Sydney Day 3: Mountain Tour

Okay, so it really wasn't my third day in Sydney;  I spent four days in the Google Sydney office participating in an internal conference and doing actual work.  But then I took a couple of days off at the end to be a tourist.  :-)

Since I only had a weekend, there wasn't time to fly to Melbourne or fly off to see the Great Barrier Reef.  But I still craved nature, and everyone said the nearby "Blue Mountains" outside Sydney were the thing to see -- just a couple of hours away.  So I did the easy thing and paid for a 10-hour bus tour.  A dozen people sit on a minibus, while the tour guide ferries us around the mountains to cool places.  You get to make some temporary friends, and overall it ends up being a really efficient way to see a lot of stuff in one day.

The Blue Mountains are mostly sandstone cliffs, covered with vegetation, that are worn-down and ancient, much like Applachia (as opposed to the Rocky Mountains.)  Like most mountains, they look 'blue' from a distance, but when you get closer you realize that they're not covered with the typical conifer or or deciduous forests, but rather mostly eucalyptus and a dozen other species of 'gum' tree.  They look... different.  It was dead of winter when arrived at the first outlook (mid-July, about 14C / 55F), and the wind so strong that people kept losing their hats into the valley.

The first classic outlook is called "The Three Sisters" for obvious reasons.

Note that this was the point where I started flipping between digital and analog cameras.  Yes, ANALOG FILM... slide film in particular.  Check out the 2nd and 3rd photos below, of the same subject.  The first is digital, the second is film.  Same fancy Leica lenses.

Notice how much richer the colors are in the slide film?  Yeah, I barely did any editing on either photo in Lightroom.  I love the richness and contrast.  From here out, when I post an analog photo, I'll put a little "FILM!" moniker next to it.  :-)  Just for fun, here's a digital vs. analog comparison of the sky-railcar that ferries people between the mountains (no, I'm not crazy, I didn't ride on it.)

In any case, a couple of us who didn't want to take the trams opted to "hike down" into the valley below -- a mere 1000 steps.  The guide opted to join the two of us, because I think he was worried about how uneven the footing was, and because he could explain what we were seeing.  It was pretty amazing.  As soon as you went down a few stories on stone steps, the temperature warmed up considerably and we were surrounded by... jungle?  I mean, it really looked like Central America, complete with waterfalls and ferns and such, but instead of monkeys in the trees there were koalas.  :-)

About halfway down (it was a full hour to descend!) we reached a major waterfall.  Again, here is digital and FILM versions!

Every once in a while, as we endlessly climbed down mostly irregular stone steps, we would see a beautiful view peek out.  Some of the staircases started getting precarious too.

Once we reached the bottom, we were pretty exhausted.  Our quads and ankles were sore.  There wasn't much to do but look at the gift shop and then take a "train" that went straight up the side of the mountain.  It was one of those crazy things that climbed up in 30 seconds at about a 50 degree angle;  it felt like you were on one of those terrifying gravity-drop rides at amusement parks.

Eventually we got back on the bus and went to another overlook, at least as gorgeous as the first one.

From there, the bus ferried us onward to a much bigger zoo...

Sydney Day 2: Tiny Zoo

My second day in Sydney was mostly spent in the office, doing actual work, participating in an actual internal summit.  It was pretty great.  But at the end of the day, at 4pm -- just an hour before sunset -- a few of us from the office went to visit a tiny zoo nearby.  Remember that this is July, the dead of winter, when days are shortest.  Apparently this means the zoo was nearly empty as well.  The few of us were (nearly) the only ones there.

Here was our crew, outside the zoo.

Of course we got to see some Tazmanian Devils.  They're cute little weasels that actually spin around constantly, just like a cat chasing its tail.  Kind of odd -- they spin around a bit, then move a few feet forward, then spin again.  Really unclear why.

Finally we got to the Koalas.

I mean, there's nothing more stereotypical, and Australia really hypes them up to tourists.  They're everywhere out in rural areas -- sort of like the way we have squirrels in our trees in North America.  The thing is, they get so few calories from the eucalyptus leaves they eat that they basically need to sleep 21 hours per day.  Pretty much any time you see one in a zoo, it's up in a treetop looking like this:

Most zoo attendees sort of sigh and walk by, clearly disappointed that there wasn't more to see.

But we were lucky!  Somehow this koala woke up just as we arrived, right as the sun was setting, and decided to climb over to three right by the cage glass window -- about a foot from us -- and start eating away.  We got all excited.  And then its baby climbed out of its pouch and started eating too.  It was super-awkward, trying to crawl all over its mom, step on her head, grab leaves, and then almost fall off her parent.  The zookeeper told us were crazy-lucky to see all this, and that the baby was only 6 months old and had only very recently learned to even venture outside its pouch.

Here's my mommy-baby shot for National Geographic:

Of course the zoo had some other cool animals, like little wallabys we could pet.

...and an enormous crocodile you could basically crawl underneath, given the shape of the glass tank.  Good thing it was sleeping.

Eventually the zoo closed and they politely booted us out, just in time to catch an orange sunset over the nearby harbor.

Sydney Day 1: Bondi Beach

After 20 hours of flying (this was a work trip, officially!), I landed at 7am in Sydney and had to fight to stay awake all day.  My co-workers recommended I take a hike along the famous Bondi beach path.

Remember that Sydney is actually an enormous harbor, like a toothy mouth that opens eastward into the Pacific.  Bondi Beach is the one that actually lines the ocean, along the city's eastern edge.

I had a cab drop me off at a cafe at the northern edge, where I ate fish and chips in a cafe facing the ocean.  While eating, it was easy to spot a massive beach to the north with people surfing.  (This was July, dead of winter, about 13C / 55F and windy.)  When it warmed up to 15C / 60F, some folks started swimming in the ocean-swimming-pool as well.

After eating, I spent a couple of hours just walking along a (fairly crowded) path that went up and down a rocky shore and cliffs.  Some of the views were just stunning.

Eventually I stopped and set up my tripod, and did a multi-second exposure to get a 'blurred ocean' effect:

On a hilltop there were all sorts of folks congregating, watching the view.  Cute dogs too.

After a couple of hours, I stopped at a smaller beach and got a final sunset shot before taxiing back to my hotel.

A Place to Document Adventures

The original 'iBanjo' blog was one which I maintained by hand on our community 'red-bean.com' server.  Alas, I no longer have the patience (or time!) to manually upgrade / maintain / de-spam / secure a homegrown Wordpress site.

It's funny -- all I wanted to do was have a place to share my photos from my different trips and vacations -- but in narrative, photojournalistic way.  But the solution was elusive at first.  Social media just isn't conducive for this:  it's all about short-form, short-attention-span sharing of the exact moment.  Things like Twitter and Instagram are lousy for storytelling.

• Likewise:  a Google Photos album is nice, but there's no way to turn it into a narrative.  (adding captions to photos isn't enough, IMO).
• ...and a Facebook photo album is nice, but then only a subset of friends and family can see it.

And so somebody reminded me that Blogger still existed (what!??), and so I logged in and lo and behold, there were a couple of my blogs from 2007 (!).  It's easy to use, integrates seamlessly with the photos I share into Google Photos, and requires basically zero maintenance from me.

Blogger it is, then. 

There are still a bunch of old stories sitting at the old iBanjo site, all from 2006 to 2014.  Perhaps at some point I'll try to 'migrate' them over to this blog, so they're still available for historical reference.