We arrived in Sydney after a short flight from Alice Springs. Of course it was raining when we landed, but now the winds have arrived also. It appears we brought the Seattle weather with us or stole it from Seattle leaving you with sunshine up there. The winds here have been 80 to 90 Kms per hour, this is very unusual for here.  People we meet say they have never seen it like this. On top of that we are having  up to 420 mm of rain in 24 hours. That's between eight and 16 inches of rain depending on where you are. We find it is very much like Gearhart in a strong storm. Trees are down everywhere.
 Right now Sydney is having a wonderful celebration called vivid. They project wonderful images and bright colored lights on all the tall buildings, especially the opera house. We find that there are installations of light on every corner or down every street. There are things like waterfalls of pop bottles with the lightsshining in them, or flags with lights shining on the, that move with the wind. Too many innovative ideas to explain them all. Unfortunately the wind has  reeked havoc on everything. While this is a celebration that continues for a month, and is supposed to go on for another two weeks, many of the exhibits have been destroyed by the strong winds. People here have never seen anything like this. They are too far south for cyclones and rarely have this type of wind coming from the east. They are certainly getting used to the weather now though . We have been out and about the whole time because it is not too different for us. The streets, however, our deserted and there is very little traffic because of the Highwinds and heavy rain. We did go on a tour of the opera house last night and it was spectacular. What an incredible setting. There are six venues within the facility and we got to visit three of them. On the outside there are these beautiful lights creating motion pictures on the tops of the sales of the Opera House - really spectacular. We were supposed to go on a city tour yesterday that would take us up into the mountains and along the coastline, however they failed to pick us up. So instead we went this morning. (We were supposed to be kayaking Sydney Harbour today, but that got canceled yesterday.) The tour this morning was wonderful but the waves of bondi beach were incredibly high so there was no swimming; there were a few surfers.  It is now dark out. Mark is on a nighttime climb up the Sydney Harbour Bridge. There is no FRIGGING way that you would catch me up there in these highs winds in the dark on the narrow track on slippery stairs.  Obviously I am aging less Gracefully than Mark, but far more wisely!   Cognitive function seems to be better for me than him. Tomorrow we head off to Q station, which is the quarantine station for Sydney and all of Australia. This is where all immigrants used to have to arrive and be sorted for disease. Kind of like Ellis Island in New York City.

We have two nights there before catching a flight home. We are still looking for day number 16 of May and hope to find it sometime soon.

Have a little bit more information about the woman who was killed by the crocodile. It was not at our hotel, but was instead At the Thornton beach near Daintree, the beach where we saw the black tipped shark and the driver/guide told us never to swim there. She and her friend had gone swimming at 10 o'clock at night. Very very bad decision.
We got up early the last morning of our last day in Palm Cove and caught a ride to the airport in Cairns. From there we flew to Alice Springs. I must say that almost everyplace we have been on this trip it has been raining. We have not had great heat or any problems except for spectacular humidity.
The next morning in Alice Springs, Troy, our Palestinian heritage man from Australia,  picked us up for the long drive to Ayers rock. First we drove for two hours until we got to the camel farm. It was too rainy to ride camels. Then we drove for another two hours until we got to the aboriginal art exhibit. Too expensive to consider.  Finally we drove another hour or so until we got to the campground at Ayres rock. We were there in time to watch a spectacular sunset while sipping champagne.  As the sun went below the clouds it got dark. Then it got bright orange again as it dropped below the clouds before it finally settled under the horizon.  Prior to the sunset we spent some time hiking around to different parts of the rock. The next morning we got up early to catch sunrise at Kata Tyuta.  Though smaller than Uluru (Ayers Rock), these 36 domes trail off into the desert in a spectacular line that may be even more impressive.  Mark hiked up and around and down the backside of the first few domes. I had stopped in the middle and then went back down,  and then back up to the middle, and then back down again. I did not want to risk the slippery slope on the backside.
  We spent two nights camping, somewhat. We actually had tents with beds and mattresses, pillows and sheets. We could have slept in a swag outside. But it looked like it was going to rain so we opted out of that. A swag is a big canvas bag which includes a blowup mattress, or foam mattress, sleeping bag, pillow and a lot of warm blankets all encased in mostly waterproof canvas.  I would've like to try that but in the middle of each night we had torrential downpours.    The Stars were amazing; no light pollution here!!
The last day we went to Kings Canyon, a lovely small eroded Valley. You can climb up to the top and walk around the rim but it's quite a steep climb in and has steep drop back down. Instead of making that climb I chose to walk up the middle of the canyon, much of it in a stream up to my knees. It was supposed to be dry, but then again, there was all that rain

Mark took the highroad I took the low road. Both of us saw beautiful sites. The rain cause us to have to retrace our drive back toward Uluru and Alice springs. We had meant to take a short cut on a long dry road through the desert, but the constant rain had caused the Palmer river to flood and we could not get across it.  That road was closed.  Even so, many places in the regular road had low spots which were flooded. We learned how to speed into the low spots after checking the meter depth sign and continue to accelerate all the way out so the tailpipe did not suck in the water and kill the engine. We got back to Alice Springs in another downpour and had a lovely dinner before crashing in bed. We got picked up about noon and took our next flight into Sydney. More on that tomorrow.