Sydney Harbour - Salt Water Ferries - I just love the old yellow ferries. I am told the white new sleek ones are more expensive and to my mind less romantic. You can get a Daytripper pass that lets you combine train travel with bus and ferry and in that way negotiate the whole harbour with one ticket regarless of the mode of travel in that portion. On New Year's Eve watching the fireworks under the Harbour Bridge it was amazing there will no accidents with all the small craft mixing in the high speed ferries and my personal favourites the old yellow ferries.

Sydney - just beyond the narrow finger of land is the Pacific. The harbour ferry goes in the open water of the Pacific that flows into the harbour and there are big swells like out on the ocean when you are on the ferry.

Sydney in Distance - what a juxtaposition - pristine beaches and Sydney's skyscrappers just behind the hill on the horizon. Everywhere you look another sandy beach with clean clear water.

Sydney - Kayaking fans please note the kayaker in Sydney harbour. There were windsurfers and on Manly Beach surfers. The water is crystal clear. There are sharks in the harbour but people only swim between the flags in areas where life guards patrol the water and there are no undertows. Can you spot the hikers in the second photo?

Sydney - Beach Hiking - Some more shots of the awesome white sand beaches. You can see some of the Bankstown Bushwalking Club members ambling across the strand with their backpacks and wide brimmed hats.

Sydney - Hiking -

The image bottom right is the nice 'track' provided for hikers and the welcome shade. The sandy beaches devoid of people are awesome and if you have awesome vision you can see dogs frolicking in the surf. The dogs really get you into the spirit of the adventure of life.

Sydney - Hike from Spit to Manly - The Bankstown Bushwalking Club did the 9 km walk starting at the Spit, stopping at Manly Park for supper and finishing on the harbour ferry back to the Circular Quay. The pictures are presented in sequence from the Spit forward. Enjoy!

Rockdale Library - Princes Highway and Bryant St, Rockdale, NSW - Councillor Poulos introduced us to the newly purchased integrated library package called 'Spydus'. It was judged to be superior for helping the public locate their local history collection and for its services online. One of the local history books on display called "Cameos of Bexley" gave a cure for the flu pandemic that worked in 1918.

Bankstown - Christmas decorations at the Bankstown Train Station and the Bankstown City Library where I work complete with Kris Kringle and his helper. Its my first Christmas in the tropics.

City of Canterbury Library - Sydney - Australia - This is the vibrant and multicultural and very busy library where the 9 City Council launch of Audio-Read Navigator was launched Thurs. Dec. 7th. The nine local government library services cooperated to get a $149,000 AUS$ grant from the State Library of NSW to give housebound clients access to new technology that with a machine voice reads them the daily newspaper or audio books that they can have downloaded to the device by visiting a participating local public library such as Bankstown City Library where I work or they can visit the www.audio-read.com.au website and download once they have secured the permission to do so once the pilot project is over.

Mr. Ron Haddrick was the special guest and MC. He told amusing and intriguing stories about when he was an actor and worked with Sir John Gielgud and Sir Laurence Olivier for the Royal Shakespeare Company in England and when he worked for EMI, TGV, AWA, and ABC radio doing radio dramas on the fly. Lately he has been the voice for many children's audio productions for talking books.

Mr. Bernard Hemmings who is a Home Library Service patron and Audio-Read Navigator user spoke about his satisfaction with the technology and demonstrated its ease of use.

Olympic Park - Sydney - Even though the olympics took place here in 2000 the residents of Sydney hold it close to their hearts. It was two weeks of excitement and being the centre of the world's attention. The poles commemorate the volunteers and the tallies for different countries. I was surprised to read and remember that Australia ranked number one overall and with the most golds. The UK was 2nd and Spain 3rd. Canada came in 4th, the USA 5th and China 6th.


I am really attracted to all the exotic folliage like the big row of palm trees. Planning for the olympics saw trees planted years ahead so they would be an appropriate height at the time of the event. The 'torch' now has water coming out of it and has bands of gold giving the names of the athletes that won respectively gold, silver and bronze medals. You will note the overcast skys. We got some welcome showers. People who want to know will enjoy knowing the price of petrol is $1.13 AUS$ per litre.

Rookwood Cemetery - Western Sydney. This is a huge 300 hectare burial spot for over 600, 000 Australians starting in 1867. There are war memorials, memorial gardens for fallen war dead, educational tours and it provides a stop on ghost tours in Sydney. The first image is the pioneer portion. I just looked at one gravestone and it documented a British couple the man born in Suffolk and the woman born in Essex in the 1830s. You could clearly see the impact of WW1 on all family life. The second picture shows the lawn cemetery portion that gets regular maintenance and the exotic palm trees and Norfolk pines. The last image is the Jewish war memorial with remembrances of all the concentration camps: Babi-yar, Theresienstadt, Treblinka, Dachau, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen [to name just a few].
These are the words on the Jewish war memorial to the 6 million:

"This is in memory of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during the war 1939-1945. May the world never again witness such inhumanity of man against man."

Katoomba Falls - Just some more images of the awesome valley. It is deeper than the Grand Canyon and three times as old at 450 million years old. The trees are really tropical and include She-oaks, Mtn. Devil, Broadleaf Hakea, Heath Banksia, and Dillwynia. The sounds coming from the valley are tropical birds. There is a 14 year prison term for being responsible for causing a fire in the valley. Where I took the Skyway tram they were serving crocodile pizza.

Birrong, NSW, Australia - This BLOG documents my 12 week job exchange at Bankstown City Library. I live in Birrong and take the train into Bankstown every day. The top two pictures depict what I see out my accomodation front door on Hill Road. All the bird calls are exotically different. I love the gardenias that grow as shrubs.

These are typical train stations. I bought my ticket using an automated machine that accepts bills and spits out the weekly ticket and correct change. Took the train to the Olympic Square which involved several transfers. I have been on the job two days and in that time participated in a DIS-Ability Library Promotion at Bankstown Centro and training on the Stock Taking week underway now.

Katoomba - Blue Mtns., NSW, Australia
These are the Three Sisters mountain outcroppings at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains slightly north and west of Sydney. Fortunately it had been lightly raining that morning so the fires and smoke were abated from the drought and sweltering heat just the day before.



I had the courage to take the Skyway tram over the valley and got some excellent shots of a pinnacle of land that has remained there for 450 million years. You can see a ridge way off in the distance.