Looking back to Sydney’s CBD over the new Great Souther Oceans exhibit at Taronga Zoo

I was asked by work to shoot the Staff launch day for the new Great Southern Oceans exhibit at Taronga Zoo. Was a nice evening and also ran into a few friends working for the event management company. They hadn’t really though about the photographer’s light requirements with this at all.

Unfortunately I can’t show most – simply due to the fact that there are shots of children. So I’ll show the non-children shots instead.

Drop Bear @ Taronga Zoo, Sydney – 23rd February, 2008, originally uploaded by ‘ju:femaiz.

The world famous Drop Bear was in attendance at Taronga Zoo when we visited while Nick and Mel were out to celebrate their engagement with the Australian contingent (Nick’s from Sydney, Mel from Colorado).

Who said it didn’t exist!

Sydney’s traffic on a better day. Today it was at the mercy of the chauffeured generation of students (Photo: north approach to Sydney harbour bridge by Lynn Smith – Creative Commons License)

After almost two months of summer house sitting friends places in Dee Why and then Haberfield I am now back at home (possibly temporarily – I’m trying to find a place to move out to at the moment). This week was what I really didn’t want. Not only did I head back home on Monday, the Australia Day public holiday, and thus start a new week commuting once more from North Narrabeen but I also was lucky enough to have this same week coincide with the start of school for New South Wales.

Anyone who travels the city route from the Northern Beaches via public transport knows the problem. Private schools start up again and suddenly every Mosman mother (and the occasional Mosman father) worth their platinum credit card jumps in the car to add to the morning peak hours car park (about 7am-9am will do nicely in the morning) that is Military Road to ensure that their little darling need not bother with that most peasant notion of catching the buses we pay taxes to provide them with.

With the little blighters on holidays the working mob of Sydney enjoyed far faster transport times. Given that the private schools generally go on holidays sometime around late November, early December (showing exceptional value for money with shorter school terms) and public schools generally the week before Christmas, it shows just which group contributes more to the transport gridlock of Sydney. Most of December and all of January has shown Sydney what transport should be like – when we get the soccer (and netball) mums – and dads (after all, there’s a growing band of stay-at-home dad’s looking after the kids in defiance of tradition) – off the road.

So, this morning, instead of the speedy 45-50 minute trip into the city, by the time I hit the Burnt Bridge Deviation leading to the Spit Bridge I was already at the trip time for only part of the journey. Looking down at the myriad of cars that ensure buses cannot move speedily through to the city (unlike their rail counterparts – those of you with rail options quit whining about the “slow speed” of the rail system, it’s better than being on the road in an motor-omnibus) I was amazed at how many of the cars had bodies in school blazers.

Hopefully this is all just a result of the first week’s nerves of new schools and so forth (obviously there’s been a lot of churn amongst students in the school sector judging by the number of teens being chauffeured by their parents) and the parents will ditch the car and put them on a bus instead. If not I hope I’m living far closer to the city as soon as I can – lest I end up needing to bring my sleeping bag on the bus for the doubling and tripling of journey times that inevitably comes from the roads as choked as they are. Till then, the L90 arriving at North Narrabeen at 645am will have to be my morning commute.