Wednesday 6th & Thursday 7th Aquarium & Manley

 On Wednesday we headed out to the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium.  Apart from the exhibits that you would expect to find there are a few surprises, one being the Dugong. It is a big herbivore mammal and quite a sight, looking rather like a dolphin, but closely related to the elephant. living in its own tank and feeding voraciously on lettuce. We had a ride on the penguin expedition boat ride, but were rather unsure whether this was a step too far. As is usual in this kind of place, there were parties of schoolchildren enjoying all manner of sea life. It is worthy to note that all the children we came across during our trip were polite and courteous. We have been told that school children do not get on a bus until all other passengers in the queue are on. They will immediately give up their seats without question.
 We had a latish lunch and to our amazement along came a thunder storm, the first serious rain that we had seen so far. Thankfully it didn't last too long and we were on a ferry on route home.

Thursday was to be our visit to Manley, a very hot day. We started the day with a video call to or son in London, a good catch up in time for his birthday. A ferry to Circular Quay to connect to the Manley Ferry, as we approached Circular Quay we were dwarfed by the Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Ovation of The Seas. A majestic sight. The ferry to Manley takes around 30 minutes, time to relax and watch the points of interest pass by: Kiribilli House, RNAS Sydney, The Spit, Watsons/Rose Bay?? We chatted to two fellow passengers, originally from Southampton who had lived in Australia for 50 years. He was very interesting as he had worked on the building of the ferries at Newcastle & Hexham. Once home and showered we headed out to Blues Point for a meal and the meat raffle.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monday 8th January - time to go home. 😞😢

Image
An overnight thunderstorm and squaking Larakeets meant that we were up early.   The day was very hot, 36 deg at 8am. After packing, we walked around Lavender Bay, through Luna Park and on to North Sydney. Once back in the village we had a cooling drink at The Commodore and lunched at Billy's.  I found it very hot and couldn't manage a last walk to the bottom of Blues Point Rd, instead choosing to sit in the shade.   We returned to the flat, showered and awaited Jon to come home so we could set off for the Airport. As we crossed the Bay to Circular Quay the sky went black and the heavens opened with torrential rain. Quite a sight - something which we had not witnessed on our holiday. The water was bouncing off the surface. I hate Goodbye's and after a farewell drink and photo it was time to be on our way and get ready for our 9.30 flight to Dubai.   We were late leaving our onward flight to Newcastle as a passenger had to be offloaded due to a medic...
Read more

November 30th

Image
When friends knew that we were planning a trip to Australia, we were asked if we could met up with people and maybe deliver a few Christmas presents to them - which we duly obliged - also an opportunity for us to acquaint ourselves with old friends again. Today was the day to meet up with a friend's son and a lady that used to work at a beauty salon here where we live. Feeling somewhat refreshed after the hectic few days, we were up and out early to meet Nikki for breakfast near to the salon where she now works. Then it was on to meet a friend's son, who works around the corner, managing a well known Sydney bar. Amazing that they work so close to one another in this wonderful city.    After the brief meetings we headed to the Museum of Australia, where we had lunch. The museum was established in 1827 and is at the forefront of scientific research, What an enormous site the museum is with 18 million exhibits.  We spoke to a couple of curators who were chipping away at...
Read more

Monday 27th - Wednesday 29th December - Uluru

Image
This morning were were up early to catch the ferry and train to Sydney Airport for our trip to Uluru - a once in a lifetime experience for us. Australia is so vast that Uluru is one and a half hours behind Sydney time. We flew over the Blue Mountains and Broken Hill, a frontier mining town in the far West of NSW in the outback. Apart from these two focal points it was barren earth all the way until the wow factor of Uluru appeared. The journey seemed to reinforce just how vast Australia is. We arrived at Yulara airport at the same time as another aircraft. We were driven to the hotel by a coach, which goes around Yulara picking up and setting down passengers at various designated points. Our home was to be The Desert Gardens Hotel for two nights.  h ttps://www.accorhotels.com/gb/hotel-8589-desert-gardens-a-member-of-novotel-hotels/index.shtml    After a light lunch we walked to the Town Square for a look at Yularu, the resort for Uluru. The square was shaded by s...
Read more