A very bright day and a trip out in Sydney Harbour – Day 325 – 9 December

Today we got straight into tourist mode and jumped back onto the underground to take us back into the heart of Sydney, we only had a bit of a sketchy plan of what we were going to do today but this was plan enough for us! We got off at Martin Place one of the nearest stations to the harbour and where ‘it’ was all happening or so the guide book reliably informed us! When we departed our station we headed to the Hyde Park Barracks Museum. Funnily enough we had actually walked past this place yesterday on our meanderings!

My wife’s maiden name is Peacock and it looks like one of them even got over here … but in a small wooden box, showing people were a lot smaller in the Past!

The guide book had recommended the Barracks for a bit of a visit and it was cheap too, so this clinched the deal and in we went! Once again we found out on our travels that cheap does not necessarily mean shoddy as right from the start the entire place was both informative and quite interesting too. We were both given audio guides and armed with these off we set round the place. We found out about yet more prisoners sent over from the UK who had only ever stolen a loaf of bread or (Gosh no!) in more extreme cases pinched an egg or perhaps the valued orange, it seems once again that no prisoners sent from the UK to Oz ever committed any serious crimes ever, would you believe it! Well no, quite frankly I for one do not believe it, there will have been the odd case of orange stealing – as back in the UK to this day we did deport of lot of orange stealers – but as for murderers, looters, rapists we shipped em out quicker than you can say ‘cor blimey who’s nicked me fruit!, so Australia at least admit that you got some bad fruit along with the good!

People were also a lot uglier back then but a pipe makes everyone prettier … or so I believe!

Still it made no difference to us though as the place was ‘top drawer’ and followed you through the history of the building – which in places had been ‘peeled back’ – as well as the history of the many inhabitants that it had received as well. Some of the exhibits were interactive, that is you could actually lie on some of the hammocks which were made up exactly as they had been back in the day. This ‘interactivity’ was not only great for the odd photo but it was possibly the cause of me misplacing my sunglasses which my good wife nipped back to retrieve, she is not a bad old stick – and will possibly break my ribs if she reads this, possibly getting deported to Australia in the process, funny how things turn out eh!

Looking very authentic, there was I acting my heart out as a poor cabin boy … Oscar Nominations please!

Next though we had booked to go on one of the harbour cruises so from the barracks we now had quite a ways to walk – at quite a pace too – to make sure we made it to the wharf on time. It was very hot and Sydney is a busy old place and we even had to enlist the help of a good samaritan along the way to point us in the right direction but finally we reached Wharf 5 with enough time spare to buy ourselves a Mars bar apiece.

Not too shabby a vessel to be going for a trip on eh?

The boat which was going to take us around the harbour was very plush indeed as are most of the boats zipping about on the waters round here. So we picked ourselves out a prime position upstairs in the shade and readied ourselves for the off. It was a perfect day, the harbour looked amazingly bright and colourful in the bright sunshine and the amount of sea-faring traffic was quite astounding too – lots of boats, yachts, ferries, cruisers and even the odd bathtub (well maybe not those but you get the picture). The skies mirrored the water too as there were lots of jets flying from the nearby airport, helicopters off on sightseeing trips and even the odd seaplane for those lucky tourists with a  few extra bucks to spend!

The iconic Opera House!

The trip was for two hours and it took us from the wharf under the iconic Sydney Harbour bridge, past the iconic Opera House and even as far as the perhaps not-so-iconic Fort Dennison but it was all really good fun. Halfway round we picked up some tourists from Asia who proceeded to take up any chair devoid of even a partial bum cheek and those who weren’t fighting for seats seemed to be staggering about as they were heavily weighed down by lots of cameras with very long lenses, so with something akin to ‘camera envy’ I hid my wee click and play and promised to feed it whoever the other bigger cameras were on! It may not be the biggest but for some of the cameras being carried about I think we would have needed another backpack! On our return journey which was still frightfully hot it was quite nice to receive the complimentary free drink from one of the many stewards as we admired the scenery from the returning angle.

Another icon, the place is full of them!

Once back on terra firma and after we had regained our more landlubbery legs we decided the sea air had given us a bit of a hunger so went off searching for foodstuffs, so Chinatown down the way from the wharf seemed the obvious choice. As ever, it took us quite a while to decide what we wanted and were we would eat, which as most of the menus seemed to offer similar fare seemed quite a waste of time but eventually we picked a place and settled back to eat some noodle soup … mmmm. Thinking we were still in Asia and had the immunity we had built up as we travelled round the place, we ordered the hot noodles, however the waitress being a kindly soul convinced us poor (stupid!) travellers to take the toned down version as the ‘hot’ may be just a bit too hot for our palettes. At first we cursed her and her meddling ways but then the noodles came and even this ‘toned down’ version of noodley goodness managed to have me in tears by the first sip! Where was the volcano behind the counter that this lava was being extracted from … okay maybe a little over the top but you get the picture. How quickly our tastebuds have forgotten that we used to enjoy chillies and the like, I suppose we must have built up a resistance to the heat or we got used to it, either way we were not used to it now and it burnt lordy how it burnt (lol)!

I really like this, quite delicate and very beautiful … cool!

Mouth well and truly burnt out it was time to venture back ‘home’ so we returned to Elis’ explaining about our day out. Good soul that she is, she invited us out but by this time we were absolutely knackered, city life definitely takes it out of one! It was not all beddybys for us though as for a while we watched a huge storm taking place out to sea with lightning flashes lighting up the sky it was great until we realised that it was heading our way so we hot-footed it back to the safety of our little campervan.

 

Bundaberg and a simply Eggsellent evening at Mon Repos – Day 305 – 19 November

It was a decent enough drive through the countryside that took us to Bundaberg, a place that my son had stayed at for a while whilst he was over here in Oz. The town was quite a big one and seemed to be surrounded on all sides by vegetable and fruit farms. As ever we first popped to the local Information Centre to try and get the lowdown on the best beaches round here so we could snorkel and relax on for today was to be a day of some serious chilling, the reason being that tonight we had booked the Turtle Experience at Mon Repos!

Coral Cove – It was much better in real life!

 

So off we went for a bit of a snorkel at a beautiful little place called Coral Cove. This was another of those places which is certainly a sight for sore eyes but where isn’t in Oz. It had all the requisite features, blue skies, aqua seas and golden sands but this was all set off against black volcanic rocks, which seemed to make all of the other features stand out even more. As sometimes happens, the snorkelling turned out to be not too great as there was quite a bit of a swell and we soon found out that as well as looking impressively black, the rocks and the barnacles on them were also quite dangerous to be rubbing up against! A couple of guys on their dinner break seemed to be having better luck than we did or knew the tides a bit better so we left them to it. Now pleasantly ‘exerted’ we felt that we had earned a bit of a rest.

Bargara – you can see why the turtles come round here!

So we drove off to a little place called Bargara which turned out to have it’s own lovely little beach too. Even better was that next to the beach was the entrance to a little lagoon the locals used for swimming and in it the kids were having a great time, laughing swimming and generally messing about, much better than seeing them mesmerised by their phones or their computers. We joined in the fun but at a much more relaxed pace by doing a bit of book reading and we even indulged in a bit of a kip each too. This was of course necessary (lol) as we wanted to be fully recharged for tonight as we had no idea what to expect or how long it would be before we saw a turtle.

Get that damn phone outta my face!

Somewhat refreshed, we cooked a bit of food and then drove down to the Turtle Rookery and viewing centre to eat it in the car park there. Lots of cars were already parked up so we wolfed our food down and in we scarpered. Once inside we were separated into groups and the guides there explained to us that we would wait in these groups to be called up onto the beach where, if we were lucky, we would have the chance to see a female Loggerhead Turtle lay her eggs – fingers crossed eh!

We had only just been put into our group, lucky (?) group two, when we were shouted up as we thought, to go on the beach, things seemed to be looking hopeful. Dash and dammit though – we were only being called up to watch a video about the conservation effort at Mon Repos and how that here they had been particularly successful in helping turtle numbers rise which was great news really. The film done we were called up again and this time we were off outside, surely this had to be the real thing didn’t it?

This was not the ‘business end’ of the turtle!

We followed our guide and strolled along the boardwalk that led to the beach and then as a group, quite a big group at that, we continued along the sands to where another guide was waving us onwards with her torch to where she stood next to some turtle tracks. This was a good indication that a possible mum-to-be had come ashore here. Then, I am not really sure what he needed to be doing but we had to wait for our ranger to ‘set things up’ at the nesting site and then he took us to her to make a semi-circle around the mother’s back whilst she was busy digging her nest into which she would be dropping her clutch.

First was the big egg count – 171 eggs!

Whilst she dug, our guide a guy called Everett, explained a bit more to us about the programme and about the turtles themselves. A couple of things that I should point out at this juncture are that the turtle’s eyesight is as good as ours is out of the water, something which I did not expect and this was why we had to stay behind her outside her field of vision. If she did catch wind of us she might be ‘spooked’ and perhaps abandon her egg laying for another night! This also meant that no cameras or lights could be used at this point too, so all there was was a single light pointing down into the hole that the turtle had made thus far.

My wife, a very willing volunteer egg-mover!

The mother then proceeded to lay her eggs and she really went at it laying 171 eggs to be precise. When turtles have laid between about 15 to 20 eggs they enter a ‘trance like state’, therefore after this number we were allowed to quietly walk round the mother and could even take photos and films which was frankly quite amazing. Then as she was nearing the end of her egg laying we once again switched the lights off and let her be whilst she covered her eggs. The guide then proceeded to inform us that our mother had unfortunately buried her eggs a bit too close to the high tide mark so the eggs would need relocating just a bit higher up. So the ranger’s helper was starting to dig a new nest site whist our mother was filling and covering hers over, for us to soon be uncovering!

Our eggs in their new home! Goodbye old friends!

Her work finished she lumbered her way back towards the sea and it may have been partly due to her size but the egg laying had taken a lot of her strength, you could see that she was absolutely shattered and seemed to just be using willpower alone to make her way back to the water. Once she was back in the sea safely and on her way further out we were asked if we would like to help with the relocating of the eggs and we were most enthusiastic volunteers. The ranger passed us the eggs from the turtle’s hole and we took them up to the new nesting site, easy enough but really good fun and we could take snaps too of our little deliveries as it were. This was a most excellent way to round the night off so, job done we wandered off back to the centre to find ourselves the recipient of a certificate each. Not really sure what we had done to deserve such an accolade as it was the mother turtle who had really been doing all of the work, maybe it was just because we had the biggest smiles! And as we received our awards, group three was only just heading out so God knows what time they would be finished, so once again we had been quite lucky as we still had quite a drive before us to get to our next port of call.

It was not too far but it was dark and in the sticks here dark is very dark indeed, so much so we almost drove past our stopping place. One quick (or to be more accurate, one slowish) U-eey though and we were soon parked up and able to get our heads down but we both definitely went to sleep with smiles on our faces, it had simply been an unforgettable evening.

 

A Day of Caves and Zoos, well one of each! – Day 304 – 18 November

After last night’s eating excesses we awoke with quite full bellies so decided not to bother with breakfast this morning. This meant that we were able to get off to something of a flying start and we quickly enough head out towards ‘Rocky’. On the way there we took a bit of a stop off to have a look at an attraction called the Capricorn caves. This was to be a guided cave tour so we had to have a bit of a wait but a quick cup of tea and we were soon enough being called up for our tour.

Quite a strange ‘cave through a hole’ photo! 

The name of the caves comes from the fact that the caves and Rockhampton itself lie close to (or on?) the Tropic of Capricorn. We have already passed over this imaginary line round towards the bottom of the Earth three times now so it is becoming a bit like an old friend on the Australian leg of our trip. The caves were quite good, perhaps not exactly full or stalactites and ‘mites as the cave visit that we had already done on the Western coast of Oz but very good just the same. At one point, in the Cathedral cave our guide put some opera music on in order to illustrate the quality of the cave’s acoustics. Throughout the caves there were a good few bats about the place the ones we could see were the Micro bats but Ghost bats also inhabit the cave system albeit infrequently. The Ghost bats are quite strange as they are whitish in colour and their wings are almost transparent, so you can see their bones giving them their somewhat gruesome name.

Cathedral Cave – maybe the Ghost Bats are here and we just can’t see them!

Here at the caves you could also go adventure caving but I am not so sure that my good wife would have thanked me if I put our names down for it. Like a good many of the cave systems you come across, in all parts of the world, what you see is just the access that the public are given, many of the caves stretch very much further in some cases miles and miles of caves even lay undiscovered but this does not particularly impress my wife so it was time to be heading on … lol!

Light through a cave opening – quite atmospheric!

So we left and continued on towards the coast. First stop was a place called Rosslyn Marina and here we had a bit of a wander about taking a couple of photos of boats we would like to own before we came across a little fishmongers selling fresh fish, so here we bought ourselves some fresh mackerel for tea … mmmmm – and put that in little our ‘fridge’ (aka the icebox)!

We did not know which to choose so bought ‘his’ and ‘hers’ matching boats! 

From the marina we drove the short distance to Emu Park where as we went on the War commemoration walk we came across some rosemary so I picked up a bit. On the walk we saw a memorial to Captain Cook called the Singing Ship, very novel!

The Commemorative Walk

Going back to the van we bought ourselves some food and had an impromptu picnic by some trees where the Black Parrots roosting in them were kicking up quite a fuss, noisy bleepers!

Black Parrots, very noisy dining companions!

 

The ‘Singing Ship’ – when the wind blows it sings!

Once nourished we made another drive to Rockhampton, one of the bigger towns in the area and we had come here to visit the town’s zoo. Now for some strange reason – possibly our good selves – we found the zoo quite difficult to find as Australians seem to use ‘the force’ (or GPS!) to get everywhere we however had to use their roadsigns which are nonexistent and somewhat crap! It turned out that their zoo was within the Botanical Gardens, signs that we had obviously not followed, but when we did get there it was all very nice and colourful with lots of birds flying about and kicking up quite a din.

The ‘Singing Wife’ – when her wind blows she also sings!!!

The zoo was quite small but it was also well within our budget being that it was free! Here we saw the Chimps being fed and the zookeeper here really seemed to have an affinity for the apes. He fed them yoghurt on a plate and some of them ate using a spoon, showing their ability to use tools. We also saw our first Koalas and Dingos too but even better or more unusual or so we thought, were the Wombats. These look a bit like small hairy pigs but with a face not unlike a koala and these little fellas burrow themselves underground – very strange. The one which had come out to entertain us lay on its back with all its legs splayed outwards and having a poop, well I never! It was hardly ‘Britain’s (or Australia’s) Got Talent’ – or was it?

The Wombat – pre-pooping position!

Our campsite for the night was a bit outside of a place called Gladstone and a bit of a way still to go so, zoo visited, we headed off towards it. Gladstone is home to a huge mining operation and as we drove through the place it seemed that there were industries on all sides of us. When we reached our resting place we got talking to an older fella who tried to explain to us ‘thee best way to experience Oz’, I thought somewhat wistfully, ‘if I had a dollar for every time someone said this’ … lol! Later we dined on the mackerel which I cooked in tinfoil with the vegetables and it was one of the best meals we have had whilst travelling in Oz – simply delicious!

Dingos another new thing for us to see!

 

 

 

 

A bit of a walk and listening to a bit of a talk before returning to Alice Springs! – Day 285 – 30 October

Passing yesterday’s rocky adventure on the way to the new rocky one!

Today we wanted to spend a bit more time at the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park and go and see a bit closer up the other ‘rocks’, those that we had yesterday seen from the air in the helicopter – Kata Tjuta! We planned to try and complete at least one walk today and if our little legs were not aching too much then perhaps follow it up with a second but even though it was still only early in the day it was already warming up towards being quite a scorcher.

The new rocks are in town …. Talking Heads!

Whereas Uluru is a monolith, that is a single huge rock, Kata Tjuta one the other hand is an entirely different creature as it is an agglomeration – a mass of smaller rocks all held together – proving that I do listen and/or do my homework before writing this tosh … lol! The indigenous people call them the ‘Olgas’ meaning a load of heads and as we drove closer we could see what they meant, the rocks really did look like a group of people having a bit of a natter – okay they would have to be very very large people but then I do have a quite an imagination!

Walpa Gorge – a big red corridor!

The first walk we did here was a shortish one to the Valley of the Winds and along the way we saw the Olgas faces up close and personal and although the rock looked a bit like Uluru, they also did not if you know what I mean! However, there were quite a few people with the same idea but it still turned out to be a good stretch for the legs. It was a fair bit quieter and to be honest a fair bit hotter on our next walk – the Walpa Gorge walk. The gorge was quite a nice stroll but as the walls closed in it was almost like being in a strange but huge red corridor. What made it even worse or better depending upon your viewpoint, was that the walk was not too long as our legs were now starting to feel a bit worse for wear especially after our exertions yesterday around ‘the rock’. At Walpa though we had hoped to see a bit of wildlife, especially some birdlife but we ended up hearing much more than we actually saw.

Too big heads in the foreground and a few more big heads in the back …

It was great for us to have had a closer view of the other great rock feature in the area and as we drove back towards civilisation we came across a lay-by with a viewpoint that gave us one last opportunity to view both great rocky sights before we headed on back into town.

Wooden weapons, would have been much more useful for us if they would work against the flies!!

Once back in town we had the opportunity to take advantage of one of the free things you can do here by listening to some aborigine bush yarns! We arrived at the small green in the centre of the little town at the appointed time and a chunky looking aborigine, who we soon enough found out was called Leroy, rolled up with a box that seemed full of ‘stuff’. Peeking out the box, we recognised the boomerangs but had no idea what the other vicious looking equipment was. Our storyteller was here to talk about the weapons the aborigines used for hunting in the outback possibly before the invent of the supermarkets! Leroy turned out to be quite a cool guy with a very laid back story-telling style and he explained to us all about how the roles in aborigine society are quite divided – the men do the hunting and the women the gathering and never the twain shall meet! He did not think of the division in their society as being ‘sexist’ rather that men and women are taught different skills to make them better prepared for doing the role they are assigned. I suppose when finding your next meal might mean the difference between life and death mixing the two roles would be a luxury the indigenous could ill afford simply on the off chance that it would pay off! The weapons were really cool but probably deadly in the right hands and Leroy taught us some new facts, like that there is no word as boomerang in Aborigine – so what do they say when they need to borrow it I wondered? Leroy had the answer, he said it was called it a ‘kuliand’ or something that sounded a bit like that – oh yes after my earlier factual success this is possibly quite a craptastical fact(let)! However, some of the woods the weapons are made from have to be treated beforehand to make them hard enough to break animal bones and the like! It turned out that the indigenous peoples also invented the very first glue from a sap which had a very high content of silica (from the sand) and this made the glue set like rock but then when it was reheated it would then soften! With stories such as these, Leroy kept us all enthralled, it was great to listen to him and every now and then he would pass round a weapon or something for us to have a bit of a closer look at. We both thought it was great to find out more about aboriginal life as it seems to be quite difficult here to find yourself one-on-one with an indigenous person and the things that you want to find out more about you don’t really want to ask the questions for! It was a great and very fitting way to end our trip to the centre of Oz but now it was time to make our way back out again.

The Mount in the distance!

Job done we once again jumped into our box-on-wheels – well our little camper van – and off we zipped back towards our next camp back near Alice Springs once again. On the way and probably because the weather was that much better than when we last travelled these roads there were many new wonders to see! We stopped to have a look at a huge salt lake with what looked like an island in the middle and this was across from the viewpoint for Mount Connell which looked like a huge plateau away in the distance – all these things we had managed to miss eh!

The island in the middle of the salt lake!

Towards the end of the day and nearing the campsite it turned out to be a tale of two battles, one against our ever-dwindling petrol reserves which we managed to win – though God only knows what we would have done if we had lost that one – and the second was a battle against those formidable foe, ‘the ants’ and this one we well and truly lost – damnable critters they are!

 

 

 

Off out to hunt down a Campervan – Wicked eh! – Day 255 – 30 September

Well after listening to all of the very many arguments from people we now consider to be our good friends, about how it would be a crime to humanity if we did not traverse the Western side of Australia I guess something must have sunk in as today we were going to investigate the costs involved in hiring a campervan. I had spent some time crunching numbers and had investigated campervan websites and as we had our mate Sue egging us on, we were in the market for some hot (but comfortable!) and serious (but spacious?) wheels!

We had heard that the Wicked Van experience was unlike any other and to be fair it was not wrong!

There was a bit of a problem though and that was because of the time of year, wheels of any kind were disappearing and disappearing fast too! Also, we soon found out that although many vans were being posted on websites as being ‘available’ this by no means meant that the companies involved actually had any of the vans left! We only found this out though after Sue had driven us into Perth to visit one of these companies. The old lady running the place kept blowing hot and cold about the vans and seemed very vague but in the end she finally admitted that she could not get us anything. So we quizzed her about the Wicked vans we had heard about and she was not very complimentary at all so we decided to try somewhere else and, unfortunately for us that someone else was exactly the other end of the market – Britz vans. Now here at least they had a couple of vans but these were definitely out of our price range – for British readers it was a bit like seeing ‘here’s what you could have won’ on the old Bullseye darts series! Their vans were superb and had all the mod cons but we simply could not afford them.

Gosh what a way to get money off your van!

At this point we decided, what the hell, let’s see what Wicked have to offer, at least we could see the other end of the price spectrum. To be fair when we got there it was not only a vastly different van type but also a very different selling experience as well. An example of this was soon to be viewed at their sales desk where they had loads of photos of happy campers … all in the nude! We found out that having a nude photo taken with your van actually gets you a bit more money off it! The van hiring process also was more akin to haggling but I actually enjoyed it and it seemed to be working. They showed us their older and newer styles of vans and though the old vans claimed to be three stars this only meant that you could see this many stars through the holes in them, so against my wallet’s better judgement we went upmarket.

Looking like a sign from God!!!

And, of course, a message from him!!

The older vans were also painted with quite crude jokes on the sides of them whereas ours had Lance Armstrong on one side but Sir Les Dawson on the other and I felt this to be like a message from God, not sure whether it was a God who was in favour of us getting such a van but a message is as a message does, so this was the van for us. We got paid up and had a couple of photos with our wheels so I dropped my trousers and they knocked money off the van simply for me to put them back on and delete the photo! Then we ‘saddled up’ and got behind the wheel and it felt strange but really quite nice after being so long not driving.

Home for the next 3 months?

And, I too am a believer!

However, following Sue back to Freo was quite an unnerving drive and quite difficult too as I was not entirely sure she knew where she was going so you can imagine my surprise (and not a little horror) when she stopped at the cemetery! No worries though because she had only stopped to show us the resting place of Bon Scott, one of my heroes when I was growing up. I have always been an AC/DC fan but it was the records on which he had sung which had really got me rocking and rolling. He was someone who just seemed so very real and it turned out that Sue used to do Bon’s Mum’s hair – claim to fame or what eh! There is also supposed to be a statue to the great man too in Freo so we shall have to see if we can catch a glimpse of this too at some point.

My wife getting a bit Arctic Roll!

After the poignant stop off we carried on to Sue’s house to prepare the van and I am not really sure what happened in the next few hours as it just seemed to be a flurry of Sue mainly giving us stuff, I am not even sure it was stuff she did not want, Liz was washing the van and then we both went off to go and buy provisions for the van and our Unexpected ‘Sidestep’ to our Adventure!

Never actually got to see him sing, what shame eh!

So it was then that in the evening I plotted our new course and although I am not really sure of the actual distance it looks like we would be undertaking a huge drive round the little island of Oz. I have first planned us to take a wee excursion down South, then if we get on with the van and have everything we need then to pop back to Freo to touch base with our adopted family and then continue to head on up the West coast before then popping across and up again to Darwin, then plunge down towards Uluru to go and see the Rock. Then next up we shall pop across to the East coast towards Cairns and Port Douglas then down the coast to Sydney and then Melbourne before heading across the water to Tasmania. It all seemed simple enough in my simple little mind, well no actually it seemed quite terrifying but in for a penny, in for a pound or Australian dollar eh! Small steps first though and a little test drive down South to see a bit of the scenery there and try out sleeping in our new ‘big rig’ our wicked Wicked van, man!