Surprisingly Sydney has turned out to be really good for food. The Fish and Chips is good; at least Sweetheart and Beloved like the chips , for me they are cooked at too high a temperature and are too crisp, but the fish is excellent. We've had good Thai food and good Italian but there is a large Chinatown and we took ourselves off there for a blowout one lunchtime and saw the Chinese Friendship Garden. In 1987
Sydney made a big thing of its Bicentenary. America gave it a Gallery in the Maritime Museum and Ghangzhou (Canton) with which it's twinned gave it a garden. It's quite odd because instead of blending into a background of sky and park it's hemmed in by skyscapers, a lot probably built after the garden I would guess. I seen better chinese gardens , mostly in China but notably at the Liverpool Garden Festival but it made a nice change of pace on a hot day.
The fact it's a cliche doesn't make it less iconic does it? Looked at one way Sydney could be any modern waterfront city, hong Kong, Singapore..., and then you tirn round and take the reverse shot and well.... We spent a while walking round circular quay and then took a trip on the ferry under the bridge.
I went back at night to see Falstaff and it is from inside you really appreciate it. There isn't a bad seat in the house. Seats about the same as the Royal Opera House, ie. mind-boggingly expensive, but they don't hit you an extra ten bucks for a programme just give you a free sheet with the cast list and synopsis, presumably funded by the advert on the reverse.
Next to Kuranda zoo is a little adjunct netted area (extra charge) with free flying birds and one poor caged Cassawary. Cassawaries are really important to the rain forest as they are a wide ranging creature and are able to disperse the larger seeds and fruits. The are related to emus and kiwis and are distinguished by the helmit of keratin on their head. Otherwise there were all sorts of parrots one of which took a liking to my backpack and perched on my shoulder for a while, and numerous attractive but unidentified waders.
Chester Zoo it's not, but the small zoo run by the Williams family at Kurunda allowed me my first view of marsupials and added to our putative wildlife photo-library (this has improved only marginally since our ace honeymoon seal pictures but we try). They have 18 full grown freshwater crocodiles and different wallabies from tiny to big but it was the Koalas and Wombats that won it for me although as they are nocturnal creatures they are not very zoo friendly. The zoo coped with enticing the wombat out of its hole by the simple expedient of offering food and this allowed us to observe its symbiotic relationship with a particular lizard who has moved into the wombat enclosure. Wombats and Koalas are near relations with huge rear ends of hard cartilage beneath the fur. Sadly there was no platypus. I would love to see a platypus.
