Royal Botanic Garden Sydney

I took a train that left Canberra at 11:55 in the morning and was supposed to arrive in Sydney at 4:05 in the afternoon. It left on time, but it arrived a little over 20 minutes late. By the time I checked into my hotel and was ready to head out, it was about 5:00. So, not a lot of time to do something, but not nothing.

You’re never going to guess where I went. That is, you’re never going to guess it if you haven’t been following along with my Australia journal and if you’re the sort of person who skips headlines and picture captions and jumps right into the body copy.

Yes, that’s right, you clever person. I visited the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney. It’s only about a five-minute walk from my hotel and it doesn’t close until sunset, which is later on these long December days here in the southern hemisphere.

But first a word about the train trip. Canberra’s train station is kind of rinky-dink. It’s primarily just one room with a ticket counter and washrooms. And I think it has only one platform.

The train to Sydney had only three cars. An announcement on the train before it left the station said that the “train is completely full, so please take your assigned seat and if you didn’t buy a ticket for this train please get off and make alternate travel arrangements in the station.”

A couple of seats in my car were not occupied on the whole journey. So, fake news about being completely full, but I don’t know about the other two cars.

The train made a lot of stops. Most were in small towns seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Some were bigger. The bigger ones might even call themselves cities. But I’m sorry. Strict international law states that no municipality may refer to itself as a city unless it has at least seven buildings higher than five storeys or at least one building over 25 storeys and at least five buildings in total of more than five storeys.

You don’t believe that’s international law? Google it. And don’t blame me for your inferior research skills if you can’t find it.

I looked out at all of the stops and I didn’t notice a building higher than three floors until we got to the suburbs of Sydney. All of the stations until the Sydney suburbs looked even more rinky-dink than Canberra’s station. Depending on your aesthetic tastes, a synonym for “rinky-dink” might be “quaint.”

I spent most of the time between stations reading a book on my iPad, but I did look out the window occasionally. What I saw was mostly fairly dry fields with a few trees and a long ridge of low mountains behind the fields. Often, there was a mirror image on the other side of the train.

The scenery wasn’t completely consistent. There were some small forests. And, occasionally, craggy hills closely approached the tracks.

About halfway through the journey, there was an announcement saying that because of speed restrictions between somewhere and somewhere else (I forget where) we were running ten minutes late. Then, when we got close to Sydney, the train stopped and started a few times. An announcement said that we were stuck behind a commuter train, but it would become an express train after yet another place I forgot and we’d be able to make up time.

And then we arrived at Sydney Central Station and I, after doing the hotel thing, went to the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney. (Google Maps doesn’t have “Sydney” at the end of the name, just “Royal Botanic Garden.” But the garden’s website does include it as part of the name. So that’s what I’ll go with. Besides, it distinguishes it from the other Royal Botanic Gardens in other cities.

Royal Botanic Garden

Royal Botanic Garden Sydney is huge and amazing. It contains all manner of trees, shrubs and flowers, and it’s all very beautiful. And admission is free.

Some of the flowers were quite exotic, including kinds I can’t recall seeing before. And some, such as a wildflower section, are profuse, with the wildflowers growing quite tall and, well, wild.

Some of the trees are very attractive or strange. For example, one single tree has a large number of trunks. Others have boughs that spread massively out from their trunks.

The gardens contain a few ponds, the largest of which contains some islands with vegetation on them. And there are a few statues, including a couple with plants growing profusely on them as an intended part of the art.

There were a lot of birds at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, including a great many ibises, although I think they’re uninvited guests, not paid performers at the gardens.

The garden is divided into a number of sections. The paths through them have some forks. I don’t think it’s possible to plot a route through the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney such that you see everything without passing by some of it twice.

I spent close to two hours there, but I’m sure I missed a section or two. Because it’s so close to my hotel, and it’s free, I might go back again if I find I need some relaxation during my stay in Sydney.

(Yeah, yeah. I know. Me? Relax? I can always hope.)

The Royal Botanic Garden is bigger than it looks, and it looks big. A couple of times I walked along a wide path thinking I’d reached one end of the gardens only to spy another smaller path that took me farther and into another section. And the grounds are so large that they have room for lots and lots of flowers, trees and bushes, but also some large, lush, lawns.

The Royal Botanic Garden sits on a hill so there are both upper and lower sections. The lower section borders on a little-used bay off the Sydney harbour. So, I got to walk along a path beside the water.

Some More Beauty at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney:

But, wait. There’s more.

Sydney Opera House

The Sydney Opera House sits immediately past one end of the Royal Botanic Garden. I was able to get a good view of it from the gardens.

I’ve probably seen at least hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures and video clips of the Sydney Opera House. It’s one of the world’s most iconic buildings. But this is the first time I’ve seen it in person.

It gives me a bit of a thrill when I see such an iconic building first-hand. It happened to me when I first saw the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame in Paris; the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty (from a distance), and the Chrysler Building in New York; and Big Ben, Westminster, and London Bridge in London. I doubt I’ll ever get to see the Taj Mahal, but I’m sure I’d have the same feeling, probably even stronger, if I ever do.

Now I’ve seen the Sydney Opera House in person. Check that one off the list.