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Published: April 26th 2008
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Hello & greetings to everyone
Australia............. and for various reasons the last 3 weeks have been the toughest so far, but here's a brief(ish) account of our latest travels.
We landed in Sydney to pleasant warm sunshine and headed to our hotel in the heart of the CBD, just around the corner from Circular Quay, The Rocks, Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Sydney really is a beautiful city and the CBD is a very vibrant commercial centre, very reminiscent of the City of London in many ways. Grand imposing buildings, skyscrapers and bustling crowds and, for Tina, plenty of shops.
We spent some very pleasant evenings in Circular Quay and The Rocks, taking in the cityscape as it lit up and was reflected in the glistening harbour waters. Tina found it very "surreal to see the Opera House after all these years of seeing it in pictures".
We had some relaxing days out exploring the city and going to places such as Bondi Beach, Manly, Darling Harbour, Newtown and the inner suburbs.
Apart from that, our time was mostly spent visiting the stygian gloom of the Sydney Backpacker's Car Market. This is held in an
The Car
A Bear, A Kangaroo and a beast underground car park with no natural light and is quite a depressing experience!! The walls are covered in graffitti messages from previous car sellers, detailing how they'd spent up to 2 weeks sitting in the car park trying to sell their cars. We did finally take pity on a young Belgian couple and agreed to buy their '93 Ford Falcon Stationwagon.
Once we'd bought the car (following a full inspection, tune up and service) we kitted it out with a tent and all the other essentials like body boards, parasols etc and camping paraphenalia. Then it was a case of buying road side assistance, 6 months extra Rego', 3rd Party Property Insurance, Window Tax and 4 new tyres and then we were finally ready to go, $4,500 poorer.
One of the main reasons we chose the car is that it is duel fuel; LPG/Unleaded. A litre of unleaded costs about $1.54 whilst LPG is about $0.65. Given that we have to travel about 18,000 Ks, this should make quite a big saving for us. We've had a few problems along the way with it and had to replace a few hoses and parts but, touch wood, it's running
ok at the moment.
Leaving Sydney we headed to Inland NSW through the Blue Mountains (The blue is caused by evaporating gum from the eucalyptus trees) to Bathurst where Daren spent time Peach picking on a previous trip to Oz 15 years ago. The surprise for us was the Autumn colours of the trees and also the cold. We awoke from our first night camping to a frost and certainly hadn't planned for Australia being quite that cold. Several sunny days were spent travelling the New England Highway to the north coast of NSW and Byron Bay via Nimbin. We guess that it's called the New England highway after New England USA as the autumnal colours of the trees were striking; vibrant reds, flaming coppers and bright lemony yellows. The scenery certainly wan't the typical 'Red Centre' desert that most people would assosciate with Australia. Much more pastural in appearance and almost European.
At this point the rains came!! Torrential and seemingly never ending. Sometimes when driving along with the wipers going full we still couldn't see out the windscreen and just had to pull over to the side of the road. You can imagine our joy at
this time when we discovered that the seals on the car doors have perished and everything inside the car was getting soaked, including all our clothes. At this stage we took an executive decision and abandoned the camping and stayed for a few nights in cabins waiting for the rain to clear. (Sydney has just had a record breaking 14 days consecutive rain).
We continued heading back south via Coffs Harbour and Sydney again and spent a very pleasant couple of days at Pebbly Beach. Here I managed to get in a few hours body boarding whilst Tina petted the Kangaroos on the beach. Woke up in the mornings to find the tent surrounded by brightly coloured parrots and Kookaburras who tried to steal our breakfast.
After this we headed inland to Canberra, mainly to pick up our Vietnam Visas. We were relieved to at last have some dry weather which finally allowed us to dry everything out. Canberra, although the Capital of Australia, has a reputation as being a bit bland. It became the capital to stop the arguments between Sydney and Melbourne and whilst there was nothing of great interest there we found it pleasant enough
Foggy mornings
Brrrrrrrrrrrrr for a few days relaxation.
From Canberra we headed back to the NSW Coast and spent a few days Wwoofing in a very picturesque town called Central Tilba. We didn't really do much work here and our host Linda really looked after us, which made a nice break from being on the road for a couple of weeks.
After Tilba it took us 2 days to drive to Melbourne. The distances here are quite vast and driving anywhere seems to take forever. In Melbourne we met up with friends, Lara & David from UK and had a very pleasant 3 days in the Melbourne Hilton with views over the M.C.G.. It does feel strange sometimes, camping in a forest one night and then staying in an Hilton Hotel the next !!
Melbourne is a lovely city and we enjoyed riding everywhere on the trams, wandering through the gardens and city parks and looking at the historical buildings. We spent the evenings eating out at diverse restaurants and sampling great & varied food. Tina even tried Goat Curry, which raised a few eyebrows.
We spent a day on St Kilda beach and went to Luna Park and
Puffing Billy
Where's Tina/Lara/David #6 also a trip on 'Puffing Billy' through the Dandenongs, which was as peculiar as it sounds.
Saying our goodbyes to Lara and David, we headed north to Alexander for some more Wwoofing experience on a farm. We arrived as the host was leaving for town and she invited us to settle in and make ourselves comfortable in the house. Tina went straight in and walked around inside familiarising herself with her new surroundings.
Being her usual mischeivous character, when she came across a parrot she took it upon herself to try and teach it some key words (as seen on You Tube with a parrot called Ruby). She therefore proceeded to shout "TWAT" at the parrott for a few minutes; on receiving no response she went to move on to the next subject, only to see a young girl (another Wwoofer) lying on the sofa with a puzzled expression - Tina promptly smiled and headed for the door rather quickly, running into me and regaling me of her faux pas. Needless to say we both found this hilarious and the only way out was for me to pretend she has mild tourettes syndrome. It will come as no surprise to you all that we left after 2 nights!.
So, all in all it's been hard work at times, but travelling for this length of time was bound to be tough every now and again. The important thing is that we are still enjoying ourselves and having great experiences. When it's not raining and the car's not making strange noises, we're fine !!
Our plans now are to head along the great Ocean Road to Adelaide and then up through the 'red centre' to Darwin/Kakadu.
Best wishes to you all
D&T
P.S. Neither of us condone teaching parrots to swear
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Jane McGhee
non-member comment
Letting Tina near animals....
Remember never to leave Tina in charge of your pets or small children!