Then ended up coming right over within a couple meters of me.
We drove to the wrong church building first (my bad), but arrived at the Summerhill ward halfway through sacrament meeting. It was great to see Tim and Allison Stokes there. (As a reminder, Tim worked with me at FamilySearch for 3 1/2 years before moving back to Australia).
The gals had fun talking with a lady from Fiji who was delightful. (Her ancestors were from India, where many workers in Fiji were brought from by the British back in the day).
When we got home, we learned that we could not park on the street on weekends during the day, so we finally attempted to pull into our reserved parking spot. It was a bit of a tight squeeze for anyone to get by the van.
That afternoon after a lunch of Tim Tams and stuff, Tim Stokes' family joined us and we all went on a walk from Bronte Beach (where we were staying) up to Bondi Beach. The views along the way were beautiful.
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| Bronte Beach |
There's an active surf rescue group at Bronte Beach.
Between the beaches are dramatic rocky cliffs.
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| Approaching Bondi Beach |
I love the weather-beaten patterns in the stone along the shore.
This one looked like a skull.
Tim told us about the Bondi Beach Iceberg Club that meets here. To become a member, you have to swim in their outdoor ocean-fed pool every day for a year, including through the winter.
Bondi Beach ("BOHN-dai") is the most famous beach in the Sydney area. The sand was amazingly soft--not gritty at all.
I really enjoyed visiting with Tim's family. His wife Alison is awesome. His son Oliver rode a scooter at the skate park for a minute. His daughter Ivy was delightful once we got her talking. It was cute to hear how she could do an American accent when she wanted to, since they all lived in Utah for 3 1/2 years while Tim worked at FamilySearch.
Near the beach was some funky art on the walls.
This beard one says, "It's a well known fact within the beard growing community that when a beard grows a certain length it starts to produce unicorns. Beards are truly magical."
As the sun was starting to go down, it was time to head back.
We had a barbeque that evening on our house's upper deck.
Here's a picture with Tim posing as "an Aussie at the barbie."
When we needed to check on the kababs, Tim laid down his thickest Australian accent and said, "I'll just go give 'em a poke."
After dinner, Allison introduced us to "pavlova", a cake made out of meringue with fruit piled on top. It was amazing with a delightful crunch on the outside. (As you might expect from the name, looking at it makes you drool).
They also shared with us Lamington, which was a sponge cake dipped in chocolate and coconut with a bit of berry filling. Also very nice.
It was lovely to spend the evening with the Stokes family.
Reptile Park
Monday morning started out beautiful once again.
But soon we could see a wave of rain coming across the ocean, and then it poured rain outside. Shauna had been on a walk and got caught in it. It was an exciting way to start her birthday!
On our walk the night before, we told the Stokes that we were planning to take the ferry to Taronga Zoo, which is on the north shore of Sydney Harbor and is supposed to have a nice view of the area. But Tim's daughter Ivy said she actually enjoyed the Australian Reptile Park much better, and we decided to take her advice. It was about an hour away by car, but by this time we had complete trust in Rob's ability to drive on the wrong side of the road.
As we were buying tickets, a guy walked through the lobby with a cool owl (a "Tawny Frogmouth"), and I got to hold it on my arm.
Luckily this velociraptor wasn't real. But I'm sure we would have been friends.
It was feeding time for the tortoise, and it was really active, hissing when it didn't get enough of what it wanted.
The Tasmanian devils were really cute, running all around.
Speaking of cute, a lady had a couple of baby Tasmanian devils and they were adorable!
(There's a contagious eye cancer sweeping through the Tasmanian devil population on Tasmania, so they're sort of waiting for it to wipe them all out so they can wait a while and then re-introduce ones that don't have the disease. So that's sad.)
During the reptile show, this guy seemed to really have fun pulling out critters. He spoke with a really thick accent that would give Steve Irwin a run for his money, and never stopped talking, interjecting little jokes all along the way. (Like, "when you pull this snake out of the bag, you don't want to use your hand--you want to use something else, like a stick, or your husband's hand...")
This lizard has a fat tail that acts like a head to trick predators.
Everyone got to pet the little crocodile.
This guy really enjoys his work.
There were a bunch of school kids sitting on the wall, and when the guy pulled this crocodile out, one of the kids turned to his friend and exclaimed, "Crikey!!" That was awesome.
During the reptile show, I looked over and saw a little kid hanging out with a loose kangaroo. So later I went over and made friends with this kangaroo, and we were buddies. This was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip.
We also got to go see koalas. It was fun seeing them climb around on the trees and eat eucalyptus leaves and sleep.
Linette arranged for us to go in and pet the koala.
Some of the koalas had babies hanging onto them.
It was eerie having all the alligators converge on the feeding platform.
One of the workers said, "Do you want to know how you can tell you're not at Taronga Zoo? You're touching the animals."
We had a nice visit at the "Platypusary," where we thought of Erika.
It was fun seeing the platypus swimming all around.
Here's a short video showing the platypus swimming around.
There was another show where they fed Elvis, a huge saltwater crocodile "with a bad attitude."
Crocodiles have teeth that go both up and down outside of their mouth. (Alligators don't have ones that go up).
And then we ate some french fries ("chips") and went and played with the roaming kangaroos some more.
This guy is the main guy in charge of the reptiles, and he showed how they "milk" a snake to collect its venom, so that they can create anti-venom to treat people for bites. This facility generates most of the venom for Australia. It was interesting how they taught the kids what to do if they get bit by a snake or spider, like it was a real possibility, kind of like how we teach kids to buckle their seatbelts or what to do in a fire.
[If you do get bit, do this: 1) Take a nice, deep breath and calm down to slow your heart rate. 2) Wrap a bandage snugly around the site of the bite and on up the limb to slow blood flow but not completely cut off circulation. 3) Get to a hospital to get the anti-venom.]
Linette thought that this turtle had a funny smile.
During the reptile show, they let a kid hang out with a huge snake.
The kid's mom seemed to be even more excited than he was.
Niiiiice little fella....
Here is one of the koalas climbing around and hopping off of a tree. I hadn't ever seen them moving around so much before.
I learned about the cassowary, which is the third largest flightless bird, after the ostrich and the emu. I had no idea.
We saw a big wombat digging in the dirt.
While we watched, a kangaroo went hopping by, which was really funny for some reason.
This gal taught us all about dingos while she fed them chickens (which they didn't really want) and kangaroo meat (which they were really excited about). They mostly just looked like regular dogs except a few times when they fought over some meat, at which point they seemed really vicious.
Our friend the fast-talking zookeeper taught us about the tunnel web spider, which is extremely poisonous and potentially deadly, though nobody has died from them since the creation of antivenom, which this facility helps to create, too. (We missed the spider-milking demonstration. I was interested to see how big the little bucket was.)
Oh, hey, another friend.
The wallaby is a lot smaller than a kangaroo.
This is a Komodo dragon. Its bite isn't immediately deadly, but contains nasty bacteria, so it will bite a big animal, and then just follow its tracks for a couple days until the animal inevitably dies, and then eat it.
In addition to the animals kept there, a bunch of birds just hang out there of their own choice.
This lorikeet came right up to me. It wasn't interested in my kangaroo food, but checked in my bag to see if I had any better offers.
This funky-looking lizard is a Perentie, and is the largest and fastest lizard in the red-sand deserts of Australia. A mature male is 2 meters (6 feet) long.
At the end of the day, they were trying to get all the kangaroos to go into the back pen for the night, but one of them kept going the wrong way and escaping. I said, "The game! The game!" because that's what my younger siblings used to yell when the older kids tried to get all 3 of them out of the room where the big kids and their friends were hanging out. (And of course when one little kid got thrown out, they'd sneak back in when they went back in after another one, all the while yelling "The game! The game!").
After a long day with minimal food, it was awesome to eat at Cristina's Pizza in Thornleigh on the way home.
We also stopped for ice cream at Gelato Messina Parramatta, in order to celebrate Shauna's birthday.
Along the way stumbled upon the nearby San Churro Chocolateria, where we got a couple things to go with the ice cream.
On the way back to the car, we found another R and L.
In the next episode, we hit the Sydney Temple, finally make it to Bronte beach across from our beach house, and take in a play at the Sydney Opera House.
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