Manly Beach

The day after the conference ended, we went to one of the "suburbs" of Sydney, an area north of the city called Manly. You can drive there across the Sydney Harbor bridge, but the more pleasant method is a 40 minute ferry ride across Sydney Harbor. A friend of Jammie's, Mina, that she met in Scotland several years ago when she was doing a clinical rotation lives in Manly, so we got to visit with her and her two children for the afternoon.

Manly is a quaint little seaside town that has a really cool boardwalk area along the beach with shops and restaurants, but wasn't overly touristy. Every Sunday, they have an open market that a lot of the locals on Manly as well folks from Sydney come to, so this day was actually fairly crowded. After having some lunch, we drifted down the beach a little and found this place along the rocks called the "worm hole" that allows one to walk through a tunnel in the rocks that takes you from one beach to the other.

When we got to the other side, we had some great views of Manly. Also, there were scuba divers below in the bright blue water.

Next we walked to the other end of Manly, which was a large hill/small mountain. From here we had amazing views of Sydney, as well as the Tasmanian Sea.

Sydney - The International Ankle Symposium

The main purpose of the trip was so that I could attend a research conference, the International Ankle Symposium. I gave a presentation and did some other things with the organization of the conference. The day before the conference started, I conducted some research in the laboratory of a friend and colleague, Dr. Claire Hiller, at the University of Sydney. The conference was great and I was energized with some ideas to work in the coming months. The talks that I and also my doctoral student, Kathryn Webster(pictured with me above), gave went very well.

The night that the conference ended, a big important rugby match between Australia (The Wallabies) and New Zealand (The All Blacks) was being televised. So, a group of us from the conference got together for dinner and to watch the game a a place called the Cargo Bar on Darling Harbor. In the picture I'm next to my friend Garrett from University College in Dublin, Ireland. We had a really great time, but unfortunately the Wallabies lost. I am now a Wallabies fan and am hoping to find a place here in Toledo to watch the upcoming games.