February 27 - Cookatoo Island on the Rocks

 We started our day by visiting the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Cockatoo Island which is at the junction of the Parramatta and Lane Cove River in Sydney Harbour. It was originally heavily timbered and was an excellent source of sandstone.

Between 1839 and 1869, Cockatoo Island operated as a convict penal establishment, primarily as a place for the worst of the worst. Later it was also prison/school for wayward girls.

 

Cockatoo Island was also the site of one of Australia's biggest shipyards, operating between 1857 and 1991. The first of its two dry docks was built by the convicts. The island is significant for its long-running dockyard and the shipbuilding complex which included areas for key functions such structural and operational layouts.

In its later years, it housed one of the most important turbine and generator repair shops in Australia.

Some of the facilities are still open for viewing.  Actually you can rent a tent and camp there.

 

In the afternoon we went to the Rocks.  John being an old navy seadog knew of many of the old historical pubs in the area.  Unfortunately, a couple of the more important pubs were closed on Mondays. So, we did have drinks in a couple of pubs and later had dinner in the area. The one pub I really enjoyed was the Lord Nelson.

 

We ended up walking about 9k during the day.  Thank goodness it was a comfortable temperature in the mid 20s.

February 25 - A Relaxing Sunday

 

We started the day by visiting the Chinese Garden of Friendship.  This oasis of tranquility in dead smack in the middle of Darlington Harbour Convention Complex. Open thirty years ago, it is modelled after ancient private gardens in China. There are lots of lush green gardens surrounding pavilions and ponds. Signage explains the significances of the trees, rocks, or landscape.  It was a very relaxing way to spend the morning.

 

After our visit to the garden, we went along Darlington Harbour boardwalk.  It has some the best modern architecture that I have seen. It includes the world’s largest cinema screen at the IMAX theatre. Originally, a railway marshalling yard, it was repurposed as a commercial waterfront attraction with office buildings, condos, hotels and tourist attractions..

The temperature was about 30 degrees and sunny. Having come from a Canadian winter this welcome relief.

 

For lunch we went on a harbour cruise.  We thought the cruise would be around different points within the harbour, but it turned out to be nothing more than two circular trips around the main portion of Sydney harbour. Oh well at least the company was pleasant the meal was good.

 

For dinner we went to Chinatown.  We stopped at a “hotpot” restaurant and had an excellent meal. At a hotpot meal you start with a broth of your choice, then you add meat and vegatables into the broth. You then cook it at a burner on your table.

February 24 - Mardi Gras Madness

Today we moved to the Hyde Park Inn, where we met up with Ellen and John Kelly.  John and Ellen live a couple of hours south of Sydney in St. Georges Basin.  We first met Ellen and John in 2011 while on the Rhine River Cruise. Along with Joan and Ken Rockburne and Sue and Dave Fahrner, we became good friends. It turned out that it was the Kelly’s honeymoon. Since then, we have vacationed with John and Ellen multiple times. Together we did the Rhone/Soane river cruise and an Alaska Cruise. They came to Ontario, where together we visited Niagara Falls and we went to St. Georges Basin just before Covid hit.

The temperature was warm, and the sun was out in a clear blue sky. It was a wonderful day for a parade.

Hyde Park is right across the street from our hotel.  As luck would have it, this was the marshalling area for the Pride Mardi Gras parade. It was estimated that there would be 12,500 marchers, 200 floats and 500,000 spectators. This an annual occasion made even bigger this year by the World Pride event.

We went over to the park in the late afternoon to view the costumes. There we saw more than an eyeful. There were angels, village people look-a-likes, rough boys in the bare ass leathers, drag queens and zombies.  Nobody can say they weren’t having a great time.

Before leaving the park, we went for a walk around the it.  It is well maintained and very serene away from the madness.

For dinner we went to Mazzaro, which is a nice Mediterranean restaurant next door to the hotel.  I had duck and Marg had white fish.  No complaints, but nothing to rave about.

February 23 - First Day In Sydney

We safely arrived in Sydney today, where we were greeted with nice warm temperatures in the mid 70s.  The trip from the airport to our hotel was interesting as our taxi driver told us about how Sydney has recovered from the pandemic.  The tourist trade Is booming and there is construction everywhere you look.  Towards the end of the ride, he started talking about health and cooking and told us that he uses coconut oil instead of corn or olive oil due to its ability to cook in high temperatures.  I guess you learn something new every day.

We are staying at the Hotel Coronation in the downtown area. It is an inexpensive budget hotel, but it is clean and convenient. Trevor, who works the front desk, ensured we had an early book in and was extremely helpful. During the afternoon we did manage to catch up on our sleep.

While we were waiting for our hotel room to be readied, we went across the street to an historical shopping arcade called the Queen Victoria Building. Locally known as the QVB, it is a late-nineteenth century building in the Sydney central business district. The architecture is called Romanesque Revival and the building is a long narrow domed hallway. It is occupied by many high-end retail outlets and small cafes.  We spent about an hour window shopping.

Outside of the building they were shooting a movie.  It seems to me that filming a movie is mostly just long periods of inactivity followed by a view seconds of action.  When we entered the building, the crew was just milling around the corner of the street and we left, it seemed that they hadn’t moved.

For supper we strolled around the hotel area and found a nice Italian restaurant called Macchiato Wood Fire Pizza.  During our travels we went along Pitt street and George street.  This is a very busy area and seems to be an area filled with Koren, Japanese and South Asian restaurants.  Along Pitt street there were several buskers playing and they were attracting large crowds. Outside of City Hall there was an evangelic revival meeting going on. I swear that every sentence uttered by the minister had at least two Jesuses embedded in it.

We are only staying the one night in this hotel before we meet up with the Kelly’s in the Hyde Park Hotel. The reason we didn’t book the additional night in Hyde Park was that it was fully booked as are all of the nicer hotels in Sydney.  It turns out that we are staying in Sydney on the opening weekend of World Pride.  This is a huge event with visitors coming from all across the world.  Sydney has gone all out to welcome the Alphabet people.

On our plane trip into Sydney, we got to talk with the organizing committee for the next World Pride event, which is being held in Washington. They were coming to Sydney to see how it was done.

February 22 - Our Trip To Sydney Australia

 It was a very, very, very long trip to Sydney Australia.  Our trip started with a flight from Toronto to Houston. Followed by flight from Houston to Sydney. The flight to Houston was four hours. Our stop over in Houston was two hours. Finally, our flight to Sydney was eighteen hours. We left our home for Pearson International at 9am on Wednesday and got to our hotel ay 8am on Friday. Because we crossed  the international dateline during the night it seems we lost Thursday. Because neither Marg nor myself can sleep on a plane, we were totally exhausted when we finally arrived at our hotel.

Our trip to Toronto was very slow due to an accident on the 401 east of Guelph.  It cost us about thirty minutes, but we had a large amount of spare time built into our schedule, so we were there in plenty of time.

Pearson Terminal One is now back to normal. It is no longer a zoo, and it doesn’t feel as crowded and rushed as was our experience last summer.

We were booked on United Airlines for both flights. I would give high marks to their staff.  They were very polite and helpful. We especially impressed by one ticket agent who helped us navigate the American Homelands Security check in program. What a convoluted mess that is.

Unfortunately, I can’t give a passing grade to their planes. Both flights left much to be desired.

Our flight Houston was on a ERJ175 jet. As we were getting ready to leave to the gate, the captain came on over the speaker and told us that on-board computer had crashed and they had to shut down the entire plane and start everything over again from scratch. This cost us about thirty minutes before we got into the queue to be de-iced and got ready for takeoff. It kind of makes you wonder how safe the plane is. We’ve had softer seats at a Mount Brydges Cougar’s hockey game.  My butt was numb by the time we reached Houston.  Also the ERJ175 has no entertainment systems, so it was a long quiet/boring trip.

Our flight to Sydney was on a Boeing 787. It might have been one of the most turbulent flights we have ever taken.  It’s not that the turbulence was extremely violent, but it was constant for the entire flight.  The entertainment system for my seat failed about four hours into the flight.  They just couldn’t reset it, so they found me an empty seat and I was able to watch several movies.  United’s selection of movies is extremely poor. I started watching two movies but turned them off after about fifteen minutes. One was call Black Adam, which is a DC action figure and the other was a BAFTA nominated comedy called Brian and Charles.  Boring and pretentious are how I would describe this waste of time. Most of the rest of the films seem to be at least two years old. 

We lucked out. A couple of hours after we left Toronto, a bad ice and snow storm hit our area.  We lost power in Port Stanley for an extended period of time.  It seems there were also multiple cancellations of flights out of Toronto.

Overview

We are getting close to embarking on another "bucket list" trip.  This time we are going to revisit Sydney Australia, then catch a cruise through the South Pacific, ending up with a stay in Tahiti.

During our stay in Sydney, we will be meeting up with Ellen & John Kelly from St. Georges Basin.  This is an oceanside town south of Sydney but close enough that they are very familiar with Sydney.  So, they have promised us a few days of Sydney as seen from local eyes.

Then we are going to join several friends, who we have cruised and toured with on multiple occasions and join them on a cruise aboard the Oceania Regatta.  This cruise stops at:

1.     Newcastle Australia

2.     Norfolk Island Australia

3.     Port Vila, Vanuatu

4.     Lautoka, Fiji

5.     Suva, Fiji

6.     Apia, Samoa

7.     Pago Pago, American Samoa

8.     Bora Bora, French Polynesia

9.     Moorea, French Polynesia

10. Tahiti, French Polynesia

Cruise Itinerary

At the conclusion of the cruise, we will be staying in Papeete on the island of Tahiti for a week of relaxation.

All in all we will be gone for a little more than a month.

Note : Ports of call in Australia have been changed since this map was on the tour's website.