Sydney, Australia is a walking city.
It is dotted with parks and gardens, and its many harbours have been used to their fullest advantage. The Sydney Opera House is just as impressive as the pictures you see of it, and the Harbour Bridge stands proudly over the harbour. One of the adventures you can have in Sydney is climbing up to the very top of the bridge, protected by belts and ropes and a guide, and standing at the tip-top, over 400 feet above the water. We chose not to do that, although Molly and Jessie wanted to. Fortunately, the weather was drizzly most of the time we were there.
We took a boat ride around the harbour, and were amazed at how huge the bay is. You could easily spend two weeks by sailboat, exploring all the little fingers and nooks of the harbour. There are villages, shopping centers, museums, and botanic gardens placed strategically along the harbour. The buses, boats and city trains are easy to navigate. It reminded me a little of Vancouver, San Francisco, and Seattle, with a bit of Paris thrown in for atmosphere.
Before we left for Sydney, we drove to a housing development just north of Coffs Harbour, which the Customs guy told us about. There are many lots in this development; some have houses built on them, and some are yet to be sold. Each lot looks to be about 5 acres. For some reason, there are hundreds of kangaroos in this development, all hopping about freely. They seem to like the short, manicured lawns of the houses, rather than the bushy, un-tended empty lots. We were there about dusk, and the kangaroos were grazing in front of the houses, keeping a lazy eye on the traffic going past the houses. There must have been about 50 of them in front of one particular house; it looked like a flock of seagulls, really BIG seagulls, nibbling away while the sun set. It was a strange sight!
Speaking of birds, the sulfur-crested parrot is as ubiquitous around here as sparrows are in the northwest. Sometimes, a tree will have so many of them in it that the noise is unbearable as you walk by. They are big and beautiful – bright white with a soft yellow comb. We went to a botanical garden in Sydney, where the parrots and Lorikeets were tame enough to land on our shoulders and eat peanuts from our hands. There were times when the four of us each had two or three birds on our shoulders, heads and arms. If you happened to run out of peanuts, they got a little testy and kept nipping at your hands or ears, whatever was closest.
The weather here has been the biggest disappointment so far. It has been rainy, and windy, with huge seas. The surge in the marina keeps our boat tugging and dancing constantly. We are anxious to head north, but there is a 3-knot current coming south right now, and big ocean swells, as well as 30-40 knot winds. There was one pretty nice day last week where we rented boogie boards and surf boards and spent the day in the water. There is a great beach right at the marina, with good waves and a nice landing. We could hardly get Molly and Jessie out of the water – they must have been in there for 6 hours, at least!
We haven’t encountered any of the “101 things that can kill you in Australia” yet, but we have seen many of the animals we had hoped to see – some were in a nature park, but some were out in the wild. Check out the media gallery for a sampling of our first couple of weeks in this huge and beautiful country! ~ Jeanna