Crouching Kangas, Hidden Spider

 

One of the highlights on these family trips is often the church services we attend, and church at St. Andrew’s in Sydney will surely be remembered for their friendliness. Toast, tea, and a g’day following service was great: “We invite you to join us. In fact, if you don’t join us, we’ll take offense.” From getting a brief history of the Anglican Church in Australia from the archbishop, talking American baseball with the bishop, and getting ginger cookies from another, they all made us feel very welcome. And seeing the man in front of us wearing his Onitsuka Tigers to church all but made that purchase a sure thing for me.

Instead of seeing a show, we took the Sydney Opera House tour. The 20 seconds of opera rehearsal we got to see was probably 15 seconds more opera than the kids wanted anyway, and we also would have missed out on the story of the construction challenges, the spurned Danish designer, and seeing the breathtaking red 70s carpet. Speaking of the 70s, Gould’s Books in Newtown rounded out our Sunday afternoon. The place is jam packed with used books, including an impressive assortment of 70s disaster novels.

Our time in Sydney is almost over and we had yet to see or eat a kangaroo and that needed to change. It doesn’t look like the Taronga Zoo serves kangaroo, but they do lounge about like they own the place. We’re not big zoo fans because forlorn animals usually don’t bring us joy, but to see Australian animals up close seemed worthwhile. This included gang-gang cockatoos, wallaby, koalas, emu, and the adorable quokka. And spiders. Very large spiders.

The kangaroos looked way too tough to eat so our day ended with pancakes near Campbells Cove.

Kangas crouching, probably up to no good

This kangaroo is named Lorraine, she smokes 12 packs a day

You’ve all seen the outside, but look at this awesome carpet!

Pancakes almost as big as the spiders

My kind of cove

Then there was rain

There were ambitions to run in Hyde Park and through the Royal Botanic Gardens this morning. But then there was rain. A lot of rain, rain for hours and hours. Plans shifted to spend a day indoors and there are plenty of museums in Sydney to make this work.

We started at the Australian Museum, which is just a few blocks from our apartment and like most of the other museums in Sydney, is free. With little downside, we spent a half hour there on our first day and it was clear there was much more to explore. Today, three of us breezed through the rest of the museum, which is filled with aboriginal history, animals, and birds of Australia. Two of us chose to read every single word of the exhibits. If it weren’t still rainy outside this would have been a real problem. One member of the three even tried to obfuscate the hidden secrets on the other floors of the museum by saying there are” only arachnids” on the next floor. Alas, this did not deter them even a little.

Chinatown had been calling since we arrived, and we finally made the trek after many more museum hours than necessary. By then the rain had cleared, and Chinatown is close to Darling Harbor, which also has the Maritime Museum. A day with submarines is always a day to remember.

Don’t be deceived by this sunrise, the rain started minutes later

Yellow crested cockatoo, properly presented rather than stuffed in a paper bag and put in the freezer

HMB Endeavor from 1768 when Capt. Cook sailed the ocean round

Forgotten Songs above Angel Place, representing the birds that used to sing in the city 

Important tips on a submarine: give CPR for as long as it takes and DO SOMETHING YOURSELF!

The sky and the skyline from Darling Harbor, it’s like it never rained

Our job was beach

 

Daniel has been talking to us for years about going to a real beach with the whole family. Not a pebble beach (turns out we tried that twice unsuccessfully), not a beach on a rainy day, and not a beach alone with too much sun. Just beach.

It’s winter in Australia, so it makes sense we would beach. Today was the best day in the 7-day forecast with a high approaching 70 degrees, so if there was ever going to be a beach day this was it. A relatively quick bus ride to Bondi beach and mission accomplished. Except no one had swimsuits. Oh, and Daniel doesn’t actually like sand. Now Dinah can’t stop talking about beaches and Daniel may never want to see another one.

The walk from Bondi to Coogee is wonderful and full of beaches. There’s a cemetery on the way, which is also right on point for our vacations. If you want people to come visit your corpse for years and year, pack it in a place that has a nice view.

It was an extraordinary day. Like true Coloradans, we found the local brewpub in Bondi. Curly Lewis is worth a stop for anyone who likes beer and good things in life. You should go.

A perfect day and perfectly sandy beach with hardly any people - winter beach!

The scenery on this walk was extraordinary

McMurray chose to upgrade to a room with a view

For swimmers who don’t like sand

A Tim Tam Man and an extra tasty mukbang

 

We did not have a Wednesday, July 24 this year. It takes close to twenty hours to fly to Australia from Denver. We broke this up into three legs, with a short flight to LA, a long flight to Auckland, and a shortish flight to Sydney. We left on Tuesday night and arrived in Australia on Thursday thanks to the International Date Line. It’s very unclear what happened to Wednesday.

Our first day in Australia was really focused on food. Not that the food was bad on Air New Zealand, but I think not having a Wednesday made us really hungry. We’ve heard a lot about Australian snacks, including from the Melbourne guy we met on the airport shuttle at DIA, so it became crucial to get a huge haul of snacks to mukbang. This included rasberry bullets, hobnobs, shapes, vegemite, Australian licorice, bhuja, and both tasty and extra tasty cheese (whatever that means).

Tim Tams were the best. Tim Tams are described on Wikipedia as “two malted biscuits separated by a light hard chocolate cream filling and coated in a thin layer of textured chocolate.” But the Wikipedia page for crack cocaine seems to be more accurate: “Effects include euphoria, supreme confidence, insomnia, alertness, and a craving for more.” A Tim Tam is 1/20th of your daily suggested kilojoules. Dinah had five of them today. Kilojoule math is almost as hard as date line math for us, but I’m pretty sure your daily allowance shouldn’t come from Tim Tams alone.

Why would you settle for just tasty cheese?

Great on toast, not sure I’d make a sandwich out of this though

Some snacks are better than others

The view from our apartment in Sydney is as good as the snacks