Tuesday 30th March, 2010
So yesterday was Taronga Zoo and I had a great time. The zoo itself is on the side of Sydney harbour and you get fantastic views of the city from various different aspects of the park.
I have yet more photographs of koala’s. I think I am going to have to separate these from the rest of the photographs if other people what to see them because seriously, I have loads. I also have photo’s of lizards, deer,giraffes, meerkats, seals and most importantly the baby elephants. The youngest elephant ‘Patti Han’ has his own tale. He was delivered believed dead only to find that he was in fact breathing. Although much smaller than he should be and not really able to stand at first, he is doing well. He was initially named ‘Mr Shuffles’ which I think is much better than the translation of his current name which is just ‘Miracle’.
We walked up and down the park getting the views of the city, nearly getting shit on by all the birds, and a talk by the Koala keeper. Useless fact of the day: Koala’s are the only other living animals that have individual fingerprints. We only just managed to make it through the gift shop without buying anything and then had a picnic on the top of the multi-storey car park.
Monday again and we were on the road to Bondi. I guess I really is one of those places that I needed to tick off the list of things to see. It is a nice beach and bay area but didn’t really compare to some that I have seen over the past 3 months. We parked at Tamarama Bay and walked the coastal path round to Bondi. We had ice cream and soaked in the atmosphere before soaking our feet in the water.
The weather was still warm but not really that sunny but by the time we got back to the car the bottoms of my trousers had dried off quite nicely. Since we had gone to the north head of the harbour the other day we decided to try and find the south head too. Most of the south head is taken up by a military base but the area they call ‘The Gap’ is notorious with suicide attempts. It is pretty high and very rocky but you could see views out to sea, across to the North Head and over to the city.
Saturday 27th March, 2010
As the signs for Sydney disappeared and the signs for the districts became more prominent I knew that I had made it and what’s more I managed to navigate my way to the airport without going on the toll roads. Even I was impressed with that. Dropping the van off I caught the train into the city. I had no real idea of where I was staying that night but I figured that I would go to the tourist information to find out where the backpacker hostels were. When the train was approving Central Station I immediately noticed YHA Central. I had briefly looked at hostels and they were all about the same price for the night but some more superior than others. I thought there was a good a place as any to check out and see if they had any available rooms. They did and after dumping by bag again I went for a walk, I would explore the 9 floors pf the hostel later. I walked in the general direction of a tourist information because I wanted to know about free buses around the city. This took me to Darling Harbour but passing Paddy’s market, a mass of water fountains and a Greek festival. This was good fun, they had entertainment and music and food and drink stalls selling everything Greek.
I got the free bus route from the tourist information and I walked by the harbour for a while taking everything in. I made my way up to the cities main streets to catch the bus to Circular Quays and got my first glance at the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. The bridge is big and you can definitely see that it was designed by the same person. The weather was fantastic and the city looked great. I spent a while watching the street entertainers and I just had to stick around to watch a guy juggling whilst riding a 12 foot unicycle. On the way back to the Hostel I found a St Patrick’s day festival too in Hyde Park where I stopped for a cider and to look at the fountain.
The hostel is really good. It has a cinema, 2 kitchens, bar, cafe, games room, swimming pool, sauna and roof top BBQ. The cinema was showing Romeo and Juliet that night and you get free popcorn too. I could get use to living like this! We had a BBQ one night when I tried Kangaroo burger, it tasted good. The people I met were really nice and we shared travels stories with a beer. Monday night was Crab racing in the bar and everybody get really into it. I didn’t win though. Tuesday night was wii sports and I won the tennis, but I think that was more to do with the fact that everybody was rubbish, rather than me being any good.
The next couple of days involved visits to the fish market and looking around the shops. I took to the water on the ferries over to Milson’s Point and Luna Park, the theme park. I went on a few of the rides including the crazy mouse and lots of rides that went upside down and spinning round. I went back to Darling Harbour on the ferry and went to the Maritime Museum. I wandered around the markets and had a good look around the city. I like Sydney as a city, it doesn’t feel too big and has a great atmosphere.
Monday 22nd March, 2010
It was a long journey from Adelaide down to Port Fairy but I had glanced at the map and figured that was where I needed to get to to start on the Ocean road the next day. The clock was ticking from the second I picked up the van and I had to deliver it to Sydney, in 1 piece, in 4 days time. It was massive, it had a big double bed, sink, gas cooker, shower, toilet, microwave and air conditioning. It was much longer than I expected it to be so I had to remember I needed more room to get the back to go in the same line as the front!
I had a really nice campsite right next to the beach on the first night and this meant the obligatory walk along the beach to watch the sunset. In the morning I packed up the van and headed east to the B100, otherwise known as the Great Ocean Road. It is said that this is one of the best drivers in the world, and it really didn’t disappoint. First came the Bay of Islands and the shear scale of the cliffs and the razor edging to the rocks became quickly apparent. Only minutes later another walk to see The Grotto, London Bridge and The Arch. The sign for the 12 Apostles confused me a bit because it points left when the sea is on the right. This takes you to the car park and the helipads. The walkway goes under the road and emerging on the other side I could see the skies were littered with at least 10 helicopters taking the more extravagant tourists on the guided tour over this stunning natural landmark.
The first part of the road was along the cliff tops but then the road headed inland and through the Great Otway National Park, zigzagging down to Glenaire, back up to Mariners lookout and then back to sea level at Apollo Bay. From here the road hugged the shoreline with cliff face on one side and sea on the other. Police cars stopped the traffic at Wongarra because someone was filming a commercial and after only a short delay the journey continued through Lorne, Fairhaven, Anglesea and Torquay were the Ocean road ended and I was on the freeway to Geelong. Another couple of hours on the road and I pulled into Seymour for the night.
The rest of the journey really doesn’t warrant another post it was long and although there was nice scenery on the way, you couldn’t see it from the rest stops because of the trees and if I was going to make it on time I couldn’t keep stopping every 5 minutes. Day 3 was a 700km day and I decided I would stay overnight at Bungonia in the Morton National Park. Only when I got there did I find that the park was closed for a month for animal culling so I went back to Goulburn for the final night. I think it will only be another 300km from here tomorrow to get the van to the airport then into Sydney for a few days.
I have written these last 2 posts out on the road ready to go on the computer when I get to it but I am finding that I am getting more and more symptoms of Internet withdrawal. I will be pleased to be back in touch with the modern world. I have really enjoyed the past 4 days with the camper that I have affectionately named FEB (F***ing Enormous Bus) and will be sad to give him back.
Sunday 21st March, 2010
It took me a couple of days to unfold completely after the grape picking but was definitely helped a long with quite a bit of wine and beer, I went back into Adelaide city on Sunday to see the market. It was buzzing with people because of the Clipsal 500 supercar event and the street entertainers made it a great atmosphere. The next day Yvonne suggested a wildlife park at Cuddlee Creek and the real selling point on this was actually getting to cuddle the Koala’s. I was oven the moon but the rest of the animals were pretty amazing too including the kangaroos (probably 60-70 of them), camels, emu, stinking fruit bats, birds, monkeys,merkats and all the others that I can’t think of right now. We spent a couple of hours there and when I could finally tear myself away we headed to Barossa Valley stopping at a German bakery for lunch and indulging in pie and cheesecake.
Lets be honest, the main reason for venturing into the Barossa is the wine tasting. With this in mind we went to the Jacob’s Creek Winery. The creek itself was rather disappointing as creeks go but we sampled quite a few wines and had a look across the acres of grape vines ripe for the picking (not by me though!) I great contrast to the new modern design of Jacob’s Creek, Yallumba estate was much older but beautifully presented with manicured gardens and a pungent fruity aroma in the air. The wines here was absolutely divine in comparison and we left loaded up with plenty of bottles of the ones that took out fancy. It is safe to say that it didn’t take us long to get stuck into them!
Another day and we were back in the car and off to Hahndoff. Originally a town of German settlers but was now a mecca for tourists. Still a very beautiful place but to me it felt like a group of people had sat down and brainstormed everything they could think of that had even the smallest German connection and put it here to draw in the tourists. I did wonder how many people actually lived their day to day life here and how many were just passing through. The main street did look stunning though. Tree lined on both sides down the full length of the town and the entire autumnal colour spectrum on show, I imagine this to be like New England in the fall.
I had booked the camper van for a relocation to Sydney over 4 days from tomorrow so I was excited about the forthcoming road trip.
Saturday 13th March, 2010
I had a very non eventful flight from Perth to Adeliade and was greeted by Yvonne (Helen’s Aunt). Yvonne and Hugh are kingly letting me stay with them whilst I am in Adeliade. They live in the hills outside the city so we drove drove round by the beach before heading up into the hills. The landscape is really nice and although a bit dry and crisp at the moment I am imagingin it in a few weeks time being lush and green.
The next day I got the chance to met all the animals they ahve including the dogs, cat, birds, lambs, sheep ponies and a donkey. We fed them and then Yvonne dropped me off at the train station to go into the city. I didn’t have to wait long for the train and 45 minutes later I was in Adelaide city centre. I had devised a plan to visit a couple of hostels in the city and check out the notice borads for jobs. I walked around a little and went in a couple of galleries and then insearch of the tourist information. They gave me a list of backpacker hostels and a map and I was on my way. I walked to 10 hostels and only managed to get 1 phone number for grape pickers in Adeliade Hills and a website address for travellers at work, not a great start but better than nothing. When I got back to the house I rang the grape pickers and they said to meet in the Foodland car park at 6.30am.
I hadn’t really considered that in order to get to Foodland car park for 6.30am I would have to drag myself and Yvoone out of bed at 5am to get ready and arrive on time. Anyway we did it and arrived 5 minutes early to find that the guy was about 20 minutes late. There were load of other poeple there and when he did arrive it didn’t take him long to organise us all into groups and send us off to various vineyards. So this was my first experience of grape picking and I wondered how long it would take to fill one of the buckets. We were all working on the number of buckets filled so everyone was concentrating on the task in hand. I think most people had higher expectations of what we could earn and for most of us it was the first time so you couldn’t really hide the shattered disappointed look on everyones faces at the end of the day. We were all bent over and had multiple cuts to the hands and wondering if it would be possible to return to next day. I didn’t! It really wasn’t worth it for $70 and I had earned more than I thought from my other job in Perth. I think Yvonne was happy too not being dragged out of bed at ridiculous times in the morning.
Managing to straighten up a little better today and we went for a drive down to Victor Harbor. It is about 90km South of Adeliade and a lovely place but full of retired people settling by the sea. On the way we stopped for lunch at Alexandrina Cheese Factory and had a sample platter with lots of delicious cheeses, olives, almonds, salami, apples and gerkins, my idea of a perfect lunch. We drove round Victor Harbor and I walked across the causeway to Granite Island. This was really nice and you can choose to ride the house drawn tram over the causeway if you want. I chose to take loads of pictures of it instead. Granite Isalnd is known for the penguins on the Isalnd. I didn’t see any but they can really only be seen out at night and on the guided walking tour.
Thursday 4th March, 2010
God, has it really been more than 2 months since I left. It feels like another world, like it was so long ago but also yesterday. This last weekend has been a holiday weekend and with no shops open I decided to head north, Shirley suggested a couple of places and came along for the ride. She says it is all new to her as well because there are new developments everywhere. They certainly are a lot of development/building sites and loads of real estate agents waiting to cash in.
The weather has been really hot over the last week and most days up to 40 at least. It felt nice walking around at Burns beach but as soon as we when inland the heat was overpowering. At Yanchep National Park we went to see the Koala’s (have you guessed I have a thing about koala’s yet) and got talking to a couple from Wales working out here for 6 months. After talking to a few more people I had definitely passed the standing in the sun time and felt like shit. I have discovered I don’t like dehydration and would be absolutely useless at going walkabout.
In the comfort of the air con we drove round to the caves and the lake. The lake usually has tourist boats, it was easy to see why they weren’t in use as there has been no rain since the beginning of December. It was more of a puddle of mud than a lake. Despite the lack of rain, the total ban on BBQ’s in the bush and the fire risk charts being on ‘Extreme’ you still see people throwing lit cigarette buts out of car windows!
The last 2 days I have been working at a Nursing home in the city. Things are really similar. The usual mixture of escaping residents, touchy feely old men, touchy feely old women and cute old dears, a normal day at the office. I am glad to be getting some money in though and you definitely get paid more here (weekly pay too!). 4 more days to try and earn a bit more and my flight to Adelaide is well on the way to being paid!
The other picture is one of Shirley’s massive sweet potatoes with a ordinary sized normal potato. She said she doesn’t add strange things to the soil but this is just not normal and they are all that size or bigger!!!
So yesterday was Taronga Zoo and I had a great time. The zoo itself is on the side of Sydney harbour and you get fantastic views of the city from various different aspects of the park.
We walked up and down the park getting the views of the city, nearly getting shit on by all the birds, and a talk by the Koala keeper. Useless fact of the day: Koala’s are the only other living animals that have individual fingerprints. We only just managed to make it through the gift shop without buying anything and then had a picnic on the top of the multi-storey car park.
Monday again and we were on the road to Bondi. I guess I really is one of those places that I needed to tick off the list of things to see. It is a nice beach and bay area but didn’t really compare to some that I have seen over the past 3 months. We parked at Tamarama Bay and walked the coastal path round to Bondi. We had ice cream and soaked in the atmosphere before soaking our feet in the water.
The weather was still warm but not really that sunny but by the time we got back to the car the bottoms of my trousers had dried off quite nicely. Since we had gone to the north head of the harbour the other day we decided to try and find the south head too. Most of the south head is taken up by a military base but the area they call ‘The Gap’ is notorious with suicide attempts. It is pretty high and very rocky but you could see views out to sea, across to the North Head and over to the city.
