Around in Australia

Since our last holiday, we have been trying to stay warm on these cold Aussie nights and getting out to keep our blood circulating. We have actually been quite busy and so have a lot of photos to look at. I’ll try to give a bit of background to them so you know what I am showing you.

Christmas Cactus – blooming in our garden in June down under

Being seafood lovers and somewhat familiar with world seafood, we went to the Sydney Fish Market to see what was on offer.

Entrance to Market

There are some interesting and delectable items for sale, although personally I was not overly enticed to sample some of them.

Scampi – not an Italian gelato flavour as I had thought

Fresh octopus – for real sushi, just eat these live

Manta Ray wings for footy night with the lads

Live sea urchins with built in toothpick

Murray Cod – not your average cod as we know it

Raw oysters – not sure of the point to just slurp it down in one go

Oysters dressed up to disguise their oysterness

And if any of you Newfs were feeling left out, there is a bit of old salt cod for you too!

Bacalao from Portugal, but probably caught on the Grand Banks

While there, we saw some unusual customers lining up to get some fresh sushi.

Pelicans love seafood – he is not looking at the child!

We watched these two line up at the door and deftly catch an offering from the kitchen – fresh fish heads!

What’cha got for me?

Cheers, matey

We also went downtown again for the Vivid Sydney display. Different sections of the city are set up for displays – and lots of food.

A few weeks ago, we took a short trip down the coast to visit our friend Cecelia at her new beach house.

Beach house in Kioloa

We also met Humphrey, the dog.

Humphrey likes the new deck

As with most Aussie coast lines, there are endless beaches, waves and beautiful vistas.

Beaches

More beaches

And beaches

We went for long walk along the beach to see what we could see.

A long walk

A plover, not unlike our piping plovers of Nova Scotia

We stopped to smell the salty fresh ocean air.

A salty selfie with Cecelia

Kioloa is home to healthy population of kangaroos.

Feeding joey

Mowing, er, munching the grass

Kangaroos apparently support a healthy population of ticks and mites in their dense fur.

You tick muncher, you.

A word of caution to parents everywhere – kangaroos are wild animals with some serious kicking power. One kick of this toenail, and you will be punctured.

Sharper than an awl

They are so darn cute, though

We also returned to Parramatta Park to visit the bats again.

Large fruit bats

The colony is alive and well. We have learned that they are not viewed kindly here due to the diseases they carry and the large quantities of poo they spread over people’s houses.

A large healthy colony

Another beautiful weekend, we decided to explore the childhood neighbourhood of our friend Diana. So, off we went to Watson’s Bay to have a look-see.

We got ourselves to Circular Quay …

Circular Quay

where we hopped a ferry much like this one…

Harbour ferry

… and passed several iconic Australian sights on our way.

Harbour Bridge

Opera House

City skyline

Out at Watson’s Bay, we did the South Head Walk which takes you along the water around the Southern point and entrance to Port Jackson Bay, which contains Sydney Harbour itself and other sections of the larger body of water.