Last night’s thunderstorms continued on and off until early morning. We woke up to cool temps and overcast sky. Took it easy so the girls could do their homework and projects, and then went to Smiggle, an Australian stationery store chain catering to pre-teens and teens with very colorful paper products and accessories. The Ellises had brought us miscellaneous Smiggle products over the years, and Laura and Elena were excited to see a Smiggle store for themselves. The Smiggle range is rather limited, but every product comes in a variety of trendy colors such as pink, purple, apple green, cyan blue and black. I bought four large paper clips for myself, not because I have a real need for them but because they were the cheapest items in the store at AU$0.50 each. The girls got a few things each; luckily we were able to steer them away from the more expensive items :-).
After lunch, Heather and I went off on another solo outing. Bill not only graciously agreed to watch Laura and Elena but he also took us to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in the CBD. The Art Gallery of New South Wales is a very large art museum displaying all kinds of things, but it was their collections of Australian and aboriginal art that Heather and I were mostly interested in. The paintings of the early settlement period by European immigrants were interesting and often quite beautiful, especially the romanticized scenes of a pre-colonial Eden, but what fascinated me the most was the aboriginal art, ranging from bark paintings to burial poles and more modern art on canvas. The dot painting style arising from the Papunya Tula Art Movement of the early 1970s was a particular highlight. I don’t profess to have even a rudimentary understanding of the symbology and iconography, but many of the works we saw have such an innate beauty that I was able to relate to them on a purely aesthetic level.
We also took in the collections of early Japanese and Chinese art, but soon after we reached sensory overload and decided to head outside. The Art Gallery of NSW is located on the edge of the Royal Botanic Garden so Heather I decided to explore some areas we hadn’t seen yet, including the palm grove, one of the oldest parts of the Royal Botanic Garden.
As we were enjoying the many tropical and subtropical plants, we couldn’t help but notice what we initially assumed was the squawking of many hundreds of birds. A look up into the trees revealed something else entirely. What we had thought were birds were in fact, hundred and hundreds of flying foxes—large fruit bats weighing as much as 2 lbs with a wing span that exceeds 3 ft. They roost in the many palm trees in the palm grove and in other areas of the Royal Botanic Garden, and at night venture out in search of fruit and pollen. In fact, these were the bats we had seen a couple of days on our walk across the Harbor Bridge. Seeing these bats hanging upside down from tree branches—some completely still, others twitching, others flying about and screeching—was a completely surreal experience, reminiscent of a bad horror movie of the 70s. What made things even more immediate was the smell—or should I say stench!—of all the bat poop.
After our close encounter with the flying foxes, we walked back to The Rocks and did some window-shopping, marveling again at the high prices of opal jewelry and aboriginal art. Instead of retracing our steps back to the Circular Quay train station, we ended up walking across the Harbor Bridge for the second time this week. The sky was still overcast so the light was too flat to take pictures of the Opera House, but it was still a fantastic experience walking on one Sydney’s best-known landmarks enjoying perfect views of one of the most beautiful structures in the entire world!
From Milsons Point we again took the train to Artarvon, our “home station”, feeling like veteran Sydney commuters by now. Sydney is a large city, but getting to know your way around the central core isn’t difficult, and the public transportation system is excellent, with many trains, ferries and busses connecting the suburbs to the CBD.
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