Sydney: What Can I Say?

My 25th birthday didn’t last very long traveling 500 mph in a Qantas Airbus 330, in fact I skipped the 14th altogether and went straight to the 15th ,when I finally touched ground in the southern continent once again here in Sydney. I’ve been in the city for two days and fly to Perth tomorrow for an overnighter before catching yet another flight to Barrow Island. Not much to say about Sydney, it’s like any other city; men carry purses, the horn is used frequently in automobiles, blue tooth headsets and computer bags are quite popular, the streets smell of urine, and people are generally in a hurry to get somewhere. I haven’t down much sightseeing mainly because I don’t care much for cities for these reasons.

I did however check out Australians oldest natural history museum and discovered that Drop Bears really did exist at one point and died out about the same time early humans began to inhabit the continent around 50,000 years ago. I also sat through a show at the Sydney Opera House, it was the best of opera and it wasn’t very exciting. I was expecting an orchestra and a grand arena, but instead got a grand piano and concrete walls. There isn’t much to the Sydney Opera house on the inside; it reminded me of the theater at Yosemite High. I was hoping some pelagic seabird trips would be running so I could check out the southern seabird assemblage, but I guess that will have to wait until Tasmania.

And no, Sydney is not flooding. Brisbane was but is now drying out once again, although the devastation is widespread. They are predicting 12 cyclones in Western Australia this season (the Indian Ocean side), it’s yet to be seen how that may affect work near Barrow. They’ve already demobilized 3 times in the last 2 months.

Photos: The better side of the Sydney Opera House, don’t bother seeing a show. A Drop Bear (actually an extinct lion-like marsupial, similar in morphology but completely unrelated to lions. Drop Bears of course live in trees).