Back To Sydney

Today I left mum and dads and headed down to Sydney. The rains were drying up in Newcastle but the forecast in Sydney remained gloomy.

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I headed down to Darling Harbour since I wanted to visit ‘Wildlife: Sydney Zoo’, the new name for what used to be called Australia’s Wildlife World. I’d been here many years ago and wanted to see how it had held up.

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That’s a whistling duck, one of the animals on display. The ‘zoo’ is a linear walk through several displays mostly concentrating on the big hitters like koalas and kangaroos.

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It took me about 90 minutes to see everything, including the (brief) ‘outback show’ and ‘kangaroo show’, which isn’t much for $40. Also most of the animals enclosures are behind glass, so you don’t feel as close to them as you do in a place like Blackbutt (which is free).

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That said, they have some nice reptile, amphibian and insect exhibits. But I think the reduction in size (due to the building of Madame Tussaud’s) had been detrimental to this park, and if you’re interested in seeing Oz animals just take the time and visit Taronga.

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That’s a giant octopus attacking a sub berthed at the maritime museum. I was a bit worn out today, but I may visit later this week.

After Wildlife I headed into the CBD for some shopping. At Kinokuniya they have an astonishing display of paper flowers that I hope Bernard got to see before he left.

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Yes they’re all made of paper.

The rest of the day was spent with Adam watching TV, laughing and (much later) collaborating on a series of unique postcards…

Murals

There’s lots of murals all over Newcastle, both conventional and graffiti style, but this one halfway up Hunter Street must be my favourite:

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Here’s detail of the girl in the crystal ball, who is only a few cm in height:

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What a lovely piece of work!

Camping

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That’s Sue, who I’ve known for years, and who is an expert on the manufacture of Weetbix. She’s been suggesting for ever that we go camping during my stay, and thus year we did! So the other day Sue, me, her two kids and her niece went to the Allyn River campgrounds in the Barrington Tops, about 2 hours NW of newcastle.

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That’s my room above, which was the tent on the left. Hardly the Hilton, but comfy enough that I slept like the dead after our busy day!

But I get ahead of myself! We did the usual campground activities of hiking…

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Swimming…

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Cooking sausages (this is Oz, after all)…

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And sparklers around the fire…

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Although truth be told, due to the kids most of the time was spent at the two swimming holes along the river 🙂

I enjoyed camping quite a lot, although I wonder if I would have had we continued beyond one night. Truth is the campgrounds were much closer together and busy than in America and camping here is extremely popular with the, shall we say, ‘less cultured’ type 😉

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That’s a Brush Turkey, one of the many animals we saw. Probably the highlight of the trip for me was waking at sunup (just before 5) and seeing many little pademelons in and around the campgrounds, including two not 3 meters from my tent entrance!

Thanks to Sue for taking me camping. I enjoyed it greatly, and it may be time to dig out the old tent and camp again in the US.