Free Day in Sydney

27 April
Sydney
Sunny, Cooler and Breezy

Today was a free day for the students. Some planned to go to Bondi Beach, but it was really too windy and cold, so most wound up visiting the wonderful Royal Botanical Gardens to the east of Circular Quay. This parkland on the south side of the harbor is one of the jewels of Sydney. Lots of people think of the Opera House or the Harbour Bridge as synonymous with Sydney; for me, it's the Gardens. Plants from all over the world, spacious lawns for picnics or games, and of course the flying fox colony.

My main goal was to capture a good photo or two of the flying foxes. (I have several shots, but I do not yet know if any turned out.) Flying foxes are not nocturnal, feeding at dusk and dawn, and resting at night and during the heat of the day. But they do fly about from tree to tree during the day, noisily squabbling over space on a branch from which to hang and cover themselves with their wings. They will also sometimes stretch their wings wide as if to catch a cooling breeze. I find them fun to watch.

The colony in Sydney is considered a nuisance by the local folks, and there have surfaced plans to force the colony to move elsewhere. The bats feed on fruits and blossoms, and so are nothing but a pest as far as orchardists or gardeners are concerned -- they do not eat insects. It would be a shame to lose them from the Gardens, though.

I took the students to dinner at the Australian Hotel, a favorite spot of my senior colleague from prior years. It's a gourmet pizza place in the Rocks, a region west of Circular Quay that at one time was a rougher part of town, a sort of Hell's Kitchen. Now, it's an upscale high-rent area for the tourists. Though the weather has been cooler and windy, we still had a pleasant sidewalk dinner, followed by gelato at Circular Quay.

IT is now early morning on the 28th. I will upload this journal entry and get some photos up, and then we leave Sydney for awhile to go to Canberra, the country's capital.