Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oy, Oy-vay...

So January 26 was Australia Day.  It was a day off from work and a Thursday.  They refer to the following Friday here as "Sickie Day".  That's the day everyone calls in sick to work.  Unfortunately, I went to work. Contrary to my previous blog I do know why January 26 is Australia Day.  Apparently, that is the day that the first ships carrying prisoners from England arrived in what would later become Sydney.  But yesterday was lovely.

As a matter of fact the last few days have been stupendous.  Here's a brief run-down:

 A couple days ago Nad and I went to our beach to watch the sunset.  There were lots of sail boats and it was a lovely evening.

 Shortly after this picture was taken, but well after the camera was turned off and put away, we saw a dolphin about 30 meters away.  At one point it lept entirely out of the water.  Amazing.

 On the morning of Australia Day we went to the beach.  Despite being 40 degrees out the conditions were near perfect.  The water was calm, clear and warm and there was a slight breeze. 

We were at the beach for about 2 hours and we spent probably all but 15 minutes in the water.

 

Later that evening we went down the river to watch the Skyworks.  Skyworks, as it turns out is the fireworks display preceeded by an air show, water vehicles, performing water skiers, live music, performers, a kids area, etc.

                        

 On one side of us is the CBD and on the other is the river.

 Here's Nad and Keva on the boardwalk near the festivities and the giant, freak rubber ducky plotting to take over the world.

 There was quite an airshow including fighter jets, vintage aircraft, helicopters and commercial planes.

 You could even get a ride on a camel.

 Although you can't see, there's a helicopter pulling an enormous flag.

 And here is a parachuter pulling a much less enormous flag.

As the evening went on the sky got darker and darker, not just from the sun setting but also the storm clouds coming in.  Just before the fireworks were set to start the sky opened up and we were deluged.  On the one hand it was nice because it cooled everything down.  On the other hand, no matter what the temperature there's something unpleasant about getting rained on.

 The fireworks were interesting.  Most of them were being launched from the river but some were being launched from the skyscrapers behind us.  Not only that but there was some lightning in the distance so that no matter where you looked there was something exploding in the sky to music. It truly was "Skyworks".

 We managed to arrive almost 3 hours before the fireworks began.  As a result, we got a good parking spot, found a tremendous vantage point to watch the fireworks and got something to eat before it all kicked off.  Unfortunately, about 10 minutes prior to the fireworks starting we had about 100 late-comers stand right in front of us.  Many of them were texting or talking to their friends rather than watching the fire works  Regardless, it was still pretty good.  The crowd in general was a mixed bag.  There were families, there were teens, there were people that had obviously been celebrating far too long already and there were plenty of Bogans (Aussie slang for 'white trash' if you'll pardon the expression).

When the show was over it was quite a crush of people.  I heard that the estimated crowd was about 250,000.  It's not a particularly big area either.  Regardless, the crowd dissipated quickly and we were home by 9pm.

Overall, the crowd was well behaved and quite patriotic. There were several jingoist cries of "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie.  Oy, Oy, Oy!"  Basically the Australian equivalent of "U-S-A! U-S-A!" or "Eh, Oh, Canada, Go!"  Okay, maybe not the last one.



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