Sydney

We only managed to spend a few days (4 to be precise) in Sydney, and our time was only marred by our choice of accomodation - which included free tannoy announcements from 09:35am, to warn guests not to outstay their 10:00am check out time. They started off pleasant enough - in a soothing voice - "dear customers, today check out is 10:00am, if you are leaving today, please check out by then, if you wish to stay another night, please come to reception soon to pay the next night, thank you". Second message at 10:15am was rather curt, "for those who have not checked out, please make your way to reception now"; the third message was down right rude and quite scary "I know who you are who haven't checked out, report to reception immediately to explain EXACTLY why you have not bothered to check out on time and I will rip your head off" (we made the last bit up, but if it had been us who'd missed the sacred 10:00am deadline, we'd have shimmied down the drain pipe).

Again, in Sydney, we mainly watched the world go by, and no day passed without making our way through the botanical gardens which are fabulous. Really interesting trees, ferns and loads of bird life. The most amazing things in the gardens are the flying foxes, or fruit bats, which by day, hang from the trees, and although they are nocturnal, they are really loud in the daytime. They squabble for space with one another ("you've got more branch than me") and don't seem to settle until later on in the day. It's like their having some sort of all night rave. The park has been over run by them in the past - it acts as a really good food source. They have taken measures to control the numbers, but we still saw hundreds of them.

Flying Foxes

A lone Fruit Bat

A Sulphur Crested Cockatoo - these are squawky little bleeders too

A Rainbow Lorikeet - a rare moment when Lisab was allowed the camera

Sydney harbour

Sydney Opera House

Andrew also found out what must feel like to be stung by a box jelly fish when we went to Manley beach. This wasn't due to actually being silly enough to go into the sea, but ordering 2 lovely looking take away vegetable pasties that we'd decided to eat for tea. He suggested the pain of forking out $10 each for a pasty could be likened to that of a sting, and almost caused the same deadly reaction.