The end of the line

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January 27th 2007

Published: January 29th 2007

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JDR

Canberra

On the roof of the parliament building.

Melbourne

So we were back in Melbourne and hoped to see some games at the Australian Open that had just started. However the day before most games had been cancelled because of the heat and there had been no refunds. Moreover there was no one 'interesting' playing that day. Interesting being either beautiful (Sharapova for me and Nadal for Marijke) or Belgian (Only the here incredibly popular Clijsters was left after all the guys messed up and the not so very popular Henin (cf. 'faking'?? a stomach infection in the final last year ) stayed home). So we only saw the games on television.

We went to pick up our new rental car in the evening and we were planning our trip to the Snowy Mountains where I wanted to climb the highest mount in Oz, Mt Kosciusko. Everything was planned and the hostel was booked (2 weeks in advance and we only just got 2 places). Just before going to sleep I used up our ' pre paid internet time' and quickly checked my e mail. There was a mail from the hostel warning us that the town was under direct bush fire threat and they would be

Canberra

War memorial in the front, parliament at the other side of the lake and Snowy Mountains in the background.

closed. Great! These were the big bush fires that had started in Victoria and had now spread into New South Wales.

We found out later that all the tourists in the village had been evacuated. The village was threatened for about a week but in the end escaped the flames. I was pretty sad to miss out on climbing the mountain although it would have been pretty hard in temperatures up to 40 degrees. Instead we decided to go straight to Canberra and spend a bit more time there. En route we passed by a village that proudly announced to have a 'submarine base' even though the closest sea was about 400 km away.

Canberra

What's the capital of Australia? Sydney most people would answer... wrong!!! The capital of Australia is Canberra. As Sydney and Melbourne couldn't agree on who would be the capital of Australia, Canberra ended up with the honour.
About 100 years ago the whole area was bush land, than an American guy won a competition and designed a city out of the bush. Still you have to drive through deserted bush land for ages to reach the city.

We heard a lot

Canberra

Parliament and old parliament (white building).

of bad stuff about Canberra. "It's shit", "Boring" and "I saw it all in 2 hours"... We don't agree and we easily filled a whole day with all the interesting things going on in Canberra.
We started our day in the National Parliament a nice piece of design. The parliament was built in (not on) a green hill in the landscape. Because there was a lot of protest to the loss of the hill (a popular pic nic spot) it was decided that the whole building would be covered with grass on the roofs. The result is amazing. From a distance it seems the hill is intact but with some sort of giant hobbit hole parliament building inside. On the other hand from the inside it seems like every other building and there is no trace of the hill to be seen. There are loads of other cool design effects (the whole history of OZ in architectural features) in the building design and materials (some really rare stones from Belgium???) but I would advise you go check it out for yourselves. Also, and I was drooling all over this one, they have one of 4 surviving copies of the 13

Canberra

Australia National museum.

th century 'Magna Charta' on display. Remember that one from your history classes? It was the first step towards a human rights declaration.

Next stop was the Australian National Museum. The place looks like a rollercoaster from the outside and it also feels like one inside. It makes maximum use of all the multi media features available...The short introduction movie/merry-go-round was awesome. Probably the best museum I ever been to (even better than my other favourite the 'Te Papa' museum in NZ).

In the afternoon I went to check out the War Memorial Museum. Another interesting place with loads of info on all the wars the Aussies had been fighting in. A big part of the museum was dedicated to Word War I and what has become known as 'Flanders Fields'. A funny thing were the Flanders "than and now" pictures. The 'now' pictures probably dated back to the early 80's as it was exactly how I remember my country from my childhood... I hope the Aussies and other visitors realize we have made (some) progress since then...even in those areas of the country ; )
Another interesting thing about the museum was the focus on the Pacific

Canberra

Bush walk just outside the city.

region during World War II (the war with Japan), something I (and I am sure a lot of you) don't know a whole lot about.

About 50 m from the museum (1 km from the centre) the 'bush' begins and I decide to brave the weather conditions (35 degrees and no wind) and climb some small mountain. I sweated out litres but was rewarded with some nice views over town with the Snowy Mountains in the background.

We certainly didn't get bored in Canberra and would advise everyone to give the city a chance.

Blue Mountains NP

The last Oz attraction we wanted to visit before leaving were the 'Blue Mountains'. This World Heritage NP is just 60 km outside of Sydney but it is a totally different world. The Blue Mountains got their name because of the blue haze that is hanging in the valleys almost year round. Despite it's so close to the city it is still real Australian bush and there are plenty of stories about hikers getting lost and never coming back.

Marijke and I got an early start at 7.30 am we began our 1/2 day walk to one

Blue Mountains NP

Jameson valley at Katoomba

of the most famous Blue Mountains landmarks; 'The 3 Sisters'. The views were very impressive as we walked along the edge of the 80 m high cliffs until we reached the 3 Sisters. From there we descended into the valley from the 'Giant staircase'; an endless seeming series of flights of stairs. When finally we got into the valley, our legs were shaking and felt really numb. From there Marijke went to the 'railway station' to catch the train up while I continued on another day walk that would take me to the 'Ruined Castle'. Not a real castle as some guy asked me (Think about how long westerners have been in Oz and when we stopped building castles...right) but a rock formation sticking out from the forests in the valley.

It turned out to be a very hard and boring walk until just before I got to the 'castle'. All of a sudden a snake slid on the path just a meter in front of me. It seemed very upset as the head was up and it was ready to strike.... In fraction of a second I realised what had happened and I immediately froze. The Snake kept

Blue Mountains NP

threatening to strike as I was trying not to move (going backwards with a snake so close would probably trigger a strike, I had been told). It took about 30 seconds before she forgot I was there (They have a very short memory span and bad eye sight) and slid off the path in the grass. I was shaking on my legs once again... I considered going back but in the end decided to continue as 'I had gotten so far already'. I soon reached the 'castle hill' and the climb up there really rewarded the long walk. I was sitting in the middle of the valley with an amazing 360 degree views. It's this kind of views (this one was one of the best I've ever seen) that make a walk worthwhile.

The next day we planned to do one more hike in another part of the park before returning back to Sydney. Once we got there we found out that all the tracks had been closed because of a recent bush fire. Damn bush fires! Good thing I had a back up plan so we drove to another valley for another walk. When we got there we

Blue Mountains NP

From 'Ruined Castle'.

found the track closed also because of bush fire threat...arghhhh! I gave up and we had to return to the city. We just made a quick stop at the edge of the Park for some awesome views of Sydney and the Ocean about 60 km away. To the north we saw another huge black cloud...another bush fire! This one would really mess up traffic to and from Sydney. Luckily this time we came from the other direction and escaped the trouble.

Driving into Sydney to drop off our car was another adventure. All the one way streets made that we had to drive into the city twice before we reached our destination.

Sydney

As the sun was up on our first morning in Sydney we decided to go for a cheap 'harbour cruise'...actually just a ferry to Manly, one of the Northern Sydney beaches. Marijke really wanted to go there as it is the home town of Nicole Kidman. The beach was pretty good and we spent a couple of hours there.
It was only the second time we spent time on the beach in OZ. We both weren't too keen to go soak up

Blue Mountains NP

More Jameson Valley

sun as it's a pretty dangerous sun shining in Australia. The hole in the ozone layer is right above OZ (and NZ) so all the dangerous rays are going straight through. Skin cancer is a huge topic there now and we didn't feel like taking our chances.

The rest of our time we took it all very easy. Did some shopping and just hung around the cool places.
There was one more unexpected highlight for me. One of my favourite (music) bands is 'Tool' a pretty mysterious band in the 'harder genre'. They had not been playing any 'real (read: non festival) shows' in Belgium for years and I was so disappointed they did 2 shows just a couple of days after we left to NZ, 3 months ago. I found out that they were playing in Sydney while we would be there but both shows were completely sold out. I had given up hopes to see them anytime soon. However it turned out that they were playing a venue right next to the food court in China town where we went for dinner each night. We decided to have a look that evening and soon we were approached

Blue Mountains NP

Posing (I hate it!) with the '3 sisters'.

by the 'sharks' to buy tickets...at some outrageous prices. I tried to see if some tickets had come available from the official desk without luck. Marijke however started talking to a couple who were willing to sell 1 ticket at the normal price. Great!
The show was absolutely amazing: great music, great performance and a really cool lightshow. Really cool also was the reactions of the 15,000 Aussie crowd. In Belgium people are pretty timid and there are often awkward silences in between songs. Here there was an incredible noise in between songs and it felt like the building was going to collapse during some songs. Or as the singer summarised " I only have one word for tonight: HOLYFUCKINGSH!T !!!".

Our last day was on 26 January; Australia Day. We checked some of the early morning action in Sydney Harbour (boat races and surfboard challenges) before heading to the airport for the 30 hr trip (3 flights) to Brussels.

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