Australia Day

In honor of Australia Day (celebrated on January 26, which commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788), I am posting a few of my Sydney pictures that I don’t believe I posted previously.  These are from my October 2009 trip to Sydney.  Please bear with me, I’m having a bit of a problem formatting the text and the pictures and editing this post.

On the first night we were in Sydney, we took a walk to find some dinner.  We didn’t know where we were going but needed to eat soon so we decided to take a short walk.  We found a small Italian restaurant and ate outside, although it was very, very windy.  After dinner, we decided to continue the walk a bit and see where it would take us.  We walked right around a bit of a curve in the path and saw colorful flags and a lot more light than where we were so we headed that way.  Literally one block from where we had eaten dinner, we found the Sydney Bridge!  We had no idea we were staying less than a mile away from this historic area!  In Sydney Harbor, right across from the bridge, is the Sydney Opera House.  The photos are a bit fuzzy because it was so incredibly windy!

The next day, we took a much longer walk and accidentally stumbled upon the Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel, which in some accounts is named as the first pub in Sydney. We had read about it prior to our trip but we didn't realize we were going to be so close to it so we didn't think we would get to go, especially by foot! Had we known we were so close the previous night, we would have held out for this place to have dinner. We ended up have a bowl of chowder and a couple of beers each. The food was delicious and the beer, well that goes without saying! If I ever go back to Sydney, I will book one of the hotel rooms that are a part of this brewery/pub. The fourth shot down was taken after our overnight stay at the Taronga Zoo. You get to spend the night and early the next morning you get a behind the scenes tour. We got to pet and feed the giraffes! And the last shot was taken from the waiting area at our Qantas gate as we waited for our flight back home. Although we were ready to come home after two weeks in Australia, we weren't ready to say goodbye to our wonderful host country!

Waiting for our plane to come home

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Taronga Zoo, Sydney–Australia

Our second day in Sydney was spent touring the city by double decker bus until the afternoon when we boarded a ferry to take us across Sydney Harbor to the Taronga Zoo.  We had reserved a slot at the Zoo’s program where you can spend the night at the zoo, in tents.  We were excited to be doing that.  The itinerary for the evening was to meet and greet the evening’s staff and then we were shown to our tents.  The zoo is situated in a very scenic spot, overlooking Sydney Harbor and downtown Sydney.  The setting for the overnight program was the most beautiful one can imagine.  In fact, when they designed the area, they built the bathrooms with windows in the showers so that you can look out at the view as you shower.  (There are also other showers with no peek-a-boo view!)  Then we had a delicious dinner and then headed for an afterhours tour of the zoo.  We were able to see tigers, zebras, giraffes, mountain goats, and other animals that were out and about at night time.

On the ferry to the Taronga Zoo.

This is the view from the back of the ferry that took us across the harbor to the Taronga Zoo.

View from tent area at Taronga Zoo.

When we were shown to our tents, this was where everyone stopped before even going in to their tent.  From here, the tents are immediately behind.  Ours was to the right and behind this overlook.

View from our tent!

This is the view we had from our tent.  It was such a gorgeous view that Tony didn’t want to close the tent.  We ended up sleeping with the screen closed and zipped (we were warned not to leave it unzipped because critters would definitely find their way into the tent) so we could see this view all night long.

Dawn over Sydney

This was the view when the sun began to come up the next morning.  I did take night time pictures but because I had only a point and shoot and it was extremely windy (and freezing cold), they are too blurry to share.  But the view from our tent was absolutely gorgeous!

This overnight at the zoo thing was something my kids and I, especially Tony, had wanted to do at other zoos over the years but we weren’t ever able to do it.  On this trip, Tony made sure we got to do all the things on our list.  This one was a big hit, even with a sleepless night and the heavy winds that night.

Interestingly enough, when 6 AM arrived, the kids on the overnight at the zoo were up and ready to go to our private tour before the zoo opened.  All the grown up were exhausted.  It turns out that we were not the only ones that couldn’t sleep the night before.  None of the adults got any sleep!  The zoo staff member that was our leader, Todd, said when he leads the group he is never able to sleep and he does it several times a month!  I figured in the end that it may have something to do with the adults being fully aware that we are in a vulnerable spot and if any animals were to escape their enclosure (think lions and tigers and bears) it could be catastrophic.

It was a wonderful activity!  Tomorrow daytime pictures of the zoo and our behind the scenes adventure!

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Lord Nelson Brewery–Sydney, AUS

One of the places we had considered staying at when we were planning the Sydney part of the trip is the Lord Nelson Brewery and Hotel.  The Lord Nelson is one of a handful of pubs that claim to be the oldest pub in Sydney.  It is located in The Rocks, which as mentioned previously, is the original site of the British penal colony and the birthplace of Sydney.  It was interesting to read that in the 1800’s pubs were required to offer rooms to their customers.  This, according to what I have read, was to protect pub customers from leaving the pub late at night and being robbed or worse.  It also provided a place for those who imbibed too much.  We ended up not staying there because it was pricey and because, as the rooms are above the bar, which has live music in the evenings, it was said to be a noisy place to stay.

However, we did want to go there to have a beer.  Tony is quite the beer aficionado.  We did a lot of beer tasting while in Australia.  So on one of our three days, we walked to The Rocks and then tried to find the Lord Nelson.  It was quite a walk with a lot of hills but we finally found it!  By then we were not only thirsty but very hungry.  We ate delicious bar food (I think mine was seafood chowder) and enjoyed a couple of their beers.

The Lord Nelson is a wonderful place to go for a brew and a bite!  If you go, make sure you go upstairs as you will find a lot of memorabilia on display.  It’s quite the mini-museum!  It’s near the observatory so you might want to take the walk up the hill to check that out, too.

Lord Nelson Brewery & Hotel, Sydney, AUS

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Sydney Sights–Australia

The second day in Sydney, we checked out of our hotel but left our luggage stored there because that was the night we were staying at the zoo.  That gave us from ten in the morning until seven to keep busy.  We ended up walking a very few blocks from our hotel to Darling Harbour.  Darling Harbour is home to the Australian National Maritime Museum, the Sydney Aquarium, Harbourside Shopping Center, the Star Casino, and a plethora of entertainment opportunities.  After walking around a bit, we hopped on a double decker bus for a Sydney tour.  It was one of those deals where you pay one price and you can hop on and off at any time.  We were on the top deck which was wonderful for getting an unobstructed view of Sydney, however, it was bad for getting off!  Several times we tried to get down to the first floor to get off of the bus at a stop (you aren’t supposed to be standing or walking while it is in motion) but we wouldn’t make it to the stairs, let alone down the stairs, before the bus started moving and we’d have to get to our seats!  Not good.

Finally, we got off at the Sydney Opera House.  There were lots of people getting off and more getting on so we made it off in time!  Whew!  From the Opera House we walked to Sydney Harbour where we got some lunch and did some shopping before getting on the ferry that took us across the harbour to the Taronga Zoo.

Some photos of the buildings in Sydney and of the Sydney Bridge…

Bus stop at The Rocks.

Darling Harbor, King Street Pier

Darling Harbour, shopping center in background

Downtown Sydney

Approaching Sydney Bridge by double decker bus

Underneath the Sydney Bridge

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Sydney–Australia

Our last stop on our Australian vacation was Sydney.  When we planned the trip, there really was nothing in particular that we had on our list to do when we got to Sydney.  Shortly before we left for the trip, Tony did find an overnight stay at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney.  He booked that but there was not much else we had on our list.  I had read about Sydney and had wanted to visit The Rocks but was okay if we didn’t do that.

The Rocks is the area where Sydney was founded.  It is the oldest section of Sydney.  For those of you who don’t know about Australian history (and why should you?) the British government sent ships full of British and Irish prisoners to penal colonies in Australia in 1788.  These prisoners built the penal colony which they would inhabit.  Why did Britain send their prisoners to Australia?  At the time Britain’s corrections system was over burdened because of the harsh economic times which caused many to steal food to survive.  Thus they became prisoners and criminals and when the prisons were overcrowded, they were shipped off to Australia.

The Rocks is the gateway to/from Sydney Harbor where you will find the Sydney Bridge and the Opera House.  What I hoped we’d be able to do was at least take a bus tour of the area so I could say I had see the Bridge and the Opera House.  Tony wanted to see these too and he wanted to see Darling Harbor and some of the other landmarks.

We arrived in Sydney mid-afternoon and rested for a little bit.  When it was time for dinner, we headed out of our hotel and stood right in front with no idea of where to go.  Tony asked if I wanted to go right where it was obviously the downtown area, or did I want to go left which appeared to be a little less busy but we couldn’t see too much because it was a little hilly and the road we were on curved.  I chose left, not wanting to get into the hustle and bustle of the downtown area.  We walked about a block and a half before we realized we were in The Rocks!  Being the oldest part of Sydney, the buildings were made of stones and bricks and the streets were very narrow.  We found a small Italian restaurant where we ate and after dinner, although the winds were howling and blowing very mightily, we decided to keep going in the direction we had been heading to see what was out there, figuring that if we got too far, we could hail a taxi to get back to the hotel.

Well!  We walked around the corner where the street dead-ended and got a glimpse of the Sydney Bridge!  We walked across the street and down a very narrow stone staircase and we found the harbor with the Sydney Bridge to our left and the Sydney Opera House to our right and the harbor all around us!  Without knowing, we had found what we had wanted to see, all within a few hours of landing in Sydney!

A few pictures below:

The Rocks

The Rocks

Sydney Harbor, Sydney Bridge on left

Tony with Sydney Harbor and Opera House behind.

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