Bart Bear's Blog

On Saturday we went on a koala hunt. Not real koalas, but a batch of koala sculptures that were hiding in the Australian National Botanic Gardens. There were also some at the zoo, the ANU and Old Parliament House. Here are 5 of the 12 that we photographed. The koalas were painted by local artists and each one had a plaque with its name and some nature facts. The aim is to teach visitors how important koalas and the plants that live in the same habitat are to us. The names of these guys are Carramar, Buzzy, Bushby, Gum Blossom and Captain Koala.The last photo is of a couple of my favourite denizens that live in the gardens. They are Eastern Water Dragons. They are fairly tame and the only visitors who disturb them are noisy kids; when disturbed they race off the rocks and jump into the nearest pond or creek. You can spend hours strolling around the ANBG, but be aware that the plants are Australian natives and to the overseas visitor they can look drab, dry and uninteresting (except for the short periods when they are in flower) as they are adapted to our (mostly) harsh climates.

Labels: animals, Canberra

One of the things that we do during some Sydney stays is to take the ferry across to Manly. The ferries all leave from Circular Quay, so there is always a chance of seeing large cruise ships docked at the passenger terminal next to the ferry wharves. The top one here is "Queen Elizabeth". I have not been on her, but did meet up with her in Sydney Harbour when I was on the "Queen Mary 2". The smaller ship is "Explorer of the Seas" and I have cruised on her sister ship "Voyager of the Seas" a couple of times. When these ships are about to leave in the late afternoon the top decks are usually lined with passengers watching the departure. Several times we have stood on deck and noticed an interesting balcony with lots of people waving back to us. So Mum did some searching and found out that the balcony was part of a restaurant called Appetito. This time it was us on that balcony, drinking Chianti and waving to the passengers on the Queen as she departed. Mum lived in Manly until she was nearly 5 and we keep an eye on how the suburb changes. It is all plazas and tons of tourists in the town centre now. The flat where her aunt lived is still there, just a few streets back from the harbour. The beach is still one of the best in Sydney, not as big and crowded as Bondi. In my opinion it is better than the Hawaiian beaches, but there is a link to Hawaii here; this is the beach where Duke Kahanamoku introduced surfing to Australia. There are more photos of Manly in earlier posts if you want to use the search box.

Labels: New South Wales, Sydney

Last weekend we took Dad to Sydney for a real flash 3-day celebration of his passing the 3/4 century+1 birthday. There are loads of pictures of Sydney on the blog, so here's a few different ones. I like the look of the city at night, buildings like the Town Hall look great with the lights giving them a glow. Of course, it is ideal if you can sit with a great building in the background and a cocktail in the foreground. The building is the Queen Victoria Building, a restored heritage shopping mall, and the cocktails are in the Glass Brasserie, one of the top restaurants in Sydney (we fed the man steak, of course). Our hotel had an interesting spiral sculpture in the foyer and if I could have found a way to get to it I would have loved to tackle the 4-story climb to its top. The Oldies spend a bit of time shopping. I usually go with Dad as his idea of shopping involves hobby shops, much more interesting to small bears than the shops Mum goes to. Hobbyco is our favourite one in Sydney. We usually stock up on plastic kits, but have hit the stage where we have built all the interesting ones. So we started our collection of 1/76 scale fire engines. There is always something new to find in "the Big Smoke" and we thoroughly spoiled the Old Bloke.

Labels: models, New South Wales, Sydney

Labels: cruising, South Pacific