Links

Many more photos are available at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/terryrsherman/

Videos are available at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/theShermanCrew

Eleanor Joy has arrived

[Oct 28, 2010]
Our Eleanor Joy Sherman has arrived.
6lbs 7 Oz
18"
Born 10:26pm 10/28/2010

http://picasaweb.google.com/terryrsherman/EllieHasArrived#

Sticky Post - Please Read

[News]
I have begun to use Picasa WebAlbums to store my photos. You can access the web albums I have available at: http://picasaweb.google.com/TerryRSherman
Each album has a general location and each picture may have a location associated with it as well. Many of the faces have been tagged so you can hover over a face to see find out who it is.

[Notes]
- Topics/Labels now in use, select a Topic to the right to sift through the entries.
- Archiving is enabled so now only the newest entries are listed on the front page. On the right side is a tool you can use to look at old posts. Click on a month and see all the posts that month, or just click '2007' and get all the posts.

P.S. A Sticky Post means that this one will always appear at the top of the page. You have to look below to see if any new post(s) exists since the last time you read the blog.

Trip to Mars?

[2009_09_23]
I woke up early this morning thinking it seemed really dusty. I dismissed it thinking it was my imagination or allergies since its spring here. Eventually I did look out side and was amazed by what I saw. My thoughts were "That isn't right!". Everything had an orange/red color too it. The sky too. It was surreal. It turned out that a crazy dust storm hit the Sydney area. (I didn't go see the Outback so it came to see me!) It was already starting to clear up when I left for work but was still quite bad. Visibility was low as the air was full of dust. Some people had masks on. Cars had dust collecting on them. The Sun was barely visible when the clouds weren't covering it. You could look right at the sun and could just make it out before it was hidden by another cloud. I wish I would have had the time to head down by the harbour and take some photos! Here are the ones I took on my way to work:


Here's a link that Bridget Bishop sent me of other photos of the storm:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/dust_storm_in_australia.html

Aboriginal Art

[2009_09_20]
Today Sandy and Maxine took my up to Yengo National Park. It a great park North of Sydney. We drove in on a little used fire lane. Good thing Sandy has a 4 wheel drive! It was quite a good drive. We lost a lot of time on the way because we got stuck in a traffic jam heading out of Sydney (big accident on the freeway). Once we got there, we took a leisurely drive through the park. Its a wild area of steep gorges. It also has a great deal of significance to the aboriginal people. Not long into the park we stopped at a great overlook of the valley. It was a fantastic view (check out the video below). The mountain you see in the distance in the video is Mt. Yango. The aboriginal Wollombi tribe believed that Mount Yengo was a stepping stone used by Wa-boo-ee, the demon-spirit. Soon after the lookout we stopped at a couple of aboriginal sites. The first one had some rock carvings (see photo above, its an image of a ghost/spirit rising). The next site was a cave that had hand painting on the walls. It was very cool to see, who knows how long this kind of history will preserved.




Further down the track we came across this Gowana. It a rather large lizard, particularly to come across in the wild. This one was about 4 foot long! They can also climb trees (see if you can spot the Gowana on the tree...)


Here's my encounter with the Gowana, this is taped just after Sandy and Maxine told me to not stand still if it gets frightened because it may think I'm a tree and its claws are sharp!

Street Performance

[2009_09_19]
After the Maritime Museum, I came across a small crowd that was gathering. Curious, I went over to see what the hub-bub was about. Once I got there, there was a street performer just starting his act! I've clipped together a couple of minutes of footage. Weird guy, that's for sure!


Here's a quick video of the fountain at Darling Harbour in action. I think its very kewl.

Captain James T. Kirk, er, I mean Cook...

[2009_09_19]
After my adventure with the Whales, I went back to Darling Harbour to tour the National Maritime Museum. My first stop (and the reason I went in the first place) was to tour the full replica of the HMB Endeavor. It a fantastic replica! Fully functional and accurate! They even have the toilets (See the photo with the outhouse looking seat hanging out the front of the boat?) Yep, that's the head. They'd tie a rag to a rope and drop in into the ocean, when you needed to wipe, yous pull up the rope and get the washed rag. Ready to set sail anyone?
The replica was supposed to be out to sea but due to financial reasons, her trip was postpones. All the better for me, since I got the grand tour. The Endeavor was originally a coal ship hauling coal up and down the coast of Britain. The British Admiralty purchased the ship for Cook's first voyage, unlike most vessels, The Endeavor had a flat bottom which made it slow but if the crew needed to beach the ship for repairs, it wouldn't. (Fortunate because they ran the Endeavor into the great barrier reef and needed to make extensive repairs). Seriosly, I could go on and on. Tell you why the large cabid had 7 foot ceilings instead of the normal 5'5", why there was a portion with 3' celing, how it came to pass that the replica had an original piece of the original ship (that I got to touch!). Instead, here's some photos!


After the Endeavor, I toured two more vessels in the Harbour. The HMAS Onslow, an Australian Oberon class Submarine, built in 1967, decommissioned in 1999, and the HMAS Vampire, a Australian Daring class Destroyer decomisioned in 1989. Here's the photos! (Including a photo through the periscope of the sub! And who's that in the captain's chair?)


On my way back to my apartment I took a stroll through China Town. At the risk of sounding ho hum, it was just like China Town in San Fransisco.


I'll leave you with a shot of the Opera House at night...

Thar She Blows!

[2009_09_19]
Well Its Saturday, time for another full day of activities! I'm going to post them separately though this time as they were quite different.

First thing Saturday I got up and headed straight down to Darling Harbour. My plan was to head out to sea and see some Humpback Whales! I managed to get on a trip last minute (whew!). Instead of going out a a large catamaran type boat, I went on a small boat that's usually used as a rescue vessel. It fits about 20 people on board, I have a picture of it in front of the IMAX. Its a little scary heading out into the open ocean in a boat only 30' long, especially since the last time I went out on the ocean (Kaikoura, New Zealand), the ocean swells were 30+ feet!

The weather was forecast to be pretty good for our trip, just ~5 foot swells, nothing too big. On the way out we went past Middle Head (where I had seen those old military forts built into the rocks), and we went out between the North and South Heads. Once we were on the open sea we were able to look back on Australia. It was very neat to see it from out at sea. I could imagine I was Captain Cook sailing in on the HMS Endeavor. There was a huge amount of smoke around though, North of Sydney there was a controlled bush fire in progress. They burn sections of bushland to try to keep the undergrowth in check. You can see the trail of smoke in the photo below.

As we continued on our way out to see (we went about 7 miles out to sea), we passed a pod of Dolphins. They come as quite a surprise, sorry no photos! They were quite pretty to see in the wild! Once we arrived at where we thought the whales would be, we just sat and waited. A couple of Albatross (The world's largest sea birds) flew by. I managed to get a nice shot of one as it flew right near the ocean surface.




We wait and waited. We were out at sea nearly 45 minutes without getting to see any whales ;( I was bummed because I knew we had to turn around and head back in any minute. "No whales today" I thought... Just as the skipper turned the engines on to head back to port, we spotted the mist from a whale surfacing just ahead of us! Wow, a whale! I was so glad I was on a small boat because we were just that much closer!

We came across one whale, it was a calve, maybe 6 months old. It was out on the ocean by itself. It was about the size of the boat, about 25 foot. Huge animal! Most whales just swim by and you hope to catch them surface, stay up for a bit, and swim away. Then you hope to see another. If you are extremely lucky, you will see once breach (fly out of the water and slap on the surface). We weren't that lucky but this whale did take quite a liking to us! It stayed and 'played' with us for about 20 minutes. swimming up and away and back again. It even came up and swam on its side and waved with its flipper, not very common at all! It was a very cool experience! I compiled a video of footage I took! Check it out.

Yakiniku BBQ

[2009_09_18]
Well its Friday night! My last Friday night here in Sydney. I decided to go out for some dinner, something a bit special. I went for a type of Japensese BBQ called 'Yakiniku'. It very neat idea. You sit around a table where you cook your food, kind of like a Fondue, but in the middle of this table is a small grill. You order your meat, I had 'Wagyu', a special type of Japanese Beef which is considered one of the best of Japan (combination of Japanese Black Cow and Australian Angus Cow). It had a very nice marbled texture. They bring it to your table sliced thinly, marinated in a Japanese BBQ sauce, ready to be cooked. (I also had sliced corn on he cob).

You toss your food on the grill, let it cook for a couple of minutes, and enjoy! Wow, this beef was absolutely fantastic! Very enjoyable! Quite, the experience. I'll have to look for a place like this back home.

For desert I had sesame Ice Cream and sweet bean, very interesting!

Three Sisters of the Blue Mountains

[2009_09_12]
Milestone post, this is my 100th blog post!

Today Sandy, Maxine and myself took a drive out of town to the Blue Mountains. A national park about an hour and a half out of Sydney. Once there we stopped at a overlook of Wentworth Falls. Australia hasn't had much rain so the waterfall wasn't as big as it would be otherwise but it was still very pretty. It was a large falls meaning it was tall, unfortunately my photos didn't turn out. Suffice to say it was very beautiful.

Soon we were off to grab some lunch before heading off on the day's trek. We stopped at a cafe sitting right at the edge of the blue mountains overlooking the vast valley. What a magnificent view! Its like looking into a forested Grand Canyon. Steep escarpments. It was a good lite lunch. Now we're off!

At the start of our journey, we got a ride down the escarpment, into the valley, via the worlds steepest incline railway. While waiting to board the train, we came across the fattest cockatoo I have ever seen! Back to the train, the loading ramp is at a decent angle. You'll note that even at a slope, the seats are titled back. That's because the track reaches a 52 degree angle as it goes down (that's more that 45 degrees!). It drops ~250 meters down into the valley. Quite a thrilling ride! What a way to enter the valley. It was originally used in 1879 as a way to bring coal up from the valley. As the coal depleted and tourists showed up, it became a passenger train. The current train runs along the same path as the original coal train did.


Here a few panoramas of the Blue Mountains, very magnificent!


Back on the valley floor, Here's where I saw the sign to our destination. That's right, the 'GIANT STAIRWAY'... It was a short hike, ~2km, to get to the stairway. Once there, whoa, it was quite the stair way! It was a mix of metal stairs precariously placed up a near sheer cliff along with steps carved out of the rock wall itself. It had a lot of twists and turns. It was very steep and sure got the heart pumping! It has ~1000 steps to the top ascending ~330 meters.


Ahh, we made it to the top! And what a view to have! (See top panoramo). Now we can see the Three Sisters, the three pinnacles. It was a fun trek, Thanks Sandy and Maxine!