City by the Harbour: Sydney

Fireworks over Sydney Harbour during the 2000 Olympics closing ceremonies. 

When I travel with K-State's Department of Animal Science to the Land Down Under, one of the highlights of the trip will be visiting Sydney.

The landmark most people instantly associate with the city is the iconic Sydney Opera House, but just to the west lies an older, lesser known structure: the Sydney Harbour Bridge. 

Constructed in 1932, Harbour Bridge is a link between the cultural hub of the city to residential areas in the north. It is known as the "Coathanger" by locals and took over 50 years to pay off with a toll charged to those who traveled the 1,650 ft. long bridge. Just this past week the bridge that is famous for its climbs celebrated its 80th birthday.

A kangaroo hoodie for those who might need one. 

We will be visiting Sydney in May when average monthly rainfall is 3.86 inches and the average daily temperature is between 52 to 67  °F. Be sure to bring a light jacket or hoodie for those cool Australian evenings. And if you wear a hoodie you can pretend you're a kangaroo with the convenient pouch located on the front.

Also, Sydney is 14 hours ahead of Kansas so we'll need to move our watches forward to compensate for the change.


In 2000, Sydney was the host of the Summer Olympics, marking the second time Australia had hosted the games with Melbourne hosting in 1956. Some of the memorable moments from the Sydney games included: USA's Rulon Gardner upsetting Russian Alexander Karelin in Greco-Roman wrestling, Australian Cathy Freeman winning the 400 meter dash after lighting the Olympic Flame, in 200 meter freestyle swimming the Netherland's Pieter van den Hoogenband beat Australia's Ian Thorpe's world record in the semi-finals and in the finals Thorpe lost by half a second to Van den Hoogenband who swam the exact same world record pace.

An example of a public "dunny" in Australia.

Public bathrooms will also be an adventure as Sydney has quite a few of these pay to use facilities located throughout the city. Each one of the public dunnies, as they are called in Australia, cost 50 cents per use. To help keep weary souls from getting lost in the bush there are over 14,000 public outhouses spread across Australia. Patrons get 20 minutes to utilize the facilities before lights and alarms sound to warn them that the door will open, so it's squat or get off the pot.  

Well until next time, no worries mate and happy trails!

Every Man A Wildcat in Australia: or EMAW in AUS

G'day!

This is a blog I've created for my travels with Kansas State University to Australia.

Here is a map that shows the cities we'll be visiting

My trip is with the Animal Science Department so it will be a mix of agriculture focused stops with the more typical touristy visits sprinkled in too. I will be spending over a week and a half in the eastern portion of the Land Down Under visiting cattle and sheep stations on the way from Melbourne to Cairns and everywhere in between.

Some other highlights include these stops: Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary, Tjapukai Cultural Center, Carlton & United Brewery and snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef, along with a number of other interesting visits.

During my journey I'll try to keep y'all up to date with stories, plenty of pictures and maybe even some video of our travels. But until then here's a classic video from Men at Work on life in Australia.

Now I'm going to have to get a vegemite sandwich when I'm there. 

Enjoy and until next time, happy trails!