It was unbearably hot here in Sydney on New Year's Day; the daytime high hit 45 degrees Celsius, which is roughly about 113 degrees Fahrenheit. The hot wind that occasionally wafted through the windows just made things worse. For the past three weeks we have been subletting an apartment in a suburb of Sydney just a short train ride from the city center. The apartment has no air conditioning and on the first day of 2006 we were struggling to keep in good spirits . Barely moving and staying hydrated were the most important things we could do but that wasn’t easy when the water coming out of the cold water tap was actually hot and the little dormitory sized fridge could barely keep things cold; tepid was about as good as it got. I’ve never been that hot before and hope I never am again, the peanut butter actually melted.
Thankfully we survived and now we’re just about done with our Sydney adventure and in a few days will be heading west towards the Blue Mountains. I’m looking forward to it although I am sad to leave Sydney behind. We’ve been here for a month and somehow I feel like we’ve only scratched the surface of what there is to see and do here. We’ve taken about 500 pictures and would you believe, not all of them have been of Ellie. I have been having a tough time keeping up with the blog posting, sight seeing and running after an active toddler all day leaves me exhausted in the evenings and I find myself just wanting to tune out rather than sit down and write, but for the past few nights I’ve been going through the pictures we’ve taken so far and was inspired to write up a little post about the Royal Botanic Gardens.
Established in 1816 and occupying approx. 75 acres and framed by the harbour’s edge I couldn’t get enough of these beautiful gardens. Everything about the place, from the plant life, to the animals, to the people passing through appealed to me. We spent a lot of time there and yet, not enough. The photos I took won’t do the gardens justice and they don’t cover nearly all that there is to see but I do hope they will at least give you a sense of how much I was moved and inspired by what I saw.
How could we not follow this sign?
The Gardens are home to grey-headed flying foxes. When we first looked up and noticed them hanging in the trees we couldn't figure out what they were but then...
one of them stretched for us as you can see in the photo above and and another flew off. BATS! About 2 weeks after noticing the bats at the gardens we were at the Opera House one evening and noticed them flying through the air in large groups, they were probably going out for the evening feed!
Pretty Beak
We think this is a possum
Spider webs are not easy to photograph but I think I was able to get a little bit of it to shine through.
Not shown here but in amazing numbers not just in the Botanic Gardens but all over Sydney were the Sulpher-crested Cockatoo Sydney is home to an amazing array of birds many of which I have never seen before.
To be continued...
Written by Deb on January 3, 2006 06:30 AMA MurrayHill 5 Creation ©2002-06 The contents of this website and all images are © D. Byer unless indicated otherwise. All rights reserved. Please do not use images and/or content without permission and credit to this site. For more information contact: mh5deb(at)gmail(dot)com