The rest of our Sydney adventures

My Aussie "mate" Cettina (I know her from my dig in Pompeii) continued her amazing tour guiding and rounded out the rest of our long weekend in Sydney. She took us to lunch up on the Sydney Tower, which is a rotating room that gave us an amazing 360 look at Sydney. At the buffet lunch I tried, among many other things, my first taste of kangaroo.

After, we all went to the Sydney Aquarium, where Carlyn's life was threatened by a crocodile (not really) and I joined the five year olds in their exclamations over anything that resembled characters from Finding Nemo (yes, really). Undoubtedly the best part of the tour was a tank equipped with underwater tunnels that allowed a ridiculously close view of a lot of ridiculously sharp teeth. Here's to hoping that we never get any nearer to Australia's natural dangers.

We've gone even a bit more primitive than the aquarium, as we've left Sydney for the wilderness of Tassie. We arrived late yesterday night and were greeted by a small hailstorm as we walked off the plane (we seem to be the bearers of bad weather). While this might not fit into our idealized notion of missing winter while we traveled, the atmosphere here in the lovely farmhouse we are working on is wonderful.

The family we are staying with not only has a young Irish couple working here, but they also have two HUGE Newfoundland dogs (one is 75 kilos...), another dog, and two cats. Two horses and a chicken coup round out the group. Still no sight though of the Tassie wildlife - wallabies, bandicoots, and, of course, the Tasmanian Devil.