“Life In The So-Called Space Age”
I’m so tired! Today was the penultimate full day, and included walking, shopping, a casino and tiredness. Some photos, with brief explanation:
I had a cheese stick for breakfast…
…saw bonsai for sale at Paddington markets…
…won a cute toy in a UFO catcher…
…enjoyed a delightful afternoon tea…
…and (much later in the day), took a photo of the $2600 Bernard won on only $5 bet at Star City Casino.
Yes, that’s not a joke. Bernard won enough money today to pay for his entire trip 🙂
Before the trip, KLS had suggested a very particular taste test. When we got back to Sydney Adam had set it up for us! The goal was to blind taste each of the following and see if we could correctly identify them:
Each beverage was poured into a green plastic cup (to hide the colour) and Bernard and I tasted them each and tried to guess which was which. Here are our results (me on the left, Bernard on the right):
It was then Adam’s turn. Here he is employing the sniff test prior to tasting:
And here are his results:
I’m tempted to buy him this lovely thing for a prize:
A steal at only $3.99 don’t you think?
Today Bernard and I walked around the city for aeons, shopping (gamebooks and souvenirs!) and getting tired! I took virtually no photographs, but here’s a good one of all the new years lanterns in the chinatown shopping mall:
A tiring day!
I lifted a TV the other day and broke myself. I’ve been recuperating on a (sheepskin!) heating pad in the evenings, but I’m not 100% better yet.
Yesterday I went for a drive around ‘the lake’ (Macquarie) with SMC. It was fun and nostalgic, but I didn’t take many photos. However we did have a go on this at Speers Point Park:
Not bad for a free slide (the design, by the way, is based on an old piece of coal mine machinery), but it would have been more fun had it been a waterslide.
Oh yes! I had a McOz for lunch! Note the beetroot:
In the afternoon Bernard and I walked to Merewether beach, along a nostalgic route that went past where he used to live. The sun was out and it was warm, but an ocean breeze kept us from spontaneous death.
The beach, as always, was scintillating:
It was a tiring walk home, since the wind was gone and it had seemed to get hotter. Here’s what we looked like collapsed on the couch when we got back.
The photo above is why the comments section was invented 🙂
This was dinner last night:
And then today, mum and dad took it easy while we headed north. First stop was the Stockton breakwater (one of the two walls designed to protect the entrance of Newcastle Harbour). Here’s the view looking out along the breakwater to the open ocean:
Here’s a shot of me at the end of the breakwater, looking across the harbour toward Nobby’s and the southern breakwater:
And here’s a panorama of Newcastle taken from the breakwater:
In the last century, many ships have sunk near the entrance to Newcastle. There are markers along the breakwater showing where they once rested, and one of them (the Alphonse) is still half-way along the breakwater; a ruined wreck. In addition to the ship markers, it seems to be a tradition to paint memoriums of the dead onto the stones of the breakwater. There are dozens of them, dating back 20 years or so. They are strangely moving to read…
After Stockton we drove up to Anna Bay, where Bernard had lunch (a re-run of the night before, mostly) before we headed down to the beach to have a looksee.
That’s an olympic village made in the sand, complete with pyramids, a castle and a football field. Here’s me climbing up a big rock in the surf:
The tide was low in this picture, and when it is high I expect much of this barnacle-encrusted rock is under water. Here’s what the surface looked like in close-up:
And here’s another rock down at the water’s edge:
If there’s one mistake I made on our little trip today it is to ignore this important piece of advice:
Yep, I got a bit burned 😮