Cone heads and other si-fi stuff

We spent a second day in Sydney, Australia this past weekend. Although we again did lots of walking, our primary destination was the Royal Botanic Garden.

This is a photo of a poster on the grounds of the gardens. You'll see the opera house on the far right. The botanical gardens are spread across a long stretch of the harbour front. General entrance is free, although it does cost to take the train tour or see some exhibits.

This display was created to mark the 200th anniversary of the gardens in 2016.

These birds are Australian White Ibis. Note their really long black beaks. It's quite common to see them in Australia, and some feel they are pests. They're certainly used to being around people.

We walked some of the pathways around the gardens. Given Greg's interest in ponds, we headed in that direction.

These lotus flowers were in bloom in a shallow pond, next to the deeper pond. They carpeted the surface and were beautiful. That's Greg's hand at the bottom left, so you can see they were large blooms. They had a lovely fragrance. 

The yellow conical centre is a seed pod. As the flower dies off, the seed pod changes and turns downward to release the seeds.

Here you can see the large leaves of the plant, and, in the bottom left corner, you'll see how the yellow centre has changed to a hardened seed pod. I'm sorry it's not a better photo, but it called for quite a balancing act, and I was concerned about maybe dropping my phone into the water.

We needed to go to a gaming store to get a voltage converter for one of Greg's devices. This display was hard to miss, so I asked Greg to pose with it. I warned him not to get any ideas about wanting one. Check out the price ...

While walking we saw these flowers. They reminded me of our recent visit to Hawaii, as they were common there and many ladies wore them in their hair. 

We left Sydney on Sunday and flew to Brisbane, an hour north of Sydney. Although it's in the same time zone, they don't both follow daylight savings time. They have a one-hour time difference, and yet are directly in line with each other. It meant our flight left and arrived at exactly the same time. Almost like experiencing time travel :)