Australia – Sydney Area

Manly

We caught the bus to Manly and then hopped on the ferry to Watson’s Bay.  We saw some whales offshore but too brief a glimpse for a photo.  Allistar obviously went for the beer taster at the 4 Pines Brewery pub.

Sydney Botanical Gardens

A day trip to Sydney on the bus led us to walk through Sydney Botanical Gardens (which is free!).

Sydney Harbour and Opera House

At the bottom of the hill, when walking through the gardens, you find Sydney Opera House …which is not how I thought it was, it is 3 separate buildings and the tiles are just like bathroom type tiles.

And a small selection of photos of Harbour Bridge.

Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park

I know a blog is supposed to have lots of words but I don’t want to end up with a backlog and a lot of the purpose of this blog is to remind myself what we did and provide a selection of photos for family to see, so here’s a short post about today.

My brother-in-law, Tony, was our expert guide for the day, with me being chauffeur.  Our day at the National Park including some terrible kangaroo photos, hey ho!

Humpback Whale Watching from Manly

Today I learnt that Southern Hemisphere humpback whales tend to have white(ish) sides/undersides, unlike the Northern Hemisphere ones.  I have seen humpbacks in Hawaii and Cape Cod and I never tire of seeing them.  This is the first time we have gone watching and not seen a series of breaches.  There was an adult and juvenile whale that kept coming up beside our boat.  We took a trip from Manly and it wasn’t too choppy. 

Home and Away Filming Location

We visited Palm Beach area and saw them filming a Home and Away scene!  We walked up the hill/steps and made our way up to the lighthouse. It was a bit of a trek uphill for my unfit legs but I was pleased I made it.  The view was pretty great from the top.

Blue Mountains National Park

It was about a 130km drive up to the Blue Mountains to see the three sisters and visit the National Park.  There was a cable car that took us down into the rain forest and we did a walk around the wooden footpaths and then walked down to a waterfall. We then took the scary train back up and Allistar took the other cable car that went across vertically and came back. It was a lot cooler temperatures in this area, but at least it was a sunny day.

Sydney and Bondi Beach Tour

We decided to do the Hop On/Hop Off bus tour around Sydney, which included a separate bus tour of Bondi Beach.  Each tour takes around 90 minutes, although there isn’t much commentary but it is in quite a few languages. 

I spotted this really cool building which I think is a lovely idea.

I am not sure why people rave so much about Bondi Beach, we have seen much nicer beaches around Sydney.

Dee Why Beach

My mother in law’s place was not too far from the beach.