Last Day

Our last day of the trip. Packing was easier this time as we had done most of the hard work when leaving Auckland. We stored our bags and walked the 15 minutes or so across to Darling Harbour to visit the Sea Life Aquarium, another thing covered by our card. The reception person confirmed we had one credit left after this, which meant we could visit either the wildlife centre or Madam Tussaud's both located next door.

Obligatory green screen picture on the way in then we followed the exhibits round. The platypus enclosure was out of commission for refurbs, but we had seen them in the zoo the previous day. The stingray area was also closed off.

An Octonauts themed area proved popular, particularly with the visiting primary school groups. Many of the fish and exhibits were similar to those we had seen in other aquaria in NZ.

The big difference came in the first walk though tunnel tank where they had two Dugongs. These look a little like seals but have tusks and are related to elephants. They are what gave rise to the myth of mermaids as they look a lot like a person with a tail fin. They are gentle creatures only found in an area of the Queensland coast. The two here were rescued from the wild. We spent quite a while watching them from above and below, with exhibits showing their poor vision and what their breath smells like! Their diet is essentially lettuce, as a replacement for the sea grass they would eat in the wild.

From here we moved to the second tunnel tank with sharks in it. There was a great interactive touchscreen on the way in with lots of info an games about sharks. After this we went through a rock pool area and touched starfish and sea sauages, then a barrier reef area. The kids draw fish and coloured them in and these were then scanned and appeared swimming on a big projected tank wall. Sam and I sat and watched the large glass wall of the final tanks, with fish swimming back and forth - a bigger version of our tank at home!

We had to buy cuddly dugongs and Ed also got a platypus as it was "so cuddly". Some lunch then we decided to do Madame Tussaud's as we had seen quite a lot of animals.

Another first as none of us had ever been to one before (the one in London always has mad queues). I had been to the wax place in Great Yarmouth years ago but not sure that represents the art at its best!

The models were very good and like like and you could pose with them all and were encouraged to touch them - they didn't feel waxya ta ll and were very solid. The hair was real human hair and the body parts were acrylic, just the heads were wax. There were themed areas for politics, sport, music, theatre, tv, movies. Particular favourites for Sam and I were Alf from Home and Away and Harold from Neighbours. There was a bit of an Aussie theme to some of the characters as you would expect, but most were well known worldwide.

We took lots of pictures using the props provided and agreed it was a fun way to spend an hour or so, but wouldn't want to do the three hour London queue then face the scrum of people trying to pose with each character inside - we had plenty of time and space here to pose as much as we wanted.

We left and headed back to the hotel - Ed complaining he couldn't walk any further, but he made it. The car arrived about 3.15 so we headed off and got all checked in. We had to leave the immigration line as we hadn't realised there were departure forms that needed completing - though we were then directed to the automatic passport gates and no one actually checked the forms, we just put them into a postbox!

We ate in the lounge and Ed got another 13 storey tree house book and cards with our last Aussie dollars, then onto the plane. It was a 777 rather than an A380 - not quite as comfy and the entertainment not as good - less films including no Hobbits, which I had wanted to finish watching. The first leg was to Bangkok and took about 9 hours, quite bumpy in parts but we all got some sleep.

We landed in Bangkok but were on a stand right at the edge of the airport so were not allowed to get off. The cleaners came in en mass then after a little over and hour we ere off to Dubai.Read more