AusTour 13: Sydney Day Four

Day four dawned, and with it our last day in Sydney. After checking out and leaving our luggage with the hostel (what we had been doing the entire trip on the days we left when our departure was later in the day). We made our way down to darling harbour again where we had booked a ride on Sydney Jet. Sydney Jet was like the harbour cruise two days before. except that is was in a high speed jet boat, fish tailing and spinning etc. after donning fairly large ponchos we realized we might actually get wet on this ride. That was kind of an understatement; the guy who sat behind us might have been swimming at one point. Oh, and STOLEN PICTURE. Reasonably wet, we found some well prices fish and chips and dried off in the intermittent sun (typical as it was beautiful the day before). Following that we went to the National Maritime Museum which was on the opposite side of the harbour. We got entrance to the two ships they have with our See Sydney Cards—a submarine and a destroyer-type ship. The submarine was pretty fascinating, and I managed to do a classic door-swing through one of the portholes. The war ship was good, but I was extremely confused when the lights went off and it began simulating an attack sequence. The actual museum had some pretty cool stuff in it, included a temporary exhibit about toy boats to which there was a curious short film in French with toy-ship characters playing. Bizarre. With time running short we headed back to the hostel to retrieve our bags and through the end of rush hour headed to the airport. The trip there was hindered by one stick—that although the airport is in the transport system it requires a separate ticket to exit/enter the airport. After failing to find the source of a meat pie topped with mash potatoes in the airport and settling on Hungry Jacks for dinner again, Barry departed for Melbourne and I to Adelaide for more adventures around Australia.

AusTour 12: Sydney Day Three

Over exhausted and possibly with a mild case of heat exhaustion the next day dawned. The good news was it was going to be a nice day again—in fact it was going to hit 30 degrees centigrade. Our first stop was 2 hours on bicycles around Manly. Manly is a short ferry ride (one of Sydney’s 11 ferries named after the 11 ships in the first fleet to come to Australia in 1787—thanks Rocks tour!). In fact most of the locations outside Sydney are accessible by ferry either run by Sydney Ferries or the faster HabourCat’s. Manly is decidedly a beach culture; a thin strip is bordered on both sides by beaches and is a popular destination for Sydney day trippers. I should mention that it took us a good amount of time, a tour of Manly’s Ocean World (mucho insignificant compared to the Sydney aquarium we had seen the night before), a conversation with an old lady and a trip to the visitor centre before we actually found the bike place. There was no hassle to rent the bikes though and we made our way out along a suggested route by the bike shop man (a web designer/marketing student in uni…sounds vaguely familiar…). This route though was uphill most of the way, and by the time we got the top of the hill it was about time to go back down hill. After some creative directions by myself we got a quick tour of most of the city streets in Manly and visit to the beaches on both sides. After the ferry ride back from manly we made some impromptu decisions after missing the next schedule attractions (Barry’s fault for getting the location wrong) and got on the ferry to Darling Harbour. Essentially there are two sides to Sydney, the main harbour or circular quay where the Rocks, Opera House and Bridge are, and the secondary harbour (darling harbour) home of star city, plenty of clubs and restaurants, the aquarium, the national maritime museum and our next attraction Wildlife World.

Wildlife World is essentially the home of all critters Australian in Sydney (possibly apart from Tonga Zoo). Kangaroos, wallabies, spiders, snakes, koala’s, birds, and nocturnal’s (fact: there are more animals active at night in Australia than at day) etc. following Wildlife World we had some down time (thank god) before a night-time observatory tour at 830. The one hindrance to this was we needed to eat, and no where was open/ or even existed. It was absurd how we could be walking for 45 mins straight without passing a single restaurant open on a Sunday night. We would eventually settle for hungry jacks—fast food yum!

The observatory started with a free walk through the museum part of the observatory with some of the old telescopes and time keepers. There were some really fascinating objects in its collection but before we had time to see it all we were rounded up for a look at the stars. The observatory has two telescopes. The first was an old-fashioned one, hand adjusted through which we looked at Jupiter rising into the sky. The second was a more high-tech computer adjusted telescope which allowed us to see the double star that’s part of the Southern Cross. It was in this dome enclosure we found that the acoustics were just right now hear the person directly across from (even if they were whispering) you as if they were standing just behind you. It was bizarre and Barry and I had some fun with it before I said something too loud next to tour leader where he explained it and everyone caught on. The final part was a 3D star experience which proceeded to show just how small you were in comparison with the rest of the universe. I think I fell asleep near the end.

I eagerly embraced the bed when we returned that night before getting up for our fourth and last day in Sydney.