Koalas and kangaroos

Today the kids and Jeremy went swimming at a really cool public beach. It has a circular walkway enclosing part of the sea, which has a net hanging underneath it that stretches down to the sea bed and keeps out the jelly fish. (They call them stingers here and there are a lot of them.) The jellies we have seen are all harmless ones though so they are just cool to watch. The beach also has a nice bit of sand, showers and a bit of grass to play on plus two rafts floating in the water.

While the kids were there, Rachael, Linda and Chris went to the gym for an hour of aerobics and an hour of personal training. The personal training involved a new toy Linda bought called the TX trainer. It is basically two ropes that you fasten to a hook on the wall. You than grasp these ropes in various positions and, using your own body weight, perform a variety of moves like sit-ups, push-ups and bicep curls. Needless to say, Rachael has quite a bit of soreness today!

In the afternoon we went out for lunch at a place that has a sushi train. The chefs make a variety of rolls and sashimi and put them on little plates. The plates are color-coded so you know how much each dish costs. You then just grab the plates you want as the moving belt goes by your seat. Delicious. We then moved on to Sydney Wildlife World. It is next to the Aquarium and specializes in the animals of Australia. Australia is unusual in that it has more animals active in the night-time than the daytime and also has more venomous snakes than harmless ones. (65% of all snakes in Australia are venomous.) All other continents are the opposite. We saw lots of little hopping marsupials, snakes, insects and of course koalas and kangaroos. The kids also had some aboriginal painting done on their arms.

On the walk back home we went to the botanical gardens again in the hopes of seeing the bats that we watched fly by the apartment the other night. We thought they would be hard to spot but suddenly about 1000 huge bats appeared hanging in all the trees. They were called grey-faced flying foxes and they were enormous. They have a wingspan of 4½ feet! They were starting to stir and we watched them for ages. Very cool. Then a quick stop at Harry's Cafe de Wheels for a veggie pie. Slept like logs again.