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.