SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

After several days in Sydney, we figured it would be good to get out of the city for a bit and check out the surrounding area, so we started this morning with a brief stop at world-famous Bondi (pronounced bond-eye) Beach. We walked down the ocean and watched the surfers for a bit, but no one really wanted to spend a day at the beach, so we piled back in the car and drove north about a half-hour to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, where there are some nice forested areas and walking trails. I figured this would be the best chance for Tom to see some kangaroos in the wild while he was here, and sure enough, right outside the visitor’s center were two wallabies poking around in the bushes! These were the first we’ve seen that actually had joeys in their pouches, which was really neat to see. One of the joeys was so big, in fact, that its feet were sticking out of the pouch the whole time, and the pouch was just about dragging on the ground! The mother wallaby must have been hating that.

We then stopped for lunch at a marina in the strangely-named town of Bobbin Head, then drove through the park to the West Head Lookout, a high point of land that overlooks the ocean and several islands. It’s apparently a great place for whale-watching, although it’s not the right season for that. Our last stop was the Red Hands Cave, an aboriginal site with red handprints on a rock overhang, possibly dating back several thousand years.