Sydney (Australia)

We flew from Singapore at 8 o'clock in the evening and arrived at Sydney airport at around 6 am local time with sleepy heads on us. Luckily, there was a shuttle buses that took us straight from the airport to right outside the door of our hostel, where we landed at around 9 o'clock. We spent most of our first day in Sydney walking around the main city area and sitting in a park on Mrs. Macquarie's Point overlooking Farm Cove with the harbour and the opera house in the background. The next morning we headed on a free walking tour of the city that took us all around the main sights including the Sydney Harbour, the opera house, and the Rocks. In the middle of the tour, we stopped for a break in Australia Square and happened to bump into the one and only Alf Stewart (yea, I know that's not his real name)! It's not lost on us that the chances of meeting such a famous Australian face on our first day in the country are probably fairly slim. We also met another familiar face in Sydney in the form of Charlie Robinson, an old friend of ours from our days in UCD. For the next couple of days, we stayed with some relatives of mine who live in a lovely spot in the suburbs (Kirrawee, near Cronulla Beach) just south of the city. On our first night, we were welcomed with a top-class family barbeque, where we got to meet some of my distant cousins who really made us feel part of the Australian Purcell family! After another day of exploring the city (including a walk around Darling Harbour), and another Purcell family dinner, we said our goodbyes and flew to Perth.

 

The views of Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House from Mrs. Macquarie's Point 

With the man himself

Harbour Bridge again

 

And the Opera House again

The city from the Opera House

This statue of Queen Victoria sat outside Leinster House (Irish parliament building) until 1947 but was given as a gift to the Australian government once Ireland became a republic