Day Twenty-Two – “We’ve been to the zoo,zoo,zoo.”

This holiday has very much had a nautical flavour,with first the river boats in Bangkok,followed by the cruise. Today the theme continued with the ferry boats in Sydney harbour. The first ferry ride took us from Circular Quay across the bay to Taronga Zoo, where after a cable car ride to the top ,we met this giant koala.  

The zoo is set out on a hill over looking Sydney Bay with an impressive display of native Australian animals, including kangaroos, koala and the deadly Tasmanian Devil. I actually thought that this was a made up animal in the cartoons, but it apparently is the largest carnivorous marsupial. Here is a picture of some kangaroos for Poppy. We were able to walk into their enclosure and some people were actually stroking them but they didn’t respond when I did my Skippy noise.

The koalas didn’t do very much just lying around after eating too many eucalyptus leaves, people used to think that they were drunk because of this. The zoo has a breeding programme to preserve the native animals and interestingly the resident stud koala is named Ken. We spent most of the morning at the zoo and then took the ferry back to the quay. As we had purchased day tickets that enabled us to travel on the buses and ferries all day, we immediately jumped on another ferry that took us to Darling Harbour. The journey took us under the Harbour bridge past the Luna Park amusements to the National Maritime Museum. Although we didn’t go in, many of the exhibits including “The Endeavour”, a battleship and a submarine were all located outside. Also in this area of Sydney is the aquarium and another native animal reserve. After walking around for an hour or so we caught another ferry back to Circular Quay. The Rhapsody has been replaced at the overseas passenger terminal by Royal Princess, which is visiting Sydney as part of a World cruise. We met a couple at breakfast this morning who are sailing on her to Japan and Hong Kong. Apparently Queen Mary is arriving soon.

We ate at a Bavarian restaurant in The Rocks this evening, Sylvia having fish and chips  while I had belly pork. It makes a change to have only one meal a day!! The weather has been good all day. Although a storm had been predicted it never came. PJ tells me that it’s 22 degrees in Pittsburgh and I’m sure that’s in Fahrenheit. I’m glad to say that it was 26 degrees here(and yes that’s centigrade).