Greetings from Sydney, Australia!

That’s the Sydney Opera house on the left and the Sydney Harbour Bridge on the right, as seen from a ferry in the harbour we rode late in the afternoon just before sunset.

Here’s a day-time shot of the same scene:

Sydney Harbour by Day

Here’s a cropped version of just the bridge:

Sydney Harbour Bridge

This photo has a few interesting things to note.  One, note all the birds, particularly the white one in the middle of the arch. It’s an illusion that it’s as big as the girder on the bridge.  These birds are all real, BTW, and not added to the photo later.

Also, the birds seem bigger that the people standing on the outside on the top of the bridge. They are real, too –  it’s possible to pay to climb up the outside of the bridge along the arched top, and that’s what these people have done. Zoom in you can just make out the people climbing there.

Now, while I’m sure Chris and will do lots of things while we’re here in Sydney, we will not be doing that. No mystery about that, I’m sure.  

I.e., we’re now in Australia.  Brisbane, Australia, to be exact. Chris was invited to give the opening plenary address at the AVML 2016 conference here – whoohoo! He also was invited to give a talk today as part of the workshop, something that got arranged just last week, so he’s actually giving two invited talks this week. Congratulations, Chris!

Anyway, we’ll be here in Brisbane until the end of this week, then we head to Sydney for a few days and then to Melbourne — the one in Australia, not Florida ;-). Then it’s on to Auckland, New Zealand (we flew through there on the way to Brisbane, but didn’t leave the airport then). We head back to the States in mid-October.

For today here are a couple of quick pics taken in scenic places we’ve stopped in during the past week:

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

The Friendly Tourist and our friend Will walking along San Francisco Bay in Emeryville

Auckland Airport, New Zealand

Brisbane, Australia

BTW, the timing of our trip was dictated by conference schedule, of course. We arrived this past Friday and the conference started today. However, unbeknownst to us, it turned out that Saturday was the last day of the 2016 Brisbane Festival, an annual celebration in the South Bank area, which is where we’re staying. On the evening of the last day of this festival they always have the biggest fireworks display in all of Australia. The crowds that turn out to see the display from the river bank are formidable. But, it turned out that from the pool area on the second floor of our hotel we had very good (albeit partially obstructed) view of the fireworks.  It was an impressively large and extremely well-synchronized display:

2016 Brisbane Festival Fireworks spectacular (partially obstructed, but still impressive!)

What fun coincidence of timing and location to get something like that welcome us here in Brisbane – we’re off to a good start.