Sydney (The End of a Great Visit)

Sydney WOW, what a great city.... its lots of fun and full of friendly Aussies... has a very NYC feeling to it (It's super multi-cultural, open 24-7 and fast paced). I'm glad I stayed in Melbourne first and relaxed a bit before heading here - I was ready for it though - its really a beautiful harbour city and the clubs are GREAT ;0)


Even better, the sun finally came out on Saturday so I was able to really enjoy it. I took a ferry up to Manly beach on Sat. and watched the waves roll in with a freind - he took me to a place that night that only serves chocolate... I had one of the best chocolate lava cakes (or chocoate souffles as they're called here) I've ever had. I stayed until the sun set wandering down at the beach hunting for tidal beasties - I'd about had my fill of crabs, spiders and strange squirting things on the rocks when out of nowhere a bunch on Fairy Penguins came strolling up out of the water to their rooks.... it was SO great to finally see them out in the wild! (I couldn't take a pic as the flash in bad for their eyes, but they are damn cute ;0)



Not that everything on the beach was cute - I saw these bizzare and disgusting jelly doughnut looking anemones and I think this might be a funnel web spider (only the MOST deadly one in the world... yeah)

I also got some nice views of the city from the ferry on the way back and watched some people on racing sailboats... they got so close to the boat I was sure they were going to hit it, great fun to watch.

I also finally made it out to THE city beach (Bondi) and watched the surfers for a while, it looked very fun (you can see all the surfers in the 2nd pic).

It so happened that "sculptures by the sea" was happening that day... it was a bunch of artists showing there stuff right on the seacliff walls... very dramatic (the mow-hawk look is very "in" here):

I went back to Bondi yesterday (another 80+ day) with a freind and he introduced me to Aussie beach delicicies - Lychee Martinis and Sydney Rock Oysters... yum. I also went for my 1st swim, which was warm and wavy (and devoid of all the Blue Bottle Jellyfish I'd seen the first time I went there - one of them got me that day when I was walking down the beach... ouch).

I wasn't all bad in the rain though... I went to the aquarium (one of the best I've been to - reminded me a lot of the one in San Fran that Uncle Curtis and Aunt Terri took me to), especially the underwater tunnel with a huge gray nurse shark looming overhead (this revived my fear in sharks nicely [not to mention the story my friend told me about his surfer buddy who was eaten by Hammerhead Sharks in his home town not far from Cairns])... ahh well - there are worse places to end it all I guess.

I also went to see "Let it Be" @ the Sydney Opera House! It was a great show, good song/ singers and I got to hear some Beatles music I'd never heard before. This is the "wing" I was in, the accoustics were amazing...

For my last day in Sydney I took a bus tour out to the Blue Mountains (so named because the oil from they eucalyptus trees gets fried by the sun and makes a bluish haze over everything)... they're beautiful mountains with a huge canyon in them (which, along with angry aboriginals, wasn't a pleasant discovery for the early settlers (convicts). There are some great rock features there called the 3 sisters (which aboriginal tales say were the 3 daughters of a witch doctor who had to turn them to stone to protect them from a monster - which devoured him before he had the chance to turn them back to flesh...) The best part is you get to take a VERY steep tram ride straight down the mountain and walk around the bottom (and play Tarzan in the vines) - after taking a cable ride over the valley floor - with glass bottoms... there's NOTHING below you for a long way down ;0)

On the way there we stopped off @ a wildlife park and I was able to finally "cuddle" a Koala - they're cute but my friend Andy was right - they smell like stinky eucalyptus... the snake was a little too cuddle for my taste ;0)

It was a great way to end my time here - its been fun and I met some great people... I am looking forward to my train trip out to Adelaide through the outback tomorrow though...

Sydney

Melbourne & environs were great - but was very excited to move on to Sydney... and rightly so - what a beautiful city. Got out the first night for some drinks with the local crowd - which (of course) turned into a much later night than I expected - the fact that it was a Tuesday night is a great indication of how fun it's going to be here ;0)

I walked around the next day and walked across the Harbor Bridge to get some shots of the Opera House.... I'll wait for a sunnier day and do pics from the more scenic side... it really is neat to see such an iconic piece of work:



If you hunt around this pic you'll see what passes for pigeons in Sydney - they're fun to watch & beautiful but really make a racket.




On the way back I stopped off at a 150+ year old observatory - they had to completely re-map the sky for the ships to navigate once they got down under... it was quite a job... took them 50+ years...



I'm hoping for more sun tomorrow....

Great Ocean Road

After spending a few days back in Melbourne relaxing I hit the road with a friend I made (it was really nice having a local guide ;0) and drove down to the Great Ocean Road... it was a spectacular, windy drive.

And of the way I spotted these in the trees right next to the road:



That was very cool - there was a whole tribe of them - about 8 or 9 in all!

There was some "not so cute" animal life along the way as well - this guys was about as big as the top of your finger (and my friend said they tend to jump when they attack)!



Continued on down - stopping off for the occasional fish & chips and ice cream... great sites along the way:

Until I got to the highlight - the Twelve Apostles (there are only 6 or so now - they keep falling down) - they were worth the drive:

After dinner I drove back down to catch them @ sunset - and got an extra suprise - if you look very hard at the 2nd pic you'll notice little dots... those are a huge flock(?) of penguins, they came in and scrambled up the beach - it was great...

Tasmania - wow!

I flew into Hobart - a really cute fishing village (more tourist now I think) right on the ocean which is famous for it's outdoor Salamanca market (it wasn't óut' that day though)




After buying some provisions at the índoor' Salamanca market & having some good fish & chips (made with a blue eye Travalla fish that Taz is famous for), I headed down to Fortesque Bay for my first night camping... the van was great - although it was a little top heavy, which made driving in the wind a little challenging (learning to drive in Wyoming helped out ;0)

I didn't get there until sunset, which it turned out was a good time to try to find penguins... the ranger told me about a rookery that was just down the beach... he gave me a special red film to put over my flashight to keep from blinding the birds and I was off. Let me tell you, it was dark... there was no moon and it was a stormy night so no stars... this also meant the ocean was pretty crazy, big waves crashing all around, which was a little unnerving at night.


When I got to where the penguins should be I camped out on some rocks - I was pretty sure I was in the right place becasue it stank... I was expecting that from what Bella had told me... well I was getting pretty relaxed at one point (even lying on a rock) when a huge wave came in... just about got me and sent me scampering up the hill as fast as I could (in the dark) - as I jumped over the rock behind me I came face to face with this site:
It was Sealy the Dead Seal... guess that wasn't penguin poo I was smelling... well if any penguins were coming i'm sure my yell scared them off. Needless to say - I was pretty unsettled at this point. There were some dark woods behind me and dead things around me and huge waves coming in... I got myself under control and waited another 20 minutes but when it started raining I decided I'd had enough and headed back... ah well there will be more penguins...

The next day I hiked up to the Freycinet cliffs, it was a spectacular walk and a great view from the top.













It was spectaular & VERY high up from the water on a sheer cliff face... so very cool. At one point I looks back into the bay and say a whale jump!!! I stayed for another 1/2 hour with some fellow hikers looking but we never saw it again...

It was hard to leave that place, but I moved on and drove down to Port Arthur in the afternoon. It was a fairly nortorious penal colony for 50 years or so... pretty harsh conditions there - so lots of history to learn about. It was able to turn some convicts around with skills and release them (most didn't go back to Europe though - in fact 1/3 of all Tazzie's had relatives there).


That night I headed up to Freycinet National Park - I got there after the sun went down so was able to see lots of Wallabies standing by the road - sort of like seeign deer and night, you the brakes and hold your breath, lukily I didn't hit any... lots of dead one on the road though... the next morning I was able to see what they really looked like in the parking lot for the hike site... they are really cute - these come up to your waist or so:

The only living thing you really see while you're driving around are echidnas... which are very fun to watch - they're slow and bumbly - don't worry about cars or anything much with all those spines... so you do see some of them squishes once in a while as well...



It was nice hike up a mountian and then down into Wineglass bay (descibed as one of the top beaches in the world -and I could see why):

On the topic of hiking - Tazzie's are really proud of their weather and how frequently it changes... every one of them made some kind of comment to me about 'the Taz hiking outfit' which is a weatherproof coat on top shorts on the bottome and layers to add/remove... it was true - I would always start off bundled up (freezing) and end up in as little as possible (sweating)... then it would suddenly shift back... it was pretty crazy.. these are typical "'beore/ after' pics:

The beach was so cool - the biggest, most perfectly formed waves I've ever seen... all the way up and down a huge beach... didn't do too much wading though - besides the water being freezing cold there were these blue bottles floating in it which I was told packed quite a wallop if you got stung by them...

I did get wet a few times though and collected some beautiful shells (including one that shoudn't have touched as it looked like it might be a Cone Shell - which if the little animal is alive inside can deliver a poison toxic enough to kill you - I was pretty sure it was hollow before I picked it up... its a great shell, what can I say).

Then it happened! I spotten some dolphins very close to the beach - that was cool enough, but then they did something I would never expect... they rode the waves in like body surfers! I was really neat to watch - they did it all the way up and down the beach as long as I was there... at first I thought they were having fun... but I think they must have been using the waves to hunt somehow - I"m attaching a movie, don't know how well it'll work:



The next day I drove up the coast (which was great with the big waves) to St. Helen's and then across a rainforest (which huge ferns and very windy mountain roads)... the views were really great- everything there is so amazingly green:


I stayed in Mole Creek campground and the next day I explored a wetcave with a river running through it - it also had glowworms in the ceiling! They turned off the lights and it looked like green stars covering the to of the cave... very cool. When I cam out of the cave I felt like was coming out into jungles a dinosaur might have seen:


I also went into a animal reserve and was able to see soem Koala Bears and my first tasmanian Devils - which are so cute you can't understand why they're called devils - until two of them come together that is - they ALWAYS make these aggresive screams at each other and bear their teeth - usually ending up in one chasing the other away... super aggresive - they were really fun to watch, I stayed for 2 hours watching them...



I drove on that night to Cradle Mountian - as i was taking a shower (the first I'd had in 3 days so one of the best ever ;0) this guy came trapsing into the shower with me - I about dropped the shampoo on my toe... it was fun to watch afterwards though (its a quoll). I seen on the night before with her baby clinging to her back in the trees, but it was dark and hard to get a pic...


I started my hike the next morning with the intention of making it to the lookout for Cradle Mountian (how picturesque is that):


Then I saw snow in the distance so decided I could at least hike to that.... I played a little...


At this point I realized that it was only 2-3 hours or so more hiking to get to the summing so off I went - I'm SO glad I did, it was spectacular on top! The end bit was pretty challening, jumping from boulder to boulder and pulling yoruself up foot by foot - at the to I hunkered down between to huge columns of stone and had some lunch...



By the time I made it down (and did a hike around a lake) the sun was starting to go down, which meant it was the perfect time to see more kangaroos/ wallabies... the one thing I hadn't seen at this point was a wombat, so I was on the lookout. I heard some rustling in the bushes and waited for a few minutes and sure enough this one eventually came down to the trail (its about the size of a dog).

They are pretty much blind - so it didn't suprise me too much when it walked right up to my shoes! This in sniffed back and forth for a few seconds (never looking up to see what it had run into) and took a nibble on one of my shoelaces... well that enough so I finally made a movement back. That startled it pretty bad - but the crazy thing is it came at the shoe for more - I guess my shower helped... I backed up the trail and it kept coming after me - I was laughing the whole time ;0) It finaly got the idea and went back off into the bush..

The next day was a long (6 hour) but very scenic drive back to Hobart to catch my flight up to Melbourne.

Tasmania is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful outdoor experiences of my life - it could only have been better with some of you there with me...