In Sydney

Sydney is a 1.5 hour flight from Melbourne.  There are a couple of flights between the airports every half hour of every day, starting at about 6am, and ending at about 11pm.  I was invited to speak at a conference in Sydney this week, so I booked myself a place on one of those flights, and arrived on Wednesday morning. 

I was somewhat limited in hotel choices.  The conference was held at the University of Sydney, so I wanted to stay nearby.  However, Jonathan's school term was ending on Friday, school holidays beginning Monday, and he and Tim made plans to join me Friday night in Sydney.  So we wanted a place that was reasonably well located for family tourist activities.  And finally, I was under a tight budget for conference accommodations, and very few places met that budget.  After some serious searching, I found a hotel not too far from the Central Railway Station.  This was only a 20-25 minute walk from campus, but also close enough to all major rail lines that we could go ... anywhere!

Um.  It isn't the best hotel I've ever stayed at.  But it is sufficient.  And the 25 minute walk to campus?  Along a busy road choked with traffic and traffic fumes.  One should not judge a city based on a walk down one busy road.  But when one makes that walk twice a day for three days in a row, one begins to believe that one was correct to have arranged the sabbatical in Melbourne, not Sydney. 

Still, the University of Sydney is lovely, even if there is too much traffic all around it.  And even if the maths building is ugly.  Below is a photo of the main quadrangle, not the maths building, courtesy of Wikipedia.

There is also a large park nearby, filled with rainbow lorikeets and currawongs and ibises.  And there are a lot of nice restaurants in the vicinity.  So in spite of the traffic, the university is not really all that bad.  Really. 

***

It rained all day Friday, including heavy rain Friday afternoon.  On Friday night, after the conference had ended but before the family had arrived in Sydney, I had just left the nice park near the university and was turning east to walk along the busy road back to my hotel.  I looked up at a large flapping bird, to try to recognize the bird type.  And then I realized it was not a bird at all, but a huge flapping bat -- a flying fox, but out in the sky early -- before dusk.  And then to my amazement, as I walked along that busy road all the way back to the hotel, I saw dozens and dozens of huge fruit bats, all winging their way slowly west and high in the sky.

Tim and Jonathan arrived late Friday night, and we spent a very nice Saturday at the zoo, vastly improving my opinion of Sydney.  But I couldn't wait to show them the early evening bats.
But this evening, there were no bats at all, past sunset. 

What happened?  Did they come out early on Friday because of the rain?  Or were all those bats I watched on my walk home some sort of great Sydney bat migration?  Migrating west for the winter? 

Not even Google had an answer for me this evening.

Upcoming posts:  The Sydney zoo, an amazing zoo that you should try to visit sometime if you can.  And then, other Sydney adventures, that we have not yet had!