Dropped the Suzuki off at the airport late on Wednesday morning before the early afternoon flight to Sydney. The flight was short and uneventful. The train ride from the airport into the heart of Sydney was quick, effortless and relatively inexpensive. The area around Hyde park is very pleasant, a decent smattering of steel and glass skyscrapers interspersed with older stone buildings dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A more human touch was the following

We saw these chaps and ladies pretty much everywhere in the city. These are ibises, whose breaks are wonderfully adapted to digging around and retrieving tasty morsels from bins dotted around the place.

I particularly liked this pensive little chap.

Just across the harbour you can spot the famous Sydney opera house.

It’s a short walk from the harbour to the opera house.

It’s early spring in Sydney so the temperature is in the mid 20s, gorgeous weather for strolling or better, whale watching 😊.

Humpback whales are migrating past Sydney at this time of year on their way to feeding grounds further south. It’s the end of the season so special deals are being offered everywhere. So for a mere $110 we booked two tickets, grabbed lunch, awful so Dorothy complained and they refunded us. Food has been poor throughout the trip unfortunately and whereas I would simply put up with it, Dorothy has no qualms about complaining. It’s all too embarrassing for me so I inevitably exit stage left as Dorothy marches menacingly up to the counter.

The highlight of lunch for me was this little chap who clearly has lower food standards than us.

The boat was large and very quick. It can take over 200 but held less than half that as we set out.

As it turned out, we were really lucky and found the aquatic version of Taliesin, frolicking in the shallow waters off the coast.

This young chap spent the best part of five minutes throwing himself around. It’s hard not to suspect that this show was purely for the hundreds of onlookers.

We spent the remainder of the day walking through the botanical gardens.

This is the cassowary that we never got to see.

Dinner was at a Chinese restaurant a few yards from the hotel. One of the better aspects of globalisation and the opportunities of multiculturalism is the consistency of a Chineses meal. Long may it continue.

The flight home went via Singapore. I spent a few days here some 20+ years ago on a business trip to Malaysia and remember the awe I felt watching the thousand or more ships waiting outside the port. It brought home to me then the enormous economic power of Asia. Australia has its sights firmly fixed on China, on japan and on Korea. As a simple example, we saw only a dozen or so European cars, all were Japanese or Korean. There’s probably a certain nostalgia for Britain but economically we’re clearly irrelevant. I suppose there’s always chlorinated chicken to look forward to.

Terminal 5 at Heathrow was clean, large and we were through quickly. Both flights were courtesy of BA on an Airbus 380. Long flights but fine.

It’s nice to see rain.

Bon voyage