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Published: August 18th 2007
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Sydney Opera House
It's a very nice building but I still prefer the Wales Millennium Centre! Well I've been in Sydney for a few days now and seem to have got my bearings fairly well as I've walked through most of the City. Once again I managed to get on the right plane at the right time and found a train to take me to the City centre to meet Mike. He lives right in the centre of the City on the 33rd floor of a big tower block, with great views of the city, this has been really handy for getting out and about. (Mike is fine and looking very well, if a little pale but I think that's because all the skyscrapers cut out most of the light here and it is the middle of winter).
I seem to spend most of the days just wandering about and taking in all the sights of the city. I'm not a big fan of cities and found the big sky rises a bit oppressive to begin with but when viewed from a boat on the harbour it really is quite a beautiful city, especially with the iconic Sydney Opera house and Harbour bridge in the background. My main mission here was to find some unusual wildlife
Albatross
Some say to see one at sea it's a bad omen....i laugh in the face of danger. which you wouldn't normally find back in Wales. Mike has been telling me for months that there is nothing here and that it is all a big myth, in the 8 months that he's been here only once have they found a single Huntsman spider in the flat and cockroaches don't count. It has also been pointed out on several occasions that I can be a little stubborn at times and so I refused to give up on the idea of finding some interesting creatures. The hunt was on!! After 3 days of searching in a variety of places the most exciting creature I found was a yellow centipede that hissed at me before stalking off into the undergrowth, I was sure I was looking in all the right places, under bushes, logs, in shoes, it was all very frustrating and I was finally coming around to Mike's theory (as i always do eventually) that there was indeed nothing dangerous or exciting in Sydney. In an effort to find something, I thought another whale watching trip would be ideal as I'd enjoyed the one in New Zealand so much. This time I was promised Humpback whales, I've mentioned before my
It's a whale honest!
It was a rough sea so it's a bad phtot but the white bit is where the whale was! lack of confidence in big boats but as I'd done so well on the Interislander ferry and the Catamaran I thought this would be a breeze in the park. To say it was rough would be an understatement, we'd only been going about 10 minutes before the first lot of people started throwing up. (Everyone knows I hate people being ill, a phobia passed on from my mother) So with my eyes fixed straight ahead and my ipod on full blast to try and drown out the hurling sounds which was by now on all sides of me, I battled on. At one point one of the stewards said I was the only person that wasn't a strange shade of grey or green, after an hour of bouncing over the 2 metre swells the first whale was spotted and I dashed outside to get a look. Over the next hour we saw a the same juvenile humpback a few times and then a larger one a little further out as well as a Pilot whale, which I missed as I was trying very hard to hang on to the boat without being knocked over the side. The best bit for
Flying foxes
Make sure you look at the video I took, fairly easy to work out what sex it is too! me was the massive albatross which kept flying around the boat. It occurred to me that albatrosses were supposed to be a symbol of bad luck to sailors but still at least I managed to get a photo of it. ( I know there will be those who will say it's just a big sea gull but this thing was the size of a light aircraft and far more impressive than your average Black-backed seagull!) Once again my photos of the whales were a little hit and miss due to the waves and the hanging on but I do have evidence a little bit similar to the famous loch ness photos. So I've included someone else's photo of the whale I saw!
Having almost given up on any hope of finding anything remotely exciting (wildlife wise) I found myself wandering through the Royal Botanic Gardens, still looking under logs and in trees and in the leaf litter. I happened upon a spiders web, it looked fairly empty to begin with, so remembering the scene from Arachnophobia where the scientist twangs the web just before the big spider jumps out and bites him, I twanged the web and out rushed
Harbour Bridge
Looks very pretty at night. Can't take credit for this pic i couldn't keep still so Mike took it - steadier hands a spider! It wasn't the most impressive spider, just about the size of a garden spider really but it did have pretty yellow bits on it's legs. Now I don't claim to be an expert but by the look of it and the way it was sitting on the web it did look like a huntsman but maybe just a young one. So I rang Mike to see if it could possibly be what I was searching for. He wasn't as enthusiastic as I'd hoped. Undeterred I carried on the search, the lizard I nearly stood on was fairly exciting but ran off under a bush, so I meandered around the succulents garden, when suddenly I looked up and there straddled between the tallest two cactii plants was a massive web with an equally massive spider, there was no doubt about it, this was definitely a huntsman I'd found my spider! Sadly, it was 8 foot up a cactus plant so I couldn't get close up but still managed to get a picture. My immediate thought was to share my discovery but knowing the response I'd get I wandered on with a big smile on my face. Now the day
It was huge!
I know it looks small here but it was the size of a small cat! before I had also made the most wonderful discovery of flying foxes in the park so knowing where I could find them I headed straight for them. They are totally awesome to watch and they make such a racket and will even push each other out of the trees to get a better position on a branch. Standing under one of their trees (There's literally hundreds of them-bats not trees) I was busy taking photos when once again I noticed a web, well actually it was dozens of webs all woven together with about 30 to 40 spiders all over the place, it was arachnid heaven. I barely noticed when one of the small ones descended from the tree onto my arm (yes i was disappointed it wasn't a big one). At last my faith was restored in the wildlife of Australia! I made a mental note not to be too excited once I got back to the flat.
Another highlight was the aquarium, the fish were stunning, the seals were sleeping (not entirely surprising as it was their bedtime when we went) but then we came to the shark bit of the aquarium. Oh my word! Words cannot
Cute koala
Never really been a fan of the koala but once I saw this one I fell in love....so sweet. Wouldn't fit in my backpack though. describe how fantastic they were, they came so close and swam right over the top of the tunnel we were walking through. I've never seen stingrays so huge either! We spent ages trying to get decent pictures but mostly I just walked around in a state of extreme happiness.
I also found time to get up to Newcastle to see the Davey family and spent several hours doing a tour of Newcastle and chatting away to the girls, who haven't changed a bit. I even had a nose around their school!
I've covered so much here that I couldn't possibly write about it all needless to say it's been great and still a couple more days to go....
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Katie
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Hi SJ, all sounds fab. Can't believe you're managing to do so much. Glad you're have such a great time. Good for you. You will of course have to do some sort of public lecture when you get back! Take care, lots of love xxx