Postcards from Austalasia #10

Sydney is an iconic city in so many ways and rightly so.  We were excited to visit to see the principle sights, including the Harbour Bridge:

And the Opera House:

While in Sydney we took advice and visited the Botanic Gardens, Cockatoo Island, Circular Quay and other spots:

We also had a brainwave and decided to check what was on at the Opera House.   Cue over-excited patrons enjoying Gustav Holst's The Planet Suite by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, sat in the circle at the Opera House, what an outstanding life experience, only moderately enhanced by the very reasonably priced local fizz.

We also travelled outside and around the city, in particular visiting Royal National Park, which hosts and outstanding sandstone coastline:

We also enjoyed a vegan tasting menu at Alibi and a vegetarian tasting menu at Yellow.  Helen preferred the former, me the latter.

From Sydney is was time for a complete change of tack, a visit to Lord Howe Island some 2 hours North-East of Sydney and a long way from anywhere else.   

It's a beautiful island, owned mostly by the descendants of the original settlers:

It's host to some amazing species of bird including Sooty Tern:

The local race of the Golden Whistler:

and White Terns:

Shockingly however it's also lost eight species of bird in the 200-odd years it's been known to man.   There's a ninth, the Lord Howe Woodhen that is hanging by a thread, we didn't see this as all known birds are currently in a zoo while they conduct a huge island-wide rodent eradication programme (which is supposed to take-out the introduced Masked Owl too and will probably also take out the supposed-to-be-there Kestrels).   Politics wise it had a bit of the Wicker Man to it with the locals suspecting the government of NSW of plotting to remove them, calling us foreigners when they didn't think we'd understand them, denying the visible impact of their ancestors' actions, etc.

That all said, it is a magic place to visit, to stay and to explore.   We pretty much walked our legs off climbing the Goat Cave ascent and at the other end of the island, Transit Hill, with this view:

The sunsets over the lagoon were impressive too.  We did enjoy and relish our visit to Lord Howe Island.

We did also look forward to moving on, via a return flight so Sydney, a random night in a hotel in Wollongong and then it was time to head further South.