Arriving Sydney

Sunday, May 23, we left New Zealand on a flight to Sydney, Australia. The 3.5 hour flight was easy and uneventful and we both enjoyed watching the in-flight movie Invictus which we found a little more understandable having now been to a rugby game ourselves. On landing we turned our watches back two more hours.

Fortunately a fellow locums doc in Wairoa, when we mentioned we were planning to go to Australia, asked if we knew that we would need visas to enter. We hadn’t thought of that or encountered it when doing our reading about OZ! Online application was easy--fill out your info and pay the fee. Consequently, clearing customs in Sydney was simple.  We bought tickets on a door-to-door shuttle to our 1-bedroom serviced apartment/hotel not far from Darling Harbour and the Wynyard rail station.

It was gray, overcast, and attempting to sprinkle, and we had our usual new-city lethargy. We decided that a visit to the much acclaimed Sydney Aquarium, a few blocks’ walk from our place, would be a good activity. The aquarium is considered one of the top in the world, and it did not disappoint.

Our favorite attractions were three large tanks/pools which were reached by descending switchback ramps down below the water’s surface. Each had a long, wide, U-shaped, glass tunnel to allow one to walk “through” the water. We saw rays, sharks, fish of all colors and sizes and patterns, enchanting fish, ugly fish, turtles, and a couple of playful huge dugongs (thought to be the creatures that inspired mermaid stories, the only plant-eating marine mammal).

It was dark by the time we emerged from the aquarium. We climbed up to a pedestrian bridge overlooking the twinkling lights of the Darling Harbour and with sightings of the Sydney Tower in the distance. Following Mark’s nose and asking questions at strategic places, we found a grocery store under the train station and bought dinner.