Olympic Park

We spent the night at a hotel in Olympic Park. My parents were in Australia in the mid-90’s, and my mom bought me a tee shirt advertising the Sydney Olympics. As we ate breakfast, I wondered where that tee shirt went. I wore it all the time but think it eventually fell victim to a bad painting job.

The park still houses many of the venues from the 2000 Summer games. It was quiet today, and I imagined what it might have been like during that summer. I’m sure heaps of people swarmed the area to get to their event or enjoy one of the numerous activities. A portion of this area is actually reclaimed from the Homebush Bay. Because it is so close to the water, there are several hectares of mangroves, around which they built an elevated walkway. We put the location into google and started walking to Badu Mangroves. Once again, we were headed out to an Atlas Obscura recommendation and once agin, the walking directions were not clear. We backtracked a couple times but eventually arrived at the mangroves. We immediately came across a black duck with eight ducklings paddling behind. The elevated boardwalk then snaked through the swamp. Below, we saw some fish, and above were several different birds. The birds were vocal, some with sweeter sounds than others. The magpies are enormous here and make the sound of a pained child. I would never have guessed the they were magpies, but Pat had pointed them out earlier in the week.

We chose a more direct path back to the hotel, which included a coffee stop along the way. It provided the right amount of caffeinated energy to get bags backed and lugged down to the car. From Olympic Park, we drove to K-mart to pick up a couple items. I think all the K-marts that closed down in Colorado must have been relocated here. I quick google search revealed four of them within close proximity to our hotel. We didn’t see any blue light specials, but we did get a screaming deal on a watchband.

We finished our afternoon with lunch on the other side of Homebush Bay. Angelique met us for a meal at a restaurant sitting along the Bay. The outdoor dining provided beautiful views fo the Bay and the backside of Olympic Park, including the boundary where the mangroves met the open water. We lingered long on the patio before returning to the road. Our next stop was an Air BnB in Emu Plains, where we’ll be visiting our friend, Lauren, for a few days.Weiterlesen