Australia Day!

 January 26, 2011

Senne's Summary: It's Australia Day! We had a nice long walk, saw some live music, and beautiful fireworks.

Today is Australia Day! We decided just to spend the day walking around because so many sites had things going on… live music, shows, etc.

When we finally got moving we headed towards Darling Harbour first. As we passed the many fountains we noticed that there were a lot more people out, and a lot more kids swimming in the fountains.

We stopped at the harbour and sat and listened to a band. We were able to sit with our feet dangling in the water of the harbour while we listened. Of course the whole time my feet were in the water I was thinking about sharks because we had seen the shark exhibit in the museum a few days earlier and historically sharks have come into the harbour 😀 After we listened to the band for a while we decided to walk to another venue (luckily our toes were all still intact… no sharks in the harbour today!)

We headed across a big bridge and through the city streets to the area called "The Rocks". On the way there we tried to get some money out of the bank machine… but it wouldn't let us! BAD bank machine. We tried multiple machines down the street and none of them worked. Hmmmm. This was quite distracting for us because we knew there was money in the account. (Don’t worry… it’s not because we’ve run out 😉)

We walked around “The Rocks” and saw more live music. There was a karaoke stage… sigh… why do people feel compelled to do that? There was also another very strange band singing a song about how they were men and able to grow beards… It was entertaining anyway 😀

We eventually got to a nice viewpoint where we could see the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. It was very picturesque.

We decided to head back to the hotel so we could phone the bank and have a rest before we headed out to the fireworks tonight.

We did get a hold of the bank and it turns out we used Steve’s bank card in a “compromised machine” so the bank put a stop on his card. Luckily, mine still works fine, so it’s all good!

After a bit of a rest (I’m still trying to get rid of this annoying cough) we headed back down to Darling Harbour for the fireworks show. It was really crowded and hot! Even though it was dark out already, I could still feel sweat dripping down my back the whole time! The show started with some sailboats lit up by lights sailing around kind of like a little boat ballet.

On the boats were an orchestra, a choir and a soloist who had an amazing voice (he looked like he was about 10 years old!). The fireworks were all set to music and were really amazing.

They had some really cool twinkly ones which I really enjoyed. All in all we enjoyed our first Australia Day.