Awoke to another blue sky and a nice view from our apartment’s balcony over Lavender Bay.

About 11:00 Jay and Kaede met us at our apartment and we went down and across the road to the Kirribilli Market, (which was mostly in Milsons Point.) It was quite hot already as we moved around the stalls.

The market was well spread and we were pleased to find it spilled into one of the tunnels between Milsons Point and Kirribilli. Here we found a couple more Christmas presents

before walking through to a nearby cafe, Oski, for lunch.

Nice food, friendly owner and excellent music.

After lunch we walked down to the Milsons Point ferry wharf.

Pretty soon a ferry going to Circular Quay arrived.

On we went and soon we were travelling beneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

As we approached Circular Quay I took a selfie of Karen and I with the famous Opera House behind us.

Then as we boarded our next ferry I took another one with the Harbour Bridge behind us. We were playing the tourist.

We were soon on our way again. The city behind us.

We stopped at Barangaroo before continuing on to our end destination,

Cockatoo Island.

While Jay and Kaede bought a drink from the cafe Karen and I checked out the information boards and map.

Soon we were on our way doing a self guided walk. You can book onto a guided walk at a cost. What looked like sculptures turned out to be old equipment, beam benders.

You can now stay on the island overnight in these tents. We didn’t think that would be so marvellous on a hot day like the one we were experiencing. Now it was 32.

As we followed the path we came upon a lovely Grevillea in bloom

as well as this Banksia robur just finishing flowering.

Lots of old infrastructure could still be seen.

Historically, since the British arrived, the island has been used as a convict prison settlement, a reformatory for wayward girls, a shipyard during both World Wars and is now available for day trippers and campers. Back in 2014 the movie Unbroken was filmed there. On the other side of the island we even found some Harbour Bridge view apartments for hire. Here’s a selection of the photos I took as we wandered around.

Along the way there were quite a few information boards.

Going into the various buildings was not only interesting but enabled us to avoid the hot sun.

However by far the ‘coolest’ place to go on a hot day was in the Dog Leg Tunnel.

The tunnel had been used to safely move goods around during WW II as well as being an air raid shelter.

Once we had finished looking around we made our way back to the ferry wharf. Within five minutes a ferry arrived. Back at Milsons Point we disembarked and took a few more touristy snaps before having a drink back at our apartment.

Later that evening we met up again with Jay and Kaede at the Old Commodore Hotel in McMahons Point for dinner.

It had a friendly ambience and the servings were typically large.

Walking back to our apartment we enjoyed seeing a magnificent end to the day as golden hour arrived.

The next morning we returned to the airport and flew home to prepare for a busy Christmas and New Year Season. It had been a fun Pre Christmas trip.

Next post we visit Geelong and Melbourne’s other peninsula, the Bellarine Peninsula.