Day forty four

We are now in Sydney Airport departure lounge, waiting for our flight. Some tears on saying Goodbye ( or au revoir ) to James and Grace, but we have plans.

Sydney airport lounge

   

Day forty three

Our last full day in Aussieland and we spent the morning filling a skip! All the work that has been done on James and Grace's house had generated a large amount of waste and we felt that the most useful thank you we could offer was to help them fill a skip. But, as we are down under, the skip was a very Australian affair.  

Skip on wheels

James had been eying the surf all morning and decided that he deserved a surf so we walked down to watch him catch a few waves. And this time we watched him and got some photos of him, not Francis-not-Henry.

Riding along on the crest of a wave.

  We then had lunch of a selection of cold meats and cheese that Grace had gone to get specially for our last lunch. In the afternoon we walked the coast path one last time. The waves were not as good as the morning.

Checking the waves

But Sydney put on the best weather we could hope for on our last day.

Bondi Beach

In the evening James and Grace took us to Sefa, a Middle Eastern restaurant for our last meal. The place was exotic and the food was delicious.

Sefa

Food

Over the meal we made plans for a return visit. To Sydney that is not Sefa necessarily, which means that all this 'last' stuff was pretty pointless. So James and Grace will hope to come to the UK later this year, we will go back to Sydney at about the same time next year and include a two week trip with James and Grace to New Zealand in the itinerary and then James will be in Cambridge in the middle of 2018.    

Day forty two

A bright sunny day so we headed in to Sydney harbour to take a river ferry up the Paramatta River to a town called Paramatta.  The ferry took us under the bridge and round some of the dock lands that we have not seen before.

Bridge

Funfair

Skyline

The Sidney-sprawl seemed to go on for a long time but some of the journey was through mangroves.

Mangrove

In Paramatta we walked to a heritage site called Elizabeth Farm and is one of the oldest surviving buildings from the early settler days. Paramatta was founded two years after Sydney and the farm was established then. The house started as a three roomed cottage but over thirty years, as the owners grew more prosperous they extended and remodelled it to create a very stylish home.

Exterior

Interior

The family were unusual in that they befriended the local Aborigines and socialised with them. In the 1900s a Quaker family owned the house for sixty years and did much to conserve the building. The gardens have many of the trees planted by the first family.

Gardens

Cactus

The return journey brought us back to the harbour with threatening clouds overhead.

Skyline

Reflection

 

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Day forty one

Today was wet, very wet, as the tail end of Debbie headed out to sea North of us. We headed in to Sydney on the bus and went to the Museum of Australia. It has a very good collection of Australian wildlife, stuffed not running about, and a very good section of Aborigine artifacts. We happened to meet one of the museum staff at the lunch table and heard about their collection, about the five members of staff of First Nation heritage and about the museum's involvement in returning items, in their collection and other collections in Europe, to First Nation collections in Australia and Tasmania.

Aborigine art - made from fishing nets washed up on their beaches

Grave markers

Ceremonial mask

 The museum also has the usual suspects - dinosaurs etc.

dem bones...

After lunch at the museum, looking out over a wet and soggy Sydney.....

Soggy Sydney

...we headed to the Queen Victoria Building, affectionately known as the QVB, to study the architecture and also a model shop that has a section devoted to trains.

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Layout in the shop

 ....and it seemed churlish not to buy something.

Australian Diesel Rail Car

Thank you Kate. 

Day forty

.......and on the fortieth day they rested.  Today we did nothing. Nada. Rien. Nigun. And other words that mean sitting around, reading, studying the seascape and dozing too. The only practical thing we did was to add names to birds. We go around taking photographs and vaguely work out what we are seeing. So now we have a set of photos and a set of names to go with it.  Just so you don't feel left out here is the list - there are repeats where we have both photographed the same birds or seen the same birds lots of times - like Kookaburras and pelicans! Kookaburra  Kookaburras  Mynah bird Australian magpie and noisy miner Australian white ibis White-cheeked honeyeater  Sulphur- crested cockatoo Superb fairy-wren Superb fairy-wren Willie wagtail Rainbow lorikeet House sparrow  Hawk Hawks Dove Noisy Miner  Grey-backed butcher bird x 2 Rainbow lorikeets x 3 Brown goshawk  Black flying foxes ( mega-bats, fruit bats) x 2 Pied cormorants  Long-billed corella x 3 Sulphur crested cockatoo  Australasian darter  Magpie lark Intermediate egret Australian white ibis x 2 Sulphur crested cockatoo  Noisy miner Sulphur crested cockatoo with noisy miners Black flying foxes ( mega-bats, fruit bats)  Rainbow lorikeet x 2 Minah bird Superb fairy wren White-browed treecreeper  Unknown x 3 White bellied sea eagle x 2 Masked lapwing with white faced heron Yellow tailed black cockatoo  Galah x 2 Eastern yellow robin  White throated tree creeper Willie wagtail on a wallaby (no, honestly. There was a wagtail sat on the back of a wallaby!) Masked lapwing Sulphur crested cockatoo  Crested pigeons  Red-browed finch Australasian darter female  Grey butcher birdx 2 Glossy ibis with black wing stilts and ducks  Ringed plover  Black swans Black wing stilts Australian pelicans  Kookaburra  Kookaburra  Australian magpie Australian king-parrot x 2 Crimson rosella juvenile  White-cheeked honeyeater Australian king parrot  Grey-backed silvereye x 3 White quilled rock pigeon  Eastern yellow robin x 2 Willie wagtail x 2 ?little grassbird  Grey shrike thrush Willie wagtail plus grey shrike thrush Zebra finch Unknown  Grey shrike thrush x 2 Eastern Spinebill x 2 Eastern yellow robin  Sacred kingfisher x 2 Australasian darter silhouette  Magpie larks  Pied cormorant Australian pelican  Long-billed corella  Australian pelican x 4 White bellied sea eagle Australian magpie Galah White throated treecreeper juvenile  White bellied sea eagle juvenile  Australian raven x 2 Kookaburra x2 Rainbow lorikeet  Australian magpie  White faced heron Plumes whistling duck Dusky moorhen Azure kingfisher  Australian king parrots  Grey fantail ?wren Flying foxes  Kookaburra  Grey backed butcher bird Silver gull Australian magpie juvenile  Australian magpie Noisy miner Intermediate egret Purple swamphen x 2 Black swan Little pied cormorant Pied lark Australasian darter x 2 Pied cormorants with Australian white ibis Pied cormorants nesting  Flying foxes x 4 White faced heron Grey butcher bird Variegated fairy wren Masked lapwing White bellied sea eagle Unknown  Yellow tailed black cockatoo  Black faced cuckoo shrike  Lyre bird x 4 Crimson rosella Olive backed oriole  Crested tern Crested tern with silver gull x 2 Common starling  Spotted dove Common starling x 2 Black winged stilt Black swans Black winged stilts juveniles x 2 Caspian tern Black winged stilt Black fronted dotterel Glossy ibis Superb fairy wren Olive backed oriole Crimson rosella juvenile  Grey backed silvereye  Unknown  Black faced cuckoo shrike Eastern yellow robin Grey backed silvereye  New holland honeyeater Non native parrots  Australian pelican x 3 Willie wagtail  Australian pelicans  Little wattlebird Little pied cormorant  Bush turkey  Galah Australian magpie  Eastern yellow robin Australian wood ducks Little grebe Chestnut teal Rainbow lorikeet  Little wattlebird Superb fairy wren Australian raven King parrot  Plumed whistling ducks 

 

 

Day thirty nine

Today we are returning to Sydney on a five o'clock flight. We decided to head up North to Tambourine Mountain National Park for some walks and waterfalls. As we headed up the mountain we got a very good view down to the coast and the shoreline.

Gold Coast

Our first stop was at Cedar Creek Falls, a short walk beside some cascades.

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The next walk was at the Joalah Section. This was proper rainforest, very dark and very humid. 

Rainforest

Strangler fig

Waterfall

Waterfall

 

Well made path

 At one point we walked, very quickly, under a colony of flying foxes.

Bats

 The trees are very impressive and even more so when they are wrapped in strangler fig vine.

Strangler fig vine

And then we made our way back to Gold Coast airport for a quiet flight back to Sydney. The view from the runway was impressive, the mountains are the remnants of a volcano. We also saw Byron Bay, which was where we walked out to the lighthouse.

Boarding

Byron Bay

 

Day thirty eight

The day started with a short walk locally, along the Mudgeeraba Creek. 

Creek

Nice toadstool

Then James drove us out to the coast, to Byron Bay, which is a great favourite of surfers. He had arranged to meet Francis-not-Henry on the beach so that they could surf together. We checked out where the waves were breaking and James decided to drive to a beach called The Pass. 

The Pass

There was a cliff walk from here to a lighthouse, so after a coffee, we walked it. 

Cliff path

Byron Bay lighthouse

Amazing views all along the path.

View

View

Path

The path took us to the lighthouse by way of the most Easterly point in Australia so it was appropriate to have my photo taken at such a significant location! This is probably the furthest place on the planet from Wales.

Not at all touristy

  On the way we spotted this, an Eastern Sea Dragon.

Eastern Sea Dragon

As we returned we saw James and Francis-not-Henry surfing and took lots of photos of them. Unfortunately it turned out that it was not James in the photos but in some of them you can see Francis-not-Henry with James in the background.

Surfer dudes

 

Byron Bay