Koalas and Tosca February 18

Wednesday, February 18

Up early for an 8:00 lecture on the trains of Australia.  More than I ever thought I wanted to know about the trains of Australia, but when a lecturer is entertaining and makes the material interesting, well I was intrigued.  There’s a fascinating history, especially of the gauges, and it wasn’t possible to go all the way across Australia on one train until the 1960’s.  He made it fun to learn!

We then went to the Sydney zoo, located on a hillside across the bridge from downtown.  Cleverly designed, you start at the top and walk down past extremely well-done exhibits.  We spent all of our time on the fauna indigenous to Australia, and had a great time! 

Who knew there is such a thing as a tree kangaroo?

Australia has giant pelicans:

But everyone’s favorites were the koalas.  These absolutely adorable non-bears live in trees and sleep 20 hours a day!  They eat only the fresh new-grown leaves of the eucalyptus tree.  We saw a number:

Of course there were lots of kangaroos and their cousin marsupials, wallabies which are a bit smaller and have different shaped faces.  Here’s a pregnant kangaroo:

Resting kangaroos:

And wallaby:

There’s an evolutionarily fascinating pair of animals unique to Australia which are egg-laying mammals: the duck-billed platypus and the spiny anteater.  They belong to a class of animals called monotremes and while they have mammary glands they don’t have nipples.  They probably represent a link between reptiles and true mammals, and their story is fascinating.  I was unable to get a good photo of the duck-billed platypus, but here’s one of the spiny anteater:

We had a reptile demonstration:

After lunch at the zoo we took the ferry back to the Sydney Bay area and spent a couple of hours shopping.  Australia is known for its opals, and we had a shop recommended to us where Joyce got a lovely pair of opal earrings. 

Back to the hotel for an early dinner and then Tosca at the Opera House.  We had wonderful seats, 16^th row orchestra just right of center.  This production placed Tosca in 1943 German-occupied Rome, and it worked quite well and didn’t feel forced.  The production was absolutely wonderful!  My only complaint was that the tenor playing Cavaradossi, one Diego Torre, looked as if he weighed 350 lbs. and his obesity interfered with his ability to move.  His acting was poor and his love duets with Tosca were not believable (she couldn’t reach her arms around him), but his voice was spectacular.  Scarpia as a sadistic Nazi officer really played well—there’s amazing evil always, isn’t there.  It was an extremely enjoyable production with great singing, great acting and beautiful sets.  The orchestra was terrific and the conductor, Nicholas Milton, had everything under great control.  A real treat.  It was a sell-out; interesting that it’s a mid-summer season.  In the USA we have symphony, ballet and opera out of the big cities in the summer.

Back to the hotel after 11:00 PM, up early tomorrow as we need to pack.  We leave for the airport at 8 AM after breakfast for our flight to Perth where it’s 3 hours earlier.  So if we get up at 6:00 it will be as if we got up at 3:00 AM.  Huh!  More then.