Prison fire?

Although I have paid $50 for 3 days internet I have not been able to receive anything in the room and nobody has responded to the phone messages that I have left so we have been forced to use internet stations where we can find them. When you have to use public internet it’s so much harder to find and save anything so I screwed up a bit with the Christmas lunch Cruise. I couldn’t remember which one of the many companies I finally found availability with but I did ask directions when I phoned them. They didn’t give me any as they said the information and a map would all be emailed with the confirmation. They also took my mobile number but I never received a phone call or the email confirmation, and was forced to find them with a search again on public internet. I obviously took the phone number of one I had tried earlier that was fully booked, then spent 24 hours leaving phone messages with them also without reply. We decided that the only thing we could do was walk down and catch the boat at the time they had told me and look for the boat. I am very grateful to http://www.riverboatcruises.com.au/ for accommodating us and not ruining our Christmas day.

Boxing Day morning we had to ring home early on our mobile phones briefly to wish our families a Happy Christmas because the hotel phone didn’t allow overseas calls. I took the nice picture of Claire just before we left for our walk around the harbour to find the boat and Claire said that she didn’t get many good photos of herself these days so I thought I had better publish it. Our cell block has a covered tunnel walkway that joins it to the car park and there is a tunnel walkway that joins the car park to the Harbour side shopping centre which is over three floors. Claire is yet to shop there. I caught Claire putting the Christmas blog on just before we headed off and bought a monorail day pass which does a circuit around Darling harbour area. We managed to do 3 and a half circuits so had good value from them but it was a shame that it rained all day so it was a good job that the massive Paddy’s market was covered. It also had about 3 floors above with a shopping centre and it seemed that everyone had started the sales so the crowds were out. Claire managed to find 3 pairs of knickers as we hadn’t brought enough with us expecting to be wearing swimwear most of the time. I only brought two pairs of pants which is totally inadequate and have been going commando most of the time. It’s a good job we have our own laundrette in the apartment cell.

We had intended to have lunch in the famous restaurant called, “Mum’s Thai” which is just out the back of our apartments but its shut until 10th January so we wont be trying that. While we were looking for our boat yesterday we spotted one of Claries favourite restaurants Wagamama’s along Kings Wharf so headed off to that. We had only just sat down when a cruise boat pulled up just outside that seemed rather familiar somehow called “Fusion Cruises”; whoops! It’s funny how cocking something up can sometimes, turn out better than if it had gone smoothly sometimes. The cruise that we ended up on turned out to have been my first choice when trying to find one in the first place.

Having been walking around Sydney in the rain all day we were both tired so decided on an evening in and an early night. Good job we did because we were awoken at 2am by an alarm which must have been piped into every apartment judging from the volume of it. We quickly got dressed and followed the crowd out of the fire escape that we had earlier got trapped in but this time the outside door was open. It was still raining jet most people seemed to have come out in their pyjamas and less than half were wearing shoes. The alarm eventually stopped but no officials came out to inform people of the situation and in the confusion some people were wandering back in while others walked around the building to the front. We stayed put for a while but then wandered around to the front only to see two fire engines. We also noticed that people were hanging out the windows from most floors and hadn’t even bothered to come down. The building is old, large and started out life in the wool industry and the front outside of the building is protected against change. When it was converted the rooms were arranged all around the outside so that everyone had a window to the outside world. This left a huge hole in the middle of the building that has been left open with walkways to the apartments. The main structure is thick square timbers that run vertically through the building with metal brackets supporting the adjoining beams and wooden walkways. As there are 13 floors if a fire did get going it would spread like crazy because the open centre would act like a chimney allowing the fire to spread very rapidly. There must be hundreds of separate apartments yet there are only 3 lifts supporting the lot and these are also placed in the centre chimney. I still don’t understand why they have no separate staircase that you can use as an alternative to the lifts. There is the fire escape stairs but you will have a $1000 fine if used when there is no fire and each door can only be opened from the chimney area and are locked from the fire escape. You can imagine the delays when everyone decided to go back to bed with only 3 small lifts. I again tried the fire escape walking up the stairs one flight to our floor while Claire held the door open but the door to the third floor was locked from the inside, even under fire conditions; bizarre. Others were pilling into the fire escape to go up to their floors and eventually I noticed that someone was holding open the fire door to our floor so shouted Claire and we could get back to bed.

It’s hardly surprising that we have had an alarm with this set up; it only takes someone to leave their room without their room card and they will be stuck as you can’t even use the lifts without it. All that someone in this position could do was either wait for someone else to come by with a room card and set the lift for you or use the fire escape and risk the $1000. At 2am there are few others around.