Sydney - Part Two
05 - 07 January 2023
Julie examining the Vasa at the Lego Brickwrecks exhibit at the Australia Maritime MuSEAum
After our visit to the Blue Mountains we got another couple of days in Sydney.
Anthony always wanted to climb Sydney Harbor Bridge. It was a cold and windy morning, but the weather didn’t dampen his enthusiasm. Julie got to do laundry.
From the bridge Anthony could see down into The Rocks, where our hotel was from our previous stay.
Another picture of the bridge, from Anthony’s walk home from the climb.
Julie with the guide from our Quarantine Ghost Tour
Later that day we took the ferry to Manly, a suburb outside of Sydney, for a Ghost Tour. It was raining, and the ferry ride was a little rough. We stopped for drinks and dinner before the tour, and watched the surfers.
Photo from the dock, where quarantined ships would arrive in Sydney.
The Quarantine Station was similar to Alcatraz in that terrible things happened there, but the views were amazing. From 1832 to 1984, ships who had disease onboard stopped at the Quarantine Station, where the passengers (and crew) had to disembark. If you were sick, you went to the sick house, probably to die there. If you were healthy you went to the quarantine areas for 40 days to make sure you were not ill. Families were separated. The diseases that were dealt with included cholera, small pox, bubonic plague, spanish flu, to name a few.
The autoclave where patients belongings were sterilized and often destroyed.
Sunset from outside the Nurse’s building.
Images from the ward in the Nurses Building. Two nurses, a matron and a doctor are said to haunt the nurses station. The doctor actually died in a ferry accident and was probably eaten by a shark. Our guide had lots of fun, first hand stories to share.
The tall man in the picture was Dr. Charles Reid, who has been seen hanging around this building.
Full Moon from the graveyard outside the Gravedigger’s cottage.
The images below are from the gravediggers cottage. This is one of the scariest building we have ever been in on a ghost tour. The PK meters were going nuts the whole time we were in the building and a cabinet door opened in one of the bedrooms while we were there. Neither Anthony nor Julie saw this. Both Julie and Anthony had had enough, but four other “guests” came running out, totally spooked by the cabinet.
Our guide told us that the superintendents who lived in the cottage were said to have done terrible things to children, who they then buried under the floor boards. Many creepy stories. Definitely a bad, bad vibe.
The Batavia, pre-mutiny.
The next day we went to the Sydney Maritime Museum to see the Brickwrecks exhibit. It was a cold, rainy nasty day, and everyone with a child under twelve seemed to think the museum was a good alternative to being outside.
Raising of the Vasa.
The Vasa was a Man-of-War built in the 1628 to be the flagship of the Swedish armada in their conflict with the Poland. The Vasa sank in the Stockholm harbor just a few minutes after it was launched. The story of the Vasa and the lessons learned became a cornerstone of project management.
Some sort of underwater camera
The Titanic It was more impressive from the side, you could tell the smoke stacks had broken off and were sinking with the front of the ship.
After the Maritime Museum, we took our camp chairs (that we didn’t use) to the Sydney Info center (at Circular Quay) to leave with Geoff and Peter. We took the Ferry back to Barangaroo Wharf, and got some photos on the way.
Anthony took some photos of ironwork on the balconies near the bridge.