One of my goals is to visit ten new LDS temples each year. The Sydney, Australia temple was the first temple for 2026. Dave and I attended temple sessions there on my birthday, March 17, 2026. I sighed as I realized I could have seen new LDS temples in both Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, countries we visited on our cruise.
Dave recalled that we also visited the Sydney Temple in 1985, when it was brand new. When we told our taxi driver where to take us, he said, "That Mormon church. It's where the island bros go." There were, indeed, many people in the temple who appeared to be Maori, Fijian, or from other South Pacific islands.
We ate lunch at a cafe in a downtown Sydney park, as we waited for our next tour to congregate. Sydney's citizens were taking St. Patricks Day very seriously, all dressed in green!
We ate salads, as we listened to the happy chatter of friends and family eating holiday meals around us.
In the park, men played chess with oversize chess pieces.
Our tour guide drove six or eight of us in his van to beauty spots around Sydney. The wife of Andrew MacQuarrie, Australia's colonial governor, established a large park looking out over Sydney Harbor. She sat there so often that the rock where she sat was named "Mrs. MacQuarrie's seat".
The park had beautiful trees.
We also drove to an overlook beyond the bay, where we could look out to sea.
We stopped at Bondi Beach. It was here, a few months ago, that a Muslim terrorist shot fifteen people. Another Muslim man grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground for the police to haul away. Many people re-thought their anti-Muslim prejudices.
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