Release The Bats*

11 March 2010
A delightful day – we met up with our friends Chris and Terry from Kent. The four of us had been unable to meet before we came away on our r-t-w trip but by one of those strange synchronistic chances they happened to be in Sydney at the same time as us, so we had arranged to meet up today, and it worked. We went walking and talking through the Botanic Gardens and it was really good having Terry, a very keen birder, there with us to tell us the names of the birds we saw, which all seemed totally unbothered by humans and most are very noisy too. One variety of ‘bird’ that amazed us wasn’t a bird at all, it was a fruit bat, or rather hundreds of fruit bats, all hanging and chattering in the trees with one or two occasionally flying from one tree to another.

We had read that there are fruit bats in the Botanic Gardens and had expected something the size of bats we see at home not these huge things the size of crows! The Botanic Gardens were established in 1816 on the area that had originally been used to grow (not very successfully) vegetables for the colony and now has both native and introduced plants and trees from around the world with some magnificent examples of the indigenous Moreton Bay Figs with immense gnarled trunks. The Gardens provide some of the most stunning views of the harbour and on a warm sunny day like today it was a most pleasant place to be, made better by the company of old friends.

Inevitably we all commented on similar things such as how ‘obedient’ pedestrians are by never crossing until the green man lights up even though there is no traffic to be seen; the litre (and occasional two litre) bottles of sun cream SPF 30 or 50; how the cost of living is so much higher than in the UK; and, the similarity between Sydney and cities in England in the 60s – well at least it’s a decade ahead of NZ!
We bade farewell after a long and leisurely lunch, with Chris and Terry going shopping in Paddington – to get there they had to go across Hyde Park and along Oxford Street (unanswered question: did Chris buy an opal bracelet?) and us going on a ferry across the harbour to Manley where we had intended to do part of the Manley Scenic Walk but in the few minutes it took us to reach the Pacific coast from the wharf it had started raining and we really wanted to be fair-weather walkers today so we walked, under cover, around Manley which is a bit like Crouch End-on-sea with palm trees and something called a “kiss’n’ride” scheme. Can anyone explain what this is, please?

We caught the ferry back – it was no longer raining so we sat on deck and had some more stunning views of the iconic Harbour Bridge and Opera House, and then returned ‘home’ along George St, Alfred St, and Pitt St.