Sydney

Melbourne & environs were great - but was very excited to move on to Sydney... and rightly so - what a beautiful city. Got out the first night for some drinks with the local crowd - which (of course) turned into a much later night than I expected - the fact that it was a Tuesday night is a great indication of how fun it's going to be here ;0)

I walked around the next day and walked across the Harbor Bridge to get some shots of the Opera House.... I'll wait for a sunnier day and do pics from the more scenic side... it really is neat to see such an iconic piece of work:



If you hunt around this pic you'll see what passes for pigeons in Sydney - they're fun to watch & beautiful but really make a racket.




On the way back I stopped off at a 150+ year old observatory - they had to completely re-map the sky for the ships to navigate once they got down under... it was quite a job... took them 50+ years...



I'm hoping for more sun tomorrow....

Great Ocean Road

After spending a few days back in Melbourne relaxing I hit the road with a friend I made (it was really nice having a local guide ;0) and drove down to the Great Ocean Road... it was a spectacular, windy drive.

And of the way I spotted these in the trees right next to the road:



That was very cool - there was a whole tribe of them - about 8 or 9 in all!

There was some "not so cute" animal life along the way as well - this guys was about as big as the top of your finger (and my friend said they tend to jump when they attack)!



Continued on down - stopping off for the occasional fish & chips and ice cream... great sites along the way:

Until I got to the highlight - the Twelve Apostles (there are only 6 or so now - they keep falling down) - they were worth the drive:

After dinner I drove back down to catch them @ sunset - and got an extra suprise - if you look very hard at the 2nd pic you'll notice little dots... those are a huge flock(?) of penguins, they came in and scrambled up the beach - it was great...