Victoria on Fire

Guess where we've been?

Hey guys,

So a few weeks ago, I blogged about the fires during the 40 degree week. Well, they're back. It's been pretty tense in Victoria this weekend; on Sunday, we got fire warnings for Gisborne, and we could see the smoke out the back of the house. It was pretty scary, but we were prepared to jump in the car and go if needed, and we were expecting a wind change. Unfortunately, when it came, although it pushed the fire away from us, it stoked fires towards Riddells Creek and then Mickleham.

The Riddells Creek fire scorched most of the land along the freeway, so things are pretty black around here, but they got it under control sometime during the night. However, three days later, the Mickleham fire is still roaring across the state. The house toll has mounted to somewhere around fifty, now, but thankfully, as of yet, there are no lives lost.

Today, Melbourne and its suburbs have been veiled in an eerie blanket of smoke; the wind has died down and the haze has settled in all the valleys and dips, hovering over the city and its surrounding towns. It's weird, but it made for a pretty beautiful sunrise this morning on our way into school!

The dry heat was quite a contrast to the weather conditions in Sydney a few days ago. Tom, who's in Australia for a few weeks from Singapore, and I took a quick trip to the tourist capital of NSW for three nights, and we had a really great time. We really just wanted to see the sights, so although we would have liked to stay longer, three days was pretty good.

We arrived midday Monday, and the weather was beautiful. We checked into our hotel, which was a bit of a hidden gem considering the price; it was a basic, but comfortable room at a great price, and the staff were really helpful. We got hold of a map, and they showed us the best ways to get around, suggesting a train or bus into Darling Harbour. However, considering the price of our train tickets from the airport, we decided to brave a walk into town. Turns out we made the right decision. Even though we got lost a couple of times, the walk was really easy and it only took about 20 minutes, so we did that everyday.

We were pretty blown away by Darling Harbour. Yes, it's tourist central, but it's so beautiful and lively. I joined the tourists and got my camera out, especially when we saw little moon jellyfish in the water!

The beautiful water at Darling Harbour



And these guys were just everywhere!

 

We squeezed in as much as we could on the first afternoon, because we were concerned about the weather for the following days. We decided to go straight to the aquarium (after stopping for a traditional Maccas lunch) and we were really impressed with the effort Sydney Sea Life Aquarium are putting into Shark Conservation. Have you heard of shark fin soup? Millions of sharks are killed every year for this, and trust me when I say it is neither quick, nor painless, nor sustainable. Beautiful, harmless little sharks are plucked from the water, relieved of their fins, which is like someone cutting off our arms and legs, then tossed back into the water, where they either drown or bleed to death.

Tell me this isn't gorgeous?

What's worse is that, while these lovely little reef sharks lose their fins for use as food or medicine, there are some boats out their stalking, capturing and butchering Whale Sharks, the largest fish in the ocean and the least harmful one there is, just to use their fins as decoration outside restaurants. As far as I'm concerned, this is barbaric behaviour, and can only be called human, since no animal would do this to another animal.

The good news is, that aquariums like Sydney Sea Life are educating the masses, and trying to put a stop to this awful practice. This particular aquarium has about 15 different species of shark, and since Tom and I are losers, we were really excited about that.

Staying on the topic of sharks, we later went to Sydney's IMAX theatre, which is apparently the largest in the world, to see the 3D Great White Shark documentary. I'm not big on 3D as a rule, but it was a beautifully made film, and I felt really privileged to be able to see it. I would recommend it to anyone in the area; it lays rest to an awful lot of false rumours about the supposed man eaters.

As the sun was setting on Monday, we grabbed a water taxi round to the famous Sydney Harbour for a drive by visit, and although we didn't get off and walk around, we were stoked just to see the iconic bridge and the opera house (pictured above). It was a really beautiful evening and we polished it off with dinner in a really nice pasta restaurant back in Darling Harbour,

Tuesday brought the rain with it, so we spent most of the day exploring Darling Harbour, and we also took a trip to the zoo. Sydney have been really innovative with their space; at first, we thought the sign for the zoo was just advertising it and the actual place was somewhere else. Turns out we were wrong. Sydney Wild Life Zoo is cleverly and carefully built into a building no bigger than the neighbouring Madame Tussauds museum, yet still holds an awesome range of Australian animals, including Snakes, Tassie Devils, Kangaroos and one of the largest salt water crocs in captivity.

I won't bore you too much with more zoo talk, but since I got to hang out with a python who was two or three meters long, I think it's safe to say we were, again, pretty damn impressed.

Wednesday's weather was slightly better, and after a bit of confusion regarding public transport and which bus we should get, we made it to Bondi Beach. I think this possibly ranks in my top ten favourite days.

 

I watch the show Bondi Rescue, so I was so excited to be here. I think I drove Tom mad, since I spent most of the day stalking life guards, blushing, and taking photos of surfers. I got to say hi to one of my heroes; one of the life guards from the show, we made friends with a couple of awesome surfers, and we walked from Bondi to Bronte.

Tony Audin, catching waves.

By the end of the day, we were pretty worn out, but more importantly, we were very sunburnt. This baffled us, since the day had been mostly cloudy, but we learnt the hard way that in Australia, the sun doesn't have to be out to get burnt.

All in all, we had a really awesome time in Sydney and I'm so glad I went. Even though I love Victoria and want to stay here forever, I really wanted to do the tourist places, and Sydney was definitely worth it.

This week, I'm heading up to Brisbane to meet up with Tom again, so expect a post dedicated to Steve Irwin and his zoo very soon!

Thanks for reading, (if you got this far) and take care, guys!

Em