Australia, Day Three: A Climb, A View, and a Walk

One thing I really love about this gig is that it allows me to be the ultimate tourist.  The kind of tourist I roll my eyes at when I'm out "experiencing the culture" and "living like a local."  The kind of tourist that does things like climb the Sydney Harbor Bridge and take silly pictures at the top.

Oh my goodness, it was AWESOME.

Until recently, I had no idea that this whole BridgeClimb thing existed.  I got an email about it from my director a few weeks before the trip, and I think I replied something like, "Sweet, sounds good!"

What I should have replied is:  "OHMIGOSH REALLY WE'RE GONNA DO THAT THAT IS SO COOL I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!"

Hindsight is always 20/20, am I right?

The Sydney Harbor Bridge is almost the longest steel arch bridge in the world (if New York hadn't built one 6 centimeters longer).  It's the longest in the Southern Hemisphere, though, so we'll just stick with that.  Either way, this thing is tall; it towers 44 stories high over the harbor.

BridgeClimb came into being 15 years ago, but since it was the first such thing in the world, it took almost a decade to realize.  When you see this operation in action, it's actually shocking it took only decade, because it is a SERIOUSLY well engineered and thought out deal.  If you're gonna take over 3 million tourists up and over an iconic landmark, you'd better make sure the safety involved is Awesome.

And that they did.

It's crazy.  Not only are you tethered a metal cable running along the bridge the entire time but everything on your body is tethered to you (and therefore the cable and therefore the bridge).  You would have to try--like really try--to drop something off the bridge while you're climbing.  And if you fell, well, it could only be assumed a suicide because of the effort involved.

First, you are given a breathalyzer test to ensure you aren't inebriated.  Smart.

Then, you are given a (stylish) regulation jumpsuit.  On the jumpsuit goes a belt with a whole bunch of hooks and pockets and cables attached.  And then they supply you with a handkerchief (in case of the sniffles) that hooks and clips around your wrist, a baseball cap that hooks on to your suit, a fleece (in case it's cold) that hooks to your back in a pouch that is sewn into the jacket, and even special sunglasses that attach to a cable on your suit.  They even have an intricate system of screws and cables and harnesses that allow film crews (like ours) to take cameras up top (which is usually forbidden).

It's impressive.

The actual climb was crazy cool.  We took the path through the bottom level of the bridge, up a ladder of sorts to the apex, and then back down.  Climbing through a commuter bridge, with traffic rushing underneath you, is a rush.

And then the view.  Oh, the view.  You guys:  Sydney is a gorgeous city.

Throughout it all, our guide, Richard (pictured below), was kind of the best. guide. ever.  This man was not only afraid of heights before he took this job, he's also afraid of birds (which, as you can imagine, live in the bridge).  But he's a phobia-tacklin', life-is-Awesome kinda guy, and it was just so much fun to be in his care for an afternoon.  We couldn't have hit the guide jackpot more.

If I can leave you with one thing from this whole praise-filled post: Do the Sydney BridgeClimb if you come to this city.  It's expensive, I'll warn you, but it really is a super Awesome once-in-a-lifetime, go-ahead-be-a-tourist thing to do.  Worth it.

As if that wasn't enough coolness for the day, we finished off Day Three with that Aboriginal heritage walking tour I told you about on Day Two.  The late afternoon was spent walking along Sydney Harbor, learning the old Aboriginal names of places from the Gadigal tribe (I wish I could remember some of them, but you'll have the pleasure of hearing me try to pronounce them in the videos), and what the harbor may have looked like 300 years ago before "first contact," or colonization.

Gabby, our guide, dropped a lot of really interesting knowledge on me throughout the walk, but an important take home fact for me was that the Aboriginal people have been here in Australia for perhaps up to 60,000 years.  In the Sydney Harbor area, they know people were living here for at least 8,000 years before Europeans landed.  The country of Australia is just a tiny blip at the end of a very, very long history for this piece of land.  It's crazy to think about.

Ugh, there's just so much learning to be done in this wide, wide world.  I feel like my head is going to explode sometimes.  I love it.