Chinese Gardens

When I did the Sydney bus tour back in April they went past a Chinese Garden near Darling Harbour, and I kept meaning to go there and never got round to it, so today I did!

It's a lovely peaceful garden with lots of water falls, lakes, fish and Pavilions where you can just sit and relax in a nice tranquil environment.

It's only a small garden area, and takes about an hour or so to walk around, here's a few of the pictures of the nice scenery.

 

 

They even have lizards living in the gardens!

Bamboo forest

Come on Uncle Andy see if you can name that bird!

Look at all these Bonsai's!

I struggle taking care of one of the buggers let alone all that lot!!

Surfing!

It's something I've wanted to do for a while but have been too busy climbing bridges, snorkelling, scuba diving, going to wildlife centres, etc..... So now I've nearly seen everything Sydney has to offer I thought it's about time I have a go at surfing!

I booked a lesson with a company called Lets Go Surfing. It was a 2 hour lesson and the instructor (Ash) was brilliant.

We were in a small group of 5, all first timers, and I think we all did really well. We all managed to stand up for a short period of time, which isn't as easy as it looks!

I've got some more lessons booked so they're going to save all my photos up until the end of my lessons and give me them all together on a USB stick, which unfortunately means I have only one picture (that I had to buy off them) of me actually surfing that I can put on here for now :(

This was my very first attempt at standing up on the board (hence the concentration on my face! :))

I went back the next day and rented the gear off the shop that I have my lessons through and practised some more for a little while. I didn't do as well this time as I did in the lesson :( I'm putting it down to conditions :) and the fact they gave me a smaller board then the one we had in the lessons.

I also went back this weekend (Sat 26th Oct) and had a second lesson. The conditions were really tough this time! The wind was blowing towards the sea and this apparently makes the waves a lot harder than if the wind is blowing away from the sea.

For you surfer people out there our instructor (Paulo this time) taught us how to use the Rips to make it easier to get out to the back of the unbroken waves by paddling on our boards. After this things became a lot easier because we weren't fighting against the waves so much so weren't as tired when we came to surf. All in all the end of the lesson was brilliant and I managed to catch some good waves :)

This just proves how windy it was, this is a picture of Bondi Beach on my first lesson (Sat 19th Oct)

This was taken this Saturday (25th Oct): Deserted!

And here's some of the waves we had to fight against.

 

When I've finished my lessons and got some pics I'll update the blog and out them on here.

Palm Beach (Home and Away!)

Palm Beach (or Summer Bay as they call it on Home and Away) is only an hour and 45 minutes bus ride out of Sydney, so one nice sunny Sunday I thought I'd take a trip up there to see where Home and Away is filmed.

It was a nice bus ride through some nice parts of Northern Sydney, I've never really been to the North of Sydney just stayed in the East where all the attractions and business is, so it was good to see a different part of Sydney.

It's a nice beach and it was a very hot day! I'd like to say I saw someone famous but the truth is I haven't seen Home & Away since I was at school, so I'd imagine the cast would be totally different now and I wouldn't recognise anyone anyway :(

 

It was a bit windy though so when I went in for a dip the waves were knocking me about all over the show! Also the sand is very fine, so when the wind picked up it blow the sand right into your face! But apart from that it was a nice day at the beach.

I had a nice lunch with a great view of the ocean :)

National Maritime Museum

I wanted to go and have a look at the ships at the Maritime Museum, but never got round to it, due to the fleet review they had a special offer on at the museum where you could gain entry to the museum and also to the tall ships (old sailing ships) that were there for the fleet review weekend. So I bought a ticket and went down for a look.

As you can see there were LOTS of sailing ships here that weekend.

You could walk on nearly all the ships and just have a look around.

Some of them were really tall (I can now see where they got their name "Tall Ships" from!)

The museum houses an old war ship (HMAS Vampire) and an old submarine.

Because it was such a busy weekend the submarine was close off :(, but you could walk literally all over the battleship, and it was massive!

This tall ship (The Lord Nelson) was on a voyage from Southampton to Australia then back again. It was going to take them 2 years to complete this! All the crew were volunteers and the ship was custom built for disabled people, so that they can sail the ship with the help of the crew.

The museum also has a Viking boat.

And one that look like it should have been in pirates of the Caribbean!