Sydney and the Blue Mountains

 

We arrived in Sydney early Friday morning, May 14 and, unable to occupy our hotel room, we walked around the city for hours. First stop was the Opera House, which is really even more stunning that any of the photos we had previously seen. The inside performance spaces are equally magnificent, especially the Symphony Hall. We attended a ballet performance of "Salome" in the Opera Hall on the second night in Sydney, but we were both so exhausted that we each slept through about half. What we did see looked great!

The Royal Botanical Gardens (there are such gardens in all of the older cities, it seems) are just up from the Opera House and are filled with native and exotic foliage and beautifully colored birds.

Saturday we took a ferry around the harbor and across to the Taronga Zoo, which is a great introduction to the native fauna as well as to some African animals. We watched the gorillas interacting for some time; one of the young was teasing the one who appeared to be the alpha male.

Sunday we spent with our former neighbors, the Deans, who immigrated to Australia and have settled in Turramurra, a Sydney suburb. We walked around their neighborhood, which has large homes, many having their own tennis courts, swimming pools and small gardens. The Deans also took us to Ku-Ring-Gai Park, where we took a couple of short walks: one with access for the handicapped that included natural enclosures for kangaroos, emus, and other native creatures; and the other up a slope overlooking a clear stream in which we could see schools of fish and then down through a mangrove forest with roots sticking up from the mud.

Monday we toured the Blue Mountains, which are west of the city and part of the Great Dividing Range. It's clear why the Europeans were unable to find a route over the mountains for 50 years and finally resorted to asking an Aborigine: the mountains are deeply gorged and riddled with rivers; the slopes are dense with eucalyptus, ferns, etc. (a recent cartoon quotes a woman answering why Moses wandered around the desert for 40 years--he wouldn't ask directions. Seems the same in Australia!). This was an organized tour in a four-wheel drive vehicle; we went with five other tourists: an elderly Argentinean man and two couples from Alabama. This was definitely not our preferred method of touring, as we were mostly confined to the bouncing vehicle and hardly allowed to walk at all! One stop was at an overlook for viewing the Three Sisters formation.

We stopped at Featherdale Wildlife Park on the way to the mountains. Featherdale is hardly a park; it's a zoo with small enclosures for the animals. Nevertheless, we did have an opportunity to pet a koala and a lizard there. Later that day, at a clearing in the mountains, we fed cockatoos and observed a mob of kangaroos.