Australasia!

Then I spent several hours wandering around the Royal Botanic Gardens.

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August 2

It’s DECEMBER now and I forgot to put in this last dayNow a ride over to Manley, across the Sydney bay.

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((It’s the wee hours of the 5th now and I’m trying to sleep. There is still the last day to put in and proof-reading would be good.))

The seat gods were in a good mood. I had an empty seat and the guy on the other end had an empty seat too. We were Happy Campers!

All the stories are in chronological order now.

hum bug; i5; intersecting roads at roadhouse; english breakfast; whitefellas; Toast-butter-jam-peanut butter; Chinese noodles; airplane lunch; chicken and chips

I’M GETTING READY TO GO HOME! There’s still the rest of this text to finish and my last day to put in (Manly and the Botanical Garden) – which might not be for awhile!

August 1

Dawn from my window. (So as not to mislead, I’m in an attic room and I do have to get up and stand in the dormer to get this splendid view.)

These are the four blocks I walk from my place to Circular Quay, one block behind me and three ahead.

I’m in the bus now for this shot, going for a tour that will give me a few hours in the UNESCO World Heritage Blue Mountains.

But first a ton of pick-ups and look, it’s the bridge!

Painted in June 2016, from the Daily Telegraph: “Artist Matt Adnate’s mural is of Wiradjuri elder Jenny Munro, founder of the Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy, and an advocate for Aboriginal housing rights for four decades.”

Why are the Blue Mountains blue?

What wiki says: “The tinge is believed to be caused by Mie scattering which occurs when incoming light with shorter wavelengths is preferentially scattered by particles within the atmosphere creating a blue-greyish colour to any distant objects, including mountains and clouds. Volatile terpenoids emitted in large quantities by the abundant eucalyptus trees in the Blue Mountains may cause Mie scattering and thus the blue haze for which the mountains were named.”

A closer-up view of the water fall.

The Three Sisters. Our driver-guide told us the story as if he was doing a Shakespearian soliloquy. It didn’t end so well for The Three Sisters.

Our driver-guide. I got to sit in front and we had a jolly good time. He was a lively and entertaining story teller.

We drove through and around Olympic Park from the Sydney 2000 Olympics and it was great. All the venues are still in use and everyone I talked to loved it.

It reminded me of my experience in 1984 – I loved it, and now we get to have it again for which I’m very glad. Eleven years. I’ll be well into my Next decade.

At the end of the tour they dropped us off at a ferry stop for the ride back to Circular Quay or Darling Harbor and everyone was to find their own way back to their accommodation.

Here we have four dentists from Myanmar! I’ve never met anyone from Myanmar outside Myanmar before and they could not believe that I’d been there. One of them did most of the talking and seemed the leader, but she did say their dentistry program was taught in English and they could all understand. I wish I could have talked to them longer.

This was fun.

I heard after I got home about the mess at the airport.

From Australian Broadcasting: “Extra security measures are in place at airports across the country after four men who were allegedly plotting to blow up a plane with an improvised explosive device made out of a meat grinder were arrested in anti-terror raids across Sydney on Saturday.”

“There is no scanner that can pick up plastic explosives.”

“He (Roger Henning) said it was “ridiculous” for politicians to know of the loopholes and to still say scanners were the answer.

Mr Henning said the “one missing ingredient” was “human intelligence”.

“The only chance you’ve got is to have everybody who works at an airport trained to observe human behaviour,” he said, calling for better training for security staff.”

(internet pic)

July 31

Rain was threatening all day and guaranteed 100% for a downpour in the afternoon so I decided to walk until it started and then catch a cab.

Here I am walking through Barangaroo Park on the way to Darling Harbor. Who could resist a place named Darling.

Maintaining some historic facades while the city grows up around them.

Shapes always catch my eye.

This is the Maritime Museum.

I’m reading a book “The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders” by Ernest Scott, written in 1914, about a guy whose name I was seeing around on streets and parks. Who is “Flinders”?

Turns out he was an English navigator and cartographer, who was the leader of the first circumnavigation of Australia, identified it as a continent, spent 7 years in a French prison, and who died in 1814 at the age of 40. It’s going to be an interesting story and I note it here because of the old sailing ship.

I’m in the early section of the book now that’s detailing, from source material, about navel battles of the late 1700s in which Flinders played a role. We’re talking complicated massive efforts with an entire dictionary of words unknown to me.

One of the bridges that crosses Darling Harbor.

There were maybe twelve of these in a circle surrounding the fountain and they were all just great.

After the walk and after a tasty lunch of eggs and Tassie salmon on toast with a very nice side salad, I decided to take a ferry ride back to Circular Quay…

…which was good fun as I hadn’t been in this area before.

The Bridge! Will I ever tire of the bridge?

I don’t think so.

This is not a big one (P&O refurbished ship built in the 1990s) with 2,000 passengers and 1,000 crew. The new ones are Much Bigger at 4,000+ passengers and 2,000+ crew but I think maybe those guys can’t even park in this spot and have to stay out of Circular Quay, I’m not sure.

It was amazing, I stepped into the house from a light mist, went upstairs and watched, from my cozy table and chair looking out my handsome window, while the storm poured down. I didn’t go out again, so my Sydney itinerary is getting shorter.

The only state I missed was South Australia and I missed two capital cities, Adelaide and Perth. It has been AWESOME!

Sydney June 11-16 and again July 29-August 3.
Canberra June 16-20 and Melbourne June 20-23.
Tasmania June 23-July 1.
Broome July 1-8.
Darwin+ and The Red Center July 8-18.
Cairns-Port Arthur-Lady Elliot-Brisbane July 18-29.

* *BACK TO SYDNEY after 7+ weeks on the road!* *

July 29-30

This was my last domestic flight – Brisbane to Sydney. It doesn’t matter how short the flight Qantas always comes up with something to eat. Arancini is a relatively common snack around Australia but this is the first time I got them from Qantas.

Welcome back to Sydney! I’m staying at the same place I stayed all those weeks ago when I first arrived.

The host here wrote this book and that’s his leg where you can see a very faint scar, evidence of his survival of a Crocodile Attack(!)! I was there in Armhenland and Graham recognized the locations of all my pictures.

I really like Sydney. On the edge of The Rocks, where real people live and where I am, you can come across great pubs on about every block.

The Harbor Bridge peeking around every corner.

When cruise ships are in, this view is entirely blocked as those monsters tower over everything else in the harbor. Close up the big boys are particularly freaky.

You can see Luna Park over there.

The grand sweep of the Opera House.

The wings are made up of these tiles and they don’t reflect.

From wiki: “…they ((the roof shells that I like to call wings)) are precast concrete panels supported by precast concrete ribs. Though the shells appear uniformly white from a distance, they actually feature a subtle chevron pattern composed of 1,056,006 tiles in two colours: glossy white and matte cream.

“Apart from the tile of the shells and the glass curtain walls of the foyer spaces, the building’s exterior is largely clad with aggregate panels composed of pink granite quarried at Tarana. Significant interior surface treatments also include off-form concrete, Australian white birch plywood supplied from Wauchope in northern New South Wales, and brush box glulam.”

I should be able to fit in the tour which everyone says is so interesting.

The Customs House. I enlarged the lion and the unicorn standing for England and Scotland. It reminds me of the cool old Customs House we ran across in Tasmania.

In the lobby of the Customs House, under a glass floor, is a scale model of modern Sydney. At the leading edge you can see the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge.

Another pub on a more touristic street.

There are two especially nice places one block from me in two separate directions. There’s this one, The Lord Nelson, and the other one is called The Hero of Waterloo. Maybe I’m done with pictures of pubs but I’m not done eating in them!