Island Hopping

We're always doing things, my Sydney Boy and I.  Every weekend we both have together, my Sydney Boy always wants to plan things to do.  Sometimes, once the initial rush of new romance wears off, it is exhausting.  Other times it's exhilarating. 

The last couple of weekends, though, it has been me that has wanted to plan things.  Two weekends ago, we went Island Hopping.  Of course that sounds very exciting and exotic but really it was only down at Sydney Harbour.  It was all part of some promotion they do every year where you pay some $$$ and get on a ferry that takes you to Goat Island, Shark Island and Clarke Island, all of which are usually off bounds to the public.

On Goat Island, visitors are taken back to colonial times.  I 'signed up' for the army, was given a red vest and then marched in line with others and shown what it was like back in the colonial era.  We had a wooden gun that we had to march with, and pretend we were firing.  We got a glimpse at how prisoners were treated and learnt a bit about the origin of some sayings "for eg, 3 square meals a day".

Here are some pics from Goat Island (I'm the one in the black and blue dress...)

 

And here I am in the old prisoner's box - this used ot sleep 24 of them and sure as hell would have been really hot back in the day!

Next, we headed to Shark Island.  We timed it well because we were the only ones leaving Goat Island which meant we pretty much had Shark Island to ourselves.  We learnt that Shark Island (named only because from the air it looks like a shark) that Shark Island was used as a quarantine zone for animals 'back in the day'.  They had some stuffed dead animals and a little touch pool, like they have at Sea World.  My Sydney Boy wasn't very fussed though on the sea urchin he got to hold... lol

Arriving at Shark Island...

One of the stuffed animals...

Because we arrived on Shark Island so early and by ourselves, it meant that when we arrived at Clarke Island we had that one all to ourselves too.  We felt like \/IPs as we got our own indigenous smoking ceremony and the indigenous kids did a welcoming dance for us.  There was another indigenous man who was doing rockpainting so we dipped our hands in the ocre and joined in...

We tried fish cooked over seaweed and learnt about rock fishing and how indigenous people survived before white settlers.  They used to have this tree, called the Guardian Tree, and the kids used to sit on the leaves if they couldn't make it back to camp in time and the parents would come looking for them.  Apparently they named it as such because the leaves were spikey and snakes couldn't slither on them so they were pretty safe for the kids unless they were unlucky enough to get bitten by a spider.

After we'd seen everything, we headed home, exhausted from our Island Hopping experiences.