Sydney

After flying in to Sydney from Cairns, we settled in to our hotel, which was located downtown, just up the street from the Opera House. Because Anna is obsessed with koalas, the following morning we took the ferry from Circular Quay to Taronga Zoo. The ferry ride took us across the harbor, giving us great views of the harbor bridge, and the Sydney skyline.
After landing at the zoo we took a cable car (which Anna loved, of course) to the main entrance. The first exhibit we had to visit was the Koalas. The iPhone couldn't get very good close ups, but Anna took some great photos, and a couple of videos, of the Koalas being cute.

The zoo has an interesting set up with several exhibits in which you can walk amongst the animals without any fences between you. One of which was an area filled with kangaroos and wallabys. We got fairly close to some of them. We also stopped to see the Australian sea lions. We walked around for a while and then took the ferry back to the city.

(Australian Sea Lion)

(Kangaroo)


(Wallaby)

(Wollemie Pine)
The following day we made our way to Bondi Beach. Despite its small size, it is the most famous beach in Australia for it's good surfing and boardwalk shops. Even though it was quite cool (the temperature was the high teens C, or the 60's F) there was a lot of suffers in the water. There were also a lot of people running around and throwing fridbees and balls around in just bikinis and shorts like it was a balmy summer day. Maybe it is because we had just come from near the equator, but we both had long sleeve shirts on. It is a little strange to walk past people dressed in very little when you are bundled up.


The beach sand was extremely fine. In fact, it was so small that it would squeak when you walked on it. We had fun for a while making our feet squeak and watching the suffers bite it on the waves. Don't get me wrong, I doubt either of us could even stand up on a surf board, much less ride a wave, but it is easy to laugh when we are standing on solid ground. There were a few suffers who were pretty good and made it all the way in to shore. We shopped around for a while and had dinner on the boardwalk. There were some die hard surfers in the water until after dark.


We took the bus back to the hotel and watched a movie in the room. It was the last bit of relaxing we would have for a couple of days. We had been expecting a package from Anna's dad for a few days that had our camping gear in it. We were to begin the camping part of our trip in a couple of days in New Zealand. We had asked the hotel concierge every day if a package had come for either Anna or I, but they said no. Since we were leaving for New Zealand on Friday, we were getting worried.

(Harbor Bridge)
Finally on Thursday morning we had the concierge track the package online and found that it had been on a customs hold for four days. DHL said it would be easier to come to their office by the airport to pick it up. We got in a cab for what would be the first of a series of taxi rides that day and the next that would end up costing over $300. We went to DHL, and after filling out a bunch of paperwork, and paying a $50 fee to pick up the package, they told us that we would need to go to the customs office to get it approved. Anna got another taxi to go do that, while I stayed and began the process of the paperwork to send our dive gear back to the States.

(Opera House)
Anna returned an hour later nearly in tears. She had had to take several taxis and trains to find the customs office, plus we had forgotten our passports back at the hotel and customs would not clear the package without two forms of ID. So I took the cab she had returned in to go back to the hotel to get our passports. The cab driver was a very nice man from South Korea who ended up being our chaufeur for the rest of the day. We were back in a half hour. From DHL we both went back to customs and after much hemming and hawing, the customs agent stamped our papers (of which we now had nearly a full ream) and told us we needed to talk to quarantine. We took another number and ended up talking to the woman who was sitting right behind the first agent. Again, after much hemming and hawing, she told us that since the package contained a used tent, we would need to make an appointment for the package to be inspected to make sure there was no foreign soils on it. It didn't matter that we were going to put the box on a plane the next morning to leave the country. They made us pay an inspection fee of $105 before we even made an appointment.

(View from Hotel)
By this time it was 4 pm and the inspection office was closed. The woman told us we would need to call them first thing in the morning to make sure that we got an early appointment. Our plane was scheduled to leave at 10 am and the inspection office opened at 7:30 am. When dealing with a government office, the chance of that happening was less than me being elected prime minister of Australia. But there was nothing we could do, so we went back to the hotel. We were out several hundred dollars, extremely frustrated, with cramped hands from filling out so much paperwork, and we still didn't have our camping gear. Anna and I agreed that Douglas Adams must have come to Australia for the inspiration for the beaurocratic and paper-work loving Vogons in his book "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy".

There was one nice thing to look forward to. We were going to see Beethoven's only opera, "Fidelio" at the Sydney Opera House that night. We had a hurried dinner at the hotel, and then went to the Opera House. It is just as impressive up close as it is in all the pictures. The white ribbed roof seems to hover over the harbor. Inside the theater is much smaller than we thought it would be. There are several theatres in the building and this one probably sat a couple thousand people. The Opera itself was wonderful. Though it was more of a musical really, as there were speaking parts as well as singing. It was all in German with English subtitles displayed above the stage. The sets were very elaborate with moving parts and multiple levels. Over all it was a fun experience and a nice way to forget about the day we had.

(Opera house and Harbor Bridge)

The next morning we got up early and Anna called the inspection office (Anna's cuter than I am and can usually sweet talk her way through things), and talked to a supervisor there. She finally got the guy to admit that it was stupid to open a box to inspect it just to send it out of the country again. He told her to speak to DHL as they had their own inspection people there who would take care of it. This made it worse because we could have just asked the DHL people to do it the day before. We got to DHL and Anna did her sweet talking thing again, and a few minutes later, a man came outside with the box and put it in the back of the taxi. It was almost so easy for them to give us the box that it was infuriating. We took off and went to catch our flight to New Zealand.

When we got to Australia, we really enjoyed it. We even found Sydney to be nice, though the people there seem a little rude and more than uphelpful. We had initially thought that we might come back here some day, but after the last few days, we are no longer so sure. -Scott