At the Vic Falls airport we caught our flight to Joberg and made it through crazy Joberg—one of the busiest airports in the world – to our gate, where we sat out our 6.5 hour layover watching airplanes land and take off. We then caught a 9.5 hour flight to Perth, waited out another 3.5 hour layover there, and boarded a 4-hour flight on to Sydney. We arrived tired and very glad to be off the plane, rented a car, and tried to find our Airbnb in Manly, northeast Sydney at 11:30pm. After getting lost without having a GPS, we found a local at 7-11 (7-11!) who showed us his Australian "mateship" by offering to drive to the house so we could follow him there. Bless him! I was back to driving on the left side of the road/right side of the car, and it was dark and hard to see the non-reflecting street signs, so it was nice to just follow someone. We made it to our place and checked in just after midnight local time. We were all tired with not having slept much on the planes or airport, but were still awake until about 2 am before nodding off.
Not suprisingly, but uncharacteristically, we slept in Friday morning until noon and then headed out to explore the city (the kids have never slept in past 7:30am!).
Manly is a fun beach resort-like town with a very long boardwalk and all the 1st world amenities we could possibly want--lots of parks and fun old buildings, good shopping and eating, public trash cans, water fountains, and beautifully paved roads and sidewalks.
We also enjoyed all of the local birds. In hindsight this was clearly the summer of birds, and we loved seeing the colorful macaw and other local birds as we walked down one side of the boardwalk to an estuary lagoon and back to our part of town. Back at the boardwalk, we found a grocery store and went a little crazy with the gorgeous fruit and vegetable and meats there, and stopped at a Domino’s pizza (Domino’s!) for a couple of pepperoni pizzas (pepperoni!) and a gluten-free chicken garlic for me. While we waited for the pizzas, we noted some big macaw-type birds that were fighting territorially for a tree right in front of us, and some wild parrots that were being fed out the window of a guy that lived above the Domino’s. This is definitely not the states and not Africa! We took the pizza home with us and ate while we watched the rafting video that Philani and Shockwave had put together for us. After plugging the kids into a movie and letting our hosts know (and giving the kids my mission president's phone number to skype if we didn’t come back, :) Bri and I decided to return our rental and make do without it – driving on the left side of the road in a big, busy city like Sydney is nerve wracking and it turned out we had great local transportation options without it, so we decided to save a few bucks. We managed to find our way to the airport after a few false starts and a couple of directional assists from taxi drivers, pulled out some Australian dollars at the airport, and caught a taxi back to Manly. Our driver was a guy from Punjab province, India and we had a lively discussion about the benefits of arranged marriages v. love marriages. The kids were pleased to see us when we got back, we tucked everyone into bed, and all then laid wide awake until 1 am waiting for our bodies to adjust to the time difference.On Saturday, still feeling the jetlag, we woke up late and rented some bikes we had seen on our walk the day before.
We had fun riding around Manly – this is a fun old town with a lot of history and a sense of place. After touring the waterfronts on both sides of the peninsula we’re staying on, we had McDonalds for lunch and listened to a couple of busking singers before finding a Ben and Jerry’s for dessert (and a waffle cone-making demonstration).
Bri picked up a beard trimmer and some more Domino’s on the way home, and we headed back to the place to read our book about a Vietnamese refugee girl’s experience, Inside Out and Back Again. Sunday morning we finally got up mostly on time, got ourselves ready, and my LDS mission president from 20 years ago when I served in NYC, John Bailey, picked us up and drove us to Dural (NW Sydney) for church. This was a long-awaited reunion and we had a blast with President Bailey and his ward, singing in English and participating in our own tongue, enjoying flushing toilets, drinking fountains, etc. We enjoyed church and catching up with Monique, one of Pres Bailey’s daughters who is about my age and went blind shortly after my mission. She's amazing! She got married and had a son who is now on a mission. I was so impressed with her ability to participate in Relief Society at church, recognize people, get around the building, etc.!
After church, President Bailey took us (and Monique) to look at the Sydney Temple where he was the president a few years back and then on to his house for dinner.
President Bailey owns an H & R Block-type company and the kids (especially Thomas) loved looking at his collection of sports cars in two big garages, including several vintage Mustangs, a couple of Ferraris, a Maserati, and a Bentley.
Sis. Bailey stayed home from church to take care of her 102-year-old mother who is ailing, and she cooked us a “bake” of potatoes, veggies, and lamb. It was nice to visit with the Baileys and Monique and hubby, including a fun discussion about how the Baileys met.
We ended with a family prayer with Pres Bailey, who then graciously drove us the 45 minutes back to Manly. I will be forever grateful for President Bailey’s association and influence in my life. He let me come out on my mission even though I was diagnosed with mono while in the MTC and was mostly convalescing for the first couple of months of my mission. It was lovely to spend the day with him and have my kids get to know a man that means so much to me.
Monday morning we were up on time for breakfast and caught the first of many half-hour long Manly ferries to Circular Quay, located in between the Sydney Opera House and the iconic Harbour bridge.
It was again a little surreal to see the opera house come into view, and we loved everything about Sydney. Right off, we walked by a man eating at an outdoor cafe that had a few parrots sitting on his table. I asked him if they were his, and he responded proudly with a big smile, "No, this is Australia!" We expected nothing less than happy and friendly from him!
Once we got our bearings, we caught the Hop on Hop off bus near the circular quay.
It was a little wet and raining intermittently but we loved seeing the city and learning the history from the top of the double decker. We got into Darling Harbour a little late and checked in with the Aquarium and other goings-on there before stopping at Subway (Subway!) for lunch. We went to the Maritime Museum and Bri bought a Hard Rock shirt on the way back.
School districts in Australia had two weeks off from school, so Sydney was full of activities for kids, one of which was ice skating at the “Cool Yule” Christmas in July event in the harbor. Our kids were dying to go, especially because they've never done it before. They did amazingly well I think because of all the years of roller skating/blading that they've done.
Nevertheless, they still fell, and landed on the ice that was melting as fast as they were skating. So after getting soaked (especially Rhea, who went home in Bri's new Hard Rock shirt and her jacket), we caught the Hop on Hop off back to the Circular Quay and our return trip on the Manly ferry.
Tuesday we got up at our Angola-usual crack of dawn hour, had breakfast, and headed down to the wharf to catch the ferry in. It was mostly sunny and we appreciated the improving weather!
We came in and walked what looked like the short walk from Circular Quay to Darling Harbour that turned out to be a little longer and colder in the shadow of the big buildings downtown.
We bought our tickets at the Sydney Aquarium and toured the several exhibits in this massive aquarium.
We especially loved the Great Barrier Reef exhibit, the several tunnel walkways under rays, sharks, manatees (and a fake dugong with a button to press to smell its clean smelling lettuce breath and hear its farts which of course the kids got a kick out of), and other animals, and the penguins.
After finishing up at the aquarium, we had lunch at McDonalds and a gelato cone at the place next door, and headed to a large outdoor playground with a big climbing pyramid, slides, a zipline, and a water park for the kids to get some energy out. They had a lot of fun and tried to catch up on all of the park time they have been missing for the last couple of years!
After watching Thomas and Savvy play, I went looking for Rhea. There she was entertaining some kids at the park by spinning the circle. We had this at our neighborhood park in UT so she felt right at home. I just loved how she was in her own world with those kids, trying to make it fun for them, not realizing I was there watching.After playing in the park, we headed over to the Darling Harbour imax, the largest Imax in the world, where we saw Finding Dory in 3-D. It was fun to again see many of the animals we had just seen at the aquarium and we loved seeing the movie in Sydney (where Finding Nemo took place).
After the movie, we caught the Hop on Hop off back to Circular Quay and rushed over to the Opera House to take advantage of the dying light to capture these beautiful buildings.
It was bitterly cold (for some thin-blooded Africans) and pretty soon we were back at the Quay and onto the ferry back to Manly, and (again!) got a couple of Domino’s pizzas for dinner and bed.
Wednesday was our much-anticipated Blue Mountain tour. We got up earlier than usual, caught the ferry in, and made our way to the Sydney Harbour Marriott to meet our tour bus driver Jeff. He was a lively guide on our way out of town for the 45 minutes to Featherdale Nature Reserve. We have been looking forward to this intimate interaction with Australian animals at Featherdale, and it did not disappoint! At the first exhibit, we saw a large aviary with the several exotic parrots and birds of Australia; principal among them for us was the kookaburra, in the flesh.
The one closest to us sat there stately and staring away, and we couldn’t resist singing to him the gum drop tree that Bri grew up singing with his family and we have taught to our kids. He was unmoved, we admired a bit longer, and moved on only to hear him call out his loud laughing cry – it was really cool. We then ran into dozens of wallabies, kangaroos, and wombats that we were able to feed and pet and interact with, which was a lot of fun. We had ice cream cones full of cut hay and they would eat it right out of our hands as we pet these different animals, who a couple of times made off with our cones.
We also saw about a dozen koalas up close, and saw these slow and gentle animals feed, climb around, and nestle into the crooks of eucalyptus branches for some of the 21 (!) hours they sleep per day.
We saw other exotic animals such as the Southern cassowary, flying foxes, dingoes, emus, the death adder, lots of birds and storks and wombats. The only things we didn’t see that we were hoping to was the Tasmanian devil (who was feeling reclusive) and the platypus, but we loved how easy the access was to these beautiful animals at Featherdale.
We re-boarded the bus and went another 1.5 hours up into the Blue Mountains to the charming little city of Leura, where we got out for lunch. It was cold and windy!
We found a Chinese greasy spoon and had a lot of fried food for lunch and wandered some of the shops of pretty Leura. After re-boarding, we headed to Echo Point, where we could see the Three Sisters, three large fingers of rock jutting out from the hillside above the Blue Mountain valley.
Aboriginal mythology tells the story of three sisters who followed their witch doctor father to the edge of the valley and waited for him as he gathered herbs and other tools of the trade for his magic. The girls kicked rocks into the valley and woke a giant mythical bird, who saw them and began to climb out of the valley to attack them. The girls’ father saw that they would be killed and turned them into rocks for the moment to avoid destruction using his magic and the jawbone of a kangaroo. The giant bird then turned on the father, who turned himself into the mimicking Lyre bird, and he managed to sing the songs of other birds to escape from the beast. However, in the process the father lost his kangaroo jawbone talisman to turn himself back into a man and the rocks into his girls, and to this day the Lyre bird scratches around in the underbrush looking for the kangaroo jawbone. We visited the aboriginal centre at Echo Point and admired the artwork and big didgeridoos on display there before re-boarding the bus and riding to Scenic World’s skyway tram.
We rode the tram over to the entrance of Scenic World, marveling at the 900-foot drop below us and the waterfall on the canyon rim. At the entrance, we then boarded the world’s steepest train and dropped the 900 feet down into the gorge and a “tropical” eucalyptus rainforest that didn’t feel very tropical on this bitterly cold day (but was warmer than the clifftops above).
We hiked the raised walkway under the canopy and admired the mining exhibits and shafts, the big eucalyptus trees, and even caught sight of the bushy tail feathers of the reclusive lyre bird before he disappeared into the forest. It was magical and peaceful under the eucalyptus canopy and it’s easy to see why this area played such an important part in the aboriginal spiritual life.
We re-boarded the bus and began our two-hour descent off the mountains and back into the city.
We stopped about thirty minutes out of the city at Paramatta, where we boarded a river cat ferry boat called the Fantaseas and cruised into Sydney Harbour from a tributary. It was beautiful coming into the harbor at night with the Opera House and the bridge lit up.
We got back later than expected and hunted around for a souvenir place on this last night in Sydney. After several false starts we found a good place across the street from the Quay and picked up a small didgeridoo and some other keepsakes before heading back to the Quay and catching our ferry home.
Aboriginal mythology tells the story of three sisters who followed their witch doctor father to the edge of the valley and waited for him as he gathered herbs and other tools of the trade for his magic. The girls kicked rocks into the valley and woke a giant mythical bird, who saw them and began to climb out of the valley to attack them. The girls’ father saw that they would be killed and turned them into rocks for the moment to avoid destruction using his magic and the jawbone of a kangaroo. The giant bird then turned on the father, who turned himself into the mimicking Lyre bird, and he managed to sing the songs of other birds to escape from the beast. However, in the process the father lost his kangaroo jawbone talisman to turn himself back into a man and the rocks into his girls, and to this day the Lyre bird scratches around in the underbrush looking for the kangaroo jawbone. We visited the aboriginal centre at Echo Point and admired the artwork and big didgeridoos on display there before re-boarding the bus and riding to Scenic World’s skyway tram.
We rode the tram over to the entrance of Scenic World, marveling at the 900-foot drop below us and the waterfall on the canyon rim. At the entrance, we then boarded the world’s steepest train and dropped the 900 feet down into the gorge and a “tropical” eucalyptus rainforest that didn’t feel very tropical on this bitterly cold day (but was warmer than the clifftops above).
We hiked the raised walkway under the canopy and admired the mining exhibits and shafts, the big eucalyptus trees, and even caught sight of the bushy tail feathers of the reclusive lyre bird before he disappeared into the forest. It was magical and peaceful under the eucalyptus canopy and it’s easy to see why this area played such an important part in the aboriginal spiritual life.
We re-boarded the bus and began our two-hour descent off the mountains and back into the city.
We stopped about thirty minutes out of the city at Paramatta, where we boarded a river cat ferry boat called the Fantaseas and cruised into Sydney Harbour from a tributary. It was beautiful coming into the harbor at night with the Opera House and the bridge lit up.
We got back later than expected and hunted around for a souvenir place on this last night in Sydney. After several false starts we found a good place across the street from the Quay and picked up a small didgeridoo and some other keepsakes before heading back to the Quay and catching our ferry home.
0 comments: