Kiwi Paradise : Museum, Observatory, and Aquarium!

We were out of the house by 8:30 so we could be at the Australian Museum right when it opened at 9:30. We of course decided to start a lasting tradition (lasting as in the last three days in Australia) of having a morning Magnum bar pick me up. Today's flavor the Magnum cookie sandwich- have sandwich half ice cream bar dipped in chocolate with nuts. Yum! The museum was amazing! I paid the extra $10 to see the amazing Alexander the Great display. There were artifacts from over 2500 years ago. It was amazing! Honestly, I didn't know much about him or his history so it was neat to learn more about his life, making me ever grateful that I live in the 21st century and not 300BC. There were ancient pieces of armor, statues, sculptures, jewelry and money pieces. The most interesting thing that I learned was that many archeologist attribute the success compilation of the old testament into Greek because Alexander brought such a wide expanse of people under the same kingdom, speaking the same language.

The rest of the museum was pretty interesting too. It was focused more on showing different animals, insects, and birds of Australia than anything else. After briefly glancing at the snake and spider part of the exhibit I said a silent prayer of gratitude that I do NOT live in Australia! It was pretty neat to look at the dinosaur fossils and structures that they had on display. They even had a section for animals that appeared to have lived in Australia during the ice age. There was this huge wombat like creature that was as big as a polar bear that they had a model of. Even though it was supposedly harmless and only ate plants I'm still glad it's no longer around.

There was also a huge display set apart for interesting rocks and minerals. There were lots of rocks of pretty amazing colors. Have you ever seen a bright yellow rock before? How about a sea green rock with dark blue splotches? Pretty cool. I also got to see a real mummy. Pretty awesome.

After the museum we left to met Janessa over at the observatory. At 1pm every day a giant ball that sits on the top of the observatory drops. In the past ships coming in from long sea voyages would be able to reset their clocks when they got into port by knowing that when the ball dropped it was 1pm. The ball
is regulated according to the movement of the stars. We had to run to see it in time but we made it. Boy was it a hot day. After running up the hill to watch the ball drop we walked inside (a bit on the sweaty side) and had a good look around. There were some pretty cool things like old telescopes and constellations that we don't have in the northern hemisphere. There was even a room that showed animated videos of the Aboriginal beliefs of how a few prominent constellations came to be. It was really interesting.

After a few hours we went back to walk around the Rocks- a part of the city near the harbor. It was such a beautiful day! Around 4 we started looking at restaurants along the warf. We decided to enjoy one expensive meal looking out over the harbor. It was a such a beautiful day and because we ate before the usual opera house crowd we had a chance to just relax and enjoy the scenery. We definitely felt very fancy ordering food that we could hardly pronounce and a bit cheap when we realized that $30 for pasta seemed ridiculous :). After our fancy dinner. the girls went to the opera to see the ballet perform. Since ballet isn't exactly my thing I opted to go to the aquarium instead. And boy was that a good decision.

The aquarium had some of the coolest animals- some I've never even heard of! Such as the Dugong- a creature looking like a manatee with the tail of a dolphin. There was an awesome exhibit where you could walk through a tunnel and see the dugong swimming around you. It was neat to see such a big aminal swim so close to you. There was also a really cool shark tunnel to walk through. If that wasn't enough you could also walk above the tank and watch the sharks and dugongs from above. There was also a gingantic tank full of all sorts of animals that come straight from the Great Barrier Reef. As part of the exhibit you could walk through a tank with water above, below, and on both sides. I could have stayed there for a few more hours but it closed by 8 so it was time to head back to the bus. It had started raining pretty hard while I was at the aquarium but luckily there was a break for just long enough for me to get on the bus home. Another great day in Sydney!

Look! Alabama in the Sydney train station!!

The "All About Bones" section of the Australlian Museum

Some of the cool rocks

More cool rocks

And yet another cool rock

The Australian Marsupial Lion (what they think it looked like)

The Diprotodons basically like a giant wambot. This thing was huge!!

Aboriginal artifacts

These are hats used in Aboriginal ceremonies

Aboriginal art

More Aboriginal art

Me on Observation Hill

Just walking by the bakery

Just cool

The Opera House

Practically every day there would be an Aboriginal man would sit out along the harbor and play his didgeridoo with some pretty sweet beat boxing accompaniment.