Eels

Of course, one of the places I wanted to visit was the Opera House.  This is situated on the tip of a peninsula to the north of a park that includes the Government House, the Conservatorium of Music and the Royal Botanic Gardens.

There are some ornamental ponds in the park and notices explaining that there are eels in the ponds, which sometimes can be seen attacking small birds, etc.  It is pointed out that the eels were not put there by the park, but are wild.  They breed up in Indonesia and swim all the way to Australia where they then jump the harbour wall and cross the grass to get to the ponds.  Park staff at night have sometimes seen them wriggling across the grass.  I find that impressive.

Incidentally, I did suggest to the people running the London in 2014 Worldcon bid that maybe at their bid parties in future, they should serve food associated with the East End of London where their site is, such as jellied eels.

I got to the Opera House eventually.  About the only thing they had on that week was The Pirates of Penzance.  I'm not a Gilbert and Sullivan fan, so I wasn't interested in going to see it.  And I was too tired by then to consider doing the back-stage tour.

Skywirting

The peninsula from which the south side of the Sydney Bridge starts is known as The Rocks.  The oldest dwelling house in Sydney is preserved there.  There's a small plaza which gives the best view of the Opera House (except possibly from a boat).  You can also see the bridge quite well.  Apparently, you can take a walk over the arch of the bridge and I could see the specks that were people apparently doing this.  Well, with my head for heights, there's no way I was going to do this.

As I arrived in the area, I nearly ran into a gaggle of people staring at the sky.  I looked up and overhead a small aircraft was writing a message in smoke.  The word IMAGINE was the result.  I sat down in the plaza and you could see the word slowly drift northwards across the harbour.  Then I noticed the plane was back and writing another word.  I could see FLORI and guessed it might be a travel company advertising holidays in Florida, maybe.  But the next two letters were A and D in that order.  The full word was FLORIADE.

My first thought was that the pilot had made a mistake writing Florida and tried to cover the mistake by turning it into a nonsense word.  I recall one of the A.P Herbert Misleading Cases where a political candidate hires a skywriter to advertise his campaign but the pilot is a supporter of his rival candidate and puts misprints into the message that turns it into an insult.  The legal minds have to decide whether in English law this is libel (written down, a permanent item) or slander (spoken and ephemeral).

Then, a couple of days later I saw a reference to Floriade.  Turns out it's a flower festival held in Canberra in September.