Hurray, a day off. Tourism here we come!!

Immy and I spent/wasted the whole of Saturday zooming here there and everywhere around the Manly area looking at houses yesterday. They have an odd system here that you can't just got to an estate agents, look at house listings and then go and take a looke around, decide you like and say "yep, I'll take this one". Oh no, that is far too inconvenient for the precious estate agents, after all, all that show people around and actually earning a living might get in the way of Doug their nails and choosing sharp suits. So instead you, as the punter, are required to come along to open house viewings at times that suit the estate agents. Except the only time that suits them is a Saturday. And because they have so many properties to cover in the same day (because they couldn't be bothered all week) you only get a fifteen minute window to look at each before the agent locks and scurries off....whether you are finished or not!!

Well here's an idea people - meet people during the week, or spread the opendays through the week so that a swarm of 50 people don't have to race across town all day trying to fit in all the viewings...and usually missing half of them.

Anyway, with that tedious day behind us, and too tired of house hunting to start again this morning we decided to be tourists for a day and headed to Sydney Aquarium. And it was cracking!! Yes it was just another city aquerium with loads of big tanks, walk threw tunnels and a penguin enclosure like so many other such places. But there were two things that really caught me.

First was the way the place was 'constructed'. The main entrance, shop, cafe and smaller tanks were all on the quay in Darling Harbour. However the two major exibits, which were huge tanks containing sharks in one and Dugongs in the other, were two huge barges with the big tanks entirely self contained. Genius! It appears a great idea to me because it saves loads of space quay side but also allows the aquarium to have third barge off somewhere else being prepared for the next display (if they ever change them that is) and just towed into place ready to go with minimum disruption to the service. That's brilliant in my book.

The other was the dougong tanks. It was great to see these creatures, the possible presence of which had plagued a project of mine in UAQ. But what really amazed me having seen these creatures in the flesh was the theory that they are the source of the mermaid legends.

I mean, how long would you have to be at sea, and how despirate would a sailor have to be for a bit of 'companionship' to mistake these huge lumps of blubber for the beautifully nubile mermaids we see depicted in Coppenhagen!!






Or maybe it says a lot more about the sort of women the sailors were leaving behind....I mean...dougongs have WISKERS!!

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