Happy 2012!

We can't believe how quickly 2011 went by.  It was our first calendar year in Australia, so we may have lost a little bit of time in trying to adjust to a new way of life.  Luckily for us our new life is based very close to Sydney, and that is where we went on Boxing Day.

This was our third trip to Sydney and was our best trip so far.  We try to do new things and see new areas on every trip, so this time we went to a Picasso exhibit at the NSW Art Gallery (the pieces were on loan from the Picasso Museum in Paris), visited new suburbs, went to Bondi Beach, saw the Botanic Gardens and walked across the Harbour Bridge to the Kirribilli side of the harbour and saw Luna Park.  It was a hectic four days!

Bondi Beach

We went on a beautiful coastal walk from Bondi Beach to Clovelly Beach, about 4 kilometres along the coast line.  We started at Bondi Beach, a well known and very popular beach on the south east (more or less...the harbour has lots of inlets) side of Sydney, about 20 minutes by train and bus from the city centre.  It is a good surfing beach and we happened to be there the day after the beaches were reopened after being closed due to high waves and winds that were the tail end of a tropical storm.  We can't imagine how big the waves would have been the day before when the beach was closed because neither one of us would have considered sticking a toe in the water with the kind of wave action we saw.  The waves were easily more than a metre high and were crashing in on the beach very fast, at a rate of about 1 every 5 seconds.  There were also waves that were more than 2 metres high and the surfers were all over them.  There are a number of areas were there are proper swimming pools along the beach and people would stand on the pool edge to try to stand up when the big waves washed over the sides.  It was quite hilarious to watch all the people get thrown into the pool, then scramble back out to take on the next one.

Waves washing over pool

From Bondi we passed the tiny Tamarama Beach, only about 250m long and then Bronte Beach, where life saving got started back in 1903.  From there we passed through a cemetary (Waverly, probably the most scenic cemetary in the world) then reached Clovelly Beach.  It was one of the most beautiful coastal walks we have ever been on (the debate still rages about whether we liked it better than Cap-de-Ferrat in France) and we will definitely do this walk again.

Waverly Cemetary (upper right hand side of picture)

We finally made it to the Botanic Gardens this trip, after having rainy weather on the designated day on our previous trips.  The gardens are beautiful and full of indigenous and imported plants.  It is a huge park with formally laid out gardens and natural looking wooded areas, gigantic lawns that were once used for bowling and cricket, and benches everywhere to take in the views.

View from the Botanic Gardens

Fantastic entrace to Luna Park

On our final day we decided to walk across the Harbour Bridge.  We didn't want to book a formal tour and go on the Bridge Climb (it seemed too hot for the boiler suits that everyone on the tour has to wear) so we walked across the bridge to the Kirribilli side and checked out Luna Park.  Luna Park was amazing!  It is free to enter and is a fairly small area but is absolutely packed with rides and carnival games.  It is really charming and has a feel of a kid's fantasy world, with clowns, characters in costumes and lots of noise.   We were completely impressed by it and ended up poking around in the park for more than half an hour.

Whimsical (and maybe a little unsettling) carnival gam

The trip to Sydney was a great way to end the year.  We were back in Brisbane for a dinner on New Year's Eve and have a day off before going back to work.  2011 started out on a low (floods!) but certianly ended on a high.  Happy New Year!