Cockatoo Island ...

Entering Cockatoo Island

Since I've been spending a few months of each year in Sydney, I really haven't gotten to know the city as well as I could (should) have.  For a few reasons - Manly is just so lovely that it's hard to leave, I'm often busy on weekends with studying and I also visit family and friends in Melbourne quite regularly.  So, it's no surprise that I'd never heard of Cockatoo Island.  Then Mum came to visit and did an excellent job of playing tourist and giving me some suggestions of fun adventures to be had in the Sydney area.  Luckily, C arrived not long after Mum left, so I was able to take that opportunity to explore a little further afield than Manly.

Camping ... nice view of the Harbour Bridge

C takes the audio tour

By far our most adventurous trip was on the ferry out to Cockatoo Island, which sits in the middle of the Sydney Harbour.  From Mum's description, I was intrigued about the island due to the fact that you can camp there, they often stage art exhibitions and the history sounded really unusual.  Plus, the island has recently (2010) been declared a World Heritage site.  We chose to do an audio tour of the island because we're both nerds although we were both interested in different aspects of the history - C was interested in the ship building side (yawn) and I was into the convict history.  The island has also been a reformatory and industrial school.

Convict buildings

The Island Bar

Half way thorough our tour, we stopped at the Island Bar to refuel with pizza and bubbles (beer for the boy).  My enthusiasm for continuing the audio tour was somewhat dulled after several glasses of bubbly - an afternoon nap was more what I had in mind - but I tagged along as C finished the rest of the tour.  Our trip to Cockatoo Island was the main touristy thing we did in Sydney, mainly due to the small window of lovely weather.  The rest of our time in Sydney was spent inside - at art galleries, shops and cafe.  It also appears unlikely that I'll get to play tourist very often in my last few weeks in Sydney because they are jam packed with visitors here, trips away and, the not so exciting, study.

My favourite part of the audio tour ...