I was staying with some freinds in Sydney who have a house in North Brigde. My Geography is pretty bad but it's effectively north sydney (north of the harbour bridge). The first couple of days I had a look around the local area visiting Clive Park which is a little Bay in Middle Hourbour. I also found Flat Rock Gully which is an native park in the middle of a residential area it has a creek and all kinds of wildlife including wild turkeys. Although I didn't see any turkeys I did see some small lizards running around.
Friday night we went out for dinner at a spannish restaurant and then went next door to a night club in the city, I generally thought I was a bit old for clubbing but that nights events tought me otherwise "praise the lord for binge drinking".
At the weekend we drove to Manley, with the shopping, markets and beach to see. Being a Saturday there were quite a few surfers and the weather was warm and sunny so it was nice to walk around the beach and promenade.
On Monday I went back to Manley taking the ferry from Circular Quays, I didn't take a camera with me on Saturday and you also get good views of the Opera House and Harour Bridge from the Ferry. Walk around taking photos, it was still sun ny but being a weekday it was less busy and fewer surfers.
I then went back to Bondi Beach where I went 18 mnths ago but it wasn't the best of weather that time and i didn't take too many photos. This time it was similar but dry which was actually good as I walked the 2 hour east coast walk down the coastline past numerous beaches and surfer along the way. It took a little less time to walk back since I had already stopped along the way alot but it was still a nice scenic walk and built up an apetite for 1/2 price muscles at a Belgium cafe in northbridge. I seem to get more adventerous with sea food when I'm here.
On Thursday I booked my self on a whale watching tour hopefully having some luck this time. First I went to the Sydney Aquarium which is the best one I've ever been to. It's pretty big but the layout and the way they have displayed the creatures is done really well. The highlight for most I guess is the shark tank. It's like a horseshoe shape and after walking down you get to the bottom of the tank where you walk along the outside of the tank thorugh tunnels that run along the bottom so you can see the sharks and other marine life swim over you. The sharks vary in size but the largest are huge as well as the stingrays, there were also some giant turtles swimming around.
At the end of the tour they have a huge tank with a mixture of hundreas of fish swimming around, it reallt is the best place i've been to to see catpive marine life.
So after the aquarium we headed out on the boat trip to see whales. It was the first week of the season and after my last two attemps i didn't get my hopes up too high. However after after about an hour we spotted a mother humpback whale and her calf migrating to the Whitsundays. It was everything i'd hoped for, about every 5 minutes or so they come up for air and we followed them for over an hour. I had some good shots of them blowing water out to breathe and then arching their backs in the water, then after about half an hour the mother dived so that her tail came out of the water which was awesome, only the camera took a secnd to focus and I just got the tail going back into the water. Fortunately she did it a couple more times and I got a couple of goods photos, we didn't get too close and my camera has limited range but they are still good when they jog the memory of the actual event.
The next day I visited Hyde Park and the Australian Museum where they had a pre historic exhibition and also an Aboriginal exhibition which was interesting. I wandered around not really bothered about where I was going so I could maybe stumble accross something the tour guides don't talk about.
There was a Press Photography exhibition on at the Natioanl Library so I went to see that which was really good. I then walked back through the Botanical gardens to take some photos of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge from Mrs Maquaries seat which is a popular veiwing spot. The botanical gardens also have some interesting monuments and ponds to see with cockatoos and other wildlife living in the gardens.
I went back to Darling Harour to the Powerhouse Museum which is a science and design museum. It was interesting and wel l worth taking the walk through the Chinese Gardens in Darling Harbour to get to. That night I tried Crocodile tail fillet which was ok, but really just tased like chicken.
The penultimate day in Sydney the weather started to turn and it was a bit cloudy and had occasional drizzle. Up until this point it had been sunny everyday. I decided to go to the observation deck at Centre Point, i had done this the last time but went to the 360 restaurant so got to see the city at night. Although it was a bit cloudy I thought that might actually be a bit different to just having pictures of blue skies all the time. It doesn't make too much difference since you don't get great views of the two main landmarks anyway. Like the London eye the main buildings of interest to see are eclipsed by skyscrapers. It was still a good view and you get to see the rest of the harbour from a different perspective.
After a couple of weeks in Sydney I flew back to Melbourne, which was good timing since the stormy weather from the Gold Coast started to hit NSW.
