Sydney

Now I am in Sydney since a couple of days. The advertising about the always sunny Australia is not really true. It seems like I brought the rain and it will stay, until I leave. At least that is what the weather forecast made us believe... until  yesterday. They finally decided to have some more sun and today I actually see the sun for more than 5 minutes. Temperatures are around 20 deg, so ... no worries. When I first arrived here - after 25 hours of transit - my friends immediately took me to Darling Harbour, which is really the touristic centre of Sydney. It was already dark and temperatures still fine but something seemed wrong... they have set up a huge christmas tree and to my mind two things don't go together: christmas preparations and people in shorts and skirts. Sydney! Now that I am here I was wondering what I expected. I don't remember. It is a huge town, with everything a bit like in the States, but then everything is a bit like in England and then there is yet something else mixed in there. People are friendly and helpful whenever they see someone struggling like getting a ticket for the local trains and busses or so.    The first day, we went to the Reptile Park. It has mainly reptiles but for the sake of the many tourists and children they also have some kangaroos, koalas, dingos and other cute australian animals running around. They have an interesting program on making antidotes for snake bites. In fact, they milk the snake to get the venom, inject it - first in tiny doses and then increasing them over weeks - into horses and cows until they get to a dose 6 times higher than a normal snake bite. Then they draw blood from the horse or cow, extract the anti-bodies and use these in case of a snake bite.  Lutz and the Kangaroo  Koala in the Reptile Park       Flying fox yawning (he just turned around shortly before I took the picture to have a pee and then startet to wrap himself up in his wings) 



Crows Nest

The next day (Monday) I was on my own. I was astonished about not being jetlagged, but that came a few days later... ??? I didn't understand that. 
I just walked up the street to end up in one of the many little shopping areas that are around in Sydney.
There were also a lot of restaurants around so I had some chinese chicken.

On my friends' balcony

My friends have pets without having them. There is a gang of rainbow lorikeets that come and visit their balcony regularly. It is fun, they are fairly tame.
They make a lot of noise. As there is a park really close by, there is a big bird orchestra going on - usually at 6 o'clock in the morning.
That is the real sound of vacation !










close to Bondi Beach


One of the famous beaches around Sydney is Bondi beach.
I arrived there in the rain, and the batteries of my camera almost flat. At least I had my raincoat, so I decided to go on a small trip along the shore. The weather was nice to me, so I even got a few rays of sun after the heavy showers at the beginning.
In the water, you see lots of people surfing, or trying to.

on the way to Tamarama

The local train station Waverton



In the local train



The ENDEAVOUR, Captain Cook arrived in 1770 in this ship

(this is a remake). At the time, the environment there was rather 

hostile with swamp, deseases and unknown aborigines.

It took the first settlers only 240 years to build big Sydney

 and the rest of Australias settlements. 

I went to the Maritime Museum and had a walk through the Endeavour. This one was rebuilt after all the details they could gather from captain Cooks' journals and other documents of the time.
It was impressive, on this boat lived almost 100 people to Botany Bay (what is now Sydney) when it arrived. It must have been quite cramped in there...
The museum also had an exhibition about shipping children to Australia, in order to populate the New Continent. That is part of the history I didn't know. They took english orphans or children from families in need to bring them over. This started around 1860 and went on for about 100 years. Can you imagine ?