Sydney - Our Final Frontier (in Australia)

Welcome to Sydney

Early Thursday morning we pulled into Sydney Harbour for the final time and organized ourselves for an expedited departure.  We chose this option so that we could get off the ship early and get going on our Hop-On Hop-Off Bus tour of Sydney.  As we were pulling into our berth at Circular Quay, the sun was rising behind the Sydney Opera House

I know that you have seen a similar shot before, but we are nostalgic about our trip and this iconic landmark deserves another view.  By the way, this is the most photographed landmark in Australia.  Now you know.

As many of you know, Australia is the world’s second driest continent, second only to Antarctica.  Consequently, they look for ways to conserve and use water as wisely as possible.  One of the more unique methods is this vertical garden.

This building, known as One Central Park, (what a unique definition of Park!) is the world’s tallest vertical garden.   The green façade has 250 species of native Australian plants and flowers.  It is one of the most ecological buildings in the world, and has the world’s biggest membrane microreactor (think municipal wastewater treatment).   Very cool!

We jumped off the bus at the Sydney Fish Market.  It is the southern hemisphere’s largest fish market.  Hmm, that perhaps explains the size of these pelicans!

It seems these guys were lining up early for this shop’s lunch time special!

Our next stop was the Chinese Garden of Friendship in downtown Sydney.

It was opened during Sydney’s bicentennial celebrations in 1988 and was named the Garden of Friendship symbolizing the strong bond between China and Australia.  These gardens are the largest outside of China.  The gardens are a peaceful oasis and a welcome respite from the hustle and bustle of the busy downtown metropolis!

Back on the bus, we passed near the Sydney Harbour Bridge and spotted some climbers.

It was really neat to see the group of climbers (just left of the platform left of the tower), as we were booked for a twilight bridge climb this evening!

And here we are at the summit of the bridge!!  Have a look at the gear that we are wearing.  There is nothing on us that is not tied down.  Our glasses, the headphones you see, and even the hat (that you don’t see) are all tethered to your (very fashionable!) jumpsuit.  As you can also see we are tethered to a steel cable, so while it appears quite daunting, the climb itself is quite safe!

It was a great experience.  Sonya threatened that she would get even with me for coaxing her into this, but if you look at her beaming face, you can tell she was happy she did it!

OK, here are a couple of pictures from the topside of the bridge (courtesy of Brigdeclimb).

A few facts about the bridge and the bridge climb are in order here.

Bridge climbing started in 1988.  By its 20^th anniversary, more than 4,000,000 people had climbed the bridge. Yes, there are a lot of similarly crazy people out there – Sonya and I are not alone!

1,390 steps (round trip)

134 metres (439 ft) above sea level or, as our guide put it, 5.2 seconds if you take the direct route!  You figure it out.

52,800 tonnes of steel

6 million rivets

It takes about 3.5 hours to complete, of which almost one hour is preparation/suit up time.  You also spend some time waiting during the climb, because they send a climb team out as often as every ten minutes, with up to 4,000 people climbing the bridge on any given day.

After the climb, Sonya said, “OK, you pushed my buttons three times – I earned that pearl!!!”  No comment.

On Sunday evening we joined our travel friends Chris and Bernice for dinner. 

We met these two on our tour of Sicily and Malta last year.  They also did the Kimberley tour a few weeks before us, so we were eager to get together and compare trip experiences.  Our experiences were very similar and equally great, and somewhat costly.  If you look closely, you will see that Bernice and Sonya are wearing very similar pearl necklaces!

Chris and Bernice are interested in traveling to Croatia, so we will see if our schedules line up to meet them over there next October.   Here’s hoping!  The evening disappeared all too quickly and we look forward to seeing each other again.

The next day we joined a tour to the Blue Mountains.  Now, most of you will be aware of the fires in Australia.  As luck would have it, the smoke impacted our trip as well, but we persisted, nonetheless.

Our first stop was the Featherdale Wildlife Park.  Although we had been at other wildlife parks, it surprisingly does not get repetitious as each setting is unique.  In the interests of brevity, we won’t repeat pictures of animals that we have shown you before.  We must show you this one however!

This is an Echidna – a very prickly fella (Chris, this one is for you)!  This unique waddler is one of only two mammals that lays eggs.  Yes, you read that correctly – the other is a platypus.  Both are found only in Australasia (New Guinea, Indonesia, Australia). 

The Blue Mountains are neither mountains nor are they truly blue.   The area is covered with Eucalyptus trees that give off an oily vapour.  The sunlight refracts through this vapour and creates a blue aura when seen from afar.

Here is a panorama shot of the escarpment.

As you can see there was considerable smoke in the area.  Here is another perspective of the smoke.

While the picture taking was quite limiting because of the smoke, we enjoyed the outing and the day, nonetheless.

We returned to Sydney via the extensive ferry service.  As we returned to Circular Quay, we caught this picture of the Sydney Harbour Bridge – yes, the very one we climbed.

This provides a better perspective of the size of the bridge.  We climbed from behind the towers on the right side of the picture to the flags at the top of the bridge and back.

Back at our suite, we looked out the window to see the impact of the smoke on the city.

This picture was taken an hour or so before sunset.  The impact of the fires in Queensland and New South Wales is felt over much of Australia.  We are reminded of the fires in British Columbia, Alberta and California, but the situation in Australia brings this to a whole new level.

As if to accentuate the point, the next morning the air quality index in Sydney was 10 times what is considered hazardous levels.  We had planned to visit the Taronga Zoo in the morning but chose to stay indoors with the windows closed to minimize the impact of the air quality. 

In the afternoon we met our travel mates Mike and Kerrie from our Western Wildflowers tour at the Sydney Aquarium.   The aquarium is built into (if I can use that word) the Sydney Harbour.  It has more than 13,000 fish and other sea and water creatures, comprising over 700 species.  The facility is impressive and as you walk through the walkways with fish and ocean creatures swimming all around, you don’t realize that you are essentially walking in the Sydney Harbour!  Sonya took her usual 100 pictures but given the number of pics you have seen before; we limit this posting to two from the aquarium.

This is a dugong feeding on seagrass. Dugongs are mammals that belong to the manatee order.  What is fascinating about these, is that they are more closely related to elephants (yes you read that correctly) than they are to other marine mammals!  

And these types of creatures are the reasons that you saw Sonya and me in long sleeved shirts while we were snorkeling.   These ones are appropriately called Moon Jellyfish.  While the stingers on this species target small prey, the stingers on their cousins called Box Jellyfish are much more dangerous and even lethal to humans.  The box jellyfish were the ones we had to be concerned about while we were snorkeling.   Fortunately, we did not see any!

After our visit to the aquarium, we went for dinner with Kerrie & Mike to a Vegan restaurant in Sydney called Alibi. 

An odd name, yes.  The food was scrumptious.  Neither Kerrie nor Mike are vegan, but they agreed that the meal was one of the tastiest! Sonya says – “Future Vegans”!.  

As with our other friends, the time disappeared too quickly, and we hope to see them on one of our next travel adventures.

Speaking of vegan food, a trip would not be complete if Sonya didn’t come home with a vegan cookbook or two.

I think that the actual count is around 5 or 6, but that is just a rounding error in comparison to her total cookbook count!

We leave you with a few interesting facts about Oz. 

(Statistics taken from http://population.net.au)
The population of Australia is around 25.01 million. 
Largest metropolitan  populations (as of 2018):
Greater Sydney                                    5.48 million
Greater Melbourne                              5.00 million
Greater Brisbane                                 2.48 million
Greater Perth                                       2.28 million
Total of these four cities                    15.24 million
Percent of total population 61%


Australia comprises approximately 7,692,000 square kilometres.

Area of greater Sydney                     12,300 square kilometres 

Area of greater Melbourne               10,000 square kilometres 
Area of greater Brisbane                  15,800 square kilometres
Area of greater Perth                          6,400 square kilometres
Total                                                44,500 square kilometres
Percentage of total area 0.58%

This means that the remaining 9.77 million Australians share 7.648 million square kilometres, giving an average density of 1.28 persons per square kilometre.

 If you count the cities, you get 3.25 persons per square kilometre.

Canada's population density is approximately 4 persons per square kilometre. USA is 91. 

And so, our Oz adventure comes to a close.  We had a tremendous time in the land down under.  We learned that, although our Aussie friends may be a little more British that we are (and definitely sound more British than we do!), the values, principals and lifestyles are very similar to we Canucks. 

I said earlier in the blog (but it merits repeating); we have made new mates and learned new words, we have drank new wines and sang new songs.

Until we meet again,

G’day mates!

SnP