Aussies

Sydney sun rising behind the iconic Opera House.

The HAL Noordam docked right between the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge

 Sailing out past the Opera House on our way west toward Melbourne.

 Healesville wildlife sanctuary, Melbourne, where we saw the classic unique Australian species: koala, wombat, platypus, kangaroo, etc.  The number of marsupials surviving in Australia today is said to be a result of sea levels rising after ancient wildlife had crossed down the land bridge from Asia, with the higher and higher levels of the ocean effectively preventing predators from following and wiping out the marsupials.  At higher latitudes marsupials ceased to exist in the long thousands of years following the inundation of the land bridge.

                                           And the fierce little Tasmanian Devil

Melbourne has some very interesting architecture

And this scary looking entrance to an amusement park.  Hard to imagine dragging a child through that entry.

Hobart.  Just kidding, of course.  We have quite enough snow and ice at home in Colorado without going to extremes.

Hobart, capitol of the Australian island state of Tasmania.  The iron work on this fence is of a style commonly seen decorating old Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart, and that cast iron has a curious history: when ships carrying convicts sailed around the world eight months from Britain to the new penal colonies, the ships required ballast; so-called pig iron made excellent ballast but the weight was unneeded when sailing back home with holds filled with cargo, so creative uses were found for all that iron.  The balcony railings of many old houses here are reminiscent of the French Quarter in New Orleans.  Perhaps that US iron work has a similar history to this.

The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens have a nice Japanese garden section with numerous stone lanterns.

I like stone lanterns.

I really do.

Life in Hobart in the early days of the colony was rough, brutish and short.  This stone is set among many in a wall of memorials that winds along one side of St David’s Park.  Very few honored people we would call elderly.  This George Kearly was the first white child born in Hobart, 9th of July 1804, and died one week later.  His brother Joseph was born and died the year after.  They shared one gravestone.

Dinner at an Italian restaurant in Salamanca Square near the Hobart docks was followed by cappuccino and a glass of Strega.  The glass is actually much smaller than it appears to be.  Honest!