Leaving Australia- on a jet plane, of course

This will (probably) be my last post from Australia. I am leaving tomorrow morning on the 9.50am flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. So this seemed like a good time to put the last of the Oz photos up for you. Nice and tidy. Here we go



This is part of the Chinese Friendship Gardens

and so is this. If you look carefully you should be able to see two turtles on the rocks in the pool. They were just perched up there with their legs pulled in and it looked a lot like they were glued there

more of the garden



and again

It is very pretty and relaxing. You can hire the place out for special events and can even get married there. I used to think that I would like to get married there but these days I think that if I find a man who wants to marry me and who I want to marry, I will just drag him to the registry office as quickly as possible before we change our minds- or sober up.

This is a great fountain at Darling Harbour



Monorail station

My new friend, Wally the Australian rugby Wallaby. I intend to take him home, sit him down in front of the telly and force him to watch the final of the 2003 Rubgy World Cup over and over. I bought him on the way to Manly Beach (so named because the Aborigines there looked so manly apparantly) so that is where he decided to pose. During my day out at Manly I managed to do two things that I had never done before 1. didn't take any photos of the Opera House from the ferry and 2. didn't get sunburnt on the ferry!

I like to go to Manly because you go by ferry and it takes about half an hour across the harbour and round the corner. The water is so clear that you can see the seabed near the dock. But my two worst cases of sunburn happened there. Mind you, it was in the summer so I was in with a fair chance this time.

This is just a small selection of the flying foxes that live in the Botanic Gardens. They hang in the trees like overripe fruit about to fall at any moment. They chatter away amongst each other and occassionally have a bit of a scuffle if one gets too close to the other. There are thousand of them living in the trees. The Park officials have put a sign up saying that the bats are trying to establish a home there and that they are using humane means to stop them as they destroy the trees that they roost in. Unfortunately, this sign was also there six years ago and I think that if the officials look up at the trees at any point they will notice that they seem to have lost this battle.

Having been good yesterday and not taken any photos of the Opera House I decided to reward myself with the opportunity to take one last shot today. The Opera House stands on a piece of land known as Bennelong Precinct. Bennelong was one of the local Aboriginals kidnapped by the first settlers in order to learn more about the culture. He even went to England with the Governer but later died, succumbing to alcohol and loneliness as he could no longer relate to his own people or those who had kidnapped and 'civilised' him. The first guy that was kidnapped died of smallpox while nursing other victims of the disease. Many of the original inhabitants lost their lives to introduced diseases such as smallpox.



These are some great Christmas decorations that I saw today at Circular Quay. They also had kangaroo ones and some of the koalas riding the kangaroos- how much more Christmassy can you get?

And today I went to the market at The Rocks. I stood under the Harbour Bridge to take this photo, you can see it at the top. When standing under the bridge it to hard to ignore the clanking of the groups of tourists chained to the bridge at the start of their bridge climb. This was only started a few years ago but is one of the most popular things to do in Sydney. Looks kind of scary to me.

And I guess that is that. I like Sydney. For the last six years I have told people that I would like to live here. It is a beautiful city with more water than you could possibly need. There are a lot of parks and you are never too far from the beach. However, I don't want to live here anymore. Having been around Australia (twice) there are other places that I would rather live and the older I get the more I succumb to the idea of small town living. Cities don't interest me in the way that they used to. The biggest downside of country living though is that I might have to learn to drive- and that could be bad news for road users everywhere!