Exploring Australia, February 2016, Part 5

As a decade birthday gift for Erick, we signed up for "Exploring Australia and New Zealand," a University of Michigan Alumni tour coordinated by Odysseys International. This post covers the end of our visit to Sydney, New South Wales. (You can click on a photo to see a larger version.)

Day 12: No scheduled events during the day, so we slept in a bit.

On our own, we walked to Sydney’s Sealife Aquarium on Darling Harbour.  The aquarium featured walk-through area where sharks, dugongs and rays were swimming overhead as well as along side the viewers.  Its Great Barrier Reef display was excellent, too.

The dugong or sea cow is related to manatees. There is a theory that the old mermaid stores came from sightings of dugongs by sailors who had been long at sea. The Sydney aquarium has two dugongs.

Sharks and rays from the walk-through tubes area:

Blue star fish and shark egg cases

Looks nasty, is nasty - Crown of Thorns is a devourer of corals

Eel

Glass fish

Nautilus 

Found "Nemo" in the anemones 

Cardinal fish

Fantastic coral colors and shapes:

Giant clam

Blenny are able to survive on land for hours at a time

Rock fish

Spiny crayfish - it can change color with the light

We ended our aquarium visit at the "wall of fish" - one could sit there and watch for hours:

On the way back from the Aquarium, we crossed Hyde Park, and visited St Mary’s Cathedral.

Postcard views of St Mary's

            

Our farewell-to-Sydney dinner as a group was at the Waterfront restaurant in The Rocks district.

Views from our table (iPhone 5c) 

Our guide, Rosie

Day 13: We enjoyed a talk by Dean Michael Adams of the Western Sydney University School of Law that gave us insight into life in Australia and the state of higher education there.

            
Mid-morning we had a guided tour of the Sydney Opera House interior – a truly extraordinary building. 

Roof tiles specially designed to reduce glare

Even the women's restroom is a work of art

On our own, Erick and I walked through Hyde Park, and visited the Australia Museum and had lunch at the roof top café there. We especially enjoyed the mineral collection, collections of birds and insects, and the prehistoric section.

On the way to the museum:

Conservatorium of Music

King Edward VI

St James Church on Kings Street (Anglican) dates back to 1824

Queen Victoria

In Hyde Park  

At the Australia Museum:

Mining is a major industry in Australia 

We bought one of these to take home with us

Scarab beetles

Life-size salty crocodile model - 15 ft long

Kookaburra

Platypus display 

In the Prehistoric Australia section:

Millions of years ago in Australia

Dinosaurs to Birds

Imagined from a fossil find

Extinct Diprotodon

Random photos of Sydney's buildings taken on foot, from the tour bus and cruise boat - sandstone predominates as a building material:

A 3-hour evening flight took us from Sydney to Christchurch, New Zealand.

Next up: Exploring New Zealand, February 2016, Part 1 - Christchurch and the trip to Mt. Cook