The trip over was much easier than I had feared it would be.  I pretended to sleep for almost 6 hours, actually dozed on and off, and time passed reasonably quickly.  We reached Sydney in reasonably decent shape, and got to our hotel about 9:30 a.m.  Unfortunately we were wiped out by 8 p.m., so went to bed early - as a result missed the fabled Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade.  But that was about all the time zone shock we experienced.

We stayed in the Victoria Court Hotel, comfortable but by no means luxurious.  The staff is very friendly, location really nice, an easy walk from the botanical gardens and the waterfront.  There is a street of interesting and not too expensive restaurants a few blocks up Victoria Street (same street by name, but different character – like lower and upper Grant.  Victoria Street reminds us a lot of the French Quarter in New Orleans:  narrow street, row houses with wrought iron balconies, painted in earth tones and pastels, mature plane trees lining both sides.  It is really quite a charming street.
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 The autumn weather was wonderful.  The forecast sounded like thunderstorms and possibility of rain, and it did sprinkle on us several times while we were in Sydney, but mostly it was very pleasant, cool mornings and evenings, unpleasantly warm only for a couple of hours in the early afternoon.

The Botanical Gardens

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It was a very nice walk to the botanical gardens, along the waterfront past a navy base, then along a promontory with a large park, planted with many different species of tropical trees, including several species of fig.  Some of the figs have huge leaves like magnolias, some have much smaller leaves; they are all huge, maybe 100 or 120 foot wide and tall.  And most of them develop air roots that will eventually reach down and become new trunks.  Several of the fig species start life as a parasite on another tree then send their roots down the trunk, strangling the host tree, which eventually disappears altogether.

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The botanical garden located in the park, wrapped around a cove, is really magnificent.  We saw too many things to describe or even take pictures of.  Some of the things that really stand out are the many varieties of exotic trees, ferns, and palms, the flowers (what would it be like in the spring?) and the birds.  There were two flocks of cockatoos, tame enough to feed by hand or approach for a portrait.  There are also ibises, a couple of species of small geese, much like Hawaii’s nene bird, and some crested pigeons.

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Flying foxes (a species of large fruit-eating bat) are endangered in NSW because of loss of habitat to suburbanization – but you can hardly tell it in the botanical gardens.  There, they pose a quandary because they have become so numerous as to threaten many of the plants by stripping their fruits and otherwise damaging them.  The flying foxes actually look like foxes, with their dog-like snouts and thick reddish-brown fur; they are about the size of a housecat.  They hang from the tops of the trees in huge groups and quarrel incessantly all day long, shrieking at each other, jostling each other for space.  I tried to get a picture of one flying – silhouetted against the sky they are spectacular – but they flit too quickly from one tree to another.  LaJean thinks they look gross but I think they’re neat.

 We went back to the Botanical Garden every day – for one thing, it’s really beautiful, and also it’s more or less on the way to other places we’ve visited.  Other places that we really liked in the botanical garden are the fern garden and a huge collection of succulents.  All in all I think I’ve taken over a hundred pictures in the gardens.

Manly

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On Sunday we, along with about a million other people, took the ferry across the bay to Manly, a posh seaside suburb built on a peninsula about two long blocks wide separating the bay from the ocean.  On the ocean side is a series of beautiful sand beaches separated by rocky heads.  We walked up one of the heads a ways until LaJean got freaked out by spiders next to the trail, so we went back and watched the surfers for a while – surf wasn’t much, maybe a 2 foot break, 3 at most, and quite slow.  The beach was pretty well wall-to-wall bodies.  Many of the bodies are nearly naked – I’ve read that the southern hemisphere has 50%-80% more intense UV radiation than comparable latitudes in the north, but it doesn’t seem to bother the Sydney office workers.  (They have the highest skin cancer rate in the world; one in three will have a melanoma removed at one time or another.)  On the other hand, the Aussies who work out of doors are fanatical about hats, long sleeves, and sun block!

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In many ways the best part of the visit to Manly was the ferry trip over and back.  It is a wonderful way to see Sydney from the water.  It looks quite Mediterranean or perhaps Southern California, with the red tile roofs and high rise condos lining the shores.  Downtown is small – about the size of Portland – but with some truly spectacular buildings.  The gem of the waterfront, of course, is the famous opera house.  (The other good thing about the visit to Manly was discovering mango sorbet!)

The Aquarium

 Sydney has one of the best aquaria we've ever seen.  The seals are a huge disappointment, but the shark exhibit and the barrier reef exhibit are both fantastic.  We spent a total of over 5 hours there – took a lunch break after 3 hours then went back through.  That’s twice as much time as we usually spend in any museum, zoo, etc.  The shark exhibit is a huge tank filled with sharks, rays, and some other compatible fish, with two acrylic tunnels through it, so the fish swim both beside you and overhead.  No really huge sharks – the largest were probably about 10 feet, but one ray had a wingspan of maybe 8 feet.  Really well-chosen classical music was playing the whole time.  We would stand in one place for maybe five or ten minutes, move a few feet, then stand there again for the same time.  I think it took us well over a half hour to get through that one exhibit.  The barrier reef exhibit is similar but different.  It is a huge central tank with very nicely separated windows for viewing, and one bridge/tunnel (fish swim both overhead and beneath you, visible through a transparent floor); also classical music very tastefully chosen.  The second time through, when we got to the last viewing panel before the gift shop, there was a huge school of fish – I’m not sure the species, sorry – swimming around and around behind the panel, in a kind of ballet.  Occasionally another, bigger fish would come up, swim through, join the ballet for a while and then swim on.

The Taronga Zoo
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Tuesday, our last full day in Sydney, we went to the zoo.  There are many things to like about the Taronga zoo, (“The zoo with the view.”) built on a steep waterfront hillside across the bay from Sydney.    We focused mostly on exhibits we can’t see in Portland:  Australian mammals (a really fun walk-through kangaroo exhibit, wallabies, koalas – you can’t touch them but you can stand right next to them for photos – platypuses, etc., a fantastic reptile collection (I had to take a picture of the most poisonous reptile on earth:  Australia has 11 of the top 15), several aviaries, etc.

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Naturally I took several pictures of LaJean with kangaroos and koalas.  This little fella seemed pretty disgusted that she didn't have any handouts for him.
 
 
 
 

Overall

Sydney was an excellent starting and ending point.  We could have enjoyably spent far more time here, and hope to do so on a later trip.  It is a lovely, charming city, the moreso because of its miles upon miles of waterfront.

Next:  Stage 2:  Kangaroo Island

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Last updated September 15, 2002
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