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Published: June 26th 2008
Sydney Harbor Bridge at sunset
You can see this construction for miles around, even when you are landing at the airport....After the last few whirlwind days of fishing and the open sea in New Zealand we finally landed in Sydney, Australia. We were greeted by glorious warm sunshine and Jackie and Dave (yes pupils’ that is Mrs. Yates sister and I will tell you what she told me about Mrs. Yates when I get back to school - ha…ha)
We were both given a fantastic start to Oz with mega hospitality and great company for the first week due to the Jackie and Dave opening their home for myself and Carl. They showed us around the famous Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge, with a walk through the Botanical Gardens with Jack having great pleasure in showing us the local bat population. We then visited the Lord Nelson Brewery that brewed its own ale, which Carl and Dave fully enjoyed.
The rest of the week we spent checking out the city center, with its impressive Victoria style buildings and parks. The ride on the water taxi along the river gave us a great view looking down towards the city with its dominant skyscrapers looming over you as you arrive in at ‘The Rocks’. The Rocks is the ‘tourist’ and
Queen Vic
This one got everywhere.... Both Sydney and Melbourne have their fair share of Victorian buildings... the ‘in place to be’ for food and drink, with its views overlooking the harbor and the Opera House. Obviously it was too costly for me and Carlos, so Jack and Sam showed us where most of the locals went for lunch it the local food court. Good food at a reasonable price, you can’t beat it. Jack (this boy is going to be a Professor by the age of 25!!) showed us his favourite building in the city, which was the lovely, built St James church next to the chilled out lunch spot of Hyde Park.
We spent a day investigation all the fuss around Bondi Beach and why it is so popular!! It is a lovely beach with a nice walk around the Mackenzie’s Point headland that gives a good overview of Bondi and the surrounding beaches. We also soon realized it’s the place where the beautiful people come to pose…. You can soon guess that we were both out of our depth!! We didn’t really fit in with the sun bed queens (male and female); the jogger’s with their shirts off and the vain people doing their sit-ups and press-ups on the grassy areas followed by
Sydney Opera House
Actually built by a Danish archietch called Jorn Utzan the ‘big-butch guys’ doing their weights and workouts on the bar and weight area…
Not our cup of tea… But there was plenty of sarcasm…
We also met up with Howard, Sam and Anuoar (their gorgeous recently born son). Howard was the poor fellow that Carl and Rob dragged into Russia when they did their 1999 cycling tour…It was great to put a face to the name and also to fill in the blanks in Carl’s memory… Thanks for the help there Howard and a lovely evening.
We finally said our goodbyes and thank you to Jackie, Dave, Sam and Jack and the luxury we had been experiencing for the past week. A big Thank You.
We then headed west towards the Blue Mountain national park with clear blue skies around us and the sun shining brightly. We camped in the park the first night near Glenbrook surrounded by kangaroo’s and parrots this was our first experience of how cool it soon gets after the sun sets. We then climbed up to Katoomba, which is around 1100m high. However the strange thing is that you are not surrounded by mountains and hills. As you climb up
2 of Sydneys main attractions
People actually walk over the arch for the crack of it and a British couple recently got married on the top of the bridge!!! from Sydney you gradually make your way through forested land that eventually climbs onto a plateau. Once you are on the plateau at Katoomba, you are at Echo Point, which gives you a magnificent view of the national park and the Three Sisters. It is an amazing view as you stand at the edge of the canyon overlooking the valley stretching below you with sounds of the different birds and parrots carrying up from the forest. You then have the impressive rock formations and distant mountains with the beautiful colours playing of each other as the sun sets giving an overall misty blue appearance, which is why they are called the Blue Mountains.
The only downfall was that we had to go back down the road we had climbed, but we soon covered the distance with a little help from the gradient and slowly made our way to the coast trying to avoid as many main roads as possible (you end up touching the southern suburbs of Sydney.) We met a mega Italian campsite owner who let us stay for free and spent a night camping in the Royal National Park at Wattamolla Beach (a naughty freedom camp) but
Bondhi Beach
Famous for its sun, surf and sand and its life guards who usually drag out foolish tourist who think they understand a rip!!! it was a lovely peaceful setting.
We then gradually made our way down the South East Coast with its amazing views of the Tasman Sea and cliff hugging road winding its way gradually down to the golden beaches. We had good weather all the way down the coast as we explore the golden sands of ‘Seven Mile Beach’; ‘Jervis Bay’ and ‘Pebbly Beach’. We also tried some local fish and chips and checked out the blow hole at Kiama. We went as far down as Batesman Bay before we took the inland road to Canberra.
One thing we have noticed along the way is how pessimistic some Australians can be, and what a mixture of comments we received when we said we were going to head inland at Batesman Bay. Comments such as; “My God, you do know you are going up the Clyde & the Great Dividing Range, its 900m from sea level!!” or “You do know that you have chosen the hardest climb on the South-East coast!!” and “You’ll never cycle up that its 50km of pure up hill!!” In perspective they were all wrong. Yes it was one hell of a climb, but the tough
Sun Queen
There were many people posing and pretending to exercise along Bondhi steep section was only the last 4 miles, up to that point we gradually made our way along a valley, slowly gaining height as we went, and the whole climb was only 30km long not 50km…..
We eventually reached the top and made our way onto the Canberra plateau and with a stark difference in the landscape around us. We had left the green vegetation of the coast and were met with the barren, sandy-coloured, dry and burnt looking fields and hills, with not much vegetation. We were going to witness over the next week or so what the 11 years of no rain had done to some of the landscape. Truthfully this was not the worst hit area either…
Canberra is a very modern, widespread and relaxing capital city. It only has a population of 350,000 and it feels less. There are lots of parks and tree areas to relax in, especially around Lake Burley Griffen with views over to Parliament house and the surrounding ‘mounts’ that are dotted around the city. Whether you want to walk, cycle or use public transport, getting around Canberra feels safe and very easy, it is more like a large town,
This is as far as I'm going
As you can see, we were really flawnting it... with a relaxed and peaceful city centre and was probably the main reason why we both really liked it.
Whilst we were there we did museum overload, mainly because most of it was free and we checked out the Parliament as well. The main reason why Canberra was chosen as the capital was because Melbourne and Sydney both wanted the status. So they compromised and built it half-way between the 2 major cities just north east of the Kosciusko National Park and the Snowy Mountains. Therefore this means that it gets glorious weather in the summer, but that it also gets very cold and rainy/snowy weather in the winter. It was here that we came across our first bit of rain and a severe change in the temperature. It regularly hit 0*C at night whilst we were camping. However, that didn’t matter because we were exploring the museums.
We checked out the following: -
- The National Museum of Australia;
- The National Gallery of Australia;
- The National Screen & Sound Archive;
- Parliament House;
- Old Parliament House;
- Australian Institute of Sport (a bit of a let down really);
- The National Archives
- The Australian
Bondhi
Many of the local beaches have swimming pools as well at one end. War Memorial.
The War Memorial was really fascinating as we spent nearly 2 days investigating the different conflicts that Australia had taken part in, and truthfully we still felt that we had not given it enough time. Neither of us realized how big World War 2 was in the Pacific and how close the Japanese had got to Australia and some of the stories were pretty hard to read.
Parliament House was also really interesting as they have built it to fit in with the surrounding area. The building is situated into the side of a hill and is not very tall (none of the buildings are tall in Canberra, which is why it feels so spacious). It was here that we learnt why the Australian emblem has the emu and kangaroo on it. Not only are both animals native to Australia but the can only move forwards, they can not move backwards (this is probably why most of the kangaroo’s we have seen are dead on the side of the road). This symbolic action is to represent that Australia will always be moving forward and never backwards. I quite like it…
We left Canberra with the
The Clear family
Sam, Dave, Jackie and Sam a massive thank you for your hospitaility. sun shining once again and the wind coming from the east and not the Snowies, which made a heck of a difference. The terrain was very rolling, but still barren. The Snowy Mountains could be slowly made out to the right of us as we slowly climbed back up to 1100m to cross back over the Great Dividing Range. It was on here that we had our coldest night of camping as it got down to -10*C and the down-sleeping bags went into over drive. However the morning afterwards was gorgeous as blue skies surrounded us and white crisp frost hugged the tent (outside and inside) and the bikes.
Gradually we made our way back to the coast and to sea-level, thankfully leaving behind the coldness of the night. We decided to have a day of in Eden and investigate the local legend of ‘Old Tom’ the killer whale. Old Tom use to help the local fishermen catch the Humpbacks and Sperm whales. Tom and his ‘crew’ would round up a whale and call upon the fishermen to come and catch it. Then they would stop it from diving and Tom would cover the blowhole, whilst the fishermen killed
The Blue Mountains
This was our first glimpse of the national park and its unique canyon style mountains. it. Then the fishermen would leave the Humpback in the ocean for the killer whales to feast upon the lips and tongue. This kind of killing when on for over 10 years during the 1930’s and they grew reputation as the ‘Killers of Eden’, that carried on until Old Tom pass away.
We then headed inland and were surrounded by the greenness of the tea-tree forests, fresh water lagoons, health land and saltwater lakes. The land became very rolling with a few 400m plus winding climbs and descents as we made our way westwards and into Victoria and saying goodbye to New South Wales. The main large town/tourist place that you come to is Lakes Entrance as the main highway heads back out to the coast. This is a large natural lake entrance from the sea, creating many different lakes along the coast and around Gippsland, plus being the start of Ninety-Mile Beach, with its white sands. It was here that the land started to change and you could see the many different lakes in the flat lands heading over to Central Gippsland. We also spent a lovely evening at Eagle Point with the sun slowly setting over the
Canyon style
This canyon is small conpared to those in the States, but are impressive in their own right nearly hills and reflecting onto the lake. It was whilst we were in this area that we met other cyclist-tourist, as we passed a Swiss, Scottish and two Aussie cyclists on the road.
We then came to South Gippsland and the change in the landscape was unbelievable, as we left the light brown barrenness and entered the lush green valleys and forests that met with deep coloured green field with the different herds grazing. It really felt like we had just cycled back into the Ribble Valley and the colours of rural Lancashire. It is also here that we finished our month of camping and are now staying with Allen and Marlene. Not only do we have the luxury of staying in a bed, but no more camp stove meals for a few days…
That is until we set of to do the Great Ocean Road…
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andy S
non-member comment
my long lost brother
Carl, its me you bezzzer mate Andy S...glad you are taking a leaf out of my book and now we look like twins....well all you need is a ginger beard to store some food for the day in..love you loads and i cant wait for you to come home..i have a NEW cycling top...a 1980s Raleigh one..unwashed as yet...a real beauty..