Sydney

It's been a great week here in the beautiful harbor city, Sydney. I arrived last Wednesday and had a fun little plane experience.

Look it's Sydney.


And look, it's the airport. It's not usual that you see the airport like this when you thought you were about to land. We were pretty close to touching down, when the plane suddenly gained a lot of speed and altitude. Apparently there was a plane on the runway we were supposed to land on, or maybe it was because I had my camera on and therefore using an electronic device.

Our second attempt was uneventful, thankfully. Took a train into the city and then a ferry to the suburb of Manly. across the harbor from Sydney. Thanks to Stuart, I had made contact with an expat Scot, Sam, and his partner, Allison, and they offered up their spare bedroom to me for the duration of my stay. They actually lived in another small suburb called Balgowlah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balgowlah,_New_South_Wales). Here are the first few pics of Sydney and a couple of pictures of Sam and Allison and their place.

The Wharf at Circular Quay where all the ferries leave for various parts of the harbor.


La Puebla, home for a week.


Unit 1, to be exact.


Who's this friendly guy?


It's a Huntsman spider and this one is below average in size.


Sam and Allison (actually this picture and the next couple were on the last night in Sydney when we ate at Ribs and Rump, but I wanted to introduce you to these fine people early on)


Damn that's a lot of meat. I only ate half and still had a terrific stomache that night.


Back at the pad, we were all approaching overload from the dinner.

Sightseeing around the harbor was the order of the day for Thursday and Friday. Thursday, after a late morning and a slow laundry, I managed to get into the city around 3 pm or so. It had been recommended to me to check out the aquarium and adjoining wildlife center... who am I to pass up a perfectly good recommendation. So here are pictures from a little bit of Sydney, the Aquarium and Wildlife Center. http://www.sydneyaquarium.com.au/ ttp://www.sydneywildlifeworld.com.au

Main street in Manly


The Manly beach


One of the mighty Sydney ferries


Awww, downtown Sydney. (you may notice some annoying specks in several of my pictures. I believe my lenses inside the camera are a bit dirty. I'm not sure how to go about cleaning them and it's very irritating.)


One of the many obligatory Opera House shots


Aboriginal band, doing there thing


Lots of big ass spiders in Australia, lots.


Getting friendly with a stick insect. Looked good enough to eat. I'm sure in Thailand that won't be a joke.


Another monster spider.


Rhino Beetle. Freaking looking thing.


A very nervous lizard. I'm sure he would have loved to eat that kids arm.


Pretty interesting, but I guess when bats are mammals it may not be as surprising.


Koalas!


More Koala


Roos! Granted they're in an enclosure, but still...


Lazy ass Kangaroo.


Cassowary. Second largest bird in the world and they've been known to kill humans with their 12 inch claws. Freaky thing on their head that scientist still aren't sure about. http://www.wettropics.gov.au/pa/pa_casso.html


Wombat. These guys look slow, but can get up to 40 km/h


Wallaby


Looks fake, but it's not. That's a live croc. I guess they like to just sit there and chill with their mouth open.


In the aquarium now, cool jelly fish.


In one of the underwater glass enclosures.


Not sure, but cool looking.


Manta Ray attached to the top of the glass walkway.


Shark, obviously.


Shark closer and a wierd thing in the corner that looks like an eye but isn't.


Super cool ray shark, body of a shark but the head of a ray.


close up.


Here's a video of one of the large tanks they had.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yf1aqkYIFA



Walking back to the ferry I felt like I was at home.

And I saw a few skateboarders doing some cool tricks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72bWPsYSaEA

On Friday I took the obligatory harbor boat tour. I took this tour last time I was here and really enjoyed it. This time I went for the slightly cheaper version hosted by the Sydney Ferries and, though it was still nice, I enjoyed the other tour better. The other tour I went on was on a nicer boat and it had a live tour guide. This tour was on, what felt like, one of the normal ferries and the narration was a recorded track that they sometimes had trouble synching up correctly with our location. Regardless, it was still a nice couple of hours on the water and I was able to remind myself how beautiful the harbor is and how expensive it would be to live on the water here.

Before the harbor pictures, I have to mention the streetshow where I somehow became a participant. I had about an hour to kill before the tour so I started to walk around the Circular Quay area near the wharf. There was some street performer that was starting to set up his act, but he was mumbling into his wireless mic comments about hating his job and not getting any respect and it basically just sounded like he was complaining. So I stood off to the side a little bit to see how things developed. It turns out that he was waiting for exactly someone like me to come along. He asked me my name and beckoned me over to the rope he had set up defining his show border. He basically encouraged me to be his first audience member. From there is didn't take long for him to harass other passerbyers (sp?) into becoming part of his crowd. It was sort of funny, he spent a good 20 minutes just drumming up an audience then spent the next 25 mintues setting up his very short act. I saw a couple other acts in the same location and it seemed to be the same with all of them. Bruce, that's his name, needed some "assistants" for his show so, being one of the lucky first comers, he chose me and several other guys. For our first task three of us threw him juggling knives. The first two guys basically just threw the knives to him while he kept on talking up his act, I actually threw the final knife to start part 1 of the act, which was just a simple knife juggling routine. The second part was more impressive, but still seemed a little limited for the preparation. His gimick was to lay down, on his stomach, onto a bed on nails about 2 foot on a side, which was suspended above the ground on a pole. While laying that he juggled flaming clubs. My fellow assistants and I were given the task of holding ropes at four corners to stabilize the pole while he juggled. The thing I found interesting, and sort of annoying, but I guess fairly necessary if they want to make a living at street performance, was his request for $5 donations from each person in the audience. Or if you couldn't spare $5 then he would be happy with gold coins ($1 or $2 coins). Now I undertand that they need to get paid, but after talking everything up for an hour and then having two fairly simple seeming acts I thought it was a bit cheesy. Seeing two other acts by different performers showed me that that is just the way things are done.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from Bruce's performance.

So, this is the crowd that Bruce (and I) had managed to get together for his hour of fame.


Deep concentration and wondering why I'm taking pictures instead of holding the rope. I thought I had a picture of him actually juggling, but I guess not.

Pictures from the harbor tour:

Another shot of the Opera house on the way to the wharf for the tour.


That's actually me...not someone else.


Onto the harbor tour, the world famous Harbor Bridge in the background. I had thought about doing the bridge climb, but it was pretty expensive and they wouldn't let you take your camera with you.


Amazing houses along the waterfront.


hmmm....more amazing houses


and beaches


and a big freighter heading out to the open ocean


went under the Spit Bridge followed by several sailboats



Really amazing houses.


more of the same


There's actually a house in the middle bottom, almost completely covered in foliage.


cool sailboat.


Cooler catamaran


Sydney was well proctected during time of war, there are gun emplacements in the cliff wall.

After the harbor tour I spent most of the rest of the evening chilling in the botanical gardens with a bottle of wine and my book. Yeah, more gardens, but these ones are fairly unique. They have a resident population of Grey-headed Flying-foxes (Pteropus poliocephalus)

http://www.sydneybats.org.au/cms/index.php?id=13,74,0,0,1,0, also called fruit bats. Everyday hundreds of bats hang out in the trees (no pun intended) and then leave in a fairly mass exodus around dusk. When I first heard about them I thought "ok, a few bats, whatever" but these things are monsters! The average sized bat body was at least the size of an American football and probably even larger. And they were everywhere. So here are some pictures of the bats and some more spiders and a friendly cockatiel.

Here's another street performer juggling while balancing on a bicycle.


cicada, I think.


The awsome fruit bats.


Several webs with loads of big ass spiders


I wanted to get a drink but this bastard wouldn't let me.


The bats take flight at dusk.


More of the bats at night.


The bridge at night.


The Opera House at night.

Allison was gone for the weekend camping, so on Saturday, Sam and I hung out with another Scot named Ian and attempted our luck at fishing. Luck not so good. We saw plenty of fish, but nothing wanted to sink it's flesh into our willing and able hooks. Sam did catch a flounder, but it was a bit on the small side. Ian was kind enough to take the longer route home and drive up to a nice reserve overlooking the coast at the West Head Lookout of of Ku-Ring Gai National Park (http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/parks.nsf/parkContent/N0019?OpenDocument&ParkKey=N0019&Type=xo) Here are a couple pics from fishing and the lookout:

Here's Ian and Sam fishing.


And Sam's one measly catch.


The view from the park and Westhead. The town on the spit there is called Palm Beach, one of at least two Palm Beaches in Australia.


Looking north from West Head at some awesome coastline.


Ian, Sam, and I.


MMMMM.......Bush Turkey

Monday I was finally able to wake up early (~6:45) and head out of town a little bit to visit the famed Blue Mountains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Mountains.) It took me around 3.5 hours to get there by bus, ferry, and train, but it was definitely a worthwhile trip to see this beautiful area. The Blue Mountains get there name from the bluish haze that surrounds the hills. This is apparantly caused by the interfence of the sunlight with the oils put off by the many eucalyptus trees. The town of Katoomba is the main starting point for most Blue Mountain adventures. Since I didn't get as early a start as I should have, I only had a few hours to explore. I chose to purchase a "package" deal for a trolley ride around the town and three ride tickets for the attractions at a place called Scenic World (http://www.scenicworld.com.au/.) Scenic World is basically the location of an old coal mine that has been converted into a tourist attraction with several modes of transportation down into the valley (15 times older than the grand canyon, according to the skyway operator) and some boadwalked nature walks. I was feeling a little more adventerous and a little less social, so I took a walk to the otherside of the canyon to a place called ruined castle. It was a little over 3 hours return at a vigourous pace and a nice walk in a beautiful location. I really didn't have much time left after the walk so I caught a train back into the city and 3.5 hours later I was back home in Balgowlah. One note on the the train systems here...Why, why, why don't they have these sorts of systems on the west coast of the states??? It's so convenient and way, way better than all these people of the roads in their cars. I was able to get two hours out of town into the wilderness area via a train that ran every hour. Stupid tranist authorities in America..... Ok, enough rant, here a several pictures from the Blue Mountains and a couple of video links.

First look at the Blue Mountains.


The one saving grace of the Skyway tram was the glass floor that had some sort of electric fogging stuff on it. Before.


After.


The scenic rail ride.

Here's a video going down the rail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qnZQ69-bS8



yeah, don't leave infants on the seat beside you. I'm glad they must have dumb people in Australia too.


Me with the Three Sisters in the background.


Scenery along my walk.


Typical shot of the trail.


The view from the ruined castle looking out away into the other valley.


Looking down along the valley.


Looking back towards where I'd come from (the bluff on the left hand side.)


Posing, semi-nude at the top of the rocks. For some reason I didn't get a good picture of the actual rocks that I'd climbed up. I guess I was tired and sort of anxious to get back to catch the last tram out from the bottom of the canyon.


More blue mountains from the rocks.


A view from back at Scenic World when the clouds started coming in.


Directly in the middle, in the distance, is a little lump, that's where I walked to earlier that day.

Here's a video of us going up the tram.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpXBe8q7UXI



A closer and better look at Three Sisters.


Mount Solitary. (or solitary mountain, I can't remember)


Me and the sisters again.


This was the "trolley" that took us around town and out to the canyon edge.


Artsy fartsy on the train back into Sydney.

Sunday was pretty much a do nothing day where I updated my last blog and watched a fair amount of the Australian Open tennis matches.

Yesterday Tuesday, was another do nothing sort of day, but I did get laundry done and caught up on my Journal and I took Sam and Allison out to dinner (as I mentioned earlier). So now I'm in Byron Bay. I was looking forward to it, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe if I were 25, but the backpackers I'm staying at seems like a giant party of college kids. I don't think I'm up to that sort of scene anymore, so I might move south a little bit to Lennox Head in a day or so, where it's supposed to be a bit quieter. Friday is "Australia Day", a celebration of the first time Captain Cook came to Australia. That should be interesting.

Peace