Big Mary, her older sister and the Grand Canyon.

As some of you might know from reading the press, the Queen Mary 2 docked in Sydney Harbour on Tuesday morning and by the afternoon her older sister ship the Queen Elizabeth 2 had docked too.

The press went mad over the QM2 docking in Sydney harbour as it was the first time two queen Cunard ships had visited Sydney since WWII. Roger, Allen and I went down to the harbour to see the two ships in the evening.

It was as if the whole of Sydney had gone boat mad as the streets were packed with people and cars all heading down to the quay. This first photo is of the QE2 docked in the normal docking place for cruise liners. The Manly ferry in the foreground was packed with people who had booked on the ferry for a special trip around the two cruise liners. They had some fireworks lined up for the evening ,but we didn't get a chance to see them as it was just too busy.

This second photo is of the QM2. We couldn't get a really good view of it and I didn't have anywhere steady to place my camera for a good shot either.

The QM2 was truly a very large cruise liner. It's apparently the biggest and fastest cruise liner today. From this distance, despite my wide angle lens I still couldn't fit the entire ship into my shot. It looked more like a giant floating hotel or building rather than a ship. It was too big to dock in Circular Quay where the QE2 was, it's just as tall as the top car deck of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It's a shame that it couldn't dock there as you would have got a better appreciation of it's size if you could see some of the Sydney skyline behind it.

After seeing both the ships we went down to the Arthouse bar for a couple of drinks. We come here quite often as it's a nice bar and quite popular for people after work to hang out.








On Wednesday Allen and I took the day off to take Joe's son Ben down to the Blue Mountains for a good walk. We decided to do the Grand Canyon walk. It's a short walk at only 5km and in the guide book only 3 1/2 hours long.

We all met up in the morning to pick up a hire car for the day. The walk was quite good as we started up walking down into the canyon where we followed a river. There were plenty of small lizards about and also some small crayfish like creatures in the river. They looked like mini bright red lobsters and more like a plastic toy.

The temperature down in the canyon was very different to the temperature above. So much so that we could see our own breath in the canyon! On the top of the canyon in the sun it must have been around 25 degrees.

Once we had reached the end of the canyon the path lead quite steeply up one side and then you walked along a ledge on one side of the canyon. If it weren’t for a rail that they had put up it would have been quite a precarious walk.

Near the end of the walk we still had to walk out of the canyon. The uphill steps appeared to go on forever. Just as you thought you were at the top over a ledge there were even more steps going upwards.

I saw a giant ant on the path as we walked along. It must have been about an inch long and the largest ant that I've every seen. We didn't hang around too long to see where the rest of the colony was.

Ben also spotted the remains of a snakeskin. We also didn't hang around to see if the snake was about either.

Here's a photo of one of the lizards that we saw. There were about three different varieties of lizard. This one had a particularly striking golden brown pattern along its back.

I guess we were (un)lucky not to see any snakes or spiders on our walk or along any other walks that I've done in the Blue Mountains. Allen says that he's seen a brown snake once around this area of the Blue Mountains. I think it's one of the most dangerous snakes around here. I did see plenty of cobwebs though and one of them quite big!