Sydney & the Melbourne Cup

Town Hall with a beautiful purple blooming Jacaranda tree

We had a great time in Sydney, Australia. In general, we try to avoid big cities - we usually don't enjoy the crowds, smog, cement, and transport that often go with them.  But Sydney is a very different city.

The city is incredibly clean and well-maintained. I never saw any dog poo on the sidewalks and litter was nonexistent. There are recycling bins - a very pleasant change from Thailand. When we passed people, they seemed friendly and would even make eye contact. The sidewalks are large and expansive, and cars always stopped for us at crosswalks.

Wow! Look at the size of this tree!

And the air! It smelled clean! There are large trees everywhere, and the downtown area was very green and filled with big, large parks. As we walked towards the city center, we frequently heard interesting bird calls. Ibis, a large stork-like bird with a long, pointy curved bill, were as common as ducks in Oregon, and they wandered everywhere in the city looking for scraps of food.

The large parks right in the center of the city were one of my favorite things. We would frequently cross through a park to get to a destination, and the bird life was fantastic. We saw a couple large white cockatoos up in the palm trees, and a small green & blue parrot when we went through the botanical gardens. The plant life was amazing and rich with flowers and color.

Our second day, we tagged along on a Free Tour of Sydney, led by our friendly guide, Allie. (Thanks Christina & Tim for the tip about these tours!) We learned about Sydney's history, from a convict prison to a thriving settlement. And, we got to see a horse race! As it happened, we took our tour on the day of the Melbourne Cup race, a gigantic and popular international horse race, with a $3.6 million prize to the winner.

The crowd watching the race

The whole city was on holiday that afternoon to watch the race. There's only one race, and it lasts about 10 minutes, but the entire city takes at least half the day off for it. We watched the race from a packed crowd in front of a huge screen in Martin Place. It was great fun to watch, especially as the winning horse won by quite a lead ahead of the others.

As we finished our tour of the city, we saw multiple bars with men dressed in suits and women in fancy dresses with feathery hair accessories, all drinking and chatting after the race was done. It looked like the party went all the rest of the evening! I had fun sneaking pictures of all the funny hair pieces - some were quite strange looking. I guess it is a "horse racing" tradition to wear these.

See the lady in yellow with the funny hat?

We enjoyed the rest of the sights of the city too of course. :) We wandered through The Rocks, the original birthplace of Sydney's colony and talked to an aboriginal tour guide inside who told us about the native peoples' culture and lives. The Sydney Opera House was beautiful from afar and close up - it looks a lot more "metallic" in pictures, but it really is covered in thousands of bright white ceramic tiles. They gleam in the sun and reflect the light in different ways, and it was great to see the building close up to admire its structure. At the time of its planning, the builders didn't even know how to construct it!

Ibis birds casually strolling the Botanic Garden lawns

A lorikeet

Day 3 & 4, Similan Islands Log

Dinner on Day 3

By day 3, we were immersed in the routine of the boat. Over the course of 14 dives, my buoyancy control increased tremendously. In diving, buoyancy control means the difference between running into coral, or needing to hold on to something, and just a general feeling of being in control of your body in the water. By day three, I could turn better, avoid obstacles, and also, avoid bumping into other divers much better.

We were in a group of six divers, and when all six want to look at a particular creature in one tiny crack, that can get quite challenging. :) It was great to know that I was getting better at maneuvering in the water - buoyancy control is a mark of an experienced diver.

Dive Plan of Richelieu Rock

Here's where we dove on Day 3-4:
Dive 1: Koh Tachai
Dive 2 - 4: Richelieu Rock
Day 4, dive 1: Koh Tachai
Day 4, dive 2: Koh Bon

An amazing sunrise

Richelieu Rock was one of the great highlights of the trip. It's a lone pinnacle of rock - far from all nearby points of land and reef. As a result, lots of larger schools of fish congregate there as a food stop. We saw huge schools of fish there, streaming over and around the rocks.

All in all, it was an incredible and amazing trip. We are hooked on liveaboard diving trips now! A day after we returned to land, we still felt like we were on the boat, rocking back and forth.

Today, a week-ish after the trip, we are leaving Thailand to head to our next destination, Australia! We will be in Sydney for three days, and then we fly up to Cairns - a jumping off point to the Great Barrier Reef! Wish us luck on our next diving adventure. :)

Sea Life Log:

Fish:

Great Barracuda - the big long fish :)

*Great Barracuda: (dive #1) we saw an entire school of them, about 40-50 fish, quite near to us as we were ending the dive. As we surfaced and began our safety stop, they slowly swam away. I learned after that they will sometimes go after women's earrings, so you have to be careful not to wear anything sparkly that might attract them. (!) They are quite large fish, 190 cm
Trumpetfish: one yellow, one silver, one brown with dark bands on the tail on dive #1. A very clever predator - they tend to stick near big grouper fish, blending in with them and stalking the small fish that think they are safe around the large grouper, which doesn't hunt them.
*Giant Trevally: I think I saw two of them, very large fish, on dive #1
Blacksaddle Grouper (one large one on dive #1, 110 cm)
*Damselfish: (4-5 groups on dive #1: skunk anemonefish on a beige with white shell anemone, Clark's anemonefish found on anemones with bright blue bodies when closed); (dive #2, lots of skunks), (dive #3, Tomato anemonefish - 2 groups!)
*Cornetfish: (dive #2 & 3, schools of them)
*Batfish: (dive #2, schools of Tall-fin and Boer's batfish), (dive #3, Shaded batfish schools)
Bigeye snapper & Bluestriped snapper: (dive #2 and 3, big schools of them)

Eels, Lionfish, Puffers/Boxfish:

Swimming Moray Eel, photo by Patrick

Giant Moray: (becoming quite commonplace! 1 on dive #1, and then on dive #3, a large moray swam up towards us, straight at Mayumi, and then over the lip of a rock and down the other side! They are massive when out of their caves!
Lionfish: (dive #2, saw a group of three, same on dive #3), (dive #4, black colored one)
*Cube Boxfish: (dive #2, Richelieu Rock; little guy about 4" long, bright yellow and black spots, hiding in a crevice)
Masked porcupinefish (dive #3, a large one, they get to 50 cm, hiding deep in a rock crevice)
Common puffers & boxfish: (dives #2-3, many black-spotted pufferfish,
Eels: saw a couple small ones, not sure what species

Cuttlefish

Sea Slugs, Crustaceans, & Shells:
*Zig-Zag Oyster: (lots on dives #2-4, Richeliu Rock)
* Peacock Mantis Shrimp (dive #3, came out from a cave then scuttled away)

Other Creatures:
Sea Stars: sevaral with orange bodies and red speckled tips;

Fan Coral

*Cuttlefish: (dive #2: one at beginning, sandy-colored and about 2' long; then a male & female together at the end of the dive. The male was about 4' long and was holding on to the top of the female territorially. Female was brown-reddish; male was sandy-colored with bright blue spots. Their skirt when moving looks like a lacy white curtain.)
Big red octopus, (dive #3, wedged in a rock and quietly breathing, colored same as the rocks - a sandy beige color)
Barracuda, (dive #3, looked somewhat smaller than yesterday)
Water snake, (dive #4, black and white)

Coral:
Fan Corals: (many lovely big ones on dive #1)

One of the stunning sunsets