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Published: February 25th 2007
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Sydney
Views over the harbour on the Manly walk We had a great few days staying with Bridget and her family when we arrived in Sydney. The first night John cooked the biggest steaks that you ever seen on the BBQ, making Sam’s week! Bridget took us on the Manly scenic walk, which is a lovely 9km coastal route, passing through lots of harbour beaches where families were out for the day swimming and having BBQs. It is strange to see areas of the sea cordoned off for swimming but necessary, as there are harbour sharks! We finished at Manly beach where the boys went for a swim and just as the lifeguards were announcing that there were lots of bluebottles appearing in the water, Sam got stung by one! They are jellyfish like creatures, and it managed to practically wrap itself all the way around him as if giving him a hug. The stinging goes away after about an hour, which wasn’t too bad but it took a few days for the little red dots to disappear….
We also took in Bondi beach and the markets there - you can see why Bondi is famous, a huge curve of blond sand. We also had our first taste
Opera House
The obligatory shot of this famous landmark of the famous Ausssie pies - and I’m sure it won’t be last as they are delicious. Coming in all varieties from the original steak, to Thai red chicken and lots of other gourmet choices, we have to concede that they are in fact definitely better than the British variety. Bridget did say that Australia apparently has a problem with obesity and with the size of the food portions that are served, you can see why! It is definitely on a par with American portions and while there we started to order one meal between us, so it’s looking like we’ll go that way here too.
We unfortunately had to say goodbye to John and Bridget at some point, so after that we did all the touristy things around Sydney: the opera house, the harbour bridge, the Rocks area (the area of the first European settlement), the botanic gardens & Hyde park. We really liked Sydney - and so friendly, we feel as though we should throw our guide book away as people are just so keen to help that you don't need it! We then eagerly waited for Roddy to arrive, but after hanging around the hotel
Blue Mountains
The famous three sisters for an hour for him to appear we thought it would be a good idea to check our emails and unsurprisingly he had missed his flight! He turned up 12 hours later after spending the night in Singapore airport, grateful for the beer that we had lined up at the bar for him. After a boozy night we headed out to pick up the van and made our way to the Blue Mountains that are only a couple of hours outside Sydney. The van is great and apart from Sam accidentally turning the windscreen wipers on instead of the indicators and involuntarily beeping the horn once in a while the driving is going well so far -(there was one incident where we were stuck going round and round the roundabout with the windscreen wipers going and the horn beeping as well - Roddy and I found this hysterical although Sam failed to see the funny side!).
The Blue Mountains were great - so called because the eucalyptus trees give off an oily mist, which goes blue in the sunlight. The area is so vast and we did a walk down to the bottom of a canyon, seeing Lyre
Blue Mountains
But with Sam and Roddy enhancing the view! birds (they apparently mimic sounds they hear - so we started whistling the A-Team theme tune to each one, so hopefully the next people that walk through would get a nice surprise!), lizards, parrots and crayfish in the pools of water at the bottom.
From here we had a couple of nights at the beach (where we saw our first kangaroos!). The drive there was a bit fraught as we were surrounded by thunderstorms and even though we were only a few hours away from Sydney it felt like we were middle of no-where, with no other cars around at all. We tried to stop for lunch but as we were making up the rolls out the back of the van there was an almighty clap of thunder followed by streaks of lightening just above us, that sent us scampering back into the van and speeding off as fast as our little campette could manage - we were ahead of the game until we reached some unsealed roads which slowed us down to about 15km an hour and were very rapidly flooding! We have since remembered to look properly at the map before we start our journey.
Pebbly Beach
Kangeroos doing a spot of sunbathing Our next main stop was the Snowy Mountains, which are popular for skiing in the winter and walking in the summer. The area has seen a series of bad bush fires over the last few years and even though they are part of the natural cycle here the frequency of them has left a lot of the area taking longer to recover than usual. It is quite eerie to see all the burnt trees and stumps stretching to as far as the eye can see on the horizon. Australia, in particular New South Wales is in drought at the moment, we read in the paper that now 98% of the state is affected - it is evident when you pass farms and the land is all dried mud as the grass has long gone, also we have passed lakes that appear large on our map but are no more than a pond at the moment. All of the places we have been so far have had water restrictions and showering with a bucket so that the campsite can water their grass/garden is now quite common!
We head over into Victoria next, taking our time to reach Melbourne
Snowy Moutains
Sprouts of green starting to show on the black coloured trees where Roddy will sadly leave us to start his adventures in Western Australia whilst we’ll continue to Adelaide and on up to the Northern Territory.
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Hayley
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Where's the fog???
You have the most perfect picture of the blue mountains - you can see them!!