Timber!

After leaving Hong Kong I spent three days in Sydney. It was a great time but not really anything to write about - yes, I saw the Sydney Harbour Bridge and it was amazing to actually be there and sure, I went to Bondi Beach and it was postcard perfect - but my Sydney experience was very standard backpacker fare. My next destination, the suburb of Cronulla, is in some ways far more interesting.

Cronulla's harsh sounding name paints the picture of an insignificant suburb, a place of tedious commutes and kids returning from university to boredom and nostalgia. The Skokie of Sydney. However, two factors distinguish Cronulla from its forgettable counterparts. Firstly, it has a huge, wonderful beach with fine yellow sands and waves crash landing from the Pacific. Conveniently, my hostel is barely five minutes walk from the beach. Secondly, something notable once happened there. In 2005, a group of Middle Eastern men attacked two teenage lifeguards on Cronulla Beach, which sparked violent racially motivated and alcohol fuelled riots on the streets. For a short time, the Cronulla Riots made the suburb the focus of Australia.

On my first morning in Cronulla I left the hostel at 6.45AM, for reasons of neither beach nor rioting. I was off to a timber yard. Upon my arrival at the hostel I chatted to the owner about finding work, several hours later he gave me the phone number of someone who needed a worker, and five minutes later I had arranged work at the timber yard. The business is a small one with just the owner, one full time employee, and for today a hard working but potentially useless Brit who never worked with wood at school because I skipped technology classes to play tennis. My first few hours were spent moving various pieces of wood around the yard. It was straightforward but fairly hard work and made for a good workout, which was fine with me as I like both hard work and exercise. Then, I was handed a nail gun and shown how to put together wooden lattices before commencing their assembly myself. Less than two hours later (during which the safety earphones proved useful when Call Me Maybe came on the radio), I had completed ten lattices. After nailing the final nail of the tenth lattice, I was rather pleased with myself; I had never felt so constructive! A large order had come in for wooden lattices, and here I was, in Australia, fulfilling the order!

After completing a further seven lattices I was starting to get tired. Luckily, it was 3.30 and time to go. Legs and arms aching, all I wanted to do was lie on the beach - and that is exactly what I did.

Cronulla Beach - the perfect place to unwind after a day at the timber yard.