OZ +17 (UK -1): Ooroo...

Which is apparently Aussie Slang for Goodbye (although I never heard anyone say it...)

The new 3-D Cathy Pacific Flight Simulator™ shows me finally leaving Australian air space...



...somewhere near Darwin (or thereabouts...) and seemingly about 17 hours after taking off - Australia being so big and all that.

And now I have to get over any jet lag and go back to work...

OZ +17 (UK -1): Not sure...

There's a subway underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge between Observatory Hill and the Rocks.

It's probably about 100m long and has tiled walls on both sides.

And both walls, for their entire length, look like this...



So it's either concerted vandalism (which seems unlikely, as there are CCTV security cameras everywhere)...

...or art.

OZ +17 (UK -1): Bloody good idea...

I think one of the ways you can get a handle on other cities is by their public transport. When you go somewhere new, you should always have a go!

For a start, if you're anywhere abroad, the chances are that your experience will be loads better than anything you could expect in Britain. In Britain, we can't really do public transport. It's dirty and slow and unreliable and crowded and the places where you get on and off are nowhere near anywhere you might get on anything else.

In Sydney, it's great. Everything links up, it's cheap, frequent and clean. You can use one ticket all week on the ferries, the buses and the trains.

And the trains are great! (Here is a lonely tourist not noticing one has arrived behind him...)



They are double decker!



We can't do this in Britain because the bridges and the tunnels weren't designed for double-decker trains and all the platforms would have to be altered - it's too late and would cost too much money now. If only someone had thought of double-decker trains to start with - we seem to be the only country (apart from Hong Kong) which has double-decker buses...

They also have five seats across rather than four which, by my maths, honed by a summer of currency conversion, means that each carriage can take two and half times as many passengers as a British train.

But if all this wasn't clever enough, they go underground too. You don't have to get off a train to get on a tube, the train becomes a tube by the simple expedient of going into a tunnel. (A very high, double-decker tunnel...)

And Circular Quay probably has one of the best views of any railway station...



But if you're commuting (easily and efficiently), you probably don't notice...

OZ +16 (UK -2): One out of Ten ain't bad...

Actually, I make it nearly seven out of ten...

I'm talking about Tina's list of things to have photos of which she gave me before I went away.

I can tick off...

1. Hug koala or feed a kangaroo - as I did both, nearly, I'm counting that as two points;
2. 3 different combinations of Opera House and Bridge - Yep, done to death (several points);
3. Holding bottle of wine outside Lindemans - Lindemans, yes; bottle, no - was driving - (½ point...);
4... Involved me going swimming, so was never going to happen;
5. My feet in thongs on see-through cable car floor - (½ point again...);
6. Find lucky bronze pig and rub nose... that took until tonight...



...and I still didn't rub its nose, although its shiny nature suggests that nearly everyone else does... (½ point...)

7. Model an Aussie Rules Football Shirt - nope, but did go to see a match (½ point...)
8. A whale breaching - failure. Didn't go whale watching in NZ and not here either. Several hours of being on a boat for three minutes whale watching isn't good value...
9. A dangerous creature encounter - take your pick: crocodile, spiders, snakes, dingoes, Ann from the Wentworth Falls Golf Club... (many points...)
10. Failed because the hire car had to be back by 4...! (That's my story!)

OZ +16 (UK -2): Memories in unlikely places...

The National Maritime Museum in Sydney's Darling Harbour...



...is a relatively new building. It has two bits - a bit that's free to go in and a bit you have to pay for. As with anything operating under this arrangement, the bit you have to pay for far outwieghs the bit you don't in terms of interest.

The bit you don't have to pay for is the museum proper with its very worthy displays of colonial seafaring and culling of Aborigines... (A sign warns Aboriginal People and Torres Strait Islanders that some of the exhibits contain depictions of dead bodies...)

The bit you do have to pay for is loads more fun!

You get to go on a proper submarine, HMAS Onslow (named after the recurring character in Keeping Up Appearances...)

It has all the things you expect of a submarine... narrow, cramped corridors full of inexplicable (if you're me) but highly important (if you're one of the crusty old sea dog guides who sits down there all day, interpretively) dials and meters and pipes...



You also get to go on HMAS Valiant...



...which is a daring class destroyer.

(I suppose being a cowardly class destroyer would be a bit pointless and contradictory...)

And it's in the strangest places which you come across things which hold particular memories for you. I certainly never saw this coming. In amongst all the other fascinating bits of ship, the quarters, the bridge, the weapons and the signs and messages which tell you so much about the everyday life on board before she was decommissioned, several decks below in the laundry was this...



...a Hoovermatic De Luxe Twin Tub.

You see, as well as having decorative plates, my Gran and Grandad had one of these, and I remember it really well. I had to lift the lid up on this one just to check. Instead of having the big agitator device in the middle which swooshed your clothes around, it had a circular pulstaor device built into the wall of the machine which looked so dangerous it would have your arm off - if you were stupid enough to put your arm in.

And I suppose it's one of those childhood things which acts as a key to so many other memories... Going round to stay with my Gran and Grandad on Friday nights; the fact that you didn't really use the front room unless it was the evening; toasting homemade bread on the fire with a proper toasting fork; Cubitz; Crossroads; hash; The Hymases next door and Olive across the road who ran the second-hand book stall on the market and her daughter who worked in Mrs West's Post Office; stewing steak; bunk beds in the bedroom with the Tom and Jerry wallpaper which doubled as a dark room and developing photos with the proper chemicals - perhaps that's why I take so many photos now - thanks Grandad!

You find these happy memories in the most unlikely places, even my Dad recognised instantly why I'd taken the photo, and they were all worth the bit you pay for.

By the way, if you think this makes me obsessed with washing machines...

OZ +16 (UK -2): Nasty, Useless Kagoule......

Everywhere you go and everything you do they want to take your photo. They take it, sometimes without your permission, and, by the time you've got back from whatever it was you were doing, they have it there for you ($30).

Sometimes in a souvenir pack ($60).

And sometimes with your photo in the middle of a souvenir collectors' item plate of the sort your Gran used to have with a West Island Terrier or Charles and Di. ($200 - but that was in Hong Kong, so that's really only about £15).

I'm not really sure why they do it with the Jet Boat...



Because you don't get a photo of you actually speeding round the harbour, pulling sharp 360° spins, bouncing over the wakes of the ubiquitous ferries, squinting to see what's happening as the needle-sharp spray makes tiny holes in your corneas and exfoliates your face revealing your skull, squelching uncomfortably from side to side as the water on your seat penentrates both layers of below-the-waist clothing...

What you actually get is a photo of you standing on the jetty in a massive, shapeless red-tent kagoule (waterproof in name only). They don't even put the boat or the Bridge in the background, both of which, as you can see from above, would be possible.

So I didn't buy them.

But I did go on the boat!

(Damn! How will I prove it without the photo...)

OZ +16 (UK -2): Put in the Picture...

Although you can see the two most famous landmarks of Sydney really clearly from many different angles around the harbour, it's increasingly difficult to see either of them the further you move south into the CBD (Cental Business District, as City Centres are known over here...)

The Bridge gradually disappears between high-rise (and in some cases, quite low-rise) buildings...



...and the Sydney Tower, which boasts Sydney's Best Views, only manages to squeeze the Opera House in between a couple of skyscrapers...



But Mrs Macquarie had the right idea...

Mrs Macquarie was the wife of Major-General Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821. He has all sorts of things named after him, Lake Macquarie, Port Macquarie... even Mrs Macquarie. But she did well in Sydney with a point, a road and a chair.

The point is well visited because it has the standard postcard view of the disappearing icons...



Once you have this photo (or one like it with better, bluer skies), then your work is done and you can go home.



So it's a good job it's the last day really...

(There is a "me in front of..." shot - in fact, there are several... and a story...)

OZ +15: An Olympic-Sized Warning...

Amongst the poles which list every one of the thousands of volunteers who helped out at the hugely successful Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, hardly anyone stirs.



It's a bit like a ghost town.

Still government-owned, none of it is used particularly frequently or effectively. The remnants of the only Games in recent history to have actually made a profit now sit underused and underloved, miles away from the centre of Sydney.

The only part to make a profit these days is the bit they sold off into private hands, the Acer Arena. (Dora the Explorer! LIVE!!)

Even the main ANZ Stadium looked a little deserted today...



I bet London won't do any better...

OZ +15: Watch out...

Here is my attempt at dangerous wildlife photography...



This is the home of a real-life, funnel-web spider.

If it pops out and bites you, you have a window of about three hours to get to the anti-venom before you die an agonising, poisoned death.

If I were clever I would have done that thing with the photo where you look at it for a long time and then, without warning, the spider pops out and sends you flying across the room..

Who's to say I haven't...?

OZ +15: Up in the Blue Mountains...

The Blue Mountains are part of the Great Dividing Range and only a couple of hours west of Sydney.

They are actually not mountains at all, but a divided plateau of sandstone. As such, the best way through them is over the plateau linking the highest points and not through valleys and gaps like in normal mountain ranges.



You can see the cliff edges and roads across the ridges really clearly.

If you try to get through these mountains by following the valleys and gaps, you just end up with sheer cliff faces in front of you and have to go back. As the orginal colonial explorers found...

Never mind, their memory lives on in some of the towns which are named after them: Wentworth Falls, Lawson, and several others which I can't remember.

Scenic World is a reasonably environmentally friendy attempt to build what is essentially a limited set of theme park rides in a World Heritage Area.

First you go across...



(The nowdays-obligatory-tourist-attraction-glass-floor...)



And the views are just spectacular...



These are the Three Sisters. They are basically sandstone eroded by the wind and rain of thousands and thousands of years but, as with everything here, there is some Aboriginal Story about how they got their name.



Then you go down...



...on the steepest inclined funicular railway in the world. So steep that the seats in the train are angled back to stop you falling out the front...

(This is a very shaky, out-of-focus shot, but that's because it was bloody scary and I as hanging on for dear life.)

And then you go back up again on some bog-standard, Swiss-built cable car, perhaps second-hand from the ski slopes...



What doesn't fill you with confidence about any of these experiences is that there is a fourth ride...



...a roller coaster which the family who owns the park built down the sheer cliff face.

You're waiting now for the story of the tragic accident which meant it was never used. Sorry, that's not coming. It was just that having commissioned, designed and built it, they realised that the annual health and safety maintenance checks would be prohibitively expensive and mothballed it. The track sits there still as some kind of Scooby Doo Ride to hell. Apparently, it was only ever used once, by the owner's daughters. Rather them than me...

OZ +15: Up close and personal...

With only a couple of days left to go, all the faffing around and zooming and panning I've had to do thus far to get good photos of indigenous wildlife seemed a bit redundant today.

By leaving Sydney at 7.20am (which was a wrench...), you can arrive at Featherdale Wildlife Park before it opens, before the crowds spook the animals. They have the lot: Tasmanian Devils, all sorts of wombats, birds of many coloured plumage, snakes, crocdiles (see the Flickr photo album for the lot...)

But what you want are your totally bona fide Australian icons up close and personal...

Koala (not bear) whose fur you expect to be wiry, but is, in fact, really cuddly-toy-soft...



Kangaroo/wallaby - not sure I can still tell the difference...



Emu... (minus Rod Hull and a bit too close up...)



And dingoes...



...which look cute as puppies but which carry your children off as adults...

Also on display was this rather oversized joey, which seemed a bit reluctant to leave its mother...



A bit like those five year olds you still see ferried around in pushchairs. Probably eating sweets.

OZ +14: Very Manly...

Manly is quite a posh suburb of North Sydney and, along with Bondi, it's a surf centre. It has a harbour coast and an open Pacific coast - a narrow neck of land.



You can get there on one of the many ferries which dart back and forth across the harbour all day and night as a vital link in the city's public transport system. In other places, an hour's cruise on a picturesque harbour would be a big deal, take organising and cost a packet. In Sydney, it's just like hopping on the bus.

And it was great to have a sit down after climbing the bridge...!

You arrive at Manly Wharf (the harbour side)...



...and as manly is also adjectival, there's a real play-on-words theme to the whole place. Manly Sandwiches, Manly Barbers, Manly Dresses (made the last one up...)

The Pacific beach is a five minute walk through the town...



It was getting late, so no surfers, just tourists and seagulls...



...and a great night time view of the Sydney skyline on the way back... My very poor photos didn't really do it justice - so much for the special Nightime feature on my camera - I won't post one here, look on Flickr if you're interested. Meanwhile, a woman next door with a very cheap-looking camera was happily taking the most amazingly sharp, beautifully coloured, reflecting-lights-in-the-water shots. I was tempted to nick it and push her in...

OZ +14: 5 seconds...

Lisa, our guide up the Sydney Harbour Bridge, was a laugh.

Standing at the top (that's not spoiling it, of course I made it to the top...), she told us how far it was down. 139 metres or 439 feet. "Or 5 seconds", she said "if you choose to go that way..."

Actually the whole Bridge Climb operation is utterly professional. Right down to its little yellow clips, which are the most important safety feature of the climb. They clip everything you might possibly have to take up with you to your fashionable grey boiler suit to avoid you dropping it onto the traffic 5 seconds below. When the guy setting up the climb proposed the idea to the council, who own the bridge, they gave him 96 reasons why it wouldn't be possible.

Like a true entrepreneur, he researched and solved all 96 points of objection and that's why you can climb the bridge today.

One of them was the dropping things. Glasses, hats, handkerchiefs, fleece, radio, headsets (with special bone induction headphones - you don't put them over your ears, they rest on your cheek bones)... the whole lot has to be clipped on for dear life.

Then they have to clip you onto the bridge and you practise this before you get out there on a bit of scaffolding'n'ladders they have rigged up in the reception building. It's done using a bloody clever bit of equipment actually - a little rotating mechanism of cogs and gubbins which means that you can't become detached from the high tension steel safety wire which follows you round the entire route.

A couple of bits are ladders and they show you safely how to get up and down them. When you are actually out on the bridge, she calmly tells you over the skull-vibrating headsets that the real ladders take you up between lanes 7 and 8 of the traffic. (And between two express train lines on the way down.) She's so reassuring though, that you don't worry.

Here's a photo I took later from one of the bridge towers, which show a little of the route you take... (You'll have to zoom in to see properly...)



You can't take your camera up on the real climb because you might drop it. I think they could find some ingenious way of yellow-clipping it to you so that you could, but then they wouldn't be able to overcharge you for the official photos they take... Of course I bought them - I'm probably never doing it again!





It's a real sense of achievement - you even get a certificate!

But your legs don't half ache afterwards...

OZ +13: Modern Opera...

Everyone who comes here gets a photo which looks something like this...



So the big Sydney Opera House Challenge is to try and get something a bit more angular and experimental.

Here are my attempts...









Marks out of 10 please.

Essential Opera House (Possibly) Facts:

• The architect who designed the iconic outside was removed from the project and didn't design the inside. As a result, it's fairly ordinary inside. I read that on Wikipedia, so it might not be true.
  
• The roof tiles are self-cleaning.
  
• They are still fairly dirty - they don't look white when you get close up.
  
• You can actually touch the roof...

OZ +13: Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport...

You knew it was coming at some point, didn't you...



Unfortunately, it went again so quickly that me and my camera had difficulty keeping up....

Kangaroo appears courtesy of Sydney Wildlife World. See Flickr photos for ants (big), wallabies (similar to kangaroos and actually different if you are concentrating, koalas (cute), spiders (furry), snakes (deadly, but behind glass), butterflies (enormous, but colourful), crocodiles (handbag), lizardy things (various), stick insects (giant), scorpions (dangerous) etc...