Another month has flown by here in Sydney -- but good news! Our internet has finally been set up in our place which means that I can now upload photos to my blog without any worry about how much the file transfer was costing me in expensive prepaid emergency wireless. Now I have all the internet bandwidth I could possibly want, which means more photos and posts for the blog! Another positive news update: our belongings have arrived in Sydney by ship and a crate full of our stuff is just going through customs. Hopefully, this means that any day now we will get the call to set up a delivery date and we can finally sleep in our own bed again! Things are looking up here in Sydney.
Looking up, but also looking back. We've been doing some pretty fun stuff while I haven't been posting blogs, so I'm hoping I can catch everyone up on the last excursions from back in May and eventually get totally caught up to speed with the present day. Back in mid-May, we visited the Powerhouse Museum. It's a science and technology museum, but they also show special exhibits that revolve around culture and multimedia as well. We were particularly interested in seeing the special exhibit called
Game Masters, an exhibit dedicated to the history of video games from their earliest days to AAA titles to indie games, spanning all platforms and all styles. If you know anything about Rob and I, you know that this show tickled our fancies! Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos inside the exhibit, but rest assured, we had a really great time and spent hours playing classic arcade games and trying out a few titles we'd never seen or heard of. One of my favourites was
Vib-Ribbon, a game by Masaya Mats that incorporates music, lines, shapes and some really basic controls to make a really hard but enjoyable timing-based side scroller. Rob also played a game called
From Dust which seemed really interesting, and since trying it there we have bought it to play at home.
The Powerhouse museum has much more than just the game exhibit, however. The museum has existed with various names for over 125 years. It is a converted electric tram power station originally constructed in 1902. There are a number of really cool perminant exhibits including the oldest operational rotative steam engine in the world. Dating from 1785, it is one of only a handful remaining that was built by Boulton and Watt and was acquired from Whitbread's London Brewery in 1888. I, sadly, neglected to take a photo of this fantastic piece of engineering but it still runs regularly for museum guests and is in beautiful condition.
The Strasburg Clock model is a pretty cool exhibit. Sydney clockmaker
Richard Smith was only 25 years old when he decided to build a model of
the Strasburg Clock as a centenary 'gift' to the state of New South
Wales. He began work on Australia Day in 1887 and three years later the
clock was on display at the Powerhouse Museum. Smith based his clock on
the famous astronomical clock in Straburg Cathedral, France. Strangely,
he never visited Strasbourg and claimed to have based his design off of a
postcard and a book. For more than a century, the Strasburg Clock model
has delighted visitors to the Museum. Even thought the vision it
embodies strictly belongs to a past era of science and technology, the
clock remains an object of fascination today.
There was a special exhibit for the costume design for one of my favourite movies growing up (which I found out is currently also now a theatre musical),
Strictly Ballroom. This movie is sort of a mocumentary of competitive ballroom dancing in the 90's. I have always loved the over-the-top dramatics in both the acting as well as the costumes in this movie, and it was a welcome surprise to stumble into this exhibit. I, of course, promptly went home and watched the movie with Rob that night just to relive the memories!
"Pam Shore's broken both her legs, and I want to dance with you."
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| Some of the costumes used in the movie Strictly Ballroom |
There was room upon room of all kinds of interesting little trinkets and gadgets and props and antiques which definitely kept us busy all afternoon. We built up a huge appetite checking out all the cool nerd stuff, so we opted to stop at Hannah's Pies across the street and get the most delicious meat pies we've ever eaten.
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| Rob found some awesome retro robot friends! |
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| Danger Will Robinson!! |
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| I got to sit on a Penny Farthing. I have no idea how people managed these beasts... |
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| The original architectural model for the Sydney Opera House |
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| Pies..... glorious pies. Topped with mashed potatoes, mushy peas and gravy. |
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| Off the back end of our boat leaving Sydney Harbour |
About a week later, we made plans to go on a whale-watching cruise using the very generous gift certificate that Rob's coworkers gave us when we left for Australia. It was through a company called Captain Cook Cruises. They do Harbour cruises, and a wide verity of different dinner/lunch cruises, sunset cruises, etc. We opted for the Whale watching cruise.
The morning was crisp and cool, and we were excitedly anticipating seeing some humpback whales off the coast of NSW. The migration passing Sydney takes place between April and December each
year. The season is split into two distinct sections depending on the
direction of travel of the majority of whales at that time. The migrating population is named the Australian East coast Humpbacks. These pods of whales are distinct from other humpback migration populations that travel along the
West Australian and South African coasts, and the same whales make the journey every year along the exact same routes. When we finally got out to the open water, it took a while for us to spot a pair of young males 'surfing' the currently just below water. Due to a large amount of rain only the day before, and higher than average winds and choppy water, the whales didn't spend much time on the surface, but opted to surf the currents just underneath that pushed them easily along their route. Because they didn't have to work very hard, they also didn't breach as often to replenish their oxygen and rest for a few moments before continuing on. This good fortune for the whales meant we didn't get a huge show, though I tried desperately to take pictures every time one would breach the surface to take a breath. It's much harder to do than it sounds! We did manage to see a few really cool tail slaps, though I have no photos to prove it. Sorry.
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| Left: Rob and our very important coffees. Top Right: The Opera House from inside our boat. Bottom Right: The closest I came to taking a picture of a whale breaching. If you look really hard you can see the bubbles from the breach. |
When we turned around to head back into the Harbour, quite a few people on the boat were not enjoying the very choppy conditions in the water. While I was loving the wild ride, Rob was certainly grateful when he was able to put his sea legs back on solid ground!
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| Hanging around in Hyde Park |
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| Archibal Fountain and a giant bubble blowing street busker bringing unbridled joy to a group of kids and kids-at-heart |
We meandered around the Sydney harbour for a while, and had a bowl of noodle soup for lunch at our new favourite, Happy Chef Seafood Noodles. It's in the food court of a mall called Market City, close to Sydney's China Town, and it's got the
best noodle soup I've ever had! After lunch, we wandered over to Hyde Park (not the same as the British version) and laid in the grass to read and enjoy the late afternoon sunshine before heading back to the Harbour to enjoy a few drinks and watch the world-famous Vivid Sydney light show. We sat on the promenade with a view of the opera house in the setting sun, and had a few drinks while chatting with some American tourists who sat beside us. Something about the Sydney sunset begs for photos to be taken...
The centrepiece of Vivid Sydney is the multimedia interactive light sculptures and building projections that transform various buildings and landmarks in and around the Sydney CBD and Sydney Harbour into an outdoor night time canvas of art. There are special art installations and each lit up building has a different theme. If anyone has ever seen the MosAika music and light show on the Parliament building in Ottawa, it's similar to that but dialed up to 11! We went on the last weekend of the 3 week festival (which also happened to be a long weekend), and it was packed full of people. The CBD was transformed into a surging mass of humanity and baby strollers, but we still enjoyed the sights and sounds! We slowly made our way through the crowds along Circular Quay, gawking at light shows and taking pictures.
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| Left: One of the Cruise boats that take people for harbour rides to see the lights from the Quay. Right: Customs House covered in a cool light installation with mouths that sang in harmony. |
On our way home, walking through Darling Harbour, we stopped for a pretty epic fireworks display over the pedestrian bridge (we realised that the fireworks were extra special because they were commemorating the Queen's Birthday)
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| Left: Rob hanging out in a hill full of giant light up bunnies Right: Enjoying a beer in Darling Harbour before heading home |
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| Left: Bustling crowd taking in the Vivid Sydney Festival Right: Getting in the spirit of Tourism... |
