Day 51 2nd March 2011

View from the restaurant

In the Rain Forest

Last night we dined at “The East”, a Chinese restaurant on the Opera quay with one of the great views in the World. We had the Sidney Harbour Bridge and the Aurora as our backdrop for the meal. As night fell the view grew even better as the bridge and ship were illuminated with hundreds of lights. We had never seen the ship at night and it is spectacular. While it was daylight we could see the tiny dots that represent people climbing up the bridge and even in the dark the flashes of their cameras created a special atmosphere. The food was wonderful. We had seafood to start with king prawns, walnuts and egg; and Mongolian lamb as the main courses.

Today, our good luck with the weather departed us and we had rain showers and low cloud. This was a pain since we went to the Blue Mountains and only saw the clouds. We did get a couple of cable car rides and a walk in the rain forest in one of the canyons. Lunch was provided in a revolving restaurant with great views if the cloud had not got in the way. On the way to the mountains we stopped at a nature reserve and saw more Australian animals. We finally saw a wombat that was not asleep. They are surprising large creatures quite chunky with an engaging face. I was also impressed by the small marsupials that all look like miniature kangaroos but are the size of rabbits or rodents. The kangaroos and wallabies were very friendly since they are used to being fed so come right up to you. One wallaby was feeding her baby that was now too big to get back into her pouch.  

The trip today involved two hours of driving each way so we saw a lot of Sidney including the Olympic stadium and Pete’s Place School. It is a very busy city with many toll roads. These often use electronic tags rather than toll booths. The place names show the close links with Great Britain with signs to Liverpool and Newcastle. The price of petrol is lower than in Britain but even a short run on a toll road today cost £8 so perhaps there is a balance. We noticed the price of simple items like magazines were double the UK price while we were told taxes were lower.