Sydney

Saturday and no work for the young so we all scramble up late.  I think we are still on Perth time or Dubai or London time, whatever, we seem to go into a deep sleep at about 3 in the morning and are oblivious of time.  However, we all take off for the Sydney Fish Market,( see pics,) which is the greatest fun, absolutely buzzing with every nationality, run by the Chinese, it has oysters in stacks, closed and being opened by speedy Chinese, and open in trays and in every size.  There are every kind of prawn, of wet fish, and poor live crabs hissing as a hand goes out towards them.  The best thing is that it doesn't smell of fish.  It is also a great eatery, people have plates piled high with mussels and abalone and sushi and shrimp and lobster mornay plus noodles and chips and children have handfuls of battered this and that.  We have a little something, Soph soup, George pizza, us, a plate of bits of fish, not sure if it is lunch or breakfast, but very good coffee with it and all the while people are still piling in.  Apparently it is open 24 hours a day and the Chinese are bussed in to run it in buses.  Then we go on to the Australian Museum where there is an exhibition of photographs taken between 1921 and 1923 in Papua New Guinea where George was posted.  It makes us realize that there are a lot of communities which we, the civilized have tried to change and that it hasn't always been a good thing. We leave and go on for a swim on Shark Beach, it has a net round it to keep us apart, we feel we need a bit of exercise because we have got a bag of every kind of fish delicacy for supper.  We eat not all of it, our eyes have been bigger than our stomachs and then watch Blood Diamond.  Am  left with uncomfortable feeling, part oyster but also a sense of having pillaged the sea and watching this film that our pillage as hunters and explorers has had some nasty results.  Am reminded of the story of the King who, whilst hunting comes across a man who has a pomegranate orchard.  The man squeezes a pomegranate and out comes pints of juice.  The king turns to his chancellor and says, these pomegranates are wonderful producers, we should tax them.  Oh yes your majesty, says the chancellor and smacks a tax on, VAT probably, then they depart.  A few years later they return, ask for juice and this time it takes lots of pomegranates to make a pint.  On enquiring why, the King is told that the reason is that greed for money has reduced the power of the pomegranate to provide.