Darling Harbour on a balmy evening. Packed with people enjoying the cityscape at night, along with some sort of free art show/funfair thingy. The “Spider-Man” house was a big favourite.
The walk along the cliffs from Coogee to Bondi Beach is stunning — roaring waves, bizarre sandstone, little coves and bays galore, and all in a suburb of Sydney.
Our final mega-meal of the trip, at Quay. Rather impressive views of the Opera House*. Bloody good food, if slightly nondescript in the photos above. *Impressive, that is, so long as a cruise ship isn’t docked. The restaurant is in the terminal building, and accordingly your view on those days would be of portholes or on-board casinos or feeding troughs or whatever. And extremely generous with the wine, resulting in an afternoon spent passed out on our bed.
On a rainy day, we took the ferry in for a tour put on by Sydney Architecture Walks, wandering around a few modern buildings in the city’s core. Some extremely fancy government offices (third row on the right), nothing like the leaky dungeons of my workplace; a rather cool and environmentally righteous tower with sinuous atrium; a rather bland curving curtain wall by Renzo Piano, allegedly evoking the sails in the harbour; another “inside out” job by Richard Rogers. Also thrown in is a shot of Sydney’s nicely jumbled modern and Victorian buildings - makes for a surprisingly varied downtown core.
Flight fifteen. Loving the way Australian airports handle security. We don’t even have to show ID; it’s like flying in the 90s.
The centre of Melbourne, with skyscrapers, Victorian churches and railway stations, and the Melbourne Cricket Ground, all stretching along the Yarra river. This being Australia, the river and its banks were packed with all sorts of sporty types — cyclists, joggers and rowers.
Strolling through the war memorial and botanical gardens.
Here is one of those crazy kite-surfing jumps caught on video. Mental.
File yet another one under “crazy Aussies doing crazy sports”: these are kite surfers off the beach in St. Kilda’s and they are something to behold. They’re strapped snowboard-style on thin planks, and use their parachutes to zip around the water. And then they JUMP.
A morning wandering around St. Kilda, a beachfront suburb to the south of Melbourne’s centre. Windy, with big waves rolling in from the bay, but that didn’t stop someone from jetpacking out there. Captain Cook meanwhile was overseeing all.