) and she prescribed
me the weakest course of antibiotics ever to be taken once every 24
hours before bed! I was told to gargle salt water and take
paracetamol for the pain. Well I wanted something that would kick in
straight away, not to have to wait until bed! So I disregarded the
instructions and took them straight away. Not that it had any effect
whatsoever, in fact the pain increased, as did the lump in my throat.
That night I had such a fever Jemma nearly rang an ambulance
(temperature of 39 degrees!). In the morning I could barely stand up
and hadn't drank or eaten all night because swallowing was far too
painful. We went to another doctors near the hostel and were called
from the waiting room after half an hour by a lovely doctor who took
one look at me and was horrified. He couldn't believe the previous
doctor had put me on such a low dose and he immediately upped the
dose and gave me some heavy duty painkillers. He also gave me an
injection of penicillin to hurry things along. He was very concerned
and told us to come back the next day to see how I was doing. He told
me to throw the other tablets away and start the new ones (goodbye
£20 that I had just paid for that lot of tablets, hello another £20
for the next!).
The only problem was,
the antibiotics he gave me could only be taken with food and this was
just impossible. Even after the penicillin jab, the pain continued to
worsen and I couldn't eat or drink. Nevertheless I managed to bare
the pain and slip the tablets down with a sorbet. That night was the
worst pain of my entire life – I actually thought I was going to
die. I had visions of swimming pools of water that I wanted to jump
into; I was so thirsty but couldn't drink because every time I did it
felt like I was stabbing myself. I knew at this point that it must be
more serious than the usual tonsilitis because usually that goes
after a few tablets. I was also sick, probably because of the
painkillers, so any antibiotics that I did take simply came back up.
The next morning we
went back to the same doctors surgery and I was seen by a new doctor.
She couldn't believe how ill I looked and said that I was really
dehydrated and that I had all the indicators of needing to go to
casualty! So off we went to casualty, which was luckily just across
the road in the lovely St Vincents hospital and there I was seen to
by a lovely team who admitted me over night and pumped me with fluids
for 24 hours to re-hydrate me as well as IV antibiotics. They also
gave me some serious painkillers, which did numb the pain, but made
me feel really weird and gave me hallucinations. They also made me
nauseas so the nurse simply pumped some anti-nausea drugs into my
drip. And there I stayed for 24 hours and after 24 hours I could
finally swallow again! Jemma was lovely and came to visit me
regularly to give me chocolate, update me on facebook happenings and
eat my free meals.
After I got out of
hospital, we were supposed to be staying with some friends of mine in
Newcastle, just north of Sydney, but I was too weak to go. We decided
to extend our stay in Sydney by three days to try and get some
sightseeing done as we had really not seen much of the city. We
bought an open top bus ticket which took us all around the city and
to bondi beach. It continued to rain heavily on and off and Jemma
told me that the only day it didn't rain was the day I was in
hospital. We visited two museums and Jemma went to a Harry Potter
exhibition at one of them. We also took a ferry over to Manly where
we watched the world surfing championships final. And that's about
it! So in the end, not such a great experience of Sydney, but we did
see most of the major landmarks and we were lucky to have a really
nice hostel to stay in which made all the difference. On our last
night in Sydney, we saw an old friend who we had met on the salt
flats in Bolivia – Keira. She was one of the Irish girls who we had
seen on the salt flats tour, in la Paz and in the Amazon. She is now
the 3rd person we have met on 2 continents.
Sydney photos
Sydney photos
No comments:
Post a Comment