Travelled Exmouth to Perth on a Propeller plane – everyone else’s first trip on one.  Then after a long wait at Perth Domestic Terminal – long cross-continent flight to Sydney.  Immediate impressions of back to city life – noise, lights etc. 11 pm on a Thursday.  Staying near Central Station on the 17th floor of an apartment hotel block.  A step down from the Novotel but comfortable and clean!


Suffering mild jet lag from the Perth-Sydney flight.  Ridiculous given the trials ahead! Manage to get up and out and leave Janet, Alice and Jack sleeping, then looking for breakfast – will meet them later.  I head out for the Northern Suburbs on the train from Central Station – fortuitously just a few mins walk from the apartment at the southern end of George Street.  I’m on my way to meet Sandy Schuck and Matthew Kearney at the Kuring-Gai Campus of the University of Technology of Sydney who’ve written about DV in Education and might just be one of only a handful of people who’ve actually cited a paper of mine!  Ridiculously happy to be sitting upstairs on a train with an upper deck over the Harbour Bridge, sipping a casppucino.  Sydney now feels like somewhere where people live and do things, not just a place where the likes of me gawp at the majestic bridge and Opera House.  It’s cool this morning, low cloud cover and rain from the night before.  As the train climbs through the northern suburbs, I get glimpses of huge houses, apartment blocks and sudden bays.  It’s a different view of the city from last time and closer to the Melbourne  experience of having something to do here.

Arrive in Lindfield and find the Kuring-Gai campus after a ride on a 565 bus.  Then locate Sandy’s office in the labyrinth of the Faculty of Education.  But she’s not there.  Just as I am about to give up I turn to ask a woman coming down the corridor where she is.  IN fact this is Sandy and she turns out not to be expecting me. The second Potter diary mess- up – hadn’t quite sealed the deal on email.  But she is great – very friendly and welcoming – so is her colleague Matthew .  Talk awhile about all the projects we’ve been engaged in and mutual friends in ICT and Media in Ed.  Very relaxed – nice lunch in Lindfeld with Sandy’s sister and two colleagues called John and Ann.

John gives me a ride back into Sydney and I catch up with the others who have breakfasted royally at a local café and then enjoyed the Powerhouse Museum.  We wander around Sydney, catching up on the sights from five years ago.  Jack didn’t remember too much from five years ago, Alice a little more.  Wandered through Darling Harbour and caught the ferry back round from the Aquarium to Circular Quay.

Can there be a better located city anywhere in the world?  It is so beautiful from the harbour, views to the Opera House, back across to the bridge.  We spend ages fussing over photos and angles and it’s all very difficult to capture in a picture.  Get the commuter train back up to Central and feel the thrill of the double decker train one more time!