Leaving Sydney

Welcome to Cairns everybody! Phase 2 of Rescuers Operations is now under way. I am up in Cairns, Queensland with my mother doing nothing but scuba diving. Erin is in Canberra with Diana. Taylor is God knows where with his sister. And Jesse is still in Sydney working away for another week. But we are all moved out of 597 New South Head Rd! No more dealing with Sydney's public transport system. No more waging war with the spiders and 7 (guesstimate) species of cockroaches residing in our Rose Bay apartment. And no more selling pizzas at Two Fat Chefs.

It was a bittersweet moment leaving the apartment for the last time. We had a lot of fun there but it was well past time to move on from Sydney. That and as I was walking out the door a little worried about missing the bus to the airport, I realized I had left my The Office Season 4 dvd's in the dvd player. Alas Jesse will have to be the caretaker of season 4 for a few weeks. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Let me talk about the last couple days in Sydney. My mum arrived in Sydney on the 24^th and we spent a solid 4 days hitting all the hot spots Sydney has to offer for the first time for her and for the last time for me. We walked the harbour bridge and explored the rocks. Walked around the opera house and the botanical gardens. Went to the movies. Slumdog Millionaire. So good. We visited the aquarium and had lunch in Chinatown. Sudoku wars. Fish n chips at Watson's Bay. We did the Bondi to Coogee walk and a little snorkel at Shelley Beach near Manly. Pretty full couple of days there. Here are a couple highlights I managed to capture photographically.

Here we have a nice little birdcage like object in the botanical gardens. Notice the axe and sickel I am holding. And at the top of the cage we have an arm holding a dagger. And in the middle there is a layer of what is supposed to be animal bones that you can't quite make out from this picture. We read the little plaque next to the cage and it did not in any way further our understanding of how/why a morbid piece of scultpurey like this would get created and displayed in a beautiful garden. Maybe you culture experts out there that were so good with the St George and the dragon mystery can do a little research and explain to me this particular piece of “art”.

Now here is a great picture. Here begins the amazing adventures of the mini-elephant. Some of you noticed I mentioned a mini-elephant in a previous post without any sort of explanation. Well here we have the belated appearance of our microsized pachyderm. My aunt Nancy sent me a mini-elephant with a request that I show it Australia. And I plan to do exactly that. Here is it's first day out on the town and it immediately has a run in with the largest predator on Earth. I might have to create another miniature sized blog for the adventures of the mini-elephant. I might have to make up stories to go with all the places the elephant sees. I might not have time to do any of that since I have trouble enough making time to contribute to this blog. We will see though.

Anywho. Finally we have a couple highlights from the snorkel at Shelley Beach. We ran into a super friendly blue groper right when we got into the water. It trailed us for a while and let us come right up to it and pet it. It almost seemed to like the petting but then again we could have just been imagining that. Can fish smile? Can they be happy? Do they like affection? Anyways we later came across a jellyfish that was also blue. We had no desire to pet this one though. We don't know how dangerous that creature actually was. But for those of you who like to think of Australia as a super deadly crazy dangerous place to be then yes it was super poisonous with meter long tentacles that are invisible so you can't see it in the picture and we just barely escaped with our lives. That's what I would like to think.

So that was my last four days in Sydney. I have now been in Cairns for 3 days and have so much more to write about in another post. I already miss my fellow Rescuers so much and I am blogging to let them know how I am doing as much as I am to tell you statesiders about my activities. Happy March! - BLindy