We’re in Sydney now, staying at a hotel next to Darling Harbour. Around the harbour itself is a huge complex, completed in 1988 to mark the bi-centenary of the first convicts arriving from Britain, and the creation of the NSW Colony. The complex comprises exhibition centre, conference centre, aquarium, a Chinese garden,museums, restaurants, bars, and entertainments of all sorts. There are loads of people around, and if you’re there as the sun goes down, and the lights come on and reflect in the water, it all looks quite magical, especially if as now there’s a full moon as well.

Sydney is a modern, bustly, multicultural city, though unlike, say, Perth, a good deal of the old has been preserved. One such area is The Rocks, which we reached by walking the length of George St. This is a bit like walking down Oxford St and finding yourself in the Lanes in Brighton. After a nice lunch we walked down to Circular Quay, where the boats come in, and the around the harbour, by way of the Botanic Gardens, to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, a lookout point for the best view of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Mrs Macquarie was the wife of the Colony’s first governor, and apparently this is where she liked to have a bit of a sit down when on one of her strolls. The picture shows Mrs A and the view from this very spot.

It was quite warm and muggy, so we treated ourselves to a ferry ride back to Darling Harbour where we visited the aquarium. There are some really bizarre creatures in here – the pig-nosed turtle, the Australian pineapple fish, the pot-bellied seahorse, to name but a few – as well as the stuff you would expect, and all are very well showcased and described. There was also a tank containing a duck billed platypus, but like the kangaroos of Pebbly Beach, he was nowhere to be seen. The finale was the oceanarium, full of horrible looking sharks and huge rays. Simon’s friend George’s wife Natalie’s dad was CFO at the aquarium on the day when the glass sides fractured and the fish and the visitors mingled rather more intimately than they had expected. That must have been a day to remember. For the visitors anyway; fish can’t remember anything.

Tomorrow we're getting the ferry to Manly, and in the evening a barbie at George's, and a peek at the new baby. More anon.