Australia wrap-up and reflections. October 31

Well, we "did Australia" the best we knew how and now Susan is half-way into her 15 hour flight to Vancouver. I am grateful I don't have to do that again for a while.

My favorite things about Australia:

Number one has to be the animals and that surprised me because I have always been a zoo-hater. Love these animals! Lots of the zoos we saw were running conservation programs or were homes for orphaned animals or were doing breeding programs to prevent extinction of some species. There was one in which I thought the animals were exploited by allowing too much handling but most were excellent.

Second place would have to go to the good beaches, the reef, sailing etc. all the sun and sand things.

Number one least favorite thing would have to be that it is expensive to travel here especially when you tour a lot.

Second place goes to the coffee. You can't get just plain drip coffee for cheap, you get a Cappucino and have it fixed up the way you want which in our case was "flat white". This is just a latte with no foam and it costs in the neighbourhood of five dollars so we had to pace ourselves on the coffee. You get instant if you get a cheap coffee.

I have been hanging at the hostel this afternoon and doing some catchup stuff, made my bookings for NZ and sewed my day bag back together. A nasty squall rolled in with thunder and rain. What a change from yesterday. Will get out and get some supper later and then early to bed as tomorrow is another travel day.

Oct 30, A day at Bondi Beach.

There was a $40.00 hop-on-hop-off bus to Bondi beach but Susan and I actually managed to get there on the city bus route.

The weather shifted from what it has been here in Sydney and it was a marvelous beach day. Many people turned out for the sun and also for an art display called Sculptures by the Sea.

The sculptures were displayed all along this rocky shore-line which would be a wonderful place to walk even without the art show.

I will show only a few of the many sculptures.

Here is a view of the path.

Who is this coming out of the thicket?

Table and chair set made of sand and grass.

Wrought iron dogs guarding the cliff.

Interesting!

Man and woman.

I liked this person wearing a rubber suit and an inner tube equipped with a propeller heading down to the water. It is one of the sculptures.

Looking back on where we have come from.

This is the second beach and park along the way called Tamarama Park.

This is the third beach called Bronte Beach. They are all great beaches with surf and the sand is sheltered by the cliffs.

Back to the hostel again we return to our sleeping car. It is a train car with bunk beds but we are in the Central Railway YHA and these cars are right alongside of working rail tracks.

I have a room upstairs tomorrow which will be quieter. This is the third time we have stayed at this hostel and we quite like it. There is another on which is also close called the Central YHA that seems like it would be good also. It was great to be near all the train and bus connections and 10 minuets from the airport by train.

If its October 29th it must be the Blue Mountains.

Off we go in the morning to meet our tour bus. This is our corner in Sydney and we walk through it again today.

It seems inevitable that every tour includes a zoo but that is not a bad thing in this country which has many unique animals to show off.

Today we are going to Featherdale zoo about an hour and a half outside of Sydney on the way to the blue mountains. It is the best zoo of all we have seen.

This is a Spikey Echidna. We held one in another zoo.

This white peacock put up with a lot of people posing with it for pictures before it put its plume down and wandered away. The animals in this zoo were amazingly accessible and most were not caged.

Feeding time in the croc pen.

Adult Emu.

Dingo dog. They forced the Tasmanian Devil population of Australia mainland into extinction.

The Devils are a protected species now and still exist in Tasmania.

Beautiful pink Cockatoo.

A Wallaroo. (Albino kangaroo)

I love these little penguins. They seem really happy here. Their backs are blue for camouflage reasons when they are in the sea.

A Kookaburra.

These birds are called "frog mouths" because of their large mouths which are lime green on the inside.

The Koalas are always so cute.

The roos in this zoo were all free to wander among the people but they also had space where people were not allowed so they could rest in peace if they wanted.

This is a Wombat. These are not available at all zoos and I was glad to finally see some.

I copied this picture of a marsupial tiger from another site because they are fascinating. They are extinct now but were last seen on Tasmania. They have a tail like a kangaroo and carry babies in a pouch.


Finally, off to the Blue Mountains. They are not actually blue. The blue color is derived from the vapor given off by the Eucalyptus trees in the valley. It is blue and causes the mountains to look blue .

This rock formation is known as the Boar's head.

These are the three sisters.

Down in the valley we saw the site of an old coal mine.

This scenic train was one of the ways you could travel down to the valley floor. It was a vertical drop of 206 meters and at its steepest point it had an incline of 52 degrees. I took a look at it and decided it would be the cable car or nothing for me. Here you see the train leaving from the lower station. It is pulled up the mountain on a cable. This is the old track they used to bring the coal cars up on.

Stopping in the small town of Leura we had some time to shop and look around.

Found these flowers on the gate of a small house.

The United Church or Leura.

Ivy leaf.

The last segment of the trip was a sunset ferry back to Darling's Harbour. We had supper there and walked the short way back to our place.

Last day in Tasmania

Today (Oct 28) was museum day, but first we were on an errand to find a place to print our boarding passes for the flight back to Sydney that evening.
That done, we wandered through shops for a bit and managed to find some items we had been looking for.

On the walk back down the hill we found a military museum that was interesting.

My favorite thing was a model of the underground tunnels used by the Vietnamese in the last war. You might not be able to see the detail, but there were traps, air vents, sleeping areas and munitions rooms, all connected by tunnels.

From the fort we had a view of Hobart spreading up the mountainside.



A woman gave us the following instructions for getting around in Hobart.
"Just look up the street and if you see a mountain then the sea is the other direction so you can't get lost."







Here is a view of some trees in a park where we had lunch after the museum.
As you see, one has new leaves, one has full leaves and one has none. It just looks weird to us and impossible to recognize the season. The native trees here are green all year but there are many trees from the northern hemisphere which loose their leaves however even they seem confused about just when to do it.

In the afternoon we joined a guided tour at the main Hobart museum. It is a wonderful place with interesting exhibits including an interactive one on the Antarctic which I especially liked. I also enjoyed the animal section. They have so many unique and wonderful animals here. There was a marsupial tiger that is now thought to be extinct. They had a film of it so we even saw one of those.

Hobart too has a long history of being a correctional colony for the British.

Later we took one last walk by the wharf and then caught the evening flight back to Sydney.

Second day in Tasmania

I can't seem to manage to get these out daily. We have been staying in the town of Hobart the whole time.

This was yesterdays adventures taking a tour out to Port Arthur where there was a ruins from an early prison. As usual we stopped many places along the way. I must say, these Aussies know how to jam pack a tour full of stuff.


This is Hobart city lookout on Rosney hill, our first stop.

In the historic village of Richmond we saw Australia's oldest bridge on which construction started in 1823 ......

and many buildings from the 1800's including Australia's oldest church and jail.

A view driving along the Forestier peninsula.

This is near a rock formation called the Devils Kitchen where the waves make caves in the rock and after a time the rocks in the ceiling of the cave fall in leaving what seems to be a room shaped hole.

This is called the Remarkable Cave. In low tide you can walk through it out to the beach. We saw another rock formation they call the Tasman arch.

Here we are at the Port Arthur site. Susan is standing in the ruins of an old church.

We had a cruise on the bay in this boat.

Two islands in the bay. The smaller one in the foreground was a graveyard and the other was where they kept the young prisoners to have them separate from the men.

This is one of the prison buildings.

The story of the prison colony is horrendous and a blot on Britain's history.

On the way home we stopped at a Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park. It was great to finally get a good look at these little guys.