Animal Exercise Beach

At this beach it's turn right if you're with a horse, turn left if you're with a dog. We turned left. I have never seen so many dogs in one place in my WHOLE LIFE. Daschunds to Great Danes, all going mad. We were there with Carly's Rogue (the dark one) and Jules' Clive (that's right, Clive the pug) so that's why all the pics are of them. The little dude is Carly's boy Bailey.
Dog body-surfing hehehe :)


Rogue chases the ball, and Clive chases Rogue...


Flirty dog visits Carly and Jules ;)

Sydney: Day 7 - Newtown

It was time to go home. :( But when home is the West coast of Australia, it's not so bad! hehehehe
We had an excellent breakfast in Newtown, which is nice and eclectic:

Some Sydney/Newtown style houses:

For silly tourists:

Originally this was a day I would be fending for myself a bit and catching a cab to the airport, but Dave and Nicole had to cancel some plans so we got in a last bit of hanging out before it was time to head for the airport... Dave in his element:

Bye guys, and thanks soooooooo much! Everything was amazing!

Sydney: Day 6 - Bondi and barbecue

Friday was a second day around town, but not so sightsee-y. During the day we went down to Bondi to meet up with Ramsey and Amanda and the munchkins.

Age this one's for you, I said "everyone wave hi to AJ!"

It is SO COOL to "recognize" Bondi now, when you see it on TV or something!! This guy's riding a nice wave:

Dave and Ramsey were considering surfing but it was cold as, down there!

The diehards were still in there though!

So anyway, we headed off to R&A's for a barbecue instead :D so nice! So weird yakkin about high school dayz after all this time. We had thought of going out to see a band that night, in Newtown, but the place we thought of ended up having a sold out show. Ah well it was a great visit! Ugh, tomorrow it would be time to leave :( A second visit to Sydney started getting into the conversation around this time!!!!

Sydney: Day 5 - Blue Mountains

The weather wasn't supposed to be that good on Thursday but we headed west anyway, and the rain held off most of the time. We went to:

to see the Three Sisters. You can climb down if you like, and we went part way. There're some pretty hefty warnings along the lines of abandoning all hope at the top of these stairs :)

We didn't go much further down than this, the photo does not do justice to the freakyness of this set of steps!

The Three Sisters: (that little notch in the left side of the left-most sis is where I took the pic of Dave and the stairs from)

Dave checkin out the landscape. Vast!!!! Pictures can not convey it - sorry!

We had a little drama with the VW conkin out on a steep hill on the way home, but Dave sorted it out pretty quick :) Another great day!

Sydney: Day 4 - Palm Beach / The Basin

Wednesday we headed north up the coast, to Palm Beach Peninsula. Okay this map is pretty useless at this size but Sydney Harbour is where the inlet is at the bottom of the map, and we just drove straight up into that white peninsula.

We bought a ticket for the ferry to The Basin (where I put the red dot)

and hung out on the beach until it was time to board. More Tasman Sea :)

The docks at the Basin

This place was FULL of wallabies. Good call Dave!!! First marsupials I have seen ... not counting a dead roo :( en route to Narrogin :S

Hard to see this small, but there is a little joey face peeking out of mama's pouch!

Did a little pissing off of the local wildlife, Irwin-style. These birds are ground nesters and they get pretty agro if you walk toward them - I don't even know where the nest was. This is a screen shot from a video, right before it rushed me. Apparently they can do some pretty good damage with hard knuckles on the front edge of their wings. It missed me!

The Basin is a nice little tidal lagoon. It's a hangout for little stingrays - Dave looked but didn't find any that day. We could see prints on the bottom, where they'd hidden in the sand though.

All in all a relaxing day, watching the critters, eating, hangin out in the sun, yakkin. We caught the ferry back to the Palm Beach peninsula when the sun went behind the hill, and headed south to the city again.

Sydney: Day 3 - The Harbour

Tuesday we had a day in town. Picked up a fat snapper and some prawns at the market in the morning, then caught a train to the centre of town. Had to go to the Lindt store, heard there are only something like three of them in the world. How many flavours of those truffles *are* there!? I lost count. Raspberry is AWESOME. Hold me back. Place was FULL of women hehehe. Then we went down for a tour of the harbour.

First attempt at a picture:

The sixth attempt (apparently this game isn't so fun any more hehe):
Yer standard Opera House and Harbour Bridge shots:

You can get tickets to walk the top of the bridge. There is actually a tour group coming down the bridge in this shot, bit small to see here hehe.

Local cross between the Ex and the Amphitheatre - pretty cool bands lined up!

Sydney: Day 3 - The Rocks

The Rocks, past and present is the setting for a favourite kids' book of mine - Playing Beatie Bow. Had to explore a little.

The scene of the action:

Where the characters would've lived:


And Dave worked right on the corner at this pub, when he was first backpacking around Oz back in the day:

Awesome fun to walk the pages of a book. May have to consider Dan Brown soon...

Sydney: Day 2 - Royal National Park

It was Monday. Nicole had to go back to work. Dave and I headed back down to Royal National Park with big plans. We stopped at the info centre for a map and a snack. Cockatiels hang around snack bars here, I guess, instead of squirrels or seagulls!

So ya, big plans. We would start from Wattamolla and head south to Curracurrang and back before lunch. Then up to Marley and back after.

That was before we really appreciated how meaningless the word "trail" can be, and how much worse you can make it by intentionally going rock climbing out to the breakers and trying to ad lib it back again through the bush. Remind me to get my hands on a GPS! At least the rocks were cool:

Another nice view of the Tasman...

See the bay there, in the shot below? And all that scrubby bush above the rocks on the far side? The stuff that looks all flat but is actually dense eye-level spiny shrubs? So, yea, we know that part of the world pretty well now :S lol!

We made it back to the van, had some lunch, bailed on Marley, and headed home to meet Nicole and get some dinner. Whew!

Sydney: Day 1 (cont'd)

Okay here's a few from the trip home:





Nicole's cute little veedub: (mom it smells just like the bug used to)

Sydney: Day 1 (almost)

Okay day two actually. I arrived late-ish on a Saturday evening. Dave and Nicole picked me up at the airport and we dropped off my stuff and then Dave took me on a night tour of the city. My first trip to Bondi it was dark and deserted but I got my touch of the water and then we headed home and stayed up yakkin til all hours.
On Sunday we packed up some food and headed off to meet D & N's new family-member-to-be:


Then we checked out the coast from Seacliff Bridge down by Royal National Park...

had a bite to eat overlooking the Tasman sea...


and checked out a little falls on the way back to the city for dinner.
For some reason, I can't get any more pics on this post but there wasn't much more anyway!