the 21st century!

so now i've got my mobile i can actually use it to take photos to upload to the blog. mine will almost be as good as bridget's at this rate. i am welcoming myself into the 21st century, somewhat belatedly. good to see you all that are already there. so the first pic is from my marathon stroll round sydney on wednesday. sydney has masses and masses of parks and a botanical garden so i wandered through and ended up at the opera house. the opera house has so many steps at the front that it sent the (somewhat crappy) camera phone loopy and they just came out as a post-modern squiggle. so, instead, this is the view from the harbour bridge, which i had a quiet saunter across, of the opera house and the front of the QE2. how exciting. sydney reminds me a lot of london. in fact, i don't even feel like i'm in oz. i'm staying in kings cross and i could actually be in kings cross at home. there's the skyscrapers in the city but then it's made up of lots of suburbs with windy streets with gentrified brick buildings in them. i feel right at home, in a weird way.

so, in an attempt to try and find australia, i took a trip to the blue mountains yesterday. the blue mountains are a couple of hours to the west of sydney. i thought i'd get to see some of the countryside on the way there, as you do from the country roads of nz, but, basically, it was just a great big motorway for most of the way. this seems to be how oz differs from nz. for a start, they have big cities just like the rest of the world, whereas nz cities are still quite small and manageable. there's a big city feel to here that i haven't experienced since america. oh, how it's taking me back. we did pull off from the motorway into euroka national park and i actually saw an actual kangaroo. i was v excited. and it meant that i must have found australia. it was strange how close people live to the national parks. the kangaroos were in their natural habitat, though it was near a camping ground so they were used to people and you could get v close to them. i tried to get a classic pic of them standing up but the buggers just wanted to eat. an excitable japanese lady tried to get them to do it by stamping and shouting 'get up, get up' in her oriental accent. but even this traditional method failed to distract them from their dinner. funny, that.

so we got to the blue mountains. you can just see the blue mist in this pic. it's basically due to oils released by the eucalyptus trees that interact with the light so that the whole is constantly shrouded in a blue mist. quite a pretty effect. the three rocks are the 'three sisters' and there are a few aboriginal stories surrounding them, mainly along the lines of three sisters being changed into rock by their father to protect them from a big beastie but then in the father's flight from the beastie he dropped his magic wand and was unable to turn them back. how's about that for a bedtime story? sorry, kids, some tales don't have a happy ending, now go to sleep...

the whole day was pleasant. it was good to get to get out of the city and i felt like i'd seen some proper oz. but it was all a bit too organised, as bus tours are. it would have been better just to get out there and have a walk into the valley but i just don't have the time. i'm sure there'll be other walks. and i did meet sharon and shared a bag of raisins with her on the way home. which was nice.

off to some beaches next...