Sydney Wildlife World is a newish attraction that opened in 2006. In this attraction one can find as many displays of the varied land animal life of Australia as can possibly be packed into a mostly indoor facility on the edge of Darling Harbour in downtown Sydney.

And the place does an impressively good job, with the available real estate divided up into ten "habitats" (reptiles, nocturnal, grasslands, rainforest, etc.) which show off insects, spiders, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals, ranging from the cuddly to the extremely hazardous. It is located right next to the excellent Sydney Aquarium, which handles the aquatic side of things. Combination tickets are available.

Before visiting Wildlife World, we first visited the Queen Victoria Building (AKA the QVB), an interesting old building in downtown Sydney which was completed in 1898 and which now houses an upscale shopping mall. Included in the mall are some food places, we found breakfast at one of them.


From the QVB we walked around downtown a little, photographing some of the other interesting old buildings, and ended up taking a coffee break at the local Hungry Jack's (the Australian name for Burger King).


Heading over to Darling Harbour, we were initially undecided as to whether we should visit Wildlife World or the Aquarium. Since we'd seen the Aquarium before, we opted for Wildlife World, mostly out of curiosity. We were not disappointed.







The variety of species and habitats concentrated in this smallish urban area was quite amazing.












From Wildlife World we walked along the Darling Harbour shoreline and happened upon an open area where a large video screen had been set up so people could watch the Beijing Olympic Games, which were in progress at the time. We watched long enough to see Michael Phelps swim to his record eighth gold medal of the games, and then we walked across the Pyrmont Bridge to the other side of the Harbour.

The Pyrmont Bridge dates from 1902 and is an unusual "swing-span" bridge, which lets tall boats through by having a section which swings open and closed like a door. It is now a pedestrian bridge with excellent views of the downtown skyline, but at the time there was also an elevated monorail track which ran the length of it.


On the far side of the Harbour there was a monorail station where we purchased tickets and waited for the train.

We rode the monorail around the south end of the Harbour and back to a stop near our hotel. We disembarked at the hotel, where we took a short rest. We soon stirred ourselves to go out and look at more stuff. We didn't have to go far - there was a nice park (called Hyde Park) in front of the hotel, and across the park was our next destination, the Australian Museum.