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Saturday 18 April 2009
AustraliaWalkingBy Boat

Clare McEwan (the organizer of the Air Safari) had a suggestion for my days in Sydney: take the ferry Manly and have a look around. And since he’s been around this place more then I have, I will follow up on his recommendation. So here we go to find the Ferry. It’s an interesting concept: this boat never turns around; it just uses the other propeller I guess.

A 30 minute journey results in this:

And then you end up in Manly. And this place has a beach, the so called Manly Beach (although they have a good sense of humor, they are not very creative over here). It’s quite busy on the beach already when I arrive. A lot of parents with their children (it’s school holiday in this state).

There’s also quite a bit of surfing going on here. But before you can ride the waves you will have to learn how to stand up on your board. Here’s a small group getting their instructions on the basics. Lie down, peddle, push up and then jump into the standing up position.

Yeah right… Most of them couldn’t even do so while they were on the beach.

That’s going to be a lot of fun when they get into the wet.

Well if you practice enough, you might end up with this group and do like they do…

It’s not only surfing, swimming or getting a tan, there’s also some quite fanatic beach volley ball game going on here.

So what’s more in Manly? Well, shops of course! Everything you need when going to the beach (or pretending you are going to the beach).

After all that excitement it was time to catch the ferry back to “my harbor”; Circular Quay.

The next thing on my list today: I want to get on the Sydney Tower (www.sydneytower.com.au). When I got to the tower it was extremely busy. It looked like they just dumped 10 busloads of Asians here… But then I got my tickets and up we go. Ten people in a small elevator up to the observation deck. It only takes about 40 seconds, but since you can’t see a thing while you’re in the elevator, it’s not a very pleasant ride. After that, this is what you get:

As you can see, it was already getting dark. Therefore I decided to stay here until the sun had set and try to take some night shots as well.

During my stay, there was a helicopter constantly circling around the tower. At some point it hovered very close to it as well. He for sure did not meet the minimum distance requirements that I need to take into account when flying…

It’s difficult to take nice shots at night. You can’t bring tripods up here, there’s too much light inside from the coffee corner and shops and about a million people are here and making all sorts of marks on the windows.

After enjoying the views it was time for the next event I booked: the OzTrek ride. Well what can I say about that? It’s good fun, but it’s not worth what I paid for it… Perhaps there were just too many Chinese/Japanese around.

That was the fun for today. Clare was right: it’s nice to visit Manly. And if you can: visit this tower. The views are just fantastic.

The Ferry to Manly:

Friday 18 April 2009

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