Iter Facere

We see a platypus

Thursday, July 19
Sydney, 7:05 PM

Up early for our flight. A nice cab ride with Ahmed, who moved to Adelaide twenty years ago. He loves Adelaide. He sold his restaurant a few years ago, which made him comfortable, now he drives a cab for spending money. He says Adelaide has everything he wants.
An uneventful flight to Sydney. It was cloudy, so we couldn’t see anything on approach. Our hotel is just south of downtown, pretty conveniently located it seems. But, no internet access. We will have to figure out a way to post.

We walked over to Darling Harbour and the Sydney Aquarium. On the way we found the Chinese Garden, built in 1988. The garden is beautiful. Right in the middle of the city, so behind the tranquil vistas every once in a while a high rise will loom. At the entranceway, there is a striking display of Chinese style bonsai. I could tell it was a different style than Japanese, but I couldn’t explain what it different. Something new to learn. The garden was lovely, I can only imagine what it would look like when the plants weren’t dormant. Each deciduous tree was perfectly pruned for shape. They were full sized bonsai. The pruning cut back the end of the branch, so that there was a lot of branching at the end of each branch. I need to learn how to do this. One of the signs remarked that the trees near the water all lean toward the water, as part of the style, something to remember for the Japanese maple near the pond.
We then stopped at a coffee bar for some food. We were amused by the sight of an ibis being treated as an annoying pigeon in the coffee bar where we had a snack. Familiarity breeds contempt for the exotic. It began to rain just as we finished lunch, and it hasn’t really stopped yet. We got fairly damp by the time we got to the Aquarium. The highlight was the first exhibit - a platypus! We watched him or her swim around for about half an hour. They’re smaller than I thought, only a little more than a foot long. When they swim, they close their eyes and ears, so they make their way underwater by touch. It fed a little, plunging it’s bill into to bottom and using it to filter out food. They are fairly adept swimmers. A dark putty brown. It looks like an adorable pet, other than the poisonous claw.

The rest of the aquarium is pretty neat. It has several tank where you walk under the water in tunnels, so you feel as if you’re scuba diving. I wouldn’t know, but Jenny says its not really like diving. Nevertheless, the tanks are interesting. We also saw the staff feed a estuarine crocodile, on of the man-eaters from the Daintree. The first aquarist walks out with a large plywood shield that he holds before him, four feet by four feet. The crocodile, an eight foot female threw herself at the shield, and then raised herself up on her hind legs to snap at the guy. He pushed her back with the plywood, and she lunged at him again, up in the air right at his face. How do you learn how to do this job? While he is fending her off with the plywood, another aquarist offers up a fish skewered on a metal shaft to the crocodile, which grabs it, and the 2 inch metal bar holding the fish and snaps it off, yanking the young women holding the skewer towards it’s snapping jaws. The first aquarist pushed back with the plywood, and the crocodile retreated. The two staff members exchanged glances and then backed away from the beast. These are creepy creatures.

Our feet gave out around 4:30 and we began our walk back to the hotel. It was raining. A nice feature of the buildings in Sydney is that almost all of them have an awning to protect you, either from the rain or what I suspect is actually the real reason, the sun.
We relaxed in our room, Jenny becoming more exercised about the yahoos at Enron, and then tried to find dinner. We walked up to Oxford Street, which the hotel had said had a lot of cafes. Not really. A lot of clubs, bars and lounges, with bums, adult bookstores and massage parlors. We turned around and found a restaurant in a hotel near ours. The waitress asked us where we where from because she loved our accents. The place was empty, although we thought the food was fine, and the staff was certainly friendly. We had a pleasant meal, and headed home around 10:00. Tomorrow we’ll try the Australian Museum, and a walk through the Botanical Gardens. We think we’ll cancel our tour through the expensive suburbs, and the sail on the harbor. Tours just don’t do it for us.

posted by Jim @ 7:54 AM