On my first morning in Sydney I left my digs in Surry Hills and took the L2 tram line towards Circular Quay.
Circular Quay is a very famous spot in Australian history because it was here that the First Fleet landed with its first batch of convict colonizers in 1788.
Two of Australia’s most famous sites bookend Circular Quay: Sidney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. This is the epicenter of Sydney.
I picked a bench in the shade of the iconic sails of the Opera House and sketched the equally iconic Harbour Bridge.
I then walked around the Opera House wondering how on earth I was going to fit this architectural masterpiece into the pages of my journal. (Maybe I needed a bigger journal!) First I needed to get a further perspective so I headed into the Royal Botanic Gardens, picking up life birds along the way like such iconic Aussie species as sulphur-crested cockatoo and the laughing kookaburra.
It was thrilling to get a first look at a kookaburra!
I found a bench and attempted a first sketch. Capturing the sails was going to be a challenge and I figured I’d needed a few attempts from different perspectives.
In the meantime I continued to bird.
One of those “I’m not in Kansas” moments. These are not escaped cockatoos but wild sulphur-crested cockatoos feeding on seed like pigeons in a park!
I headed out to Mrs. Macquarie’s Point, after picking up more lifers, to get a further perspective of the Opera House and Bridge.
My sketching bench with a view of two of Sydney’s most iconic structures produced the featured sketch. A self portrait view from the deck of my Surry Hills fifth floor flat looking toward downtown Sydney. A frequent morning visitor to the trees in the foreground and my first Aussie lifer was the beautiful rainbow lorikeet.
While on O’ahu I continued with continuous-line sketching.
I had originally wanted to keep a separate journal and only sketch with this freeing technique but I didn’t follow my own challenge and spread continuous-line sketches throughout my three watercolor journals that I brought with me to Hawaii and Australia.
I grew to love this method in proportion to by own leaning curve. I didn’t want to sketch this way on every sketch but sprinkle it about as the subject seems fit.
What I love about this technique is it is a puzzle; figuring out how to get to one part of the sketch to the other. You simply draw your way there, sometimes doubling or tripling back on already existing pen marks. And of course pencils are never allowed for Continuous-Lines Sketches (CLS).
My first CLS was of the famed statue of King Kamehameha in front of the ‘Iolani Palace in downtown Honolulu.
While I initially looked at the complex details of the building I let it rip with a single pen line and I liked the results.The final continuous-line sketch with watercolor washes.
After sketching the palace I caught an Uber up to the Punchbowl Cemetery where the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific is located. The cemetery sits in a volcanic crater and many of the victims of the attack of Pearl Harbor are buried here.
I rendered the monument in a single, unbroken one line and I am pleased with the result.
Is this the most precise and accurate sketch of the monument? No, but is has something more, a feeling of spontaneity.
I had to continuously-line sketch the one view that says “Waikiki” more than all others: Diamond Head from Waikiki Beach.
I walked out to a stone jetty, in front of the lifeguard station and let my pen do the dancing. Instead of attempting to draw every palm leaf on every frond, I look for shapes not details (featured sketch).
A great way to end the day was to sit on my hotel room balcony with an adult beverage and my sketchbook while looking over the “Las Vegas” of Hawaii.
One other sketching stop on Ford Island was the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.
I love aircraft and I love sketching them. I did three sketches of aircraft used in World War II, two of which played a part in the attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941: the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk and the Mitsubishi A6M2, know as the “Zero”.
At the time of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Zeros dominated with many P-40s being destroyed on airfields around the island. A few Warhawk were able to make it to the air to put up a defense.
On the way to Hanger 79 is one of my favorite fighters, the F-4 Phantom.
I then walked over to Hanger 79, which also houses planes in the museum’s collection.
This hanger was built in 1941 and still bears scars from December 7, 1941 in the form of bullet holes left by strafing Zeros.
Zeros left their mark on hanger 79.
One plane in Hanger 79 was on my sketch list. This was a B-17E Flying Fortress named the “Swamp Ghost”. This bomber has an intriguing story (featured sketch).
The bomber was damaged and low on fuel after a bombing raid over New Britain in the Papa New Guinea archipelago.
The pilot was forced to land in what he thought was a flat green field but turned out to be a swamp and the plane settled in five feet of water.
The crew survived the forced landing and hiked out of the jungle for six weeks arriving at Port Moresby exhausted and sickened with malaria.
The B-17 sat for half a century, dubbed the “Swamp Ghost” by Aussie pilots.
The plane was eventually recovered, piece by piece, by helicopter. It spent some time in California before returning to its new home on Ford Island for the first time since 1941.
There is one site that has the most visitors (70 million per year) out of any other in O’ahu: Pearl Harbor.
I had a 9:00 reservation to visit the USS Arizona Memorial. Before I boarded the boat out to the memorial, I did two sketches from the Visitors Center (one is the featured sketch and the other is below).
The Arizona is a nautical grave. On December 7, 1941 a Japanese bomb passed through four decks igniting an ammunition magazine causing a massive explosion. Sailors were incinerated instantly. This is the biggest loss of life on a single ship in US Navy history killing 1,177 sailors. About 900 sailors are entombed in the sunken battleship.
We queued up ten minutes before our boat took us across the harbor to the memorial.
The boats are run by the US Navy with enlisted men and women in uniform piloting the boat. Each boat are considered launches of the sunken Arizona, carrying the number 39, the hull number of the Arizona “BB-39”.
Before we departed, the park ranger had to remind visitors of proper decorum while at the memorial. My teacher voice was at the ready if there was any guffawing and disrespect at this solemn tomb. Luckily for me I keep said voice under wraps as visitors were respectful.
After the short ride we disembarked to the entrance of this solemn but beautiful memorial.
Approaching the beautiful memorial.
As we walked up the gangway a light but persistent warm rain began to fall.
The memorial is built over the sunken hull of the Arizona. You can look off towards the bow and the stern, both of which are marked by white buoys.
Part of the Arizona in the foreground looking toward the bow and beyond, the USS Missouri. Here is the beginning and the end of America’s involvement in World War II in one image. The surrender documents where signed on the deck of the Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.Looking towards the stern of the Arizona with Gun Turret No. 3 breaking the surface.Beautiful pollution.
About half a gallon of oil from Arizona’s fuel tanks leaks to the surface everyday. When Arizona was lined up at Battleship Row in 1941, she was fully fueled. It is estimated that 79,000 gallons of oil are still aboard the Arizona.
California Coda
Before I left for Pearl Harbor, I visited a cemetery near my mom’s house in Grass Valley.
I was looking for the grave of Louis “Lou” Conter at St. Patrick’s Cemetery. After a brief search, I found it.
Why this grave? Conter was the last surviving member of the crew of the USS Arizona, where he was a quartermaster. He passed on April 1, 2024 ay the age of 102.
I arrived at my hotel an hour and a half early before check in so I stowed my bag and walked to the Waikiki Beach through Fort Durussy Beach Park.
There were tons of birds in the park, all exotic (common myna, zebra dove, red-headed cardinal, common waxbill, Java sparrow, etc.) introduced to this jungle paradise. But I was looking for one native. An all white bird with a solid black beak and black eyes. It perches and nests on horizontal branches in the park. This is the white tern!
This is not a lifebird, I had a far off and all too brief view of one on a pelagic from Kona on the Big Island. But I was soon to get stunning views of the “Angel” tern!
It is fitting to see this bird in Honolulu as it is the city’s official bird. In the Hawaiian language the bird is known as manu-o-Ku.
Searching for the white tern is pretty easy. Look up into any tree with lots of horizontal branches for a white bird and hope it’s not a feral pigeon!
White tern at the park next to my hotel.
There were lots of terns (or as it should be called the white noddy) to choose from.
I finally made it out to Waikiki Beach with stunning views of Diamond Head. So I had to sketch the view (featured sketch). With some sand in my shoes and a Mai Tai in my gullet!
“Consider the platypus. In a land of improbable creatures, it stands supreme. It exist in a kind of anatomical nether world halfway between mammal and reptile. Fifty million years of isolation gave Australian animals the leisure to evolve in unlikely directions, or sometimes scarcely to evolve at all. The platypus managed somehow to do both.”-Bill Bryson
Australia has a host of really odd creatures.
Some are only found Down Under such as kangaroos, wallabies, wallaroos, and certain tree-possums.
There is one animal that tops the oddity list and this has to be the duckbill platypus.
The platypus is a monotreme, an order of the only mammals that lay eggs. There are just the platypus and four species of echidnas in existence today in this order.
The platypus seems to be put together from some surplus animal parts: the bill of a duck, body of an otter, the tail of a beaver, and the webbed feet of a goose. Who knew what early scientists made of the platypus?
I hoped to get a chance to see this mammalian oddity in Queensland.
I ordered a platypus model to use as a sketching tool. I think I might bring this long with me in my carry-on. An Aussie mascot.
My Aussie good luck platypus mascot. I wonder if it will bring me a real platypus.
On my visit to North Queensland, I couldn’t be near one of the seven wonders of the natural world without having a look-see.
From the coastal town of Cairns, boats depart on day trips to the Great Barrier Reef.
The reef system runs mostly parallel along the northeastern coast of Australia for 1,400 miles, making it the largest reef system in the world.
The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is what a tropical rainforest is to biodiversity. Here are a few facts that highlights the mega diversity on hand.
The GNR supports 1,500 species of fish, 4,000 species of mollusks, 400 species of coral, 6 of the 7 world’s species of sea turtles, 14 species of sea snakes, 133 species of sharks and rays, and 242 species of birds. The GBR also contains 25% of all known marine species!
I am planning to dip into a bit of this biodiversity with a snorkeling trip to Michaelmas Cay. While I’m a certified SCUBA diver, I want to spend some time topside, to see some of the breeding seabirds of this cay.
The cay supports 23 species of seabirds and at the height of the breeding season (our summer) there can be up to 20,000 birds on Michaelmas Cay.
Some of the lifers I hope to see on the cay are: brown (common) noddy, sooty, little, great crested, black-naped terns, and masked booby. I also hoped to get great looks at some birds I’ve seen before such as great frigatebird and brown booby but in breeding plumage.
“The saltwater crocodile is the one animal that has the capacity to frighten even Australians. People who would calmly flick a scorpion off their forearm or chuckle fearlessly at a pack of skulking dingos will quake at the sight of a hungry croc.”
-Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country
I was looking forward to my encounter with the world’s largest reptile in Queensland on a Daintree River cruise. I just hope it will not be a close encounter!
Australian wildlife has the capacity to kill. Even a cone snail can kill a human! Oz is home to 213 venomous snakes. That is more venomous snakes than anywhere else in the world.
Australia is also home to the Murder bird, a small venomous octopus, the world’s most deadly spider (Sydney funnel-web), stonefish, box jellyfish, the common death adder, the blue bottle, the bull, tiger, and great white shark, and many others.
But as Bill Bryson notes, there is one deadly animal that rises above all others: the saltwater crocodile.
This apex predator sometimes sees humans as prey. In Australia from 1971 to 2013, saltwater creatures crocs killed 106 people. On average there are about 2 fatal attacks per year.
I have seen the American alligator and crocodile in Florida and the Yacare caiman (above) in the Pantanal. I was really looking forward to seeing the largest crocodilian in the world.
In order to sketch a croc I ordered a model to help me sketch. This way I could sketch it from any angle such as from above.
My saltwater croc model and my sketch in progress. My croc eating my student’s capybara! No plastic was harmed in the making of this photograph.
Some of the birds on my Australian trip would be fairly easy to find in Sydney’s parks. Especially a big black swan. The other is a diminutive little bird with a wonderful name of superb fairywren. (This bird is a species featured in The 100 Birds to See Before you Die). Challenge accepted!
The swan can be found in the ponds of Centennial Park. Having seen these all back swans at the San Francisco’s Zoo’s Australian exhibit, I wanted to see this bird in the wild. Or the quasi-wild of an urban park.
All of the swans found in North America are all white, such as this pair of wintering tundra swans in Yuba County.
The superb fairywren is a member of the Australian wren family. The male and female, like most ducks, are sexually dimorphic. The male is a stunning mixture of black, brown, and an electric blue. The female is a drab brown with a blue tail held erect.
In 2021, the superb fairywren was voted Australian Bird of the Year, beating out the tawny frogmouth.
There was one creature in Australia, out of all the deadly and dangerous creatures, that my Australian mate was concerned with me encountering: the murderbird (southern cassowary).
When asking zookeepers at the San Francisco Zoo to list the most dangerous animal in the zoo they often replied: a tiger might attack you but a cassowary will attack you. This flightless beast topped the list.
And I intended to see a cassowary in North Queensland. The Murderbird topped my Australian birding wishlist.
I will be on a five day guided birding trip out of Cairns and we would be looking for the flightless Danger Bird on three different days.
If the tawny frogmouth looks like a Muppet, then the cassowary looks like a denizen of Sesame Street, but from the other side of the tracks. A satanic Big Bird.
I have seen large flightless birds before, like this greater rhea in Brazil’s Pantanal. The rhea looks friendly and inviting, unlike the cassowary!!
Corvid Sketcher 