October 12

We had two days this week for fun! Monday was Labor Day here so we didn't have to work. We decided we would drive south to a city called Wollongong. We haven't ever driven very far south from Sydney, so we decided Monday was the day to try something new. We were amazed at how beautiful the country and the seaside is south of Sydney. We spent a 10 hour day just driving and stopping at places that caught our fancy. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, but not humid, so it was the perfect day to wander around and do a little bit of hiking. We even managed to get sunburned!

This lighthouse is out on a point and the canons are left from way back in the 1800s when they were used for defending the area!

View of the area from the overlook. Pictures never do justice to how beautiful it is in real life.

We went to a place called the  Sky View where you walked out on these suspended walkways about 20 yards above the trees.  Not an activity for the faint-of-heart! This is a view looking down from the skywalk tower you can see in the picture below. 

You could go up this tower which was way above the tree line where you could see a beautiful view of the surrounding area.

Yesterday, Saturday, we spent the day seeing sight around Sydney itself. We drove downtown and then just followed the shoreline roads and stopped and checked out areas that looked interesting. I happened to wear my pedometer and we logged 21,400 steps, that's roughly 10 miles, so you can imagine we checked out and hiked to a lot of places! I'm only including a couple of places we saw because there's nothing more boring than to watch someone else's travel pictures!

No beaches here:-)

You find these trees all over Australia, I love how complex and beautiful they are.  This one happens to be located, of all places, in the rest room area of the beach!

Just an example of the beach area common to most of the public beaches here. Note the posts and netting going into the ocean, that is the shark net and it surrounds the whole 'safe' zone for the swimming area. There are sharks all over everywhere here, so most beaches have nets that go out about 100 yards or so and seal off a pretty big area for swimming.  Note the kids boarding on the outside of the net, either they are really brave, or really dumb, I'm not sure which!

I just love that there are so many harbors up and down the coastline and all of them are filled with boats just waiting for their owners to show up and take them out for an adventure.

This cruise ship was just leaving the harbor, probably headed out to New Zealand. It was a huge ship, one of the biggest cruise ships I've ever seen.  You can get an idea of how big it is by comparing it to the sailboat next to it on the right. That little sailboat is actually a pretty good sized boat, plenty big enough for several people to walk around on deck at the same time. It just looks tiny because the ship is so huge.

We stayed long enough to capture the sun setting behind the Harbor bridge. 

These are our friends, Tom and Molly Feil, they go home in 10 days. We will miss them a lot.

Grandkids:

Well, I have bad news concerning the baby birds. Only one egg hatched! The other three were duds and, even though the mom bird sat on the eggs for two weeks, no other babies hatched. Finally, the grounds crews moved the cones and took the eggs away. The birds were really mad while the worker was doing this and kept dive bombing him, but he finally got everything and took it away and they mowed the lawn. The mom is still looking for her eggs and she goes back to the spot where the nest was and she sits on the spot where the eggs were and cries. Grandpa and I walked by there tonight on our way home from a meeting and you could see her out there in the grass sitting where the nest was and you could hear her calling and crying. Eventually I guess she will realize that the eggs are gone for good and she will move on and be happy with her one little chick. The baby bird is very cute and can run very fast, I haven't been able to get a picture of him for you because the parents really guard him well and I can't get close enough to get a picture of him without the parents dive bombing me. I'm attaching pictures I got online because it's too dangerous to try to get my own picture!!

Isn't he the cutest little bird ever??!! As soon as he hatched out of the egg he could walk around and peck in the grass for food! After a couple of hours he figured out how to run.  He's a very fast runner now.

Grandpa and I went to a place on the seashore where they filmed the Power Rangers movie! Does any of this look familiar to you? I wouldn't know because I've never seen the movie.

I hope you all are still enjoying school. Grandpa and I love and miss you all!!