Our trip from New Zealand to Sydney was uneventful, with no issues checking in, making use of the lounge, the flight, customs or luggage collection. On arrival, we picked up our hire car, unfortunately not quite as nice as the car we had in New Zealand, and, despite not being able to connect the phone up to the display for the satnav, made our way from the airport south of Sydney, through the city and to our apartment in Neutral Bay, on the north of Sydney Harbour. As promised, the apartment had a distinctly New York apartment flavour to it being up second floor, but being very high ceiling and light.
We had intended to make use of the ferry into the city, so went for a short explore in the evening to see where the ferry was, and found it was very close. As the ferry ran regularly, every half hour during the day and every hour in the evening, we decided to make a trip into Sydney for some food. As we got onto the ferry, we could see the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but had little idea where this was in relation to anything else. It therefore almost came as a surprise as we rounded the headland of the bay to see Sydney Opera House in front of us. Our initial reaction was that the Opera House was much smaller than we were expecting. I think this is largely because of the angle that we first saw it from, that and the size of the Queen Elizabeth cruise liner that was parked up in the harbour just across from the Opera House. However, as we got into the dock, after a trip of only 10 or 12 minutes, we saw the Opera House from different angles and it looked much bigger and more like what we were expecting.
Before eating, we took a walk around Circular Quay to the back (or is it front?) the Opera House, and saw the Queen Elizabeth leave port. I chatted to someone taking photographs of the bridge, who turned out to come from about 5 miles from us at home! We then went back around Circular Quay for a meal, overlooking the harbour, before catching the ferry back to the apartment.
I had considered getting up early the next morning to try and get a sunrise shot of the Opera House. I'm glad that I didn't, because although we had seen the Queen Elizabeth depart the evening before, another liner had taken its place by the time we arrived, still fairly early, the following morning for our day in Sydney. This time, we walked in the opposite direction around Circular Quay, going up to Dawes Point opposite the Opera House, continuing around to one of the wharfs for breakfast, and then on to Sydney Harbour Bridge itself. Although we had decided not to do the Bridge climb, where you walk over the top arch of the bridge (at an exorbitant cost), there is a footpath across the Bridge, and so we were able to walk across to the other side, where we could get some very good views across the harbour. We then retraced our steps, visited George’s camera shop to get some sensor swabs as I had used all mine cleaning the camera after the Doubtful Sound trip in New Zealand, and then grabbed some sandwiches to eat in the Botanical Garden before heading to the Opera House for our planned guided tour.
The tour was very interesting, finding out more about the overrun in time and budget, the change of architect, when the Opera House was being built prior to its opening in October 1973 (a date that I had remembered as I have used pictures of the Sydney Opera House in various presentations as 1973 was also the date on which the European Patent Convention was signed too), as well as seeing some of the preparation work taking place for performances that were on in the Opera House later that day and in the coming weeks. Although from outside our initial impression was the Opera House was not as big as we had expected, inside it was extremely big, especially in the theatre having the massive organ.
Whilst neither of us could pretend that opera was our thing, we did wander along to the box office just in case there was any availability for any of the shows that evening. We were very lucky that two returns had just come in in very good seats in the middle of the stalls for the evening’s greatest hits of opera, a fairly gentle hour and a half performance with some arias that we may have heard of. Feeling that our rather sweaty shorts and T-shirts may not be exactly the right thing for the opera at the Sydney Opera House, we caught the ferry back to the apartment for a shower and to change into long trousers and a long sleeved shirt. We may still not have been that smart, but certainly smart enough for a light evening at the opera.
Although neither of us could pretend to understand everything that was going on, the compare/piano player was able to give a brief and generally humorous introduction to each piece, and they were English translations of what the performers were singing so we did at least have a clue. The performances were all extremely good, especially given that none of the sound appeared to be amplified, and therefore the singers’ voices and the piano alone were all that was filling the auditorium. I am not sure that we will be making opera something that we regularly go to, but we certainly had an enjoyable evening.
The following day was much warmer, and so we made the journey to Bondi Beach, driving over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and through the city to get there. Even though it was a Thursday morning outside the holiday period, the beach was very full, and you can imagine how full it must be in the holiday time and at weekends in the summer. We walked the length of the beach and back again, watching people trying to surf, although the waves were probably not large enough for them to do themselves justice. We then drove north, stopping at Watsons Bay for fish and chips on the beach, before heading back to the apartment and catching the ferry back into Sydney to spend some more time at the Botanical Garden, before getting some sunset shots of the Bridge and Opera House and having our final meal in Sydney.
The following day we were due to drive the two hours west to the Blue Mountains, but having heard that Taronga zoo, which was only 10 minutes or so from the apartment, was very good, and wanting to guarantee seeing a koala and kangaroo whilst in Australia, we went to the zoo first. The zoo was very good, and although we would not able to see too many kangaroos, we did see the koalas, and gorillas (which we are not able to see at Colchester Zoo where we normally do our zoo trips), as well as many other animals including penguins, with a nice view from underwater, and the fur seals/sea lions (I'm still not sure where the fur seals are true seals or are sea lions).
We then drove the two hours west to the Blue Mountains. Our first full day in the Blue Mountains was somewhat affected by the weather. It was so wet and misty that we could barely see across the road, much less across the four miles of the valley to Solitary Mountain. We therefore spent a lot of the day in the house playing cards.
The next morning was much better weather wise, and so we drove the short distance to Echo Point, from where we were able to walk to see the Three Sisters, one of the main highlights of the Blue Mountains.
We had booked I large Airbnb so that my cousin Ian, and his wife Kate, who live south of Sydney could come and join us for part of the weekend. It is about two years since Ian came to the UK and we last saw him, and the last time we saw Kate was nearly 20 years ago when she came to the UK. We therefore had a little bit of catching up to do when they arrived before we drove around 45 minutes to a winery for some lunch. The winery was lovely. We sat overlooking the vineyards, and over the valley to the distant limestone mountains, eating what was called a ploughman's, but, if this is what ploughman eat around here, they must be very well off. Those drinking wine said the wine was very good. We stayed chatting well beyond closing time, and when they took the umbrellas down, exposing us to the full heat of the sun, we realised it was time to move on.
As we started driving back to Leura where we were staying, we saw a sign for the Grand Canyon, I thought we should go to take a look. Whilst not quite as big as the Grand Canyon in US, that we visited last March, it was still spectacular. We had a very clear view of the blue haze from the eucalyptus trees, which I suspect may be what gave the area its name – something else to Google! Almost as impressive was Kate trying to locate a black cockatoo that she was sure she heard in the bushes. The trip out was completed with an evening meal in a converted cinema in Katoomba, just a few minutes from where we were staying, and then back to the house for more chat, including some help with our planning for the drive down to Melbourne.
With more catching up still to do, we had a very enjoyable breakfast in a pavement cafe in Leura before heading back close to the Three Sisters for a cable car, railway and walk into the valley. Ian and Kate left us part way through so they could get back home, most we stayed until closing time (again) and then returned back home with the intention of heading out for sunset. However, the mist and rain again came down, so we spent the evening finishing off a game of cards, and getting ready for our journey south.
