Tasmania to Tokyo – Sydney – Day 4 can be found here.
Up at 6:45 am so that we can make the most of our last full day in Sydney.
Hard to believe that our time here has passed so quickly. The phrase “barely scratched the surface” comes to mind, but I don’t think we’ve even done that. Our mark on Sydney is a microscopic dot that might be mistaken for dust. It’s almost as though one should allow more than three full days in a world-class city.
Ah, well. Nice to have a reason to come back.
No time for leisurely cafe breakfasts this morning – we have a ‘red panda encounter’ at the Sydney Zoo just after 9 am. Given the vagaries of traffic, we elect to leave ourselves an hour – or more – get down that way via Uber.
Hotel breakfast goes as quickly as we’d hoped. We were again able to pre-book the breakfast the day before, which should offer us a deal off the adults’ rates – AUD$30 instead of AUD$45.
We call the Uber shortly before 8 am, and we are soon on our way. Surge pricing is in effect, so we’ll pay AUD$110 for the 40 minute car ride. The alternative is two hours via public transit. Our time here is already limited, so we opt for the Uber.
We’re briefly snarled in city traffic, but soon find ourselves on the fast moving highway. We arrive roughly 30 minutes before opening. We line up 15 minutes before, and then we’re soon ushered to guest services where we sign our waivers and pick up our lanyards for the red panda encounter. Then we’re off to explore:
Sydney Zoo was established in 2015. It’s a private zoo, but operates under the strict supervision of the Animal Welfare Unit of the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) and the key zoo industry body in Australasia, the Zoo and Aquarium Association (ZAA).
Their large enclosures with plenty of enrichment activities make a strong first impression, as do their beautiful animals:
We’re due at the red panda meeting spot at 9:20 am, and show up promptly – but no sign of our keeper. We flag down another keeper, who explains that it’s a 9:20-for-9:30 kind of situation. The perils of being punctual. At least there are capybaras to watch:
Fun fact – the capybara is closely related to the guinea pig.
The red panda keeper does show up promptly at 9:30 am, and informs us that the red panda has not yet come down from her tree. He offers to have the zoo call us when she’s ready – except that would cost an extra $15 on our irritatingly expensive Canadian roaming plans. We settle for meeting back every 30 minutes for updates.
The tiger shows up briefly, but moves too quickly for me to get more than a single in-motion shot:
Off to the Africa section:
The lions seem very interested in the baby giraffe that’s recently entered the neighbouring enclosure:
Also – baby hyenas!
While there’s nothing quite as epic as a real-world safari, zoo visits are still a great way to practice wildlife photography.
I’ve brought my 24 – 200 mm f4 – 6.3 lens – or in English, it goes from wide-angle to a 8x zoom, and it needs a fair bit of light to work well. It’s much heavier than my walking-around 28 mm, but not nearly as weighty as my 180 – 600 mm. This is my “swiss army knife” of lenses, which I used throughout our Antarctica to Zimbabwe trip.
Back to the red panda enclosure. Good news, Tashi (the red panda) has started coming down the tree! The keeper expects that she will be fully down in another 30 minutes.
Off we go for some further explorations:
Another 30 minutes passes quickly, and we once more return to the meeting point. Tashi is ready for our visit!
We go follow the keeper into the backstage area, where he explains the rules of today’s animal encounter – we need to be very careful not to let Tashi escape, as she will gladly do so given the opportunity (and make a beeline for the food court). To this end, there is an airlock to prevent her from having direct access to the outside world. She too has a lovely enclosure with plenty of enrichment activities.
We need to sanitize our hands before entering, and to be aware that she is going to snuffle over and check us out when we first arrive. We get the chance to feed her and to gently stroke her fur – though not her ears or her face – and we are warned not to try to hug her. This goes without saying, but apparently people do try if not warned in advance.
As a defence mechanism, red pandas will also go up on their hind legs and raise their paws in the air. The keeper reminds us that they only do this when truly terrified, so it’s not something we should attempt to get her to do. Again, it feels like this should go without saying – but for every rule, there’s a reason.
(My wife adds another rule – don’t try to steal the red panda, because she is adorable.)
Red pandas are actually more closely related to raccoons then they are to pandas. The word “panda” comes from the Nepali word “ponya”, which means “eater of bamboo”. And in this regard, “panda” is a fitting term – though Tashi is particularly fond of sweet potatoes. Blueberries are her absolute favourite food, and they will put medicine in them when needed.
She almost reminds me of Stitch (from Lilo and Stitch), and I’m amazed at the dexterity with which she uses her paws. She’s able to easily clutch the little sticks of sweet potato.
Once feeding time is done, the keeper has us show our hands to assure her that we are not holding out on her. She runs around to give everyone a final inspection – and the keeper gets one final final inspection – before she heads back out to her enclosure.
I’m generally very wary of any encounters that allow people to get close to wild animals, but I think the Sydney Zoo did a great job of protecting the wellbeing of the animals involved – there were plenty of reasonable, well-thought-out rules to ensure Tashi’s safety and comfort.
It’s also entirely left up to the animal if they want to participate – if she had decided to spend the entire time snoozing in a tree we would have had a few options from switching to a different day, different animal (depending on availability) or a refund.
With our red panda encounter behind us, we return to the otter area just in time for feeding:
We then proceed through the aquarium area, the nocturnal area, and the Australian area:
I’d say that the koala space seemed a bit cramped, but generally the enclosures were spacious and well-designed.
Wallabies!
And dingos!
And kangaroos too, even though they look as though they are trying to seduce you:
“Paint me like one of your French marsupials…”
We were closing in on lunch at this point, so we grabbed another Uber to head back to Sydney. AUD$90 this time as surge pricing was no longer in effect. We’d wondered how long it might take before they picked us up, but it took less than 5 minutes.
We had the driver drop us off at Ribs and Burgers once more.
The kids each had a regular burger (not pictured), as well as an Oreo milkshake:
I had a chicken burger:
And my wife had the wrap:
All about what you’d expect – tasty, but nothing to write home about.
Then off to the Musuem of Contemporary Art.
We’d initially struggled to find tickets for today, but then realized that Wednesdays are free days – today’s is sponsored by Telstra.
We are allowed to keep our backpacks with us, but have to wear them on the front so as to discourage pickpockets or banging into exhibits. Fair enough.
There’s a special exhibit on currently regarding art and artificial intelligence. It’s intriguing and thought provoking, but also disturbing on some fundamental level.
Though we do enjoy the exhibit where you can enter in a sentence about a dream you had, and the AI interprets it in a wave of colour and movement.
There are also more traditional exhibits too, some of which are quite striking:
I’m glad we went, but I’m also glad that we didn’t have to pay the all-access pass of AUD$35 per adult. That would have felt expensive given the scope of the exhibits. While some of the works were quite striking, others were – less so. I asked my wife how she would describe it, and she simply said “Art is in the eye of the beholder.” Very true.
Back to the hotel for a spell to work on reading / writing / homework. While enroute, Qantas informs us that our flight is now available for check-in. No notice on our business class upgrade request, however.
Some research indicates that this can come in quite a bit later – potentially only 3 hours in advance. We’re still hopeful, as Qantas can be quite particular when it comes to weight limits on carry-on bags and this would save us some overage charges. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Off for one last dinner – this time at Ventuno. (Big thanks to @MrsWaldo for the recommendation.)
Image Credit: Ventuno
Image Credit: Ventuno
We start with the foccacina:
Service is quite good. The mains take a while to arrive, but we’re not in any rush. Our daughter has the prawns:
My son has a margarita pizza:
I have the gamberi pizza:
And my wife has the ravioli:
All very tasty, though the gamberi pizza was quite spicy.
After dinner, we take a wander in search of yesterday’s ice cream truck – which has since relocated. Ah, well. It’s nice to have one last leg stretch along the waterfront.
Then back to hotel room to start packing up. Still no word from Qantas regarding our upgrade, so the baggage question is becoming urgent – and it reads like a bad math problem:
A family has 352 pounds of luggage spread across 5 checked bags, 4 carry-on bags, and 4 personal items. Qantas includes 4 checked bags up to 50.7 pounds each. Carry-on bags and personal items cannot exceed 30.8 pounds combined, with no individual item to exceed 22 pounds. Each extra bag costs AUD$75 each way if booked online at least 3 hours before the flight but AUD$150 if paying at the airport, and an overweight bag costs AUD$60. What is the optimal arrangement of luggage to minimize overage costs?
Numbers dance in our heads as we drift off to sleep.
Continue reading Tasmania to Tokyo – Sydney / Hobart – Day 6.