We woke up early after getting a solid night’s sleep, feeling human once again. After a big breakfast in the hotel,we were off to explore the Sydney Harbor area.
photo credit: Roslyn Konter
Sydney Harbor is enormous.It has almost 200 miles of shoreline, with 20 swimmable beaches and about 20,000 registered boats. There are several ferry services that shuttle people between the central business district and other communities along the harbor. We took one, and our first stop was the zoo. If you like zoos (not everyone does), you’ll enjoy this one very much. I was thrilled to see one animal that seemed free to come and go as it pleases: a kookaburra (see picture at bottom of post)
The kookaburra is native to Australia and New Guinea. It’s the largest member of the kingfisher family, but it doesn’t fish. It’s a carnivore, eating rodents and snakes. It’s call is a harsh cackle that must have reminded someone of laughter; hence the song about the laughing kookaburra.
After the zoo, we visited a beach community called Watsons Bay. We were waiting for the ferry there when Roslyn got a call from her cousin Warwick, who offered to pick us up at drive us around to show us some of the other beaches and other sights. And so we got a lovely guided tour of Bondi Beach, one of the largest and certainly most widely known of Sydney’s beaches; as well as half-a-dozen more. These beaches are all on the Pacific Ocean side of the city, and their waters are that beautiful mixture of deep blues and teal greens.
Back at the hotel, we washed up, and changed clothes for our evening’s entertainment. Roslyn’s cousin Victor had gotten us tickets to see La Boheme at the Sydney Opera House.
We figured, why just see the opera house, when you can see an opera performed in the opera house! It’s as beautiful inside as it is outside. I’m told the opera company is very good; but I confess here my knowledge of opera is such that I couldn’t tell good from bad. We enjoyed it thoroughly, except for the woman who seemed to have taken a shower in her perfume. See sat a row behind and a few seats down from us, sending Roslyn into respiratory distress. The opera house staff was magnificent, giving us different—and better—seats at intermission.
