Who needs school, anyway?

Last Monday was Canberra Day, and with a bit of luck that ended up meaning I had no necessary classes all week, so I went to Sydney!  Charlie's mom and sister were in town for the week and my grandparents also came, so we made a party of it!

After the weekend in Bateman's Bay, I caught a bus to Sydney and a train to Macquarie University to meet up with everyone and stayed through Sunday doing plenty of wonderful touristy things together.

Monday, we went to Sydney Wildlife World which was a lot more interesting than I had anticipated.  It was full of all the essential Aussie fauna, including humongous crocodiles, a cassowary, kangaroos and koalas!

These western red kangaroos are only out west (...Capitan Obvious), the roos I see hopping around campus are eastern grey kangaroos, which are a bit smaller and... grey.  Australians were really creative when it came to naming things.

Below is a Cassowary, a bird from up north in the tropical rain forest.  It is actually the most dangerous bird in the world, and it is very important to the ecosystem since many plants need the bird to help spread seeds.

Thanks to Steve Irwin and Crocodile Dundee, lots of folks like me normally associate Australia with crocodiles, so of course they had a very impressive specimen-- if you look closely, you can see a person standing beyond a window in the top right-hand corner to understand the scale.  This fellow is huge!  He is forty years old, and STILL growing!

Don't forget the platypus!  These guys are actually a lot smaller than I had anticipated-- a bit smaller than an otter.

After going through Wildlife World, we went next door to the Sydney Aquarium!  I had heard that it was a must-see, so I was pretty excited about it!  The place is packed with fascinating animals, including a tank of dugongs, very similar to our manatees.  They really liked to munch lettuce.

Nom nom nom

Of course, I made sure to find Nemo, along with Dory, Bruce, Gill, Mr. Ray, Bloat, Flo and the rest of those guys.

We were also introduced to cuttlefish, which were really exciting!  Along with some sizable rays.

Wildlife World and the Aquarium were HEAPS of fun!  After going through both of them, we were pretty pooped, but it was totally worth it.  That was Monday, Tuesday we took it easy and just did some wandering then Wednesday we took a ferry to Manly to see Ocean World and then hit up Manly Beach! It was a BEAUTIFUL day, made even better by being able to laze around on the shore for hours just soaking up some sun.