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.

 

Off to Mount Isa and a bit of a difficult Night’s Sleep! – Day 287 – 1 November

In the morning, somewhat surprisingly, the flies had made us breakfast and were being a right good laugh …. no, you are right once again they were being a right pain in the a$$, argh! So we grabbed ourselves a quick cuppa, splashed our faces, wolfed down a corned beef sandwich each and then fled the scene of the flies’ crime … Doh!

Welcome to Queensland, time for some ballet (?)

We were not that far down the road when we actually reached the milestone of us having travelled 10,000km in our wee motor and by my rough guesstimate we are still only about halfway along on our trip! We could not believe that we had travelled so far in the confined space of our van together and not actually killed each other – yet that is – lol! Though I must admit to having been woken up on a couple of occasions only to find Liz bending over me, knife in hand flicking away a mosquito or two from my throat … or so she said!

Beautiful creatures but still look as though they would rip your eyes out for a mouse!

As it was our next stop-off was nicely on the way towards the east coast, a place called Mount Isa. Along the way to getting there we saw many nice bits of scenery but often this was being overshadowed by the awesome antics of the birds of prey. We would be driving along and then suddenly one of would just drop out of the sky, which obviously meant trouble for whatever tasty morsel the bird had espied from on high. Some of the raptors seemed to be just enjoying themselves riding the thermals, they made it all seem so very easy and showed complete mastery of the air. Often on our travels we have seen birds but with all of the kangaroo roadkill we usually come across them hopping about somewhat dangerously on the roads whilst scavenging but thankfully not all of them seem to employ this tactic and it was great to watch some of them actually hunting from the sky.

To be honest there is something I find quite disconcerting about a fire danger rating sign where the second lowest rating is HIGH!!

We carried on eastwards and passed from the Northern Territories into Queensland which called for great celebrations and the taking of many a celebratory photograph to record our triumphant crossing of this boundary! And from here it was not too long before we reached the mineral mining town of Mount Isa itself. Again, it was so hot here that there was only one place in the locale we could even begin to think about visiting – Moondarra Lake. This place ticked all of the boxes, we had read that it had once been a river that had been dammed in order to make the lake and as such it turned out to be a beautiful little place. We had a bit of a wander around the place to see the views and during our stroll soon realised that here too there were loads of birds vying to be seen. Around the edge of the water were the little BBQ ‘stands’ these are covered huts that contain a working gas BBQ for people to use as long as they followed the unwritten rule which is to clean up afterwards! What an amazingly great idea but one that I don’t think would ever work back home in the UK as I just don’t think people would follow the rule. So I started cooking up our day’s chicken pieces and as they cooked away on the BBQ the weather started to blacken, so once we had eaten it was time for us to be moving on.

I find chicken cooks much quicker with my hand (somewhat camply) placed on my hip. For beef I do tend to place it on my knee though!!!

Next up was a visit to the Mount Isa visitor’s centre to – funnily enough – grab ourselves a shower and some leaflets and here too we had the opportunity to swap a couple of books, it is always nice to get some new reading material, especially of the ‘free’ variety. As I was getting dried off after my shower, a young bearded fellow was in there giving his beard a most meticulous trimming. Now I had previously assumed that the reason the young blokes grew these things was because the facial hair would take care of itself but I was very wrong, this guy was taking great care with a small pair of scissors just taking the odd snip here and there to keep his masterpiece in top condition! By the time me and Liz had both showered and I had spectated at the great beard trim, the place was in the throes of shutting so we had to start making tracks. This was a pity because there were other things to see here as well but we know when we are not wanted … lol!

Not many people know this but Mount Isa is the place of Elvis’ reincarnation, strangely ‘The King’ chose to become a parrot but beautiful plumage!!

As we were a bit late getting away from Isa it was quite dark by the time we reached our campsite. So we dined on a curry made from the finest chicken! Then settled back for some entertainment, we watched more stars along with a couple of beers – which is a most fine way to watch stars in my book. Whilst watching we saw a couple of shooting stars each, one of which seemed so close it looked as though we could have reached up and plucked it from the skies and I think both of us simultaneously wished to never have to stop this travelling lark and whilst stargazing in the far off distance we saw electrical flashes meaning that someone was getting a storm or two.

Moondarra Lake – quite beautiful eh, even better being able to BBQ whilst taking it all in!

Off we toodled to bed but the story does not stop there. As a postscript the storm which was very very far away when we stopped watching it then decided to pay us a visit – a very, very close visit at that! So it was that at 2am we were awoken by the storm trying to shake us out of bed such was the lashing of both wind and rain that the van was getting. The wind seemed to be trying to blow the van over and the flashes illuminated the entire area. And what did we have parked right next to us? Whilst we had been sleeping we had only been parked next to by a huge petrol tanker! As it happened, the next day we found out that the tanker had ‘only’ contained diesel and that it had actually been empty but for that night we found it very difficult to get ourselves any sleep whatsoever, it was all a bit too much for my wifey to contend with and for me to contend with her!