Trip to Sydney

We had a great 1st day in Sydney. We started our day by going down to some Aussie morning news show. We met the news people and we listened to a popular Aussie band the Road Traders. We then walked down to the Botanical Gardens . We did a tour of the Government house and the Opera House. The kids had fun playing in the open spaces of the gardens. We saw a street performer and took a ferry back to Darling Harbour where our hotel is.There is a festival there(Darling Harbour). We capped off our night by watching fireworks. All in all it was a pretty full day. We are now getting geared up to go to the Taronga Zoo.

The Mono Rail.
The Brown Family. These are some friends of ours. I work with Anthony at EWS. He is one of the mechanics. We went on this adventure with them.

Us relaxing under a tree at Government House One of the huge trees on the grounds.
This tree was pretty cool. It was at the Botanical Gardens. I bet it was at least 50' across the bottem.
In side the concert hall in the Opera House. The main hall was closed because a group was rehearsing. The pipe organ at the top of the photo has 10,000 pipes.
This nut was doing his street performance outside the ferrys. He picked Ryan as a volenteer.

More Sydney Photos

Carol & I on the steps of the Opera House Ryan & I showing our colors.....LET'S GO OILERS LET'S GO
The Sydney Harbour Bridge. They seem to make a big deal over this bridge but I don't know what all the fuss is about.
The family at Goverment House in New South Wales
Mark checking out the sites

Some more kites

These pics are from the second day and we remembered to take our kite from last year. It was really a great day for flying a kite until the sky opened up again. I think they're going to have to rename the "Sunshine Coast" something else. We've had enough rain to have the level 2 water restrictions lifted. I guess that's a good thing. Sigh. This is Mark flying his kite.
This one was Mark's favorite.
This was another huge kite.

They didn't have the parachute jumpers Saturday night because of the rain so they had them Sunday afternoon.

Lizards

I quite often have to go for long drives for work. As you can imagine nothing is really close. I always try to remember my camera as you will never know what you'll run into. I saw this little guy below on the side of the road. I had to stop and make him/her famous.
He decided to lay low and hide from me under this bush. He is a lot easier to see in the photo then he was in real life.

I almost run this little guy over. Just out of the photo is my tire track. This little fellow was quick. When I put the camera down he was gone. I was going to go look for him but the Aussies told me there is a certain kind of lizard that when scared it will climb the tallest thing to hide. If you are the tallest thing it will climb up you. I don't know if it is true but I wasn't taking that chance.

Air Show

Apparently, there is a short airshow at the Kite Festival too. These are from our apartment. This was just after is started to rain. It was much better than these pics show. You might have to enlarge the pics to actually see the planes, lol.

Coolum Kite Festival

It is estimated that the Coolum Kite Festival will have 50,000 visitors over the two day event. The kite surfing was postponed due to high winds. There are bands playing, food vendors and kite making lessons held. Hopefully, the weather holds out. I hear thunder as I am posting this. There is suppose to be fireworks and a night parachute jump. This is some of the 50,000 visitors. The beach is not usually this busy!

This kite was one of the largest there.

I don't know how they don't all get tangled. I guess that's why they're "professional kite flyers"

These were cute but hard to get a picture with them both facing the same way. Roy is the photographer; he probably would have been more patient.