First Oz Trip

Well what a great trip! My sister Deej came for her first visit to Australia and we had a terrific time. I had Deej meet me in Sydney, so I worked half a day and drove up to Sydney, a very easy 3-hour journey--thank god for the GPS when navigating big city traffic. When I arrived Deej had pretty much just gotten back to the room after walking around Sydney since 9:30 a.m. She was tired, not just from not sleeping for umpteen hours, but from all that walking around. But it was great because I had been to all the same places just a few weeks before. It was great to see her again.

The first day the weather in Sydney looked...Seattle-like. So we decided to up to the Blue Mountains, which is roughly an hour outside Sydney -- first though, Deej needed her coffee and I needed breakfast so we headed to the a French patissiere and I had awesome hot chocolate and croissants. Then we got in the car and headed toward the Blue Mountains, again, thank god for the GPS in getting us out and into Sydney. As we got close to our target, a mist settled down all around us -- hmmm. We finally got to the visitors center car park and it was clear -- yipee. We went into the visitors center and got a map of walking trails, we came out -- yep, misty again. We looked in the direction of the Three Sisters natural feature and it was -- surprise, obscured by mist. Well, we decided to take one of the walking trails hoping it would clear up again, and ended up doing the Giant Staircase walk of more than 800 steps. It was steep in places and made up of rock, cement, and metal stairs but always with beautiful scenery--even if it was draped in mist. It was a long way down, then we walked over the the Scenic Railway which was another 2-3 km and saw the Koomba Falls on the way -- very pretty, but doesn't match what I saw at Iguazu Falls in Paraguay. We took the scenic railway back up, it is the steepest in the world and short, and fast. But it was pretty neat and I certainly didn't want to walk back up those 800 steps! All in all a very good day, if misty. We never did see the Three Sisters, just a bit of one or two on the way down.

The next day we headed to the beach--I was a bit sore from walking those 800 steps. First, we walked from the hotel to the ferry, going through the Botanical Park, which was cordoned off in the most inconvenient places. They were hosting a local triathalon there -- we were looking for the Ironman Triathlon Deej's co-worker had entered and my friend Brandon wanted pictures of -- but nothing, was was that darn thing? We took the local ferry to Manley Beach -- it started out to be a very nice day and for a while it was, then the clouds shrouded the sun and the wind picked up so we started walking around the area, the sun came out again and we enjoyed soaking up those rays! After we felt we'd had enough beach time we headed back to Sydney on the ferry to get a good view of Sydney Harbour from the sea. Then we did a bit of walking around the oldest part of Sydney, The Rocks. We stopped in the Visitors Center and found out the Ironman was indeed this weekend, but in Port Maquarie -- a 4-hour drive away -- maybe next time! We then went to the Susannah Place Museum -- which is 4-row houses that were built in late 1844 and continuously used until the early 1990's. They've kept it more or less as it was in different eras of the houses. I really enjoyed that, then we had pub dinner and went back to the hotel.

Monday we headed back to the car and started our drive down the Prince's Highway toward Melbourne. We took 5 days of 2-3 hour drives, our first stop in Jervis Bay was a winner, white sand beaches, pleasant bushwalks (hikes), wallaby's and quiet. Then as we headed to our next stop of Narooma, we stopped at a beach where, we heard, there were plenty of kangaroos (Deej hadn't seen one yet and really wanted to) we took a left at the sign for Pebbly Beach and it was a dirt road with plenty of potholes. We got to the beach, which was quite nice and settled down to wait for kangaroos -- but nothing. After a couple hours of enjoyable beach time and lunch we got back in the car, ended up on a different road with 200 yards of freshly graded dirt road and then ashphalt -- hmmm. When we got back on the Prince's Highway, I saw the turnoff sign, it said Mt. Agony road, personally I think road signs were switched! We walked around Narooma -- not much there actually, then had dinner in a great fish 'n' chips type place sitting on the water. It got very cool when it got dark though.

Then we headed to Orbost and stopped at Eden Beach, which was beautiful and we saw dolphins -- no good pictures though my camera just isn't good enough for that distance. Orbost is at the base of the Snowy River and we easily found our B&B -- it was a great place. We went for a long walk around the area which was lovely and quiet. When we got back the fire pit was lit and we took our bottle of wine and chairs and looked up at the stars, but it was too cloudy to see many. Sue and Glenn, our hosts, came out and we had a very interesting and wide-ranging conversation. They invited to their club the next night and gave us some suggestions for the next day. We went to the Buchan Caves to see the really cool stalagtites and -mites, as we came out we headed toward the carpark and guess what we saw -- kangaroos! Then we did a bushwalk to the Falls and saw a goanna (huge lizard) and a lyre bird (just the back but it was big and had long feathers) we got to the falls, but due to drought, no water. Then we headed back to Orbost to take the paddlewheel boat on the Snowy River -- very relaxing, if chilly. Then we headed to Cape Conran Reserve and went walking on the boardwalk at Sailor's Grave, it was great and there were beaches with some great seashells and photo ops. BTW a boardwalk here is just a nature hike over boards, I guess to try and minimize destruction of nature by manhandling it to make paths and people going off-path. Late we joined our B&B hosts Sue and Glenn at their club and had a great time, I haven't laughed that much in ages. Wonderful people, wonderful town! I'm going back!!!

The next morning we headed back down the road and stayed at a not-so-great motel and saw the old mining town of Walhalla, it was interesting, but the most interesting bits burned down in the 4 different fires they had from 1860 to early 1900's. I didn't like the motel so much, so we headed 45+ minutes away to go to a movie! So as to spend as little time as possible in the room.

The next morning we headed to Melbourne (again, thank god for the GPS) where we stayed with my counterpart, Leez. We saw Melbourne, which is a lovely city including the National Library where we saw the real iron suit worn by Australian outlaw Ned Kelly (he's Oz's Butch Cassidy, Billy the Kid type) the suit only covered his chest and torso, his arms and legs were not covered and that is what eventually got him caught. Deej, Leez and I participated in the Ned Kelly trial reinactment and it was great fun. Deej was the prosecutor, she took the role to heart and was very good, I was the chief witness and enjoyed it immensly. The guy may have been guilty, but that trial was a travesty of justice. The next day we did a trip to Dandenong Ranges on Puffing Billy, a old steam train -- gorgeous day and scenery. The next day we went to Bendigo another old gold mining town and went deep into a mine to look for gold, walked through tunnels, used a drill, cracked some quartz to find gold (but only found pyrite) and had a miners lunch of meat pasty and tea. It's a beautiful town with very eclectic and pretty architecture, you can tell it benefited quite a bit from the gold the miners found. Then Donna and I flew to Alice Springs to see Uluru (Ayers Rock). Out of 30 days of bad weather a year, we were there for two of them and couldn't see the great sunrise/sunset at Uluru or the Olga's because of all the cloud cover. Bummer. There was a great long and somewhat difficult walk around the Olga's, it was gorgeous though. There were some very good shops for typical Australiana souveniers in Alice Springs and I'm very happy with my purchases. But don't ask me to play that digereedo, just does'nt seem to want to happen!

Our final big trip was to Port Douglas and the Great Barrier Reef. This was amazing!! When snorkling or diving it was like swimming through an aquarium. It was to me, the major highlight of our trip. We stayed at a great studio room with a hot plate and stuff, and a grill by the pool, walking distance to town, the beach and marina. Loved it. The beach was gorgeous and the water soooo warm. I did the intro scuba dive and enjoyed it, would like to finish getting my dive certification and am working on planning that now. If you come visit me you CANNOT miss this. We also did some walking through Daintree Rainforest, which was rather nice with lovely beaches there too. Finally we flew back to Melbourne and drove my car back to Canberra. It's a long trip with lots of road construction -- we were so happy to be home! We did loads of laundry and saw the War Memorial (beautiful building), found a great new Vietnamese restaurant, and went to the Tidbinbilla nature reserve. Now Deej had seen the kangaroo's at Buchan Caves, but that was it. She was rather disappointed, I mean Australia is 'roo's, right? Well, driving around Canberra we saw plenty of "lazy" 'roo's (meaning dead), but few live ones. We get to Tidbinbilla and start driving to where the koala's are and she see 'roo's, so we stop and she takes some photos. Then we keep on driving and there are more 'roo's and more. Then we walk see the top bit of a koala high up in a tree, and wallaby's (same family as 'roo's), birds, etc. Then we see some duck billed platypus', but all you can see are their stomach's and if the ranger hadn't told us what they were we would thought they were anything but platypus'. On the drive back, around dusk, all we saw were 'roo's everywhere we went, more kangaroo's. It was hilarious!! But cool....so long as you don't hit one! Anyway, that is my first trip around Oz.

Deej will be back in 2011 and we'll do Tasmania and New Zealand. I'll also do some traveling with my parents and everyone else who comes to visit.