sydney fish market
One of the first things a novice in Sydney normally goes through is the Holy Tourist Trinity – opera house, bridge, fish market. A day or two upon arrival Down Under, we felt compelled to take a turn, too. I still remember our first (and endless) bus ride along the Northern Beaches, I remember that we liked Harbour Bridge very much and were dismayed by the Sydney Fish Market.
As per popular advice, we left the car at home and went for public transport. The idea was to spare money by avoiding the painful parking charges in the city, which we did. What we didn’t spare at all, however, was time. The bus trip stretching over 45km lasted about 3 hours, because the vehicle stopped in what seemed to be every two minutes.
Being an avid reader and having a wild imagination since childhood, I envisioned the fish market to be like something from a Scheherazade’s Tale. Water, schooners and wooden stales near which weather-beaten sea-wolfs are taking snuffs and selling their catch of the day. Based on the countless online reviews I had reviewed, all left by triumphant tourists, I was impatient to dive into the atmosphere of this magical place.
Now, I am not saying the market was bad but it’s just not that romantic. It was small and overflowing with tourists, there were long queues everywhere and a profound smell. Oh well, I retract the last note as it is a fish market after all, not a floristry.
On the other hand, the items on display were amazing, especially for a person like me who has a zero fish culture. Shoving people on my way I wandered the stalls and excitedly photographed the fish corpses. Blue, red, barbed, green, elongated, tentacled, jagged – an unimaginable variety of fish, crustaceans, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and other sea krakens. The prices seemed very reasonable to me as well but given how bad is my understanding of finances, I don’t claim credibility.
Of course now, a couple of years later, when we are more Australian than all Australians, we just like them go to the Fish Market for 15 minutes in earliest morning, looking down on everyone who photographs dead fish. In an ideal world we would have been there every day as we live close and we love sea food but in reality we go less and less often because they sprinkle everything with sulphites (or other preservatives) still in the fishing boat, which makes me inflate like a balloon fish and brings me other, more serious problems.
From all the photos we made on this very first Sydney sightseeing day, I loved the one inside Harbour Bridge as it gave a never-seen perspective. The Opera House is great but even the fish in the fish market have seen million pictures of it so we accentuated on small unpopular streets, gigantic ficus trees and creepy ibis bird faces.
