Australia: Days 1-4

Australia is absolutely beautiful! I admit that I've only seen a small percentage of it, but I can't get over all of the trees, flowers, animals, and sights! Everyone I've come across is so incredibly friendly and outgoing, and unlike the Europeans, they don't cringe when I say I'm from the United States!

The trick with flying to Australia is how to get through jetlag. I arrived at 8:40am on Saturday, but my brain was - between Germany, a 1-day stop in Burlington, and a 4-hour layover in LA - scrambled eggs. I was picked up by one of my advisor's colleagues at the airport and, upon returning to his house in the Bellevue Hill neighborhood, told to take a 2-3 hour nap and then power through the rest of the day and crash at 10pm. Worked like a charm! After my nap, my host-mom gave me a driving tour up to the Watson's Bay neighborhood, which is just on the narrow bit of land pinched between the Sydney Harbor to the West, the Pacific Ocean to the East, and the mouth of the Sydney Harbor to the north. I got my first views of downtown Sydney along the way!

Downtown Sydney as seen from Watson's Bay

View from Watson's Bay north across the mouth of Sydney Harbor

I was then dropped off at Bondi Beach, famous for its surfing competitions, and decided to check out the beach and walk back to the house. The weather was a little breezy, cloudy, and actually kind of chilly!

Bluebottle Jellyfish (aka Portugese Man-o-war) washed ashore on Bondi Beach

Little purple jelly on Bondi Beach

I picked up some good Thai food on the way home and though I wanted to crash and just fall asleep, I still had 3 hours before I was told it was okay to fall asleep. The problem with falling asleep too early is that you'll wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to sleep! Luckily it was Sydney's Mardi Gras which is a HUGE parade downtown. It's also the largest gay and lesbian Mardi Gras parade in the world and Sydney appears to be a mecca for gay people, so it was a big event. I didn't actually go to the parade, but I watched it on TV, but as soon as 10pm rolled around. I bit it and went to bed.

The next day (Sunday) was so much nicer. It was sunny and really warm, so I got up, had a quick breakfast and then walked back down to Bondi Beach and started walking along the East Coast Trail which goes south from Bondi past Coogee Beach, another surfer's paradise, though a little more laid back than Bondi. The trail runs right along the rocky, cliff-lined coast and since it was Sunday, everyone was out running, walking their dog, strolling their babies, playing lawn bowling, rugby, cricket, surfing, and enjoying the weather. There was even an ocean-swim to raise money and awareness for the Black Dog Institute, an organization helping people with depression and other mental complications. Participants swam 2.5km from little Tamarama Beach to littler Clovelly Beach.

Australians love their ocean-fed swim clubs

Bondi Beach from the South

Bondi Beach and part of the East Coast Trail

Houses overlooking Bondi Beach

Tamarama Beach: starting point of the 2.5km ocean swim

Next group of swimmers getting ready

Waverley Cemetery right on the bluffs of the Pacific

Memorial dedicated to the 42 (?) Australians who lost their lives in the 2002 Bali Resort Bombings

Oh, just a photo shoot for some dance troupe on the rocks

Surfing in the Pacific. He's doing pretty well...

....until now!

One thing I notice about Australia is that not only do they have their fair share of bugs here, but their spiders are huge! I was told these common garden spiders wouldn't hurt you. Riiight...

Once I got back from my long morning of walking, it was only 2pm and my hosts suggested I take the afternoon to get down into Sydney. So they drove me to the nearest ferry dock, where I got on one of the Sydney Harbor Ferries. The ferries are pretty sweet and act as a subway-service of sorts to dozens of points around the harbor. I only had a few hours before the last ferry left downtown's Circle Quay back home, so I stuck mostly to the central area. I did the obligatory walk up the steps of the Opera House, which is more stunning in person than in photos because you get a sense of its size and strolled into The Rock, which is the oldest part of town where British prisoners were disembarked before being transported to the outback to work in quarry and farming camps.

Does this even need a caption?

The Sydney Harbor Bridge (but without its Olympic Rings...)

The oldest building in Sydney (I think) where the coxswain of old British vessels would live

I had extra time and sought out the view of the Opera House with the Bridge in the background that is so famous and to get there moseyed through the Botanical Gardens surrounding the old Government Building.

Before I got to the viewpoint, though, I also got sidetracked by a rabble being caused by a ton of wild cockatoos. That's right. WILD cockatoos. They are so damn annoying, but the spectacle they were creating was pretty humorous!

 

It was clear the birds were pissed off about something, but I couldn't figure out what! Someone was feeding them, which just made them fight more, but there was plenty of food around, so I guess maybe it was breeding time or maybe they were protecting nests...I'm not sure.

A little bit further and I found my goal. Now, I only had my iPhone camera with me (my new iPhone camera which I bought after my other one was pickpocketed...) so the photo quality might not be the best, but oh well. I was there! I also found a monument erected on the site where Queen Elizabeth II first stepped on Australian soil. It's also right next to the Fleet Stairs where America's Great White Fleet, a symbol of global prominence first came to Australia.

Short on time, I had to start making my way back to Circle Quay to make my ferry. I took a different path through the gardens and came across some inner gardens where more animals were waking up. Right at dusk, huge bats, with at least 2-foot wingspans, started swooping out of the trees. It was just one or two at first, but there were hundreds more up in the trees. Apparently, they are so numerous and bothersome, that city officials are considering relocating more than 2,000 (of the 10,000+) bats! All I could think of the entire time was that my brother, Ryan, would HATE this! He is not a fan of bats at all!

A quick sit down banana shake was in order and then I got on my ferry and went home. Such a long day with more than 15km of walking! I was definitely ready to get off my feet! Early the next morning, though, my host and I drove south of the main Sydney area to ANSTO, an Australian National Laboratory, where I am spending the next week working in one of the labs here, learning a new method to hopefully bring back and start up in our lab space in Burlington! I'm writing this now at the end of the second day of work. Tomorrow morning, I get to take a break from lab work and give a talk to whoever is interested in attending about portions of the work I did for my thesis. It should be fun!

I started looking into what I can do over the weekend and found out my friend, Greg, from the Glee Club, is in Sydney, though we haven't gotten in touch yet. Maybe I'll head back up to the city and try to meet up with him if he's still in town. If he's not, spending more time in the city is a definite possibility - check out the zoo or do the Bridge Climb? Otherwise, I might hop a city train out of town and spend a few nights at a hostel in the Blue Mountains.

I'll let you know more soon!