In the Land of Oz (Part 2 - Sydney ... sharks, jellyfish and a sneaky platypus or two)

[Now that I've FINALLY got the pictures working, I'm going to break up the travelogue a bit to make things easier to post. Please bear with me as I try and sort things out ....]

The next day – Sunday, I think – we ended up at the Sydney Aquarium. Expensive, but well worth a visit. Among other things, they had about a gazillion different kinds of tropical fish (small, pretty, and very quick)...

a crocodile (big, lazy, lots of teeth)...


a variety of sharks (big, lazy, lots of teeth),

and some electric-blue jellyfish (big, lazy, no teeth at all).

And that's not all. There was also live coral (not so big, very lazy, teeth TBD), a few impressive eels (big, NOT lazy, too scared to look at the teeth), some Fairy Penguins (little, cute, VERY not lazy, and no teeth but some pretty sharp-looking beaks), and, finally, a couple very adorable platypuses -- or do I mean platypi? (not as big as I thought they'd be, surprisingly lively, and EXTREMELY hard to photograph - as you can tell!).


There were even two underwater tunnels where you could watch the seals (in one pool)...

and sharks and other dangerous-looking critters (in another pool) swim right over top of the crowd.

[All of the seals, BTW, were ones who had been injured or who had formerly worked in shows and wouldn't have been able to survive in the wild. They lived in a fairly large saltwater pool that mimicked their natural environment, at least according to the posters …] Apparently, the sharks really enjoyed the way the water current flowed over the tunnels – it was like a Jacuzzi, I suppose – so you’d often see them plastered on top of them just hanging out - like this ...


TO BE CONTINUED …