Copyright: Jurgen Brauer, Augusta, Georgia, USA

1. I was invited to give a keynote lecture to a conference in Sydney, Australia. As per my request, the conference was held during my spring break so that I wouldn't have to fly 20 hours in, give the lecture, and fly 20 hours out back in time to lecture at my home university. Instead, I could give the lecture and relax a bit as well, to enjoy Sydney and the surroundings.

   I left Augusta, GA, and flew via Charlotte, NC, to San Francisco, CA, from where I left to Sydney on 30 March in the evening - but I arrived in Sydney on 1 April in the morning. The 31st of March I skipped, courtesy of the international dateline. It's a weird feeling to skip a day in your life. On the return, something even weirder happened: I left Sydney on 11 April at 1:45pm but I arrived in San Francisco on 11 April at 8:30am, i.e., I arrived several hours before I left!

   Here are some photographs and stories.

   The picture below shows a fruit and vegetable store outside Kogorah train station in south Sydney. All over town, there are small retail stores near the stations of the city's excellent public transporation system. I bought, for about US$30, a 7-day ticket that entitled me to use public buses, trains, and the ferries all over Sydney. No need to rent a car, and a wonderful opportunity to sit and observe people.

2. The next photograph shows the Kogorah train station. Note the double-decker train swooshing by on track 3. I had rented an apartment for 10 days, a five-minute walk from Central Station (shown later). I couldn't have had a more central location for my daily public transportation use for Central Station, as the name implies, is the center through which almost all train traffic passes.

3. The cafe, pictured below, is right near Central Station (you can see a train in the background). Cafes are plentiful throughout the city, and people frequent them to take a break, or have a chat. Felt like Paris, and the weather was gorgeous sunshine.

4. One of the things I enjoyed about downtown Sydney was the wonderful combination of old and new. In the photograph below is the Crown Hotel with a satellite dish on top, a younger-vintage building behind it, and a modern high-rise building behind that.

5. Construction was plentiful - big holes and construction cranes all over the place. Hereunder, a street scene with one building reflected in another.

6. One of Sydney's landmarks is the Centrepoint Tower, a 1000-foot high structure, completed in 1981. I took this picture from near Hyde Park, at the corner of Elizabeth and Park streets.

7. Sydney, of course, lies on the water. It has a world famous harbor, criss-crossed by ferries all day long. Hereunder one view, with more to come.

8. Probably Sydney's most famous landmark, the Opera House was opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1973. You'll see the full building in all its spendor later on; hereunder an unusual perspective. I was astonished to discover just how well-designed the structure is. Depending on the location from which you view the building, it evokes imagery of sails, an entire sail boat, a series of fans, or as here, a shell. 

9. Back to downtown for a moment: here a shot of Sydney's monorail train dashing around a corner. Downtown Sydney is busy, cars and busess and people everywhere, but everyone is incredibly relaxed. In my whole ten days, I never saw a policeman nor a police car, and never heard anyone shout or yell.  How do they do it?

10. As visitors to my web site know, I am partial to scuba diving (and I did go diving in south Sydney - near Cronulla - and near Wollongong, about an hour's drive south of Sydney). So, wherever I go I usually visit the aquarium. The seal tank (below) seemed spacious enough ...

11. ... and seals are my favorite swimmers. Their sheer elegance and playfulness is unbeatable. (My daughter and I once dove inside a seal colony in South Africa, so I know firsthand about seals being playful.) Hereunder, a seal profile shot from below.

12. I didn't have the time on this trip to make a separate trip to Australia's Great Barrier Reef (I will next time!), so I had to be content to shoot some aquarium -based critter ...

13. ... and reef scenery.

14. I discovered that Sydney boasts TWO aquariums. So, next day I took a ferry (below) to head across the harbor to a suburb called Manly to pay a visit.

15. "Nemo," as (sadly) all children now call all reef fish is an anemone fish hiding in the anemone.

16. On my fist dive outing in south Sydney, a Port Jackson Shark sat on the ocean floor and I swam right over it. Hereunder, the shark photographed from below. It does not have a regular set of teeth. Instead, it has a couple of hard, serrated plates with which it can crush food.

17. The Oceanworld Aquarium in Manly contains a walkway underneath the shark and ray tank (next photo) so that one can observe the creatures in all leisure. I spent a good bit of time here, especially enjoying a humongous and majestic stingray flapping its "wings" and "sailing" through the water.

18. Two smaller rays and a Port Jackson Shark took a breather on top of the walkway tube, permitting an unusual photograph.

19. This octopus was very active, crawling up and down the glass of his darkened tank. To avoid glare, I bounced the flashlight off the glass at an angle away from me, so that I could get a clear view of the octopus. I wish I could have played with the animal.

20. The White Seahorse poses nicely for me ...

21. ... but the Mandarin fish didn't, and it took many tries to get even this photograph.

22. Caution. This shell is poisonous. The snail inside it has a harpoon-like poisonous "tooth," the sting of which can lead to quick paralysis and death. The primary rule of diving is this: never touch anything at all!

23. After visiting Oceanworld, I walked across the Manly isthmus, which is just a small peninsula, toward the South Pacific side and walked around the beach and marine park there. Along the way, I found this sculpture.

24. Everyone was telling me that I just had to spend at least one day in the Blue Mountains, a couple hours by train west of Sydney. So, on 8 April, I took a book, Gould's Book of Fish, by Australian writer Richard Flanagan, boarded a train and off I went to Katoomba (below), a small town located at an elevation of about 3000 or 3500 feet. The day was sunny but chilly.

25. My train ticket included all-day transport in and around Katoomba. This is rain forest country, and a popular tourist, vacation, and day-trip spot, but this was the Thursday before Easter weekend and traffic was light. So I took a walk in the rain forest, and happened upon some astonishing vistas. The Katoomba Falls (below) cascade several hundred feet down the plateau, and I actually walked all the way down to the first falls landing ...

26. ... on my way.

27. In the distance, the Three Sisters, a close-up view of which we'll see in a bit.

28. Sheer drop-offs. Unfortunately, most of the day was heavily clouded so that one can't see the orange glow of the mountain side. 

29. Spectacular views, this one from the Katoomba Fall's first landing out into the valley.

30. A bit further on, another view. The light spots are breaks in the cloud cover that let a bit of sunshine through.

31. Oh, the Wombat! How should I have loved to see one in nature. Instead, all I got was these tracks, I presume of the Common Wombat which is native to the area. Solitary, these marsupials burrow extensive tunnels and spend much of their time - very much of their time - sleeping. I later saw a Southern Hairy-Nosed Wombat in the Tarongo Zoo in Sydney, and it slept, all curled up, in its burrow.

32. A gaggle of tourists unable to escape my camera.

33. Self-portrait in the English double-decker tour-bus. As you can see in the mirror, just one other traveler was there at the time.

34. The Three Sisters close-up. For scale, note the people on the walkway near the top of the left-most sister.

35. At day's end, my sore feet, a swollen right knee, and a bent and swollen left ankle needed some rest and restoration. So, I found this nice restaurant where the sunlight hit so nicely and the mirror on the left reflected a bit of traffic on the right ...

36. I ordered a veggie burger and chips ("French Fries" to Americans) and was served a humongous portion, by far the largest I had in my whole time in Aussie land.

37. Next day, 9 April, started out, as almost always, at Central Station.

38. A look around the train tracks.

39. Today I was on my way to the Tarongo Zoo. I took the train to Central Quay and, from there, took the ferry across the harbor. Hereunder a view back to Central Quay with Sydney's main ferry wharf.

40. The Sydney Opera House in classic pose, all sails unfurled and billowing.

41. A close-up view ...

42. ... and a frontal view.

43. Downtown Sydney on the next picture.

44. The Zoo has its own wharf.

45. A typical ferry, with downtown across the harbor area.

46. The Zoo has an interesting location. It is built up along a massive hill side. From the wharf one either takes a bus up the hill to the main entrance or, as here, a skyway. One advantage of taking the skyway is the extraordinary view of Sydney one gets in the background. At the bottom of the skyway pillar, incidentally, is a huge construction site, the future site of an Asian Elephant rain forest exhibit.

47. Many places in the Zoo offer tremendous views overlooking the river and harbor area.

48. The sign says it all. Once thought extinct, the Wollemi Pine was rediscovered, near Sydney, just ten years ago in 1994. The Zoo now has a special ecosystem exhibit featuring the Wollemi Pine and, get this, some 200 animal species in this special exhibit alone.

49. Nope, not a Kangaroo, but a Wallaby, hopping contentedly across my path.

50. Australia's famous Koala bear. Unfortunately, this sleepy creature wouldn't budge at all, and this is the best shot I got at it.

51. More luck with this mother-kiddo pair of the Western Lowland Gorilla (from western Africa). In the wild, these have recently suffered from a bad outbreak of Ebola but are still the most common of the gorilla species. The Eastern Lowland Gorilla of eastern Congo has been drastically reduced in numbers, to a few thousand, in the late 1990s on account of the eastern Congo war. Even worse, the Mountain Gorilla of Rwanda numbers less than 350 individuals. And the fourth species, in Uganda's Forbidden Forest, is also very low in numbers.

52. A little birdie whose name I have forgotten to jot down. Something like Fire Diamond.

53. Zoo goers often overlook the plants but this one caught my attention.

54. Likewise, seagulls off the harbor, always on the lookout for tourist morsels, are usually overlooked - but they are beautiful.

55. Also overlooked, despite their size, are the spiders in the Zoo. Once you become aware of them, you see them everywhere, hanging in-between the bushes and the trees. This one here would very nearly fill a grown man's palm.

56. Zebras and Giraffes from the distance ...

57. ... and close-up, relatively speaking.

58. A gaggle of tortoises.

59. One surprisingly entertaining show was that of wild birds of prey flying free, but at the attendant's command, in the Zoo's bird show arena. Sydney's famous Harbor Bridge makes for a spectacular backdrop.

60. The endangered Snow Leopard. Actually, the leopard was in hiding, so I took this photograph off a plate near the cage.

61. A lion pair.

62. A Kodiak bear.

63. See the hiding spider's legs poking out from the curled up leaf?

64. A Pigmy Hippopotamus at rest.

65. What a stately mane and manner ...

66. Now these chimps put on a nice show for me. They are gathering around a termite heap, using the stick to fish for termites. They wrested the stick from each other to each have a go at it, and the youngster in the middle jumped up on the hill and closely observed what the others were up to.  Like human children, chimp kids unquestionably learn by observation.

67. A baby chimp put on a show of his (her?) own, learning to swing - to the oh's and ah's of the crowd visible in the glass' reflection.

68. This double-horned lizard is probably called something like it.

69. A Komodo Dragon.

70. A Tasmanian Devil. Unfortunately, one can't see much more than the characteristic red ear.

71. On the way back down the hill with the skyway, I went by the Orang-Utan's place and saw this one hanging out near the top of the enclosure.

72. 10 April 2004. Last full day in Sydney. Today's program is to visit the Queen Victoria Building, the Royal Botanical Gardens, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. But first I took a picture of the Central Railway Motel, where I had rented my apartment. ("Motel" is a bit of a misnomer, for American English anyway.)

73. Looking down Chalmers Street.

74. As I walked toward downtown I came across the Sydney Library and this placque, in English and Chinese. Sydney is full of people of all nations, but especially of course of Asians, primarily Chinese and Korean as best as I could tell. 

75. QVB - Queen Victoria Building, nicely restored into a shopping mall consisting of a 180 or so small retail stores and restaurants, spread over several floors ...

76. .. crowned by a wonderful stained-glass top.

77. Speaking of crown - here's a replica of Queen Victoria, age 19, at her coronation.

78. Stained-glass window at one side of the building.

79. I went to QVB to shop for books by Australian writers and had a blast reading one of them while visiting and resting at the Royal Botanical Gardens.

80. A view of the gardens.

81. Bamboo - signs like this are placed all over the garden. Did you know that 90 percent of our food is derived from a mere 20 plant species? Commercial food growing of a small number of genetically identical food plants ensures consistency of product but also poses considerable risk should any one species be attacked by a pest. The Botanical Garden hence grows many varieties of food plants to perserve genetic stock.

82. After the Gardens, I walked to Macquaries' Point and took this view of the Opera House. Note how nicely it blends into the Harbor Bridge. One can, by the way, take a tour atop the Bridge (round about 700 feet high at the top).

83. Next, the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This was the Saturday between Easter Friday and Sunday, a traditionally big family and outing day in Australia. Entry today was free, and the place was packed with visitors.

84. The inside of the multistory building is very modern and displays vary from paintings to photographs to sculpure and other art forms.

85. What do YOU see in this painting?

86. A children's day painting camp inside the museum. Future - here we come.

The end.