Ok, well I'm actually back from Australia, and very sad about it. But I shall digress, I've got a bunch of pictures that I've yet to show everyone so I'm just going to continue my blog even though I'm back in the states.

On one occasion Eric and Dave and I took a road trip to some of the northern beaches, those being north of Sydney. As you can see from the first picture it was a pretty stormy day, the rain clouds you see look like they are fairly close but it actually took quite a few hours for them to catch up with us, we got a good soaking.

The next picture is taken from North Head looking at the Sydney skyline. There's North Head and South Head and in the middle is from where ships enter and leave Sydney Harbor. The water you see there in the Harbor is what the Australians refer to as very "sharky" in other words, don't swim there. The waters in and around the harbor are teeming with sharks, mostly bull sharks, very dangerous to swim in the harbor!!
The third picture is one that I like because it rather well demonstrates the topography of the land north of Sydney, rolling hills, very green and picturesque. Of course you also get some very jagged cliffs too but you already knew that.

The final picture is taken from the House of Ken and Maureen, long time friends of Dave and his family. The bird in the picture is a Kookaburra, Ken put out two small pieces of fish and the Kookaburra swooped in and took one, now what Kookaburra did next is slam the piece of fish on the railing to "kill" it. They do this with their natural prey which is usually snakes, easier for eating I guess. You know the typical sound that is meant to represent a jungle environment in the movies? Anyone? Anyway that sound is made by the Kookaburra, to hear it in person is really cool, makes you think the bird might be a celebrity for a moment.

More pictures!! I know!! I went on a tour of the Sydney Opera House and before hand I took some pictures, it was a very overcast and rainy day but despite that I think the pictures turned out pretty well. I decided to take many of the Opera House Pictures from different angles, angles that you don't often see. You'll notice that the "Sails" of the Opera House are actually covered with thousands of small tiles, this was a surprise to me, we've all seen many pictures of the Opera House but they're all wide landscape shots, too wide to see the detail of the structure itself. I was very intrigued by the tiles and enjoyed them very much. I zoomed in very tight on some of the tiles, if you didn't know that they were on the Opera House you'd never guess it would you? I really liked the convergence of angles which is another reason that I took so many pictures of parts of the Opera House. While I was on the tour we went inside the main concert hall, to everyone's surprise the Sydney Symphony Orchestra was right in the middle of rehearsal!! It was a very cool experience, I've never heard musicians that were that masterful!! It was a case of very good timing. Yeah I know, I haven't taken any pictures of really beautiful women, too bad. If you want to see lots of beautiful women then get yourself to Australia, see them for yourself, there are tons of them, especially in and around Sydney. Gotta go!! Ian

More pictures!! Sunrise at Bondi, the next picture is taken from South Head, the south side entrance to Sydney Harbor and looking at North Head. The third picture is a silhouette of a church steeple with Sydney Harbor behind, I think it turned out fairly well!!

OK, I'm back!! Eric and I moved out of the hostel we were staying at and we finally rented an apartment, it's only about two blocks from the beach here in Bondi. It's kind of a pit really, not a 5 star location to be sure, it's very utilitarian and gets the job done quite nicely. Finally got some surfing in again today and as a consequence am quite tired. The last two days have seen some fairly decent waves but because of all the rain we've had surfing was more or less out of the question. Rain brings runoff, runoff brings in the smallest of animals to feed on said runoff. When small creatures feed you can count on larger creatures to feed on the smaller ones, follow this path all the way up the food chain and at the top you'll find the apex predators, most notably the bull shark and great white shark. So in a nutshell when it rains the sharks show up, to make matters worse the rain causes the water to get very murky which makes it harder for the sharks, or toothy guppies as I like to refer to them, to differentiate their normal diet from the forms of surfers and swimmers. Now when a bull or a white shark takes an investigatory bite it's doing so in order to determine if it's really worth the trouble. Unfortunately an investigatory nibble, even a small one, is more often than not fatal to humans. More to the point such a nibble is fatal to pretty much everything under the sun, sharks don't mess around. So Ian, and many other surfers and swimmers, didn't go into the water for the last day and a half. But I digress as I got in a pretty good two hour session early this afternoon. Go me!! OK so I've been trying to get my pictures to upload but for some reason I'm not having the slightest bit of success... you'll just have to believe me when I say that they're awesome!!

God Bless,

Ian

 

Pictures!! A cove just south of Bondi, waves were building at this point. Next picture, onshore breeze blowing the mist up the cliffs, very cool sight!! And a panoramic view of Bondi from the South. I have more pictures but don't have easy access to the internet right now, sorry about that!!!  

Dave's Little Accident

The pictures we have here are of my friend Dave and his recently broken ankle, more to the point his very seriously broken ankle. Dave was an ocean lifeguard with Eric and I in New Jersey and he's a volunteer lifeguard here at Tamarama. Anyhoo, Dave and one of his mates, as they say here in Australia, were doing a shark sweep in an IRB, inflatable rescue boat, in some pretty hairy conditions when Dave was confronted by a 2.5 meter meter wall of water. Dave was driving and he wasn't able to get the IRB squared up in time so the wave pitched Dave, his friend and the boat upside down. This happened so quickly and with such force that it instantly snapped Dave's ankle, he didn't actually hit his ankle on anything nor did his ankle get caught between two objects, just a simple and very rapid change of direction. Now I have on occasion flipped a rescue boat (I imagine Eric has as well), I've gone over the falls backwards (it doesn't get much scarier than that), I've been hypothermic on more than one occasion, however I never stacked an IRB into a wall of water and broken my ankle in the process. Dave wins the Life Guard Worst Injury Award hands down. Take into account that Dave's ankle isn't in shadow, it's really that color, not pretty.

More pictures!! Behold the glory of pictures!! The first picture is one of the sun peeking through the clouds, this was taken whilst I was on a ferry in Sydney Harbor, God did an outstanding job when he made the sun didn't he?

The second photo is also taken from the ferry and I thought it might be interesting to see if I could frame the flag in the foreground and the Opera House in the background and see what kind of picture it would make. Let me know what you think ok!!

The third picture I took while we were crossing the Sydney Harbor Bridge. The HUGE freighter entering the harbor makes for a good point of reference to give you an idea how big the Opera House is. Click on the pictures to make them larger if you'd like.