Solo in Sydney* or: Getting My Groove Back

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a pulse will not be in want of attention in a cocktail bar. I have no idea how I’d forgotten this. But I had…

Over the course of a “career” not so much chequered as positively gingham, but dominated by language and creative stuff, one of few constants has been writing about bars, cocktails, bartenders and combinations thereof.

So as the witching hour when economics moves me from travelling mama to digital nomad mama approaches (accelerated by the prices in Oz), I’ve dipped a tentative toe back into the world of paid writing.

More specifically, an old, old friend and quondam employer who has asked me to identify, write up and take the odd shot of the top bars in Sydney and Melbourne. Z? He’s frolicking in saltwater pools outside Cairns with his dad.

So here I am, in Sydney. Solo. Bouncing around cocktail bars and landmarks with a notebook and a camera as I did rather a lot from age 24 until Z arrived on the scene two years later.

And how does it feel?

Pretty damn good, actually. Not just because thanks to the climate there’s a better class of gentleman here than in the UK. Not simply because the boy, whose company I enjoy immensely, does (appropriately) tend to function as the walking, talking equivalent of bromide in the tea. Not only for the total freedom of movement…

It’s partly the camera.

My Sony Cybershot TX-5 proved, guttingly, not as waterproof as the literature claims approximately forty-five minutes after we arrived in the wilds of Eastern Halmahera, three days’ travel from the nearest decent camera emporium, to trek successfully in pursuit of nomadic hunter-gatherers.

But even before then, I’d been hoping to upgrade to a more serious camera, one where I could play with depth of field, colour, motion blur, angles and the like…

I settled on the Canon EOS 550D T2ni (Rebel T2). And bouncing around with a camera that actually does roughly what you want it to do when you want it to do it (and will, I am sure, do far, far more once I’ve got to grips with white balance and exposure and acquired a prime lens) feels nice.

Having great drinks in some of Australia’s best bars feels, well, pretty great, actually. They make good drinks here. They genuinely do.

There’s also something about walking off a plane with a brief to get a grip on a big city, and exploring a city with a specific urban purpose that’s, well, really, really fun. Last time I did this, I think, was in Barcelona, over a decade ago, though I did a chunk of Vegas solo in 2003…

Sydney I approached, I have to say, with a certain anxiety. Not so much because I’ve found Australia challenging, though I have. It’s never been on my bucket list, we’re here for family more than travel per se and it’s *incredibly* expensive, leaving me, largely, dependent on the wonderful generosity and hospitality of a range of family members.

It’s not that I have any anxiety about being a solo female traveller. Aged 19, I hitched solo around apartheid South Africa, a baptism of fire, bordering on insanity, which makes me fairly hard to scare.

You know: “You are safe from those kaffirs in my truck, lady!!! See, I have a gun right here!”…

Or: “You need to leave this bar right now, girl! That man is dangerous… Oh, you’ve been trying to leave?… No, like I said, the taxi’s broken. You’re going to have to walk… No, it’s not safe to stay upstairs, the locks are no damn good… Can’t help, you, sorry girl…”

Or: “Yeah, fucking great Swaziland green! Woooo!… Can you just take the wheel for a bit?… Just hold it straight while I get a bit of sleep, there’s a bend in 10k you need to look out for… Yeah, roadtrains have a load of gears, but you’re not going to need the stick out here…”.

More seriously, as a feminist who travels, I can’t reiterate often enough that any woman anywhere in the world outside the most vicious war zones is far more likely to come to harm at the hands of a male partner, ex-partner, relative or friend than a stranger.

It’s more the, well, the age thing. I’m 36, which, my spawn tells me, is middle-aged, and, having passed the halfway mark of my three score years and ten in April, he’s on the nail.

And the living out of a backpack thing…

Sydney is Australia’s only world city (though other cities have their different charms, which I’ll be posting about soon). Which carries with it a certain, well, wardrobe pressure if one is to gain access to a certain type of bar.

Y’know. Not the type that knocks out jugs of beer and greasy, overdone meat products of allegedly marsupial origin to backpackers. I wouldn’t go to one of those joints in London (or Bangkok), and I’m buggered if I’m going to one in Sydney.

All the same… I have carried mascara, blusher, nail polish, remover and lippie tens of thousands of kilometres over the last ten months. But I can count on my fingers the numbers of times I’ve used them.

Sydney girls all wear makeup. A lot of makeup. Plenty of London women eschew foundation in summer and some wear no makeup at all. Sydneysiders are also in possession of wardrobe items, especially shoes, which don’t need to pass the travel tests of light, compact, uncreasable, hardwearing and multifunctional.

Further, most of them can afford to shop in places that aren’t Target (say “Targé”, as “Primarché” for Primark) or secondhand stores. I would hazard a guess that most of them attend a hairdressers rather than highlighting with lime juice, cutting with nail scissors and styling with their small son’s hair wax…

Now, I wouldn’t say I haven’t been out in the last year. Z and I took a sophisticated trip to Vertigo, in Bangkok, and dined in style in a revolving restaurant in Penang.

We’ve been to some genuinely good restaurants in Ubud (Bali), Vientiane (Laos – and, no, I’m not joking), Penang (Malaysia), Manila and Kuching (though I had my best meal in well over a year at Duke at the Flinders Hotel last night).

We (and that does sometimes mean both of us) have been force-fed rice wine on a range of exotic cultural occasions. I’ve checked out the nightlife in Kuching (the capital of Sarawak, in Borneo), Kapit (upriver in rural Borneo) and Tobelo, Halmahera (the brothel capital of its region).

In none of these places, however, did I have to encounter the critical gaze of what tradition dictates I refer to as clipboard Nazis (though working the door of a trendy bar or club is an *extremely* skilled job), while sporting Targé sparkly, erm, thongs, and a camera bag in lieu of a handbag.

And, for most of the year, my wardrobe decisions have been based on two simple questions:

1) What body parts do I need to cover?
2) What do I have that’s clean?

(Like any good traveler, every item in my wardrobe bar the party frock can be combined with and layered over others.)

You can, perhaps, imagine the transition…

Anywise. My wardrobe, extended in consultation with my lovely mother at some of Adelaide’s gorgeous vintage/secondhand clothes shops for a price of $65, and in consultation with my wallet at Target in Melbourne CBD (apparently the only clothing outlet open after 6pm in the run-up to Christmas) at a price of $50, has held up OK for Melbourne. I opted for boho Darlinghurst over the more chichi city bars on my first night here in Sydney.

Tonight, the last Saturday before Christmas, is, in fact, the single worst time of year to take the measure of the city’s posher joints. But my flight’s on Monday, not everywhere opens on Sunday, and a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

So I’m sitting here, weirdly, sipping Flat White in an internet cafe opposite Central Station, and hovering between two worlds. A slice of my old life, and a slice of my new one.

The plan for today? Wash smalls and a couple of tops in hostel sink then drape them, classily, to dry over my bunk. Purchase foundation or Touche Eclat, new black mascara, razor, and, conceivably, red lipstick and eyeliner. Faint with horror at the cost thereof…

Do a little paid writing work and sorting out of photos. Don vintage/second-hand frock, accessories by Targé, makeup by whatever the equivalent of Superdrug is and camera bag by cousin in Adelaide. Then brave the door police at the capital’s glitzier bars…

I’ll keep you posted.

But what about you? How do you pack for smart restaurants and bars when you’re travelling light and/or longterm? Do you even go? (I’d always rather stay in the cheapest clean place and eat at the best place, which is by no means always the most expensive.)

What are your best tips for a wardrobe that runs from urban hotspots to trekking knee-deep through rivers? I’d love to hear…

*: Most of the photos are from Melbourne. Sorry ’bout that…