Back from Sydney. Our last full day there was mostly spent doing the 6 km walk from Bondi Beach to Coogee, which was fantastic. In addition to spotting a whale just outside of Bondi Bay, we saw a ton of new birds, the most impressive being the sulphur-crested cockatoos and the Australian King Parrots. Also spotted were honey-eaters, fairy wrens, and Willy Wagtails.

I'm one of those sickos who loves to fly, and the flight back was a very interesting one. We passed directly over the famous Uluru (formerly Ayer's Rock), but it wasn't until we were already well past that I noticed our flight path took us right over it. Bummer. North and west from there is some serious desert. There was nothing -- not a house, not a road, nothing -- for about 400 miles. Drawing on their most imaginative thinkers, the Aussies have named this the Great Sandy Desert. The name is even more embarassing when you learn that the region is almost devoid of sand. We flew off of Australia near Derby, then south under Bali and Lombok (we could see the volcanos again), over Java, and up the Javan Sea, over very many small uninhabited islands and atolls.

Entertainment on international flights just gets better and better. Every chair had its own little video screen, as is now the norm, but now there were over 30 movies to choose from, and you could pause and rewind all you want. In addition there were tv shows, video games, news, and a do-it-yourself playlist for music where you could pick songs from about fifty different albums. I can't wait to read back on this in ten years and laugh at how paltry it is. And I'm still waiting for the free in-flight internet access.

We survived the bridge walk -- it was a lot less strenuous or scary than we expected. It was pretty cool, mostly in the way that for all my life, whenever I've driven over a suspension bridge, I've always wondered what it would be like to be able to climb up the supports. A bit of fantasy fulfillment, there, but I'm not sure it was worth the price. Fantastic view, if nothing else. We have pictures we'll scan in when we get home.

Tomorrow we're going to walk the trail along the cliffs down around the famous Bondi Beach. We talked about seeing a rugby match but apparently they only go on on the weekends.

Weird musical coincidence, along the lines of the Christmas/Ho Chi Minh City/Clash one six months ago -- Elvis Costello has a song with the Brodsky quartet that goes:

Care of St. Ignatus House
Willoughby Drive
Parramatta, New South Wales
This fifth day of July

Parramatta's right up the road, and the fifth was just the other day while we were here. Wonder if there's a St. Ignatius House on Willoughby Drive.