An afternoon break...

Andrea and Kate were stopping off in Sydney on their way though to Osaka on Wednesday so I took half a day off work to do some more tourist things in Sydney.

Went up the Sydney Tower which is the highest point in the central business district. It was a little expensive at $23.50 each but the views were worth it. It was yet another sunny day in Sydney and the views over Sydney were great.

I totally forgot my camera today, but fortunately Andrea had hers so these photos were all taken by her.

It reminded me quite a lot of the World Trade Centre. It was really good to be able to look over the city and pick out landmarks that I recognised from the last three months living here.

In the second photo here you can see the Queen Victoria Building (the green dome) which is just across from Sydney Water. It's a fantastic old building which also has some really great designer clothes shopping. I walk past it every day to and from work as well.

I read the other day that April's rainfall was very poor, hence all the dry weather we've been having here. The average rainfall for April should be 120mm, but we only had 9mm! Just think that at least the UK doesn't have water shortages as bad as here.


After the tower we went for a walk around the Royal Botanic Gardens. There were all manner of different plants and trees, some indigenous to Australia and others not. There were also a couple of orb spiders which I wasn't so keen on! Thank god we didn't see any funnel web spiders. :-)

There were plenty of fruit bats in the trees as well. Here's a photo of them hanging from the trees. It was getting near sunset so they were starting to get active.

Just as the sun did set though the fruit bats did fly from the trees and it was quite amazing to see them flying around.

As we were walking around the Sydney harbour side we also saw a Possum scavenging for some food by the public bins.

It was really exciting to see a wild possum and it wasn't that worried that we were around it. I could even get up quite close to it to take some photos. Maybe it was a tourist possum placed by the Australian tourist association.

The sun setting behind the Harbour bridge and the side view of the Opera House was very picturesque. We walked around to Mrs. Macquarie's Chair, which apparently has a great view around the harbour, unfortunately it was dark by then, so we couldn't see to much. Never mind!