Museum/ The Olympic Park

So last weekend was really one of my last free weekends in Sydney. I have a ton of trips coming up in the next couple of weeks including a trip to Melbourne which I will post about on Sunday. I also have finals right around the corner and have been studying like crazy in preparation for those finals. So, this was one of my last free weekends in Sydney and I wanted to make the most of it.

Last Thursday, I went to the Australian Museum in Sydney. The museum was one of the first in Australia and has a focus on Indigenous animals as well as people and some geological significant parts of Australia.

You first walk into a massive room that is filled with stuffed native and foreign animals.

There are all kinds of animals including a stuffed Tasmanian tiger that was hunted to extinction in 1936.

Stuffer Tasmanian tiger

This beautiful animal I researched before coming over to Australia still rumored to be alive but the only way to see this beast at the moment is in museums and stuffed.

The museum also focuses on indigenous art and their culture. I got to see native boomerangs which obviously look different than the boomerangs that you can find in gift shops. I even got to hear about the aboriginal story of the beginning of the ocean.

This is called a Ghost net. It was a fishing net which the aboriginals have turned into art. 

The museum had dinosaurs that were native to the Australian land and butterflies that are native to this area as well as the biggest mineral collection I have ever seen.

I love all of these things so I really was in heaven in this museum.

On Sunday, I decided to visit the Olympic park. Sydney hosted the Summer Olympics in 2000 and the park is still being used today. The park is pretty large, it has a lot of really trendy restaurants, a ton of stadiums, a massive wildlife refuge, and a concert field. I didn’t really know what to expect when I went so I had no plans. I happened to go on a really cool day. There was a dog festival happening in the concert field so I first went and pet and played with the puppies.

I even got to see a tutu dog show where people were judging which dog was rocking the tutu the best. The Great Dane won. I then wandered around the stadiums and saw the many different shapes that they all were. The main stadium where the opening ceremonies took place has been converted into a rugby field and looks suspiciously like a potato chip.

I really wanted to see what the inside of the stadium looked like and they happened to be selling rugby tickets for later that day. I bought a ticket for the game which was a lot cheaper than the tickets to see sporting events in the States and then I headed over to the wildlife park and hung out in the park until the game started, watching the birds play in the water.

I know nothing about Rugby, people tell me that rugby is a mix between soccer and football but it was nothing like either sport. Like soccer the clock is continuous and the ball was shaped like a football but I couldn’t figure out how points were scored.

Most of the game I just cheered when everyone else cheered. A lot of people looked at me weird because I was cheering for both sides, but I couldn’t really figure out what was going on. I usually cheer for refs as I am a soccer ref but I couldn’t even figure out who the refs were as they were wearing very similar colors to the waterboys. I ended up rooting for the referees and the waterboys in the end. Towards the end, I started to figure out what was going on but the game was almost over. The Roosters beat the bulldogs 29-20. It was a good game… I think. The stadium was really pretty though and while I didn't know what was going on I had fun and am glad I went.

I then headed home on the train with the mass of fans who were all in good spirits and were all very friendly as they tried to explain to me how rugby works.