Old Musings - July 01

Sorry again, not many updates for a while - but here is a nice big one to make up for it! 

Things have been pretty hectic here lately. I've had my parents over, and just last week said goodbye to a friend from back home who decided to pop in for a week. I decided to make the most of it, and took just over a week off myself. All in all, I have been doing plenty of cool stuff these last few weeks - and I'll see if I can dig up some photos to prove it

After hiring a car for a bit over a week, I managed to do quite a bit of sight-seeing. First of all, I took my parents down to Berry (no, not Berri, Berry. Berri is over a thousand km away, where as Berry is a lot closer!). Berry is very much a tourist destination. One street, a couple of side streets, and more craft shops and cafes than you can shake a stick at. I think Mum was on cloud nine.

On the way back up from Berry, we stopped off at Kiama, world famous in the Illawara for it's blowhole. We went, had a look, and were definitely impressed with what we saw. In the last week or so, the sea had been a lot more violent than usual. Just around the corner from my apartment, the waves were up around 2-4 meters. The ocean near Kiama was similar, and this made for an impressive show around at the blowhole, where the water was thrust a good 20-30 meters up into the air! <Take a look at the rough oceans - or the Kiama Blowhole>

Berry, Kiama, and the blowholes are all south of Wollongong. To the North, we have Sydney. If you go hunting around, somewhere in between the two, you will find Stanwell park with the Symbio wildlife gardens. This is a great place to visit, and would I recommend it to anyone new to Australia. It is basically one big petting zoo, but with lots of native animals. For a dollar you get to buy a bag of food, and you get to feed all the cute - and some not so cute animals, including kangaroos, wallabies and wallaroos (I didn't even know such animals exisited, but there you go. You learn something new every day). Other animals in the zoo included : camels, hawks / eagles, possums (they are actually a protected species here!), bats, owls, native birds, snakes, lizards, duck, geese, sheep, rabbits, hamsters, alpaca / llamas, chickens, dingos, kookaburras (is that how you spell it?), and of course the ferocious koala marsupials!

Of course, what would any holiday be like without actually going into Sydney? You can spend days just walking around, admiring the old buildings, the botanical gardens and other sights without even getting to the entertainment that is on offer. Before I go any further, I just have to say that the place to eat if you are in town is Xerts. That place is truly bizarre, but I've had to loosen my belt a couple of notches ever since.

The first time we went into Sydney, we decided to hit the aquarium first - BIG mistake. It was school holidays, in the middle of the day. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a) it was going to be busy and b) there is no way you are going to get close to a tank without some kids squeezing in front of you. Anyway, we quickly did a whirlwind tour of the facilities, and a quick sticky-beak of all the pretty fishes, and exited as promptly as possible because things got rather claustrophobic in there. We then proceeded to have a good look around Sydney, taking a couple of photos, and then finally made our way back to Xerts (I believe I have already mentioned them :) ) for a bite to eat. After gorging on Xerts' wares, there was a bit of time left over, so it was decided to return to the aquarium (we had a stamp on our hands, which meant we were allowed to return as often as we liked). There were a lot less small people this time, which made it easier to get around, and we ended up at the final aquarium where there is plenty of room to just sit down and watch the fishes swim by.  We did this until it was time to catch the train back home.

It was a special week for me this week. It marked two special occasions for me.
a) One year living in Australia (13 July 2000) - as long as you don't count the 3 months in Belfast <g>
b) One year working for Nortel (17 July 2000). Since I started, the share price has dropped from 65USD per share to less than 8USD. I hope it wasn't anything I did!

As you may have noticed, I have slowly started adding some more graphics into my main pages. This is after some good feedback from people about the site. Sure, it may have been quick to load up, but apparently the place was a bit barren. So, in an attempt to get people to browse around a bit more I have decided to start throwing in some more photos onto my main page to liven things up, as well as adding quick links in my dribble to some of my other stuff. If anybody else has any suggestions on how I can get things looking a bit more lively, then please let me know. (Oh, and the same thing goes for if you find any broken links!)

Web Update
Added Koala Bears to the Flora and Fauna section
Added Kiama Blowhole photos
Added some new photos of Sydney
Added Ocean photos

Parents back for week.

I took time off work.

Hired car.

Went shopping

Did tourist stuff.

See photos.

No guestbook entries yet.


Web Update
New photo sections added - Ocean, Nan Tien Temple
Added another photo to the 'Dumb Ozzies' section
June ravings filed away into the old news section.
New link of the week