Sydney, Australia

-


Opera house and iconic green and yellow ferry, taken from our ferry back to to Milsons Point

 Our east coast express tour continued with an overnight stop in Glenwood, part way between Burnett Heads and Brisbane.  In the morning Toby had a chance to let out Mario's chickens and we played with Max, the big fluffy "guardian" dog, all the while enjoying another cool, cloudless morning in Queensland.  Our flight to Sydney was short and we arrived at our apartment in Kirribilli early evening to enjoy the views of the Harbour Bridge lit up in the night sky.  

The bridge at night, from the Mary Booth Lookout Reserve

The bridge from our apartment balcony

We only had one full day in Sydney but we made the most of it with a walk across the Harbour Bridge to a too-quick stop at the Australian Museum, a fun visit to the Policing Museum and plenty of time lazing, walking and wrestling in the beautiful Botanical Gardens.  We took the ferry back across the bay and got some great views of the Opera House.  

Hard at work in the charge room at the policing museum

Sydney Harbour from the Botanical Gardens

Ice cream by the Sunday market in Kirribilli

We did have most of another day before our 8.25pm flight to Vancouver so we wandered down in the morning sunshine to the nearby Milson Park, a small, pretty park right on the bay by the yacht clubs.  

Milson Park. Sydney is a very pleasant city, especially if you dodge the summer heat

After a late check-out we made one final stop, luggage and all, at the Maritime Museum.  We got to see around a battle ship, a replica of a 400 year old spice trading boat, and a submarine, which was the highlight.  Quite extraordinary that 60 sailors would live in this cramped tube for weeks or months at a time without seeing daylight.  Not for everyone.  And so much engineering packed in too.  Systems for the diesel engines, the electric propulsion system, the air system, as well as the missile systems and so much more.  

A replica of Duyfken, a small Dutch spice trading ship of around 400 years ago 

On top of HMAS Onslow

Food is essential to morale on a submarine

Navigating a submarine

Looks about the right size for an eight year old

One of my favourite images at the Wildlife Photography awards exhibition at the Maritime Museum

We completed our visit to the museum with a look around the Wildlife Photography awards exhibition and some of the other museum displays.  Then it was time to head to the airport where we had a few quiet hours before embarking on our 14 hour voyage across the Pacific.  I had not been looking forward to this flight, the longest I think I've ever been on.  In the event it was fine, quite comfortable, lots of good movies (The Alpinist, Last Known Coordinates, and a bit of Mary Queen of Scots, as well as an accidental second viewing of the sub-par Burn After Reading), decent food, and some occasional sleeping.  The kids were amazing, no complaining, doing their own thing and being nice to each other.  There is no denying that the screen helps but they also had a good go at sleeping and just generally handled it all very well.  Oddly we arrived in Vancouver 3 hours before we left Sydney having crossed the international date line.  Welcome home (almost) to us!                 
Good morning! Time to relive June 13th, 2022

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Alpine cycling adventure - Part II

-
Image
Day 6 - Barcelonnette to St Dalmas, 123 km (76 mi) Cols passed: Col de Cayolle (2326 m), Col de la Couillole (1678 m) Despite the brooding skies we left Barcelonnette cheered by dry shorts, confidence that we were within touching distance of our goal and enjoying the atmospheric effect of the wispy mist, high clouds and soft sunlight. Our hopes for the newly adapted route were met and surpassed as we wound our way up a stunning gorge towards Col de Cayolle. Despite a brief hailstorm as we approached the col we stayed dry and enjoyed a pit-stop and blankets amongst the snow pack on the col before negotiating over 1500 m of patchy wet descent to Guillames at 793 m. The high Alps now behind us we climbed back up through the ski resort of Valberg and on to the Col de la Couillole up at 1678 m and rolled back down to 500 m where we expected to spend the night. Our ever-supportive support team had other ideas however and let us know by way of text message that they had found a fantastic ca...
Read more

Rafting the Rio Maipo

-
Image
  Feb 5th -  Sometimes travelling is hard, and I have moaned a bit about how covid has made everything harder. But sometimes it's just pure fun.  Not to say that everything about our day out rafting was plain sailing. To begin with we had to get everyone on board (have you ever noticed how many of our idioms come from nautical activities? Ask me sometime about freezing the balls off a brass monkey...).  I enjoyed the water as a kid but I never went white water rafting until I was a fully grown person. I can see how it could be intimidating. We found Natexplora who said they ran kids trips and that was enough to sway the doubters. The fact that we ran the same route as the other six adult-only rafts on our trip was fortunately lost in the joy and thrill of the moment. There is a project to divert water from the Maipo through a hydroelectric tunnel. Apparently, this will reduce the flow of Maipo by 90%. We had heard of this scheme, and we saw these signs, although the ...
Read more

10 December days in England

-
Image
Swiss air brought us to England (Apologies for the formatting issues). My six oldest friends live in England, within around 20 miles of each other, along with their six partners and 14 children.  We haven't been to England in the winter in nearly a decade. It was unsurpsingly grey and somewhat surprisingly very dark, very early.  Ottawa is on the same latitude as Rome.  Our "true North" is suprisingly far south.  All of this English gloom was no equal to the congenial cheer that was in full flow in the run up to Christmas - the sunshine of friendship radiating through the pale fog.  We had a very smooth taxi-bus-plane-taxi trip from Chamonix back to Woking and were settled just in time to wave our generous hosts, Nick and Agnes, off to London for their Van Gogh and Shard dinner engagements to celebrate the anniversary of their first date.  We were comfortably house bound for the first couple of days awaiting what else but a covid test result.  When it...
Read more