Blonde on a Road Trip

Woke up at 8am this morning. Reprobate! To be fair, I was awake till late talking to Martha on Ukrainian time, so I still got about 7 hours’ sleep.

Slowly got myself ready and repacked my big suitcase in preparation for tomorrow. It is looking fuller as I am not planning to wear any of my bulky warmer clothes, except maybe a jumper, to get to New Zealand tomorrow. I can’t believe this is my last full day in Australia. It hasn’t gone quickly or anything because I feel like we’ve done and seen a lot while I’ve been here, but I’m still sad to be leaving, especially as the hot weather sets in. My skin will probably be relieved once I get to Thailand. Anneke says the ozone isn’t good in NZ either, so I’ll have to be careful there too 😩.

Michael, who’s working from home today, gave me a lift to Chatswood and I got the metro from there to Martin Place, which is a brand new tube station built below the actual building he works in. The building itself looks like a minion, thanks to the placement of the Macquarie logo right in the middle.

Apparently, Macquarie wanted the logo off-centre but the planners wouldn’t allow it, so it looks like a Pixar minion instead.

I walked down to Circular Quay, which took about 5-10 minutes and grabbed a coffee and croissant on the way from The Associate Espresso. £4.95 for coffee and croissant right in the CBD didn’t seem too bad compared to London.

The ferry to Taronga Zoo departs every 30 minutes and sadly I just missed the 10:50 service. It was pulling away from the wharf just as I arrived… Sod’s Law that things run on time when you need them to be late! So, to kill some time, I sat on a bench and ate my croissant in the sun instead.

Shook off the crumbs I’d covered myself in and got up and admired the clear water under the wharf, but was slightly dismayed to see jellyfish floating around. Eww!

I wasn’t going to miss another ferry, so made my way down to the boarding area and at 11:20am we promptly departed from Circular Quay.

The ferry’s pretty busy, with lots of prams and children on board. No surprise there… we’re going to the zoo! You can drive to the zoo, but the ferry is a much more enjoyable way to get there on a day like today!

Arrived at Taronga Zoo Wharf at 11:34! Very quick indeed. And all you have to do is tap out with your card because they’re just part of the commute for many people living on the other side of the water from Sydney’s CBD, and it costs about $1.

After a two-minute walk up the road from Taronga Wharf, you arrive at the zoo entrance. I’d booked mine online earlier that morning and saved 10%, so the adult day pass came to £25.

Shortly after the entrance was the red panda enclosure. There were two or three of them sleeping in the trees, and I don’t blame them! It was turning out to be a very hot day!

The first live exhibit I went to ended up being the free flight bird show, which was amazing. The two presenters started their talk in sign language, standing in the centre of the stage with the Sydney skyline as a distant backdrop.

The first bird they brought out was a Black Kite called Dixie. She flew into the arena out of nowhere and they threw up some nest scraps for her to catch. Apparently very good on the wing, they live all over Australia.

Apparently they’re so intelligent that they have learnt to drop food in water to attract fish up to surface and then catch the fish. Mind-boggling!

The next guest into the arena was the Black-breasted Buzzard, which was using its ingenuity to crack open a plastic egg. This egg was being used to imitate an emu egg, but obviously they can’t give the buzzard a ready supply of those, so they’ve improvised for the twice-daily show.

Not long had the buzzard taken itself back to its enclosure before the next bird was brought out.

This time it was a barking owl with incredibly intense owls. The keepers were standing at opposite ends of the arena and had it swooping down above the crowd.

The owl didn’t bark much. In fact, I reckon Phoenix is still safely at the top of the league table in that regard, but it did fly very adeptly over our heads several times between snacks on the keepers’ arms.

Next out was a slightly less “cool” bird, but a bird nonetheless, in the form of the very first chicken species in the world from which all other chickens are descended.

Next out was a male red-tailed black cockatoo, which are struggling for habitat in modern Australia. They need the hollows of old trees to nest in, and the trees need to be about 150 years old to develop such hollows, so no amount of reforesting is going to save them in the immediate future. They did however point out that a nest box would do… the nest box being surprisingly small for the size of bird expected to nest inside it…

Despite being given a map at the entrance, I found it quite hard to navigate my way around the zoo, and it took me forever and a day to find the wombat enclosure, which was unfortunately in the same area as the spiders – eww! I didn’t even feel safe looking at the spiders behind a sheet of glass. Hard no from me!

All in all, it was amazing to see so many animals up close, but zoos always leave you with a tinge of sadness that these poor ambassador animals don’t get to live in the wild. But they are fulfilling a very important role representing their species and raising a tonne of money towards conservation efforts to improve their wild habitat and preserve their species, and in some cases save it from extinction.

For me, the star of the show, other than the koalas, was the Tasmanian Devil.

Now extinct on Australia’s mainland, apparently they are blighted by a contagious aggressive cancer that presents as horrible tumours around the face that stop them eating. It’s a horrible disease and can claim their life in just a matter of months. The good news is, some of them seem to have developed a natural immunity to it through natural selection, so there is hope.

They are opportunistic feeders and love a bit of roadkill, so there’s a fake road and dead kangaroo in the enclosure… lovely!

Before I knew it, it was nearly 4pm, so I made my way to the exit and then walked around to Taronga Wharf. I’m sure there must have been a quicker way to get there, but the 12-minute walk was a pleasant one anyway – through a park with the water to my left.

As I walked down to the ferry, I checked the timetable and one was just about to leave, so I got a wriggle on and ran the last 200 metres, making it just in time on this occasion!

Once back in Sydney, I got myself a double scoop of ice cream from Messina, as recommended by Michael. The choc mint and choc chip went down an absolute treat, although it did make me cough a bit – remnants of whatever bug or pneumonia had taken me down over a week ago.

I walked from Messina at Circular Quay over to Darling Harbour as I’d heard it was worth a look. Apparently they have a firework display there every night at 9pm. Not sure how they get away with that with all the wildlife protections in place, but money talks, and Darling Harbour is the kind of place where there’s a lot of it going around. The promenade is lined with nice fancy-looking restaurants and there are endless joggers running up and down from the Barangaroo end. There’s even a Friday morning running club that meets there at 7:15am. What a shame I’ll be long gone by then…! Yeah, right!

It’s a nice walk down towards the harbour, and if you weren’t already absolutely shattered, you could spend a good amount of time wandering around. However, I’d already covered several thousand steps and my feet were aching. Also, I needed to head back to Lindfield to see Michael after he’d finished work so we could figure out what to do for our last supper.

Seeing as I was wearing the most naval thing I own, I thought I’d take a selfie to place myself there.

I then began my trip home, walking to Wynyard station and catching the train to Lindfield. Easy enough and I was back by about 6pm. Quick cup of tea with Michael to wake me up again and then we decided on getting a takeaway so we could just hang out for the evening.

We placed an order by phone for a Persian meal and they said it would be ready in 20 minutes. I asked Michael how long it would take to get there and he said, “20 minutes.”

Crikey! Time to get back up again and pick up our dinner, which we were both hungry for by this point.

Apparently the quality of Persian food massively varies in Sydney, but Michael, having been married to a Persian woman and the son-in-law of Persian parents, knew the best place to go.

We tried a lamb neck (Baghali Polo ba Gardan) and on-the-bone chicken (Joojeh) mains and an aubergine dip starter (Kashk o Bademjan), which came with bread. All in all – Yum!

After dinner we chatted a bit and watched some more Two and a Half Men, and then I got a lovely surprise call from Amanda and Naledi. Poor Nali is poorly and so was home from nursery. It was so lovely to talk to them and Nali even sang a few songs for me.

She’s getting so grown up! Such a nice surprise ❤️ hopefully I’ll see them when I come back.

I went back to Michael at about 9:50pm and we hung out a bit longer but then it was time for bed on my last night in Australia.

I hate to leave but I’m excited to see Anneke in New Zealand and to see what more the north island has to offer!

Alarm set for 8am in the hopes of leaving the flat by 9:30am at the latest!