Gallivanting Grandma

Thursday – November 15, 2018

My alarm chirped at 5:00 AM this morning and we were showered, dressed, and walking to the Sydney Opera House by 5:45.  The sun was rising over Woolloomooloo Bay and cast a warm glow on the CBD buildings.

A single ferry moved in the bay, but otherwise the harbour was deserted.  A few days ago we made reservations for an early morning Backstage Tour of the SOH (Aussies shorten everything) so here we were enjoying an early morning stroll around Circular Quay.

We arrived at the Stage Door in plenty of time for the 7:00 tour. Our small group of seven people were given bright green security vests and I.D. badges with our names printed on them to wear during the tour.

The first place we visited was backstage of the Joan Sutherland Theater.  Today the venue is primarily used for operas, ballet performances, and contemporary music concerts.  It was named for the “dramatic coloratura” Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland. We started in the orchestra pit.  I stood on the box where Richard Bonynge and other famous conductors directed the pit orchestras.  It was a tangle of music stands, chairs, wires, and ropes.

This was the view the musicians see of the Joan Sutherland Theater from the orchestra pit:

We passed Joan Sutherland’s dressing room, currently being used by the Prima Ballerina of the current ballet.

It was ballet season at the SOH and the stage was set for that night’s performance of Spartacus.  Nonetheless, here’s a view of the theater from the stage.  This was the view seen by Joan Sutherland, Kiri Te Kanawa, Luciano Pavarotti, Paul Robeson, Brigit Nilsson, Sammy Davis Jr., Ella Fitzgerald, and President Nelson Mandela among other famous people.

This is my photo of “The Green Room” where performers relax, grab a snack, play a game of pool, or chat with each other between acts.

I did a double-take when passing an office.  Queen Elizabeth officially opened the SOH in 1973, but she wasn’t there on the day we visited!

We also saw the magnificent Concert Hall where large musical events are held for 2600 people.  The Australian Orchestra plays here and contemporary musicians play concerts regularly.  Jeff got a chance to conduct:

Jeff stood next to the gigantic case of a Double Bass.

Since it was still early when we finished the Backstage Tour, we hopped on a ferry and rode out to Manly Beach.  Manly looked like any beach town: tacky souvenir shops, stores selling surf boards, towels, & bathing suits, also restaurants, cafes, and bars.

The beach was lovely.  It was windy and the surf was up!

We had fun watching the surfers.  They seemed to glide on the water. The wind picked up and more surfers appeared.

Eventually, we walked back to the ferry dock.  The city of Manly put up their Christmas tree although it’s only the middle of November.

Manly is a suburb of Sydney and a 30 minute ferry ride away from the city.  What fun it must be for surfers and other young athletes to live and work here.

Wednesday – November 14, 2018

There was a light rain falling this morning – misting really, 63 degrees.  Just enough rain to clear the streets of the Central Business District (everyone here calls it the CBD) of tourists and office workers.  We walked up George Street, the main street in Sydney to explore and learn more about the city.

Construction is everywhere!  New tall modern buildings are being built wherever we look and George Street is torn up because of construction of a new light-rail system.  A shop keeper who was complaining about the “never ending” disruption, said Sydney “has the second highest number of construction cranes, after Abu Dhabi.”  We walked to the famous Queen Victoria Building:

The QVB (Aussies shorten everything) was built in 1898 and takes up a whole city block.  It was built of Sydney sandstone and proudly stands among modern skyscrapers as a reminder of Sydney’s past.  Originally a marketplace, today it houses high-end shops and boutiques on three floors.

There is a Tea Room tucked away on an upper floor which serves High Tea daily.  I was told those are Baccarat crystal chandeliers:

There were cafes and coffee shops:

And Santa was having a conversation with a young dad and child:

Later we walked down Market Street to explore Darling Harbor.  It had stopped raining by the time we crossed Pyrmont Bridge, but was gray and overcast.

This is the area of Sydney’s huge Convention Center so there are theaters, hotels, restaurants, bars, cafes, a shopping mall, a ferris wheel, and 2 ferry docking stations.  Modern apartment buildings line the harbor all around.  There are also several museums and attractions nearby and the Australian National Maritime Museum.  It’s a happening place!

The Maritime Museum had an array of sail and power boats as well as a submarine and a war ship.  Below is the Carpentaria Lightship that was in service from 1917 to 1985 in the Gulf of Carpentaria on the northern coast of Australia.

We used our Opal Cards to ride the ferry back to our hotel near Circular Quay.  It was a fun day!

Tuesday – November 13, 2018

We woke up to a beautiful sunny day in Sydney with the temperature about 67 degrees Fahrenheit.  During the week we traveled around the interior of Australia, we never saw any wild animals.  Australia is known for its exotic only-place-in-the-world animals and we wanted to see them before we left the country.  So today we went to Taronga Zoo which is a short ferry ride across the harbour from the CBD of Sydney. That’s another cruise ship tied up at the dock in the photo below.  There seems to be a new one every other day.

After a 10-minute ferry ride, we boarded an ariel tram-way to the top of the steep hill where the zoo is located.  It’s a fun ride because the cars float over the zoo and travelers can look down on the animal’s pens.

The first exhibit we saw was the “Koala Walkabout.”  We did the walking.  The koala, which are known to sleep for 18 to 20 hours a day, were dozing off.  But cute anyway!

We heard very loud squawking and followed the sound to a peacock who was strutting his stuff:

On our way to the Aviary – bird enclosure, I spotted a “wild” animal.  I guess this Australian water dragon lives in the zoo on his own and easily finds food.  Or he escaped from one of the tanks in the reptile house.  I did a Google search to find out that this lizard is common in and around Sydney and New South Wales.  It was about 10 inches long.

My photos in the Aviary weren’t very good, but here is a picture of an Eclectus Parrot:

We went into the building that houses nocturnal animals and I tried to take photos but none of them worked well.  Too dark.  Outside the building I saw an echidna and took a picture.  They’re also known as spiny anteaters and are one of four mammals that lay eggs.  We saw several platypus inside a building, as well as wombats, bandicoots, quokkas, quolls, and Tasmanian devils.

We followed signs to the “Kangaroos” and were surprised to see a sign near the entrance that read “Hop In.”  So we entered the kangaroo enclosure and saw kangaroos, wallabies, and emus “up close and personal.”  All the animals totally ignored the people walking along the path through their cage!  The kangaroos were resting and the wallabies were eating.  Unbelievable!!

Some kind of pelican:

A Goodfellow’s tree kangaroo asleep in a tree fern:

Komodo dragon lizard – also sleeping:

Australian brushturkey aka bush turkey picking up crumbs on a table in the snack bar of the zoo:

It was fun to finally see Australian animals!  We rode the ferry back to downtown Sydney:

Sunday & Monday – November 11 & 12, 2018

Our Land Tour of Australia ended in Sydney on Sunday, Nov. 11th after a bus tour of the city and surrounding suburbs.  On the tour, we were driven to the other side of the Harbour Bridge to see a panoramic view of Sydney.  Group participants below:

We drove through the beautiful affluent suburbs of Sydney out to Bondi Beach on the Pacific Ocean.  This is the famous surfing beach in Australia.  Unfortunately, there was no wind and the waves were flat, but that didn’t stop the hopeful surfers who sat on their boards waiting for the perfect wave.

The specially trained “Surf Rescue Team” didn’t have much business either:

The Rocks was the area of the first European settlement in 1788. It has developed into a prime tourist attraction with cobbled streets, shops, boutiques, and architecturally interesting buildings from the 19th century.

There’s a fun market every Saturday and Sunday in the historic “Rocks” neighborhood near Circular Quay.  We explored the market which is located near the Harbour Bridge:

The Rocks looks across Sydney Cove to the famous Opera House.  Ferries constantly crisscross the harbor taking Sydneysiders to work and back home.  An “Opal” card is like our NYC Metro Card.  Passengers “fill it up” with money and use it on all the ferries, trains, trams, and light-rail in and around Sydney.  A typical fare is about six dollars for a half-hour ferry ride across the harbor.

This is a photo of the Australian white ibis.  They approach people who are eating outdoors and try to snatch their food.  The ibis acts like the pigeons and seagulls, but they are much bigger more formidable.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge is one of the main symbols of the city, connecting Dawes Point with the Kirribilli neighborhood. It replaced a ferry when it was opened in 1932.  The bridge is only less than 4,000 feet long and is open to pedestrians, bicyclists, and climbers across the top.

Jeff and I walked around Circular Quay to the other iconic symbol of Sydney: the Opera House.  It took 14 years to complete construction in 1973 and was very controversial.  Today, it is recognized all over the world and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Under the soaring “sails” there are four performance spaces which host 2,500 performances and events per year.  We signed up for an early morning Guided Backstage Tour and were also able to get tickets for a Sunday Matinee of the Australian Chamber Orchestra playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and The Fifth Symphony.

We explored and took many photos.  Up close,  the “sails” look more like interconnected clam shells.  They’re actually several buildings under separate white tile roofs.

Our lunch in the Opera snack bar was served under a heavy mesh dome to protect it from soaring seagulls.  The birds watched us intently with their beady eyes during our lunch.

Below is a view looking back toward Circular Quay and the Central Business District (CBD) of Sydney from the Opera House.

Sydneysiders gather to eat, drink, and enjoy the weather along the harbor at all hours of the day and night.

Saturday – November 10, 2018

We set our alarm for 5:30AM so we could have time for breakfast and meet the tour group in the lobby by 7:30.  The Shangri-La Hotel in Cairns is a lovely comfortable place to stay and I wish I could have spent more time there. We all checked out and rode the coach up the mountain into the rainforest to the village of Kuranda.

We walked through the village to the Skysail Rainforest Cableway.  It was too early and all the shops in town were closed.  The Cableway is a 7.5 km scenic ride above the Barron Gorge National Park in the tropics of Queensland’s World Heritage Area north of Cairns.

The Cableway travels over the world’s oldest continually surviving rainforest on earth.  It was the longest cableway in the world when it was completed in 1995.

Six-person gondolas travel through the McAlister Range of mountains over the canopy of the rainforest trees.  It takes about 45 minutes to travel the entire distance one-way.  The developers established an agreement with the Djabugay Tribal Aboriginal Community for protection of Aboriginal cultural heritage.  The cableway was built by helicopters so the ancient rainforest would not be disturbed.

The coach bus met us at the end of the Cableway and drove us to Cairns Airport to go to Sydney.  The “Airport Tour of Australia” continues!!

We arrived at Sydney Airport at 4:00pm and were driven to the Four Seasons Hotel on Circular Quay in downtown Sydney.  We checked in and had the rest of the day and evening to ourselves.

The Sydney Opera House is across the Quay and looks beautiful at night: