Taragona Zoo

Took a hike over to Taragona Zoo on Sunday. Usually I'm not one to visit a zoo, but because of many recommendations I decided to. Price tag of 40 bucks was hefty but once in, I was glad that I came. I should note that there are some ways to get discounts; ordering tix online saves 2 bucks a ticket, using a mastercard to pay for the tixs saves you 15%, or if you are a student you get 17 dollars off ticket price). Not only did the zoo boast incredible views of downtown sydney, the opera house, and bridge, but the amount of animals and facilities were impressive. My favorite exhibits where the birds, apes, and seeing a koola was neat as well.
All the koolas were asleep, but it's to be expected since they sleep 20 hours and eat for 4. The aboriginals thought that the koolas slept this much because they were drunk from the formented eucalyptus leaves, but not true. Apparently eucalyptus leaves are very hard to digest, so their bodies shutdown to digest their food.





I had to put this last photo in. Oskar was trying to get a picture of the stuffed koala but caught what looks like a very naught act.

Curl Curl Beach

Drove North this weekend and checked out some other beaches. Beautiful with surfers everywhere.
After stopping at Curl Curl Beach (pictured below) we drove to the North Head of Sydney Harbor and spotted 2 Humback Whales, either a mother and child or male and female, cause one was quite a bit larger than the other. It was exciting since it's my first whale sighting in Sydney. They can usually be seen here from May - October then migrate down to Antartica.

Growing Roots in Sydney

Made it safetly to Sydney and have settled in Oskar and Mine's new accomodation in Balmoral(house pictured below), just north of Sydney. We are a half a block away from the beach, cafes/restaurants, and art classes just up the hill. Needless to say, I'm in heaven. Instead of pigeons and rats they have parots and spiders. I haven't seen any spiders yet, but I have seen some really incredible birds. Like this colored parrot pictured below. He and his partner were collecting seeds from the tree in our front yard. I've also seen a really large white cuckatoo (which made loud screeching noises) and a couple of kuckaberras (not photographed below).

I've started my art classes at NSA, Northshore School of Art and am really happy with it so far. My teacher has given loads of information on local contemporary artists and some history on native art. I'm going to ART SYDNEY next weekend which should give me a really good grasp on contemporary art in NSW. Looking forward to it. She also told me about these long weekend trips that drive you into the desert, camp, and paint/photograph desert scenes; which sounds incredible. I'll look into that.

1 week in California... From the OC to San Fran

First visit out to California and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Spent 2 days in Orange County with family members, then rented a car and worked my way up along the Pacific Coast Highway, to San Luis Obispo, Carmel,Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Finally San Francisco. Perfect pre-cursor to our trip out to Australia.