Travel: Botanic Gardens, Sydney

A friend told me about seeing the "United Buddy Bears" exhibition at Circular Quay, and we thought we'd take a look, only to find we'd missed them (that'll teach me to check with city search first)

Am I showing my age if I say I can remember when going to "town" was only done on special occasions and it seems like that still happens to us, we only go into town for something we can't get in the burbs, and so we rush to whatever and don't take time to look and enjoy.

So we decided to do the tourist thing in our home town and wander up past the Quay to the Botanic Gardens.



Halfway up the hill we came across a little park at Macquarie Place with the historic obelisk marking the point from which all roads out of Sydney were measured.




In the same park was a lovely piece of Victorian ironwork which I'm guessing once housed a drinking fountain



On one side was the admonition to "Keep the pavement dry"



and on the other side was a quote from St. John "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst"
...that's why I think it was a drinking fountain, duh!



Also in the same little triangle of park was a tree planted by Queen Elizabeth in 1954, it seems to have grown well in those 52 years since I remember standing outside my school on Victoria Road with the rest of the kids, for what seemed like hours, waiting to glimpse the Queen as she drove past, and in sheer boredom cheering and waving our flags at the truck drivers who gave us the royal wave in return.


I thought this a poignant reminder of royalty gone wrong while commercialism rules.



I really love old buildings and all the little features our ancestors used to adorn them. The new never seems to have the character of the old, I sometimes think I was born in the wrong era (even though I love my 'puter)



Along Bridge Street we found these gems:






and do you ever look down to what your feet are passing? Can't you just imagine Banjo Patterson sitting behind this window writing to Clancy while he listened to the 'ceaseless tramp of feet'.



At the top of Bridge Street we reached the Conservatorium of Music and the Government House gates entrance to the Botanic Gardens and the Domain, where the sign invites you to walk on the grass and hug the trees.


This is Government House with it's high tech security hedge

We headed straight down to the harbour first, Tom hasn't been fishing for a while so he needed his fix of harbour views

Within the park is a small lake where we could see enormous eels basking around the shallow edges, I think I read once where they come up from the harbour through the stormwater drains, also around the park are the next urban pest, the ibis, though not in the numbers I had expected.



The Victorian Australians loved monuments, sculptures and fountains...and were never happier than when they could combine the lot as a monumental sculpted fountain.

This drinking fountain was built in 1889 by the family of Lewis Wolfe Levy, businessman and philanthropist who migrated to Sydney from London in 1840 and was a member of the Legislative Council.
The water nymph is Diana and the base is red and grey granite cut and polished in Cornwall UK. It was restored in 1999.



The Macquarie Wall - in 1810, at the instigation of Governor Macquarie, work began on a wall 950 feet long, to separate the government domain from the town. Only this small portion of that wall now remains (and no longer keeps the riff raff out)





At the end of the Macquarie Wall is the Lion Gate guarded by a lion and lioness



As well as my love of old buildings, I've also got a thing about trees and the gardens have a collection from all over the world, I'll just post a couple of pictures here of my favourites, I have more of them on my Flickr site






and then we came on the BATS!!!

To be correct, they are Pteropus Poliocephalus or Flying Foxes commonly called Fruitbats.

I knew the Botanic Gardens has been battling the bat colony for years as it continues to expand and permanently damage the historic trees, but until you see them you could not imagine the number and area they have taken over.

Looking like some kind of strange alien seed pod they hang from the trees



and talk about noisy!! I thought bats slept all day, but they flew and wrestled and squabbled constantly and loudly.

The Botanic Gardens have been given a license from the NSW Parks and Wildlife service to use "non-harmful methods" to discourage the bats from nesting here - it hasn't been very successful to date - not sure what the methods are - I once had a friend who (30 years ago) ran a peach orchard outside of Sydney and they could lose half their crop in one night to bats which will fly up to 50 km a night looking for food before returning to their colony. Back then my friend didn't use "non-harmful methods" - she sat her teenage sons outside with .22's......

Here the bats were all over a very pretty flowering Chorisia Speciosa "Floss Silk Tree" from Brazil



Further along was another of those monumental fountains, topped with our first Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, and symbols of his nautical life.

including Britannia and these wonderful sea serpents


Phew...we are nearly there.....as we started back up toward Macquarie Street we passed the pyramid glass house

and reached the Palace Garden Gates

The story of the Garden Palace building I'll have to research for another time - I know it burnt down in the 1800's but I'm too pooped after loading all these photos to tell the story now.

Then out into Macquarie Street, a mix of new and old architecture, one of the more interesting buildings is the NSW branch of the British Medical Association
I know the symbol next to their name is supposed to be a cadeus, but it looks (more appropriately) like a dollar sign (Macquarie Street being the traditional stamping ground of 'specialist' doctors)


On the way back to the car park - some lovely mellow yellow Sydney sandstone


then driving through Sydney, under the monorail

to the Sydney Fish Markets at Pyrmont where we sat in the sun and had prawns, oysters and calamari while we wondered what the rich people were doing (they were probably eating the scampi at $50 kg - although the kg of prawns cost $25)




and that, friends, is where the camera battery died

I also have pics from the cacti garden within the Botanic Gardens but I'll save those for another post