The Sydney Harbor and Opera House have been on my bucket list since I was 10 or 11 years old.  I had a travel calendar with the “must visit” places around the world and I used to look at the photo of Sydney Harbor and I thought that someday I would visit.  Today I finally had my chance.

Fortunately, it was a sunny day and the weather was warm.  We took a walk along the “boardwalk” next to the Opera House (above) and strolled the water front cafes, restaurants and tourist shops.  There were so many things to take pictures of and I must have shot a hundred photos just of the Opera House.

We stopped at a cafe for some coffee and I noticed two things: the coffee is über hot and it is very expensive.  It seemed that everything in Sydney is expensive.  At the end of the day when we went to collect the car, the parking fees were about $60.  But the ambiance of the casual walkers, the light breeze and sunny weather made it a day to remember.  We checked the ferry rates and decided on a day pass so that we could sail all around the harbor.

The ferry was very comfortable; we stood on the bow and sailed out past the Opera House and east past Fort Denison to North Sydney near Cremorne Point.  All along the North Sydney banks are high-rise apartments and on the long fingers of land that stretch into the bay are huge mansions with private boat docks.  Near each boat stop there was a marina and we ooohed and aaahed at the beautiful yachts and boats as the bobbed in the water.  Some rather large mansions commanded views of the city and I shot this photo below to illustrate what someone’s back yard view looks like:

We sailed west back past the skyline and under the Sydney Harbor Bridge.  There was an active traffic of small boats as people enjoyed the sunny day.  We sailed over to Cockatoo Island past the Parmamatta River finally landing at Valentia Street Wharf on Hunter’s Hill.  Walking up the hill we found some lovely restaurants in Woolwich with a beautiful city view and dined on some exquisite Italian food.  I really began to fall in love with the Sydney culture, the beautiful views, the nice people, the mild weather and the great food.

Looking towards Birchgrove we had a great view of the city and I saw a sea plane coming in for a landing; no doubt one of the rich residents coming in to land at their backyard dock.  How nice that life must be, you can land your airplane in your backyard harbor with such a view of the city.

Up on Hunter’s Hill we saw a house for sale.  From the front it looked nice but didn’t look too big.  We looked at the sales billboard and I was surprised to see that it had 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and an 8 car garage!  The photos on the billboard showed the inside of the house and we realized that only a small part of the property was visible from the road.  While the house had a small frontage on the road, it had a large slice of land facing the bay, a private dock, each bedroom had a harbor view and the roof of the house has a patio with a great city view.  I downloaded a photo of the “patio” from the realator’s website (below) www.classiqueresidential.com.au  My curiosity was piqued so I called the listing agent and inquired about the price.  Oh geez, only $10 million Australian Dollars!

I just don’t feel like I had enough time here – perhaps next time I’ll take a sailing lesson.  I would love to spend more time in the Sydney Harbor and surrounding bays.  It is such a beautiful place and visiting here was a lifetime dream finally satisfied.  As we sailed back into the harbor, the fading light of sunset really made the colors of the sky, the ocean and the buildings “pop.”  It is my favorite time of day to shoot photos as the colors are so vivid and the contrast so striking.

I have a feeling I’ll be back to visit the harbor and shoot some more pictures ;-)

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When I arrived in Sydney, Andrea picked me up at the airport and took me for a tour of Sydney.  We stopped for some Thai food before heading to the harbor.  It seems like Sydney has outgrown its roads and without a freeway system in town getting around was a successive series of traffic lights intersections.

We began our proper tour of Sydney at the Royal Botanical Gardens, I beautiful park along the bay right next to downtown and the Sydney Opera House.  We parked inside the park grounds Fleet Steps that lead down to Farm Cove, the body of water just east of the Opera House.  Reading the placard at the steps I learned that they were named after the American Great White Naval Fleet that sailed here in 1908 by order of President Theodore Roosevelt.  The placard had a photo of Queen Elizabeth ascending the steps from the harbor and mentioned that they had been climbed by hundreds of thousands of people.  Today, I saw numerous joggers, locals taking walks and tourists snapping photos.  The stairs seem to have become a bit of a fitness obstacle as many were running up and down in jogging shorts.

A visit to Sydney Harbor and the Opera House has been on my bucket list since I was a little boy.  But today I would only see it from a distance.  It was already late in the afternoon and the sky was gloomy so we decided to bird watch at the Royal Botanic Gardens.  The park wraps around Farm Cove just east of the Opera House and has beautiful walking trails, green lawns and huge trees full of bats and exotic birds.  Well, I say exotic because they are exotic for me but a tree full of cockatoos is normal for Australia.  Andrea tells me that many people consider them a nuisance and some are even killed if they annoy people.  How sad.  I looked up into the trees and as I snapped their photos they looked down at me with curious eyes.  They are beautiful birds and their white feathers really stand out against the green trees and blue skies.

The birds seemed to segregate themselves by species into different trees.  A few trees were loaded full of huge fruit bats.  They were hanging upside down and at first I thought they were sleeping but it seemed that they were waking for their day to start.  Occasionally, one would push another one off of his branch or a pair would squabble for position on the tree.  The bats were quite large, easily the size of a large hawk or eagle, their wingspan looked to be 2 or 3 feet across.

Rainstorms blew in and we ran from tree to tree dodging rain drops and tried to fit under a shared umbrella.  We saw a large Australian Ibis who was fishing around for bugs and water along the walking path.  The Botanic park had all kinds of birds and we were entertained as we watched them munching on seeds and nuts.

Looking back towards the bay I could see the Opera House and the Bradfield Highway Bridge behind it.  Despite the “off” weather, the Royal Botanic Gardens are quite beautiful and I thought that it would be nice to visit here on a sunny day.

We came upon a rather large flock of cockatoos and we watched them as they foraged around for nuts.  We collected some of the pods, cracked the nuts out of them and then used them to lure some of the birds closer to us.  The cockatoos didn’t seem afraid of  us and came up to eat out of our hands.  Their expressions are so interesting, as they watch you it seems as if they are analyzing you, trying to figure out what you are all about.  They are really interesting to watch, a bit like watching monkeys, you are always wondering what they’re thinking.  I shot a short video of some of the birds that came up to see what we were holding.  I wasn’t sure if they wanted to eat the camera or the nuts!

A few of the cockatoos decided to fly to another area once they had picked the nuts clean in this area.  I tried a few times to capture a photo of one in flight and I captured this one as it flew right past us; the flash pulse captures his wing stroke as he made flight past us.

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Coming through the airport in Perth on my way to Sydney I saw this advert hanging on the wall.  From what I’ve been told some of these mining jobs pay $80,000, $90,000 and even some (probably the dangerous jobs) pay over $100,000.  Australia is one of the few countries that missed the global recession that followed the 2008 stock market crash and much of Australia’s economy is driven by the exploitation of its natural resources.  The mining industry is booming and they are hiring.

I am not sure the particulars of a foreigner coming to Australia to work in the mines – I believe that you can only get a work permit for employment in Australia if there is a job open that can’t be filled by an Australian.  If you have some mining experience, there might be a high paying job for you in Western Australia.

I talked with quite a few travelers who came over on work visas, worked for 3 or 4 months and used their earnings to travel around for a year.  I also met some who had worked for a year and then traveled for a few months before taking their excess earnings home.  If you stay longer than a year, you can “refresh” your work visa by taking a “hard” job that they have trouble filling.  Some of these jobs include agricultural work, cattle work, fruit picking and janitorial work.  I was quite surprised when some college students from Ireland told me that they earned $4,000 per month picking fruit.  They worked for 3 months and then traveled for the rest of the year on their earnings.  I guess this is in line with what I’d been told by others: the minimum wage in Australia is about $20 per hour.

We often hear that Latino labor is needed in America because no one will pick fruit (at least no white, black or Asian people will pick fruit).  But I wonder if we paid $4,000 per month to pick strawberries, I bet that you would have an abundance of workers.  I think that many businesses in America benefit from really cheap labor and maybe if we raised the labor costs a little, we wouldn’t have such a big immigration problem and we would have a lot fewer unemployed people.

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So you want to visit Western Australia?  Bring a fat bankroll – its not cheap!  Especially in the Outback; the further you get from Perth, the more expensive it gets.  Perth is expensive enough on its own but when you get out to some of the small towns, things get downright expensive.  Here are some of the prices we paid for things on the Perth to Exmouth and back tour.  Above, you can see that the price for a candy bar is over $3.  At the time of writing, an Australian Dollar is on par with an American Dollar.  Below, you can see the price for a case of beer – and that was beer on sale!  I paid as much as $75 for a case of beer.  It seemed to me that beers were $4 for a single, $2 each for a six pack and a buck fifty if you got a case or more.

Ever paid $2 for a coke (outside of a restaurant)?  It seemed that EVERYTHING in the Outback cost two to four times what it costs elsewhere.  Some of the other prices I paid were $21 for a 750 gram bag of pistachios (1 1/2 pound bag), $18 for cashews (1 pound bag), $6 for a small can of peanuts and $1.10 for an apple.  Yes, ONE APPLE!

Add a lime slice to your beer?  Limes were selling for $1.80 a piece and lemons were just under a dollar.  Expect European prices for a tank of petrol.  The great equalizer on this trip was home cooked meals and camping (versus hotels).  I spent twice as much money in 2 months on this trip in Australia than I spent traveling 4 months on my Trans-Siberian tour in 2009.  You can get by on the cheap in Australia, but it isn’t easy.

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Our last designated stop on our Western Exposure Perth-Exmouth- Perth bus tour was at the Greenough Wildlife and Bird Park.  This unique wildlife park is completely non-profit and is supported solely by donations and visitor’s fees.  Entrance to the park is free but is supplemented by a donation/purchase of feed pellets that can be hand fed to designated animals.  The park is run by two wonderful women who have given up life in the corporate world to help animals.  All of the animals at this park are rescues; this isn’t just a petting zoo, its a place where injured and abandoned animals are cared for with love.

One of the most popular characters at the park is a little piggie whose animated character attracted our attention for quite a long time.  This little pig acted just like a puppy dog, wagging its tail as it reacted positively to ear scratches and attention.  Of course it wanted some food pellets but it was such an animated little creature that we spent a lot of time petting and talking to it.

The park is spread out with plenty of room and had a wide variety of animals including a huge salt water crocodile, cockatoos, peacocks, ducks and other birds and parrots, deer, dingo dogs, emus and of course, kangaroos.

The most popular exhibit at the park is the kangaroo petting area.  All of the different types of kangaroos are on exhibit here and our park guide explained the differences in size and color.  I noticed that the kangaroos looked a bit lethargic and it was explained to me that they are nocturnal animals, they prefer to sleep during the day and only were awake because we had some feed pellets.  In other words, they were “tolerating” our presence when really, they would prefer to be sleeping.  The roos were quite mellow and pleasant and nibbled the pellets from our hands gently.  We got to pet and touch them and it was quite a nice experience – especially after going for near a month having only seen one (live) kangaroo.

I made my way around all of the exhibits and I was impressed with the crocodile.  This guy was HUGE!  He must have measured 4 or 5 meters long.  He was sunning next to his pond with his eyes closed and as I approached he opened them and looked at me as if I was to be his next lunch.  I could see that, in the water, no human could stand a chance next to this croc.

Standing next to an Emu, I realized how tall they really are.  In one exhibit I saw a cockatoo that looked (to me at least) like a a regular cockatoo.  I read the description next to his cage and saw that he was born in 1945.  When I realized that he was 56 years old I couldn’t believe it.  He didn’t look older than a few years.  Incredible the longevity of these beautiful birds.

The second most popular exhibit at the park is the dingo pen.  For a fee of $5 you can go inside and play with and pose for photos with the dingo dogs.  A few in our party went into the pen to pose for a photo.  At the time, I didn’t want to get dirty as I’d just put on a new change of clothes but in hindsight, I wish I had gone into the dingo pen.  They were really good looking dogs and were surprisingly domesticated.

I really had a super time at the wildlife park.  The ladies that run the park are truly doing noble work by rescuing and caring for these animals.  If you are in Western Australia, try to stop by for a visit; not only is the park a wonderful place to see wildlife up close, it is also the last refuge for injured and abandoned animals.

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