The Land of Oz

Oh my goodness, where do I begin this blog?  I guess I will start at the time we left Hawaii.  We left Debbie at the condo sleeping while Tom was a sweetheart and took us to the airport at 5am.  We had to catch a plane to Honolulu at 6:30am so that we could catch our plane to Syndey at 9:15am.  It's funny, but I was so into the two weeks in Hawaii that I didn't really think about our next stop.  Then we were about half way to Syndey that I suddenly realized - we really were going to Austrailia!!!!!

The flight was 10 hours long, but it worked out great that we left at 9:15am Hawaii time and arrived in Syndey at 4pm (Sunday) which was 7:30pm Hawaii time and I didn't feel any jet lag.  We were able to ease into the next day by going to bed at our regular time.  So on to the fun stuff.

Monday morning we were greeted by our breakfast guests (that show up every morning) and they wanted their food!   There are three of these Lorikeets that will show up every morning waiting to be fed.  And will show up whenever we sit on the deck.  They are very tame and will sit on your hand and wait to be fed.  We also have cockatoos flying around the trees in the backyard.  Boy do they make a noise!  That is one thing that I have to get used to is the bird noises - there are no familar sounds at all.  The apartment we rented is surrounded by trees and so there are tons of birds calling in the trees from sun-up to sundown.

That afternoonn our host dropped us off at the Koala Park Sanctuary. It is a small zoo that has a lot of native Austrailian animals including about 25

Koalas. They aren't caged in and are allowed to be anywhere in the park. There were some in a small area that were shown to people and we were able to pet them and get out picutre taken. I didn't realize how lazy and lathargic they are. There was also an area that you were able to get up close and personal to kangaroos.

Today we took a ferry ride to the Watson's Bay and walked around The Gap.  Syndey runs on trains, ferries and buses.  We bought a 7 day pass that covers every public transportation, unlimited, for 7 days which is a great way to get around the city.  Our apartment is about 1 hour outside of Syndey and we took a train into the city then boarded

a ferry and off we went!  Watson's Bay is a cute little harbor that was once a fishing village and a place where ships would come in to offload their cargo.  The Gap is called that because it is a false harbor that is just before the real harbor and a ship, in 1857, was destroyed and sunk because it crashed against the rocks after mistaking it as the real harbor.  122 crew were lost and the only survivor ended up staying in Austrailia and running the lighthouse.

And lastly, no blog would be complete without a picture of the famous Opera House and the Syndey Harbor Bridge. Tomorrow we are taking another ferry ride to another part of the harbor and then we are taking a tour of the opera house.

Now to explain my title - everyone calls Austrailia Oz. And why is that? Well, it is colloquially pronounced Oztralia. Hence the Land of Oz.