Savannah in Australia Part 3 (Sydney)

This is my last blog in Australia as Sydney is our last stop. When we arrived on April 10, we went to our apartment in Darling Harbor.

View from Apartment in Darling Harbour

The next morning we brought a ticket for the Hop On Hop Off Sightseeing Bus.  We went around the city, and we got off a few times. When we got off at The Rocks, we walked around a little and went to some Aboriginal art galleries. We had lunch at Circular Quay, where they have lots of seagulls, but they also have a few ibises!

Ibis

After lunch we went to the Sydney Opera House! It was really awesome to see it up close! We realized that the sails are covered in tiles, which we didn’t know before. We had a drink right outside, so we could look at it. We tried to get tickets to see the Australian Ballet perform Madame Butterfly, but all the tickets were sold out.  They told us we could come and stand in line and hope that someone turned some tickets in. 

Savannah in front of Sydney Opera House

Tile Sails of the Sydney Opera House

 After we saw the Opera House, we went to The Botanical Gardens. The gardens are really pretty, and there are some great views of the city. In one part, there is a big tree full of sulfur crested cockatoos! The tree is full of berries that they like to eat. The berries have a skin, a little juice, and a pit. The cockatoos rip of the skin, crack open the pit, and eat the seed inside. You can hear lots of cracking noises. The cockatoos in the tree drop a lot of little branches covered in berries, and there are a lot of cockatoos on the ground eating the dropped berries. If you collect the berries, there are a lot of cockatoos a few meters from the tree that will eat out of your fingers and climb all over you. Jack, mom, and I fed them, and dad had some on his knee.

Botanical Gardens - cockatoos in the tree

As we continued to walk around the gardens, we noticed that there are thousands of large bats hanging in the trees. There were tons of trees full of them! At the gift shop they told us that they are grey headed flying foxes. Later, on the bus home, we saw them flying around the city on their nightly hunt for food.

Bats in the Botanical Gardens

Grey Flying Fox

Bat in flight

The next day we went to Bondi Beach, which is a famous beach known for its surfing. Jack and I went swimming, and there were some pretty good waves! Unfortunately, it was too cold to stay in for a long. Our last stop was an opal and pearl cutters, where mom looked at some opals. We also went to another opal jeweler down the street.

Bondi Beach



Savannah and Jackson having fun in the freezing waves at Bondi Beach

The following morning our first stop was the Sydney Harbor Bridge, which we walked across. The views from the bridge are amazing! It was a great view of the water, the skyline, and the Opera House. We spent the afternoon in the Botanical Gardens and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Paul, Anne, Savannah & Jackson - Sydney Harbour Bridge

Savannah about to walk over the Sydney Harbour Bridge

In the gardens we saw a Wollemi Pine that until 1994 recently had only been found fossilized and was thought to be extinct.

Savannah with the Wollemi Pine

We also saw more bats, but around dusk they started getting really restless and flying around a little bit. We also saw them getting a drink at a pond. The way they drink is really cool. They fly really close to the water, get their chests wet, fly off, and lick their chests dry. We talked to one of park rangers who told us a little more about them, including that there are over 15,000 bats just in the park. They are considered a huge problem because when they grip with their claws they kill the trees, so next month they plan to move them to another place by making continuous noise. They just need to make sure that they don’t move to people’s backyards. We were really lucky that we saw them before they left!

We also went back to the cockatoos, and this time I let them on my legs. Once, one jumped on my shoulder and really scared me! They were a little cheeky, because when they were ready for another berry, they would give you a gentle peck.

After we tore ourselves away from the cockatoos, we headed to the Sydney Opera House. On the way, we saw the bats leave for their nightly hunt. At the opera house, mom and I were the first in line waiting in case there were any tickets returned. Luckily, after a really long wait, WE GOT TICKETS!!!!!! We were so excited! We went to see Madame Butterfly the ballet in the Sydney Opera House! We had great seats and the dancing was amazing, even though the end of the story is sad. That was an AWESOME night and definitely the highlight of Sydney.

On our way to see Madame Butterfly (ballet) in the Sydney Opera House!

The next day we went to the Sydney Aquarium, which has the largest collection of Australian marine life in the world. Definitely the best part of the aquarium was the platypus. He was really cute! We learned that platypuses and echidnas are the only mammals that lay eggs.  We also didn’t know that platypuses are venomous. We saw lots of fish, a gigantic crab, a really big seahorse, some baby sharks, some jelly fish, and we also walked in an underwater tunnel. In the tunnel we saw sting rays, a lot of different kinds of sharks, lots of really pretty and colourful fish, and some dugongs. Dugongs are related to manatees, and look a lot like them. It was an awesome aquarium!





Dungong is related to the manitee

The following day we went to the fish market. The fish market is the second biggest fish market in the world . Unfortunately, there is only a small section for tourists, and the main part is only for auctions.  In the section we went in, we saw big fish, small fish, lobsters, crabs, crab legs, eels, mussels, shrimp, clams, already prepared food, and a few restaurants. We had really good fish and chips there, before going to an Aboriginal art gallery. At the gallery, we looked at a lot of paintings, and my parents bought one that they really liked. After the gallery, it started raining, so we stayed inside the rest of the afternoon. When it stopped, we went and had dinner at Chinatown.

The next day it was pretty rainy, so we went to the Australian Museum. It was a very interesting museum, with displays about Aborigines, skeletons, what lives in Australians backyards, Australian animals, Australian birds and insects, and dinosaurs. They had a special exhibit on Birds of Paradise, about the birds of Papa New Guinea. Later that night, we were really lucky that the rain stopped long enough for the fireworks in Darling Harbor. That was really cool. The best part was the fact that they were really close, and we could see them launching off little platforms in the water in front of us. It was a great night!

The next morning we went to the Maritime Museum. The coolest thing at the museum were the real boats that you can go in. We got to go on a naval ship and a Tall Ship that was once used as a cargo ship.  The coolest one was a submarine. We went inside, saw the humungous torpedoes and also looked in the periscope. The museum was really cool too, with a lot of interesting exhibits. The most interesting one was about the child immigrants from England that came to Australia.

Today we went to see our last Australian animals at the Taronga Zoo, which is known for its incredible views of Sydney. We had to take a ferry from Darling Harbor to the zoo, which is an island across from Sydney that connects to Sydney by the Harbor Bridge. At the zoo, we took a cable car up to the animals. The view from the cable car was spectacular! They had the usual animals, giraffes, elephants (including a baby!), zebras, etc., but the best part was the Australian animals. We saw some very active platypuses, sleeping wombats, lots of very pretty birds, but no koalas L.  There were kangaroos, cassowaries, and our first Tasmanian devil! He was lying down, but sometimes he would get up and walk around. We also went to a bird show. They showed a few different birds doing different things. The galah flew from the girl to a guy in the top row of the audience who was holding out a gold coin, and the galah took it, flew back to the girl, and dropped it in her shirt pocket, and when she took it out and gave it to him, he took it back and put it on the guys hand. With the next bird, the girl put an egg the size of an ostrage’s egg and a rock on the floor, and he picked the rock up in his beak and slammed it down on the egg repeatedly, until he could use his beak to fully open it. They didn’t teach him to do that; it was just natural instinct, because in the wild when they eat one of those, it fills them up so they can go a few days without food, and it is extremely nutritious as well. Another bird we saw was the biggest eagle species in the world with a wing span off up to two meters long. It was a great zoo.

Unfortunately, we leave Australia, today on April 19.  We had lunch at a restaurant on Darling Harbour before heading to the airport.  It was sad to say goodbye to Australia and all its animals and the fabulouse city of Sydney.  I had a great time and really, really hope to come back someday.