{"id":1669,"date":"2018-11-26T22:53:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T22:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/?p=1669"},"modified":"2019-04-27T17:55:05","modified_gmt":"2019-04-27T16:55:05","slug":"sydney-boat-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/2018\/11\/26\/sydney-boat-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney – boat heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sydney<\/p>\n

We have enjoyed our final port of call – and what a port!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Sydney<\/p>\n

Captain Phillip of the first fleet in 1788, after his disappointment with Botany Bay, took 2 ships up the coast and discovered Port Jackson (Sydney harbour). He was delighted – here is a natural harbour – a place where 1000 ships of the line can safely berth (paraphrase). I hope you like David\u2019s interesting perspective below!<\/p>\n

\"Sydney<\/p>\n

Phillip was probably hoping the ships would turn up as I remember he had to wait a long time for supplies from England and the land here was poor for farming.<\/p>\n

We enjoyed a tour of the harbour looking at boats of all kinds getting ready for their Saturday regattas<\/p>\n

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And lots of very swanky bayside properties<\/p>\n

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Including the residence of the Australian Prime Minister- now we know why they all want a go<\/p>\n

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And the lovely opera house, of course<\/p>\n

\"BIRU-WP-20181124T101037GMT1100.jpg\"<\/p>\n

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It is a building way ahead of its time with very practical tiles that have stood the test of time<\/p>\n

\"Sydney<\/p>\n

We went to pretty Watson\u2019s Bay for an excellent fish lunch at Doyle\u2019s right on the beach – it\u2019s been there since 1885<\/p>\n

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Just behind is a good swimming beach – the water was fresh so not many Aussies in the water!<\/p>\n

And up above are the lighthouse, cliffs and harbour entrance<\/p>\n

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On our pleasant stroll round South Head Park we finally heard a mob of laughing kookaburras!<\/p>\n

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We enjoyed our evening ferry back across the sparkling water<\/p>\n

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On Sunday we took in the market at The Rocks<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s a statue here put up in the 1970s to the settler, marine and convict that claims the population of Australia was 400,000 in 1850 – this is obviously wrong as it ignores the aboriginals completely.<\/p>\n

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There is lip service to aboriginal culture here but no real attempt to atone for very bad racism in the past and present.<\/p>\n

We enjoyed the botanical gardens and their views over the bay (with kookaburra)<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s a noisy miner bird<\/p>\n

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We saw a possum\u2019s bottom:<\/p>\n

\"BIRU-WP-20181127T134815GMT1100.jpg\"<\/p>\n

And we sat on the steps of the opera house to see the \u2018Dance Rites\u2019 festival of aboriginal and island dances. The music was fabulous with amazing throbbing didgeridoos<\/p>\n

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These lads above are doing exactly the same hunting dance that we saw on a black and white film in the museum in Adelaide<\/p>\n

And these handsome dancers are from islands in the Torres Strait – they are sharks coming in on the tide<\/p>\n

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It was good to see the musical side of aboriginal culture and the announcer was very upbeat – but there was one moving dance about a suicide with a hand-written notice reading: our mob has highest suicide rate. Suicide among young aboriginals is sadly at a crisis level – 5 times more per 100,000 than non indigenous.<\/p>\n

David asks you to find me in this photo<\/p>\n

\"Sydney<\/p>\n

Unfortately I had a migraine on our last full day here but David met Alastair Macdonald (Mac) – a BSB friend he hasn\u2019t seen for 35 years!<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

He also looked after me like an Angel<\/p>\n

\"11\/24\/18\"<\/p>\n

Now we say goodbye to this wonderful continent where we have been delighted, entertained, and very well looked after.<\/p>\n

\"Sydney<\/p>\n

I hope you have enjoyed travelling with us – thank you for following our odyssey!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have enjoyed our final port of call – and what a port!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1669"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1762,"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions\/1762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.holloway.me.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}