Notes from a BIG Island

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Well, sorry it’s been a while - amazing how much time life actually takes up! We’re finally adopting the 21st century in the flat (i.e. we’re online, at last) so now there’s no real excuses left for not keeping up this diatribe of our lives.

Having sold our souls to the corporate gods of banking & publishing, which accounts for the drudgery of 8am to 7pm Monday to Friday, and finally finished the endless weekend trips to Ikea and other miscellaneous furniture & electrical stores, our lives have become our own again. Having found the sofa of our dreams in chocolate brown, we decided to save the hassle of looking any further for the second one & ordered the same thing, this time in lime green (really not as bad as it sounds). Bedside cabinets, a rug, a spare bed, a bookcase, and various tables (coffee, ‘puter & dining) almost completed the picture. The flat is starting to feel like home now so perhaps the over-familiarity with all things Swedish has been worth it - the icing on the cake was that our worldly goods finally arrived. My only advice if you’re thinking of moving over here is don’t rely on Bishops Move to get your stuff to Sydney & start praying if, by some miracle it gets here, that you’re not assigned to Kent International Movers to get it from Sydney port to your doorstep. A process, which we were told would take 8-12 weeks in total, took 26 - it’s not healthy to miss a potato peeler as much as I did, and the joy of seeing Eggy, Panda & Peter was almost beyond words!

As I mentioned, we’ve now got free time on our hands at weekends, and with no DIY to do (for now) so far we’ve explored North (Hunter Valley), South (Kangaroo Valley) and West (Blue Mountains). Not much point in going too far East as we’d get wet feet after about 10kms, and sand has a habit of getting everywhere!

Our first trip was actually up to the Blue Mountains, just before we moved into the flat, so it was in the middle of winter (early July - probably about the same sort of temperature here as it was back home!!!). All joking aside, it was blooming freezing as central heating is a rarity here. Oh well, in true British style, we didn’t let the rain or the cold stop us & we eased ourselves into mountain life gently by going out for an all afternoon lunch and a spot of shopping. The following day, however, we walked about 12 kms - bloody tosser is no better in the Blueys than any other area, so suffice to say we got lost & ended up going about an extra 1km or so. This wouldn’t be so bad, but it was an extra km down, and to reverse a popular saying, what goes down, must come up - that is if you want to get back on the right path. One point to note about the Blue Mountains is that they should more correctly be named the ‘Plateaus with Multiple Blue Valleys’ as, in true upside down Aussie style, all civilisation (& thus the start of all walks) is located at the top, and you start by walking down & then along & then up again! All worth it though, as the scenery is absolutely stunning (when we could see through the clouds and rain). We explored around Katoomba, which seems to be the main town in the area & packed full of classic sites, though as we were making use of our legs to get us around we largely managed to avoid the (literally) bus loads of tourists who turned up at key lookouts. Just to reiterate the stereo-type images we have of our fellow man, all Japanese tourists got off their buses took endless photos of each other whilst making the obligatory ‘V’ sign; the yanks somehow managed to find the nearest takeaway & were spotted stuffing pizza into their over-generously sized bodies, and us Brits continued walking in the rain & sat & ate our packed lunch without offending anyone. Having escaped the mayhem that is Echo Point, we carried on past the Three Sisters to discover some really unspoilt rainforests and waterfalls. The original plan had been to catch the Scenic Railway back up to the top at the end of the walk, but having discovered the price, which scrooge McMatty refused to pay, we ended up crawling back up the 500m to the car. I was promised a bottle of something nice if I made it to the top, so there was an incentive, though with hindsight 20 bucks seems like a bargain.

Day 3 was a slower start due to the fact that my legs had seized up after the 4 million stairs I’d had to climb the day before, and the Shiraz that night had only numbed the pain temporarily. Stiff upper lip & all that jazz, and we were off again, this time to walk from Govetts Leap, via Evans Lookout, through the Grand Canyon to Neates Glen. Unfortunately there’d been some bush fires about 18 months ago so the first path was closed - you can imagine how devastated I was that we had to cut the walk short by about 5 km! Having walked down steps for about ½ hour we finally got into the Grand Canyon - smaller & greener than it’s US cousin - WOW what an amazing place - real Jurassic Park country, we almost expected Sam Neal to appear being chased by a roo-osaurus! With no energy (or time) left we finally headed back to Sydney the following day to pack up, ready to move 2 days later.


Our next trip saw us taking advantage of the fact that George Bush & 21 of his fellow world leaders decided to descend on Sydney for APEC weekend (I think it stands for Asia-Pacific Economic Conference) in early September. Due to the security measures imposed on us mere mortals, the whole city was closed down for the weekend, including Friday, to allow the delegates to move around - we just took the opportunity to go bugger-off again, this time to the Hunter Valley - wine country about 1 ½ hours North of Sydney. Need I say more about the next 72 hours??? Surprisingly, we decided to leave wine tasting until day 2, and headed out for a walk (well, tried to) on the first day. Having got some details from tourist info, we picked a walk & headed off. What we should have done was read the details first - the start of it was actually about 30 kms further than we originally thought, the last 18 of which was on a dirt track. With no rental restrictions to ‘off-roading’, we bumped Beefy along in the rain & finally found the start. The small dried up stream that we were supposed to ‘simply cross’ turned out to be a raging torrent thanks to all the rain. In true Ray Meers style, my intrepid explorer managed to ford the river eventually, however the next marker was nowhere to be seen - a good bit of searching later & we found it, only to find barbed wire fences & locked gates blocking our path - well we’d got this far, what were a few gates, so we climbed over these and trudged on up the hill. After about ½ hour of trudging a load of fallen trees blocked the footpath, & I finally accepted defeat, though I’m sure Matt would’ve carried on if I hadn’t finally spat the dummy & refused to go any further!


Having had such fun on the boutique wine tour in Margaret River, we opted for the same sort of thing up in the Hunter, and an excellent choice it was too. Our first stop was at Tallavera Grove, a Tuscan style villa with the most fabulous view & a very knowledgeable & likable winemaker - shame that the wine was so awful really! The rest of the day saw us visiting Tamberlaine, Ivanhoe, Iron Gate & Petersons wineries as well as the obligatory cheese, ice-cream, chilli & chocolate shoppes. Thankfully the wine got better as the day progressed (I think). There are quite strict laws about wine tasting over here (mainly the restrictions around doing it when you’ve got to drive), including the fact that you’re not allowed to pour your own, they limit you to about 5 samples which are kept to 20ml - these last rules seemed to have totally by-passed the lady who served us at Petersons. In fact, I’m holding her entirely responsible for the hangover I developed at about 10 o’clock that evening (following the 4 hour snooze I had when we got home!). The vintage Shiraz ($50 per bottle) which shouldn’t have been on the tasting list was flowing, as was the port & desert shiraz, and this was after offering us a taste of everything else on the menu! Oh well, you’ve only got one liver, might as well make us of it - use it or lose it, I say. We did our usually trick of going back the next day to collect our purchases & that was about all we did - not quite sure how we squeezed them all into the car, but it was definitely worth it.


An amusing story about the stop at the ice-cream shop emerged on later that month: Whilst I was innocently eating my passion fruit sorbet, Matty announced that he needed the loo. Not very amusing in itself, but what he was actually doing was legging it back to the cheese shop where he’d spotted a set of cheese knives which he wanted to get me as a birthday pressie. Trouble was he had to keep them hidden, so he shoved down the front of his jeans - very resourceful you may think, until that is, it’s time to get back on the bus & he has to sit down! Let’s just say he ended up with some scratches from the packaging…


Our final excursion was south to Kangaroo Valley for the Labour Day weekend - bank hol at the beginning of October. About a 2-hour drive from Sydney under normal circumstances, it took us just over 3, as we were competing with every other bugger who’d decided to leave work a bit early to beat the traffic. Full of romantic notions of sharing the Valley with a mob of Kangaroos, we were slightly disappointed to find that the name actually comes from the name of the river that flows through the bottom. We did, however, manage to stumble across a fantastic campsite near said river, just over Hampden Bridge (a historical local feature, which is actually over 100 years old!!) There is so much to do here & we started planning on how we could fit everything in, and then came to the wonderful realisation that we didn’t need to do everything this time as we could always come back, so we limited ourselves to plodding through the bush on horseback for the following afternoon, and plodding on foot up a different track the next day. What a stunning country we live in - the views from the top of the horse on the top of an escarpment were unbelievable - we could see the sea (about 50 kms in one direction) and the highest point in this National Park (100 kms in the opposite direction). Even though we were a little tender in the nethers the next day, it was well and truly worth it - our only regret was that Garry wasn’t there too for the added amusement factor! Nothing on earth could be funnier than Mr White on horseback in France last year, except perhaps his comment at dinner that night.


Rather than heading straight home on the Monday, we decided to go whale watching in Huskisson - a lovely little town near Jervis Bay, which apparently has the whitest sand in the world (according to the Guinness Book of Records). No whales to be seen anywhere, but a few playful dolphins made up for it (as did a free return trip to look again next season).


Although working over here is about as dull as working in the UK, we are starting to explore some of this bonkers new country & get used to some of the oddities. A few key points for anyone thinking of coming over:
If you start with the premise that everything is the opposite to how you would expect it to be, you won’t go far wrong - door locks all lock ‘the wrong way’, including those on toilet cubicles (which can be quite disconcerting when one is in a rush). The water does actually go down the plughole anti-clockwise and they use the American names for veggies - peppers = capsicums, courgettes = zucchini and aubergine = eggplant. The traffic lights go straight from red to green (for going) & linger on amber for ages (for stopping) so it’s OK to go through on amber - a point we must remember when back home! Final bit of news for now is that we’ve booked our flights to come back in April next year - land at stupid-o’clock on Friday 25th & leave about 3 weeks later. We’ve already planned to see Dan that first weekend & then we’ve got Sonja & Karl’s wedding the following one, so keep the weekend of 10th (ish) of May free & we’ll be in touch much nearer the time to make some plans to see as many of you as possible.

Hope one & all are well - keep in touch!!!

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Photos

Panda, Eggy and Peter
Happy teddies

Three Sisters
Classic tourist site in Katoomba

Mount Solitary
View from Echo Point

Grand Canyon
Plateaus with Blue Valleys

Room with a View
Tallavera - nice place, shame about the wine

Wildlife amongst the Vines
Is this the secret ingredient...?

Deb on Manet
Horse Riding in Kangaroo Valley

Matt on Rocky
Ditto

Matt watching Whales
And doesn't he look cheerful

Local flora
A waratah - state flower of NSW - with friend