Travelog for: Toothy Walrus

Next stop was Wellington, a larger town than Molong... I guess around the same size as Orange (with 38,000 people). There's sadly not much to see or do here but here I am...


...and here are some photos as we are driving through the main street of Wellington as you can see there's not much to see.



Although we had no time to stop we were already running a little late.... so moving on...

First off, sorry I'm not really in any of the photos next... Sara had a hard time getting in and out of the car with a 2 year old let alone with all of the toyvoyagers... we saw most of it - but the pictures really tell the story. :-) Enjoy!


Well... we have arrived in Dubbo... after a 2.5 hour drive were finally here... we've been through rain and sun and it's already pretty hot here. Dubbo has temperatures that are very similar to Africa. So they have a major breeding program with the African animals. They successfully breed a lot of endangered animals so the heat is normal but quite uncomfortable... :-)

Well we've arrived at the zoo...


In these photos you can see the entrance to the zoo... it kind of looks a lot like the entrance to Jurassic Park doesn't it? Also the little cars you can rent to drive around the zoo. Since the zoo is so huge you can either drive, walk or bike around the zoo...



Well now that were at the zoo, it's started to rain... the wild dogs were underneath a tree keeping dry... not many animals were moving much since it was raining so much...


Well we decided to move on anyways... we can't stop the rain... but then it REALLY started to come down... we were standing near the camels and Arabian sheep when we ran to an enclosed area (at least the top of us was covered).


...the animals didn't really enjoy it so grouped together... and then it started to hail... so they all ran in every direction. You could barely see them even though they were right in front of you... crazy...


...and then we decided to deal with the rain (after the hail) and ran down to see the black rhino. Which is one of the babies that were successfully bred in the zoo... obviously he's not a baby anymore...



Within 5 minutes... it was done raining, the sun was out and it was heating up. Within 5 minutes the rhino went from soaking to totally bone dry (as the photos show)... so we decided to go and visit the Arabian sheep and camels again...


Then the giraffes... Sara was going to feed the giraffes today but was 30 seconds (literally) too late for signing up... so she was a bit sad about that since last time they missed feeding the giraffes as well... but they did come pretty close anyways...


This next photo shows you what the zoo looks like with the less dangerous animals. So the giraffes, zebras, any "safe" animals (more or less) you could get quite close... you could stand on this hill and then the fence was below... it's quite an amazing experience... but this shows you how close the giraffes can get to you (they've gotten even closer)...


Sara then went and saw a talk on the hippos... the females are separated from the bull hippos which are extremely territorial. The zoo keeper told them about how the hippo population in the Democratic Republic of Congo went from 29,000 hippos in the 70's and 80's to 700 hippos last year when they checked. It's kind of sad really... they sprayed some water in their mouth since they really enjoy that it's almost like a massage for their mouth. Also shows off their amazing teeth... this picture is one of the bulls...


Next stop was the less endangered white rhino... he was all alone but the group of the others was in some shade... not sure why he didn't want to be there... but obviously he did because he walked over there a few minutes later...


Next stop was the cheetah's... now where's the mom? Sadly the mom died during complications while giving birth to one of the two cheetahs... via emergency c-section... so they had doubts the babies would survive. So they had someone stay there 24 hours a day 7 days a week to take care and feed the babies every hour on the hour... thankfully they made it... even without a mom they're very happy little cats...



...and then we got to see the African elephants. They were doing a talk on them at the time I took these photos so you can see all the people and the zoo keeper and everything feeding them. I love elephants they're very beautiful creatures...



...next stop was the Siberian tiger. Sara hasn't ever been able to see him before... he's always been hiding and sadly it didn't take long before he went and laid down in the shade where he all but disappeared. You can tell how hot it is when the tiger is panting... :-P


Near the tiger are the bongo's... the baby was there - who wasn't there the last time I visited in October... isn't he adorable?


The first time Sara visited in February 2007... she saw the African Water Buffalo in the water. It was so hot all of them were packed into the water to keep warm. You could barely see them. Obviously it wasn't that hot... but they weren't moving much...


Next section was the "Australian Animals" section. There's this big "walk" where you walk through where there used to be kangaroos on the ground and koala's in the tree. But for whatever reason it's only koalas now. You have to walk up pretty high and you can see some koala's sitting in the tree... sleeping of course... :-)


Next stop was the emu's... they were also quite close to the edge. Sara was only a few feet from one of them (obviously not the one pictured)... Sara loves emu's they're so graceful for such a huge bird...


...and then next to the emu's were the kangaroos... they weren't very active at all either... but now you can see the grey kangaroo (which are the ones I've seen in the wild) and the larger kangaroo, the red kangaroo. Which are native to Dubbo and more of the 'outback'... :-)


One of the last stops was the galapagos tortoises... they're HUGE and they have breeding program here too... we got to see 4 different tortoises while we were in this section... you can see two videos here and here... they're both quite short but it shows all four of the tortoises, two of which are in the photos below...



Well... obviously we didn't take photos of all the animals... they have like 3x more animals than are currently pictured... but I had fun it was very warm but it was very informative as well... I hope you enjoyed the photos! :-) Write again soon! :-)

We decided we should take a trip to Sydney. It was Daniel and Sara's 4th year wedding anniversary (tomorrow) but she decided to go a bit early since they could get some baby sitting. So we left early and got to Sydney around 11am (lots of traffic) and as we started to get into Sydney we got to see two famous landmarks in the distance, the famous Sydney Harbor Bridge and the less famous Anzac Bridge.


...and before we knew it, we were going over the Anzac Bridge. Sara had never had the chance to go over it before so it was exciting... here we are about to go under the bridge...


After the Anzac Bridge we were thrown right into the middle of the Sydney CBD... there are lots of HUGE buildings, it's amazing really... here are some photos of the Sydney CBD from the freeway going through it...

In the distance you can see something that looks like a tower, that is the Sydney Tower or also known as the AMP tower. You walk around the edge of it - some of which has a clear walkway so you can see straight down, it's called the Sydney Skywalk.


This picture shows Darling Harbor...


...and this is going right through the middle of all the huge buidlings. It's amazing the height of them when your right next to them isn't it?

...and then we did a quick turn and after a few signs Sara realized we were almost about to head under the Sydney Harbor Bridge as well... Sara quickly rolled up her window for our safety and put us on the dashboard so we could get pictures of us going over the famous bridge... Sara hasn't ever been on the Harbor Bridge (on purpose anyways) because it's always the "scary" part of Sydney where it is very easy to get lost. Thanks to the GPS navigator though it's made it simple (more or less) to get through the CBD of Sydney...

...almost there...


...almost there...




...and there we are... we've now traveled the Sydney Harbor Bridge! How awesome is that!...

Well now we're almost at our destination... it's time we get a park and get our way to the ferry... we're not done yet! Write again soon! :-)

Well after what seemed like forever driving around we finally found a park. It was a kilometre away from where we needed to be... thankfully it was mostly down hill but the uphills were massive when they were... I'm sure glad we were in a bag because the heat was just shocking and the walk felt like it took a while but we got there JUST in time... we are now getting ready to board the Manly Ferry... last time we went to Sydney we wanted to do this but for some reason couldn't see what was right in front of our eyes... haha... well here we are, top deck, front row center...

Isn't the beach front and the water there just gorgeous? It was more amazing than that even... it was such a beautiful blue!...


Off we go time to set sail... I wonder where we are going?

Here are some of the photos taken throughout the trip... there was a lot of cliffsides and open ocean, and sailboats, and buoys, and lots more to see it was an amazing trip... you can even see one of the ferry's coming back from where we were going to pick up and drop off more people...














...and then suddenly were getting ready to dock... it's suddenly apparent that were going to be visiting the famous Circular Quay... what's amazing to me, is that there is a military base right there near the Quay... I didn't know that!




...and as we begin to dock Sara takes a few more photos of the quay from the boat... there was a HUGE cruise ship right next to the harbor bridge... it was amazingly big... Sara said she thinks that's the cruise ship we saw in the photos when we were at Manly last time... she thinks it's the Pacific liner that visits all the smaller Pacific islands including places like Vanuatu. How awesome...


...Sara also got a couple photos of the bridge... in the first photo it's obviously the bridge. The second photo is the reminents of the fireworks on Sydney Harbor on New Years. You can see where the sun would have been... if you didn't see it you can see it in this video if you can't tell it's the thing spinning in the middle, which was a sun this year... it was quite beautiful... and the last photo is the close up on the top of the bridge. You can see two teams of people walking up the bridge on another famous touristy thing to do in Sydney... the Sydney Harbor Bridge Climb...




You can't be at this dock without getting a picture of the beautiful Sydney Opera House though can you?


Well now that we are finally docked it's time to get off the boat... the seagull said goodbye to us as we deboarded - time to spend a bit of time here before heading back...


Write again soon! :-)

Well now that we are in the CBD of Sydney again, and more specifically Circular Quay it's time to visit some of the shops and see what Circular Quay has to offer us... we got some ice cream from Baskin Robbins and then headed out towards the Opera House... this is how far we were from the Opera House from the boat dock... not that far but on a hot day you feel every step of it...


...once we finally got there I got a picture of myself with the opera house and the sydney harbor bridge... here I am...



...we decided to see a few of the shops... and we saw a few entertainers... these ones were the most interesting to me... they're aboriginal people and one of them is playing the digeridoo a lot of the time aboriginal people hate their picture taken because they believe it's like a gate way to the souls - I'm not really sure... but these ones didn't mind getting their picture taken so Sara took one for us...


We also got to see some famous stuff around the harbor... one of them being Luna Park which is located right below the Sydney Harbor Bridge...


We also got to see some water taxi's... Sara has never been on one but would really like to one day... they look quite fun don't they? We also got to see some of Sydney's other tourist attractions, the Jet boat ride where they take people around the harbor in a speed boat with lots of twists and turns... looks quite fun... :-)


We decided it was too hot to go searching the tourists shops for something for Sara's family instead they decided they'll come back again soon and do that - on a less hot day... so Sara got some videos... one of the Sydney Harbor seen from the ferry (on the way back) and Sara also got a video on the ferry ride back to Manly... you can see that video here it was VERY windy on the ride back to Manly... we even got splashed a few times... it really kind of felt good though on the hot day that it was...

But on the way out of the ferry we saw something pretty cool... we got to see a real pirate ship! How cool is that? :-)


Well have a check out of those videos (they're pretty short) and you can see more of our trip to the CBD... more to come though... we're on our way back to Manly now... write again soon!

Now we are safely back on land in Manly... Manly is a very beautiful beach but instead of having all of us run back to the car (95% up hill) we had Sara's husband do that while we waited near the ferry dock and got a few photos of us at the ferry dock and the pretty calm side of the Manly beach (the other side is about 1/4 of a mile straight the opposite direction)... here I am in front of the ferry dock area..


...while we were waiting there was a few seagulls, and one of the seagulls kept staring at us but you could only see  his head... it was kind of funny...


Here is a photo from the beach front as we were coming back into dock. You can see the beach we are currently standing on in these photos... amazing isn't it? We were standing under one of the trees though trying to get some shade while we could...


Finally Daniel arrived and we drove a short distance and thankfully found a park pretty quickly got 2 hours of parking and got some photos... first was the chance for photos of the beach and a small panoramic video of the beach... you can see that video here... it became very windy on this side of the beach... but it felt nice especially when they got in the water they told us. They didn't want us to get lost so after the photos and the videos the camera and the three of us were put in the car to stay safe... here I am in front of the Manly beach...


Here are a few panoramic shots showing from left to right what the beach looks like from where we were standing... as you can see it was pretty busy that day...






As you can see in the last shot Sara managed to get a seagull in there... that wasn't on purpose and Sara actually think the seagull really adds something to the shot. Very beautiful sights anyways... and the water is so dang pretty isn't it? It was very warm as well... :-)

...and here are a couple more shots from the beach before we got put away to safety so we didn't get lost or blown away (when Sara and Daniel were in the water)...



...well that was our trip to Sydney and the beaches. I saw some amazing sights and I'm glad I got to see more of this stuff while Summer was still here...

Today we stayed up really really really late. It was around 530am before Sara went to bed and we went to bed around 430am thankfully we were all so very tired... but we stayed up because at 4am, Mr. Obama was turning into the first African American president. President Obama now... a pretty awesome thing actually. Three of the five tv stations were showing it live from Washington DC... a lot of it I found to be pretty boring but when it finally ticked over to 4am, it got a lot more interesting... :-)

Around 3 or 330am they had a whole bunch of people walk out and then they had president elect Obama walk out...


After a lot of talking and speeches, and singing they inaugurated vice president Biden...



...and then it was finally the time... even 5 minutes late... the inauguration of President Obama...



...after the inauguration we watched his speech. He's such a lovely speaker isn't he?


Well you might ask why Sara stayed up that late just to watch that... well, I didn't know this before but Sara was born and raised in America and is an American citizen... so she's very proud of her country for electing such a fine man and watching history itself... it's an amazing thing isn't it? :-) She's very proud to be American sometimes. :-) Well I'm off to bed it's been a long night... :-P

Today we took a trip to Sydney. We had to go to Camperdown for an appointment for Sara's son, Andrew. But we decided since we had a bit of time to check out some of the local beaches... well, since Camperdown is pretty much in the CBD of Sydney we were directed to the beaches of the CBD. Which are extremely crowded, hard to get to and overall a pain in the butt. Especially driving, people don't drive in the CBD for a reason... but the GPS took us there so that's where we went... the concrete jungle was too much for the GPS though because it kept driving us in circles before finally getting us out... needless to say we gave up going to that beach and just decided to head back to Camperdown...

Although I don't have any photos of me (it was too hard because we all kept slipping off of the dashboard) in the CBD but here are some of the things we saw...



This is coming into the CBD around Darling Harbor. If you can see that little gold star on the left side of the picture... very pretty... and look at all those huge buildings...


The next photos is the middle of the CBD on the main street of Sydney, George Street.



In these photos you can see the Queen Victoria Building it's a very iconic landmark of Sydney... very beautiful isn't it?  Here's the statue right out front of it... Queen Victoria... if you look at the link connected to the Queen Victoria Building you can see what it looks like on the inside... very elegant!

Next on the short tour through the lesser known CBD icons is the clock tower on Martin Place... isn't it gorgeous?


Last but not least we got to see the AMP Tower people climb up on top of it and walk around the edge in what's called the Sydney Tower Skywalk part of the walk actually has a clear walkway so you can see straight down! Crazy!

Well those are the lesser known parts of the CBD of Sydney. I hope you enjoyed the walk through so to speak. We hope to be taking another trip to Sydney in the coming days *fingers crossed*

Wow! Sara got the fright of her life earlier this morning. Remember that tarantula? Well, it disappeared for a few days. Her and her husband kept remarking that they should find it because it's a big spider and well, you really want to know where it is... because having something like that spook you... well isn't fun. Well what happened early this morning (around 2am) Sara will probably never forget...

Sara was sitting at the desk and then looked down at her hands and saw some legs moving towards her hand. She quickly pulled back and stood up. She even made a whimpering noise... how crazy is that? Someone so big... compared to something so small? Well it decided to make a home between her keyboard and mouse so Sara decided to show us how big he was... so here I am... do you see it?


Pretty dark eh? Well, here's with the flash... I'm sure you can see him now...

Definitely not something you want crawling on you in the middle of the night. Sara thinks it might have actually had to crawl across her stomach to get where it currently is... oh my gosh that would give me the heebie jeebies! You can bet she went straight to bed after that little incident...

Hi! It's been really boring around here lately.. Sara hasn't been able to get out as much as she would have liked to so we've been sitting at home with her... well, nothing much interesting has been going on but today Sara tried kangaroo for the first time. So she thought this was note worthy... we all smelled it and it actually smelled really yummy! It looked just like a steak and Sara says it actually just tastes just like beef, but very very lean, almost no fat at all.. yummy!

Not much there but sometimes I wish we could try new things too - so here was Sara's dinner (or part of it anyways) from the other day. I promise more interesting things ahead in the days to come! Write again soon!

Today we were taking a small road trip. No where exciting but Sara took this as an opportunity to show us what the Central West is full of... which sadly isn't all that interesting, but hopefully you'll find it a bit more interesting... it's very dry and brown here. There's been barely any rain, so now that it's Autumn, we're hoping for a bit more rain... *fingers crossed* first stop we went to a small town called Blayney which has a population of only 3,000 people...

Here I am at the top of the highest point in Blayney, Church Hill... you can see the whole town from here...


...and here's the rest of the view around Church Hill from where we're standing...




Coming down from Church Hill we went down the main street to our next destination... here I am on the main street which is called Adelaide Street...


We're back on the road again... I'll update more soon!

Next stop was the Blayney Wind Farm and Carcoar Dam which is just outside of Blayney and Carcoar... here I am in front of the wind turbines...


Sara also decided to show you Carcoar Dam... if you click that link you can see what Carcoar Dam used to look like. Since the Central West has been in a drought for so long the water level is much much lower than at the moment... here I am in front of what is left of the dam...


Kind of puts it into perspective how much of a drought Australia is in, especially inland from the coastlines... here's a closer image of the water level. You see that line on the hill just below the trees? That's where the water used to be... can you imagine THAT much water evaporating? Scary isn't it?


...and here are a couple more photos of the wind mills that run the wind farm...



Write again soon!

Next stop was Carcoar which is one of the many tiny towns between Blayney and Cowra, so we decided to get a few photos. Carcoar has a population of around 400 people... so very small, here I am on the main street...


...there's sadly not much to see here but Sara took us down to the little river that runs through the town. Sara says her and her husband Daniel used to drive here from Blayney to here to have picnic's once in a while. :-) Isn't it pretty?



Back on the road... we're almost there! Another 40 minutes or so... write again soon!

Last stop, we're finally there! We've arrived in Cowra which is a town about half the size of Orange, with around 13,000 people. There's not too much to see here... Sara and her husband had to do a few mystery shops. So we just waited, after all the jobs were done we all went down to the Lachlan River... we saw a LOT of bird life while we were there... here I am in front of the river...


Walking down to the river there were a lot of aboriginal paintings on the underside of the road (which passed over the river)... here are some of the paintings...



Can you guess what some of the animals are? Well, there are dolphins, echidna, turtles, fish, dugong, kookaburra, and snakes. How interesting is all that? Isn't it pretty?

You can't tell but there are HUNDREDS of Long-billed Corella's... they're making heaps of noise but they're fun to watch. Sara took a short video of them in the tree... you can watch the video here. It's short and you can also hear the noises they make... they were crazy... here are a few snap shots of them as well...





...and we even got to see a bunch of Australian Wood Ducks...


After spending an hour or so at the river we decided to head home. It had already been a long day and it was only 230pm. Crazy! Well back home we go... write again soon! Miss you mom I hope you enjoyed my day out!

...wait what?

...why are we waking up at such an ungodly hour? We've just started to adjust to having the clocks put back an hour... and now were getting up at 5am, being packed into the car to go somewhere? why? Well at least we can sleep...

In the mean time we had to get some petrol, here we all are, awake and at the petrol station... time to move on, we're already 20 minutes off schedule...


Write again soon... at our next destination...