Taronga Zoo, and the Sydney Harbour Bridge
This will probably be my last post from Sydney – at least, the last from what has been my home for the past four and a half months. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post pictures over the next month, but I will definitely be blogging from all over the continent and beyond. This is the kind of thing that makes this trip so much different than it would have been even ten years ago: internet access is basically de rigeur at hostels now. Can’t say I’m complainin’.
A few weeks ago I went to the Taronga zoo, which is a fifteen minute ferry ride from circular quay in the heart of Sydney. I love taking ferries here, for reasons that are probably best expressed pictorally.
Once I got off the ferry the view was still amazing:
The zoo is built into the side of a mountain, with a cable car leading up to the top.
Not only could you look down and see most of the different animal enclosures on your way up, but the view of the city was amazing, too (as a view-sucker, you can tell that I was stoked):
These two cute kids were visiting the zoo with their grandfather. I told them to turn around and check out the view and they were soundly impressed.
The first animals I saw were koalas! They were in special enclosures that were set up so that people could have their pictures taken next to them – but it’s illegal in New South Wales for untrained people to handle koalas so you don’t get to pet them. They wanted a lot of money for it, too. So I just took pictures of them from afar (though another koala enclosure later afforded me a much better view).
I don’t have a whole lot to say about most of these, so expect a lot of captions that just very enthusiastically state the name of the animal. Like this one:
Alligator!
Dingoes! (Which did not, in fact, eat my baby.)
Um… duck-like birds!
Monkeys!
A… garden? Thingie?
Kimodo Dragon!!
Zebras!
Pygmy Hippo!
MEERCATS!! I love how they’re just chillaxin’.
Red Panda. I love how this one turned out.
Elephant, havin’ a bite to eat.
Penguins!
Seal! This guy was SUCH a ham, he climed up on this rock and preened for a while to draw a crowd before he finally dove back in.
Pelicans! And I think this is just about it for random animal pictures.
I have to say, it was a pretty amazing zoo, these pictures don’t represent even a fraction of the animals I saw there (only the ones that took the best pictures.) And the way it’s set up, you take the cable car to the top of the zoo and then work your way slowly back down to the ferries. Have I mentioned that I love the ferries?
Since today (to bring us back to the present) was my last day to effectively live in Sydney, I decided to go into the city and do a few things that I had been TALKING about doing for a while. Namely, walk across the harbour bridge and check out the museum of contemporary art. I took a bus to North Sydney and got off close to Milson’s point, but Luna park was close by so I checked it out for a bit before I crossed the bridge.
I thought about riding that ferris wheel, but it was going to be more expensive than I figured it was worth. So I just headed back up to the bridge.
It was really amazing to see circular quay from this angle.
I went up in the look-out at the top of the pillar for these next couple of pictures. It was a little pricey, but the view WAS pretty amazing.
This next one is kind of cool because you can see a crew of folks who are about to go up the arch for a bridge walk. It’s HELLA expensive (like, 130$) so I didn’t bother. The view from the top of the pillar was almost as good, and didn’t even cost 10$. So I’m good.
It took me a while to get down to circular quay – the route was long and circuitous. But it afforded me some nice pictures.
I took these on a different day, but they seem to fit nicely here.
The sun had just set when I took this last one of the opera house. As many times as I have looked at this building, it hasn’t yet ceased to be visually interesting. I’m going to miss getting to see it every night that I come home from the city on the bus.
By the time I had finished wandering around (and partly because I slept in so late), it was already close to 4:30, and the museum was only open until five. Still, I figured it was worth taking a quick look at the collection – modern art is the kind of thing that you could spend three seconds or three hours looking at, depending on your mood.
It’s kind of odd for a “contemporary art” museum to be housed in such a traditional, Western piece of archetecture like this. But it kind of makes the art that you see displayed right on the front of the building there even more poignant.
Phew! So that’s the last picture-laden post for a while. Tomorrow’s going to be a full day, lots of wrapping up loose ends, packing last-minute things… Just one last night here, and then I’m officially adventuring!
