Post #373421 by Quiet Village Idiot on Sun, Apr 13, 2008 6:56 AM

Hey leisure master! Sorry to have taken so long in getting back to you. I've been busy with work ever since I got home, and it's only been in the past week or so that I've started to hang out here again and see what I've missed... Probably too late for your friend, though. Sorry about that.

Sydney was excellent fun, as ever, although this time I was very much wrapped up with my family, so the focus was a bit different from last time's endless beer-drinking and record hunting expeditions.

So what did I discover?

Well, incredibly enough, I never got round to visiting Outre, even though it's very close to where I was staying.

Like you say, there isn't a whole load of tiki going on. The closest thing I found to a tiki bar is the restaurant Rambutan on Oxford St, which has an Asian food/cocktails combination going on. Good food, good drinks, but not really tiki as such. I did spy a few front yard tikis in King's Cross, and then there's the huge Vanuatu slit drum in the Botanic Gardens. Too bad our digital camera gave up the ghost or I would've posted a few pictures.

I also found that the Australian Museum had a few Sepik River carvings for sale in its shop, at a much more reasonable price than the tourist shops. I bought a couple of masks and an ancestor statue.

I also did a bit of record shopping. There's a place on Salisbury Road (Camperdown) called Pigeonground that has a pretty decent selection of exotica and Hawaiian LPs. I also found a few cool things at the Vintage Record store and stumbled across a second hand bookshop in King's Cross (Bugden's Books, I believe) with a back room full of LPs to dig through. I found a few choice items here, and the shop has a record player for customers' use, if you're having difficulty making up your mind.

We made it up to the Blue Mountains for a couple of days. Being based in Katoomba, with no car and a 3-year old limited our sight-seeing options drastically, so we didn't manage to see Kanagara Walls. It was still amazing.

I did make it over to Rozelle Market, but I didn't find much. Too bad --- I remember going there on my previous trip in 2002 and finding a few cool things.

The beaches were a huge hit with my little boy, especially Bondi. He was easily the youngest kid out there, fearlessly leaping around in the surf. He now says he wants to be a surfer when he grows up!

Hopefully it won't be another six years until I go back again.