New South Wales (not whales)

The Harbour Bridge

How ya goin'?

little parrot in the botanical gardens

um... on the train? Oh! How am I doing!? Good thanks :p
That seems to be the go-to greeting, here, and it took me a few times to actually understand what they were saying.

The past few days I've been exploring Sydney! Surrounding one of the harbours is a huge botanical garden complex, with all sorts of (absolutely enormous) trees and other plants from around the world - and some pretty cool birds, too!

giant tree

Also fountains, statues, ponds, etc - and the Governor's residence. Interesting - in Canada we've just got the Governor General, but here they've got a Governor General as well as a Governor for each State - so the Queen has her own representative just for New South Wales. That was (is) a pretty cool building. It was built to match what is now the Conservatory of Music... which one of the governors had built as (very elaborate) stables before running out of money. :p Then a few governors down the line, they built the house haha. The guide was from Philadelphia, of all places, but he's Australian now - but in my head it seemed like an American was singing praises to the Queen which made me chuckle a bit. :p

Opera House

The iconic Sydney Opera House sits on one side of the botanical gardens - I've got to admit, its smaller than I had pictured haha. On my first visit to the gardens I saw this bizarre bird with a long curved beak and tall spindly legs... turns out it is called and ibis, and after a few days I've realized that they're everywhere. :p 

Forget the opera house,
they've got Carmen set up
right on the water!

Usually every Saturday night the city puts on a fireworks display over Darling Harbour (seriously? What is this, Disneyland?), but they were cancelled this week due to the "Hoopla Festival" ... that is to say, the city hired a circus for Easter! So that was super cool! Street performers and stages set up all around the harbour, a trapeze suspended beneath the bridge with acrobats swinging and doing crazy how-are-they-not-dropping-each-other routines! Little "trains" driving people around, music everywhere, people dressed in ridiculous costumes (I think my favourite was three individuals in costumes shaped like an eye, a nose, and a mouth... the mouth would go up to people and lick them, haha!) The harbour is lovely at night-time - all the trees all lit up with white lights, people everywhere - very alive.

Ballroom in the Governor's House

Also, there is this ENORMOUS market near Darling Harbour called the Paddy's Market... WOW sensory overload! SO much stuff!!!!! Clothes, cds, jewlery, nuts, souvenirs, knock-off handbags, vegetables, towels... stuff! A LOT of STUFF!!!

Today I hopped on the train (these trains are fantastic. If Europe's train system is like this, no wonder it is so easy to get around...) for the 2.5 hour ride up to... New Castle! There's no castle, apparently. Actually, I went to Cardiff, just south of New Castle. Why? To see Kate! Who is not only from "Cranbrook", but from Wycliffe, no less!!! She's been living down here for a few years and gets to feed reptiles at a nature sanctuary. So she and Evan (her boyfriend) took me all around the vicinity of New Castle to see lots of cool stuff, like fantastic rocks eroded into bizarre shapes slashed through with fractures and covered in snails (and one section of rock where the water would go ripping up this thin crevice to explode out the end when it hit the rock face - that was cool!) Apparently there was a storm last night and there were a few dead puffer fish washed up on the beach.

tiny finch!

Also, they took me to this little nature park type thing where I got to pet a koala. I know, I know, koala's are wild animals and it only lets people pet it because its a tourist thing and the koala was raised to be handled etc, but still, it was so cute! And it had really soft, thick fur - like sticking your hand into a basket of un-carded alpaca wool or something. It was also very placid, and intent on eating the leaves on the branch it was holding, which is good, because it had pretty long claws... There were lots of other animals at the park, too - my favourite I think were the tiny, rainbow coloured finches, but there was a pretty awesome owl, as well.

I'm sure this means
something other than
an actual Zebra Crossing...
maybe its a special
kind of cross walk ... ?

Oh, and kangaroos and emus! The emus make very bizarre noises, a bit like a deep drum, and they growl... they were growling a lot... I've never seen a velociraptor (obviously), but the emus are remarkably similar to my mental image of one. Sharp, predatory eyes (which is funny because I'm pretty sure they're herbivores...) and almost scaly clawed feet... the kangaroos had tiny little t-rex arms and walked around using their tail (forelegs + tail to lift back legs forwards, back legs to move forelegs + tail... THICK tails). Some delightfully tasty fish and chips (also deep fried slice of pineapple sprinkled with cinnamon sugar... the beavertails of Australia? I  think so... it was weird, like the fish part of fish and chips, except pineapple inside instead of fish, but surprisingly good!) and ice cream all the way from the distant land of New Zealand (that country is serious about their dairy!) aaaaaaaaaaaand ... 10 pin bowling. First time I have done that. I knocked all of ONE pin over on my first turn. But I got better, haha. :p

They also introduced me to a band that sings exclusively about beards, appropriately named "The Beards," as well as an Adventure Time-like show called Gravity Falls... which taught me a good joke! Actually, its a pretty bad joke, but I laughed, so I'll share it anyhow. Its a PELICAN joke! Why did the pelican get kicked out of the bar? ... Because its bill was too big! hehe. he

'allo!

So I haven't updated this in a few days and as such there is much more about today in this post than the last couple, because today is rather fresher in my mind. :p

Tomorrow - the zoo!