Australia Zoo

We went to the Australia Zoo (founded by Steve Irwin's parents and now plastered with his family's images) and spent the day there seeing the animals and shows. It's about an hour's drive north of Brisbane. Highlights were:

• Bird and crocodile show: I was very nervous for the trainers! There were so many crocodiles at this park. 
• Tiger feeding: The trainers showed us how they feed cream to the tigers and are able to draw their blood without having to put them under anesthetic. They are such gorgeous creatures. Pretty much huge cats.
• Kangaroo petting: There's a big enclosure where they just roam around and tolerate the visitors petting them.

started off the bird and crocodile show with...a dinosaur?

dingos are so cute

The cassowary is 3rd tallest bird (behind ostrich and emu) in the world.

definitely can see the link to dinosaurs with huge, three-toed feet and sharp claws

I think this lizard was trying to blend in by being super close to its sign.

Around Brisbane

We made it safely to Brisbane and picked up our Hertz rental car, a small, silver, bug-shaped model, then drove south of the city to our host's house. We chatted for a bit and then she took us to the mall so we could grocery-shop for the week. The mall had a Target -- a Target! -- so we couldn't resist popping in and checking out the clearance racks. I spotted my first Australian bugs, two small cockroaches in the bathroom, but they ran back into a crack before I could do anything. 

The next day (after she hand-fed magpies from her patio - I couldn't believe how close they came; apparently they have walked into the house too!), she drove us around Brisbane which was really nice because we would definitely have had a hard time trying to navigate all the places without GPS. We went to the Botanic Gardens which have a great view of the city, Mount Coot-tha, and a jetty out on the water.

Darling Harbor

On our last full day in Sydney, we checked out Darling Harbor and then went to the National Maritime Museum. It was quite affordable for the exhibit-only ticket (not the ships outside or the special exhibit): $3.50 for students. The museum had a lot of stuff -- odds and ends of ship things plus the military aspects. I especially liked the section on stories from ship passengers who arrived in Australia as kids. There was even a Big Brother Australia program to get young boys from Britain here to work on the farms. And the White Australia policy wasn’t officially over until the 1970s.

Next we went to see Jurassic World for the second time, but this time in the "world's biggest IMAX screen". The theater was very poorly organized and managed, with masses of people and no crowd control, and they started late. But we still enjoyed the IMAX experience!

We wandered through a small Chinatown and ended up eating at the mall food court. D got lemon chicken and rice and I got garlic beef and fried rice. Meals were very affordable, plus they came on sizzling platters! We got gelato and sat outside looking over the nighttime harbor, then walked home. The city is very walkable, although it is warm when the sun is out but gets chilly when it goes down like anywhere else, which makes it difficult to plan for what to wear.

 

A Day of Culture around the Opera House

We went to the Contemporary Art Museum in hopes that it might have some understandable art. I didn't enjoy the exhibition of electronica “art” with headphones and static, buzzing, and other electric noises. The room with the projected image of the sun and the scent sticks of ozone was alright. There were a couple cool pieces elsewhere, mostly about the aboriginal resistance to colonization. Photos were allowed, so I took a couple of those to share and remember. We left our stuff at bagcheck and went to The Rocks Discovery Museum which was free. It was a small museum but an interesting look into the history of convicts (who were mostly tradespeople who forged a note in Britain or some other small crime) and The Rocks area. It got cleaned up and is now a tourist area with fancy shops and restaurants! Ah, gentrification. 

 

The Rocks Discovery Museum

Getting to go inside the Sydney Opera House and hear Azar Nafisi discuss "The Power of Literature" and her new book The Republic of Imagination was a true highlight of the trip. I picked up our tickets at the box office (no ID! they're so trusting here) and wandered around the gift shop, which had a bunch of really cool items, until the room opened for the talk. Azar was great - very passionate and an advocate for the importance of reading books in modern times. She talked about the loss of vision in the U.S. and how scary this should be to citizens, even though it is not as obvious as the authoritarian states. The room had a great view of the water and I think most of us could have stayed there listening and asking questions for hours.

Afterward, we walked around the Royal Botanical Gardens and took some nice pictures of flowers and birds.

the ibis can be found everywhere in cities as a trash-hunter

most royal magpie, in the dark

most royal magpie, in the light