Monthly Archives: April 2010

We had another sleeping in morning, finally at the Manly Ferry launch at 11:30am. Our first meal of the day was lunch, paninis on the Corso of Manly town, then we shopped a bit, and ended up at the lovely beach. I’d been told it was like LA beaches, but even thought I’ve only been to Huntington beach way back in 1990, it still was a much smaller town feel than LA. It was very nice to play in the surf then relax in the sunshine!

We caught the 3:15 ferry back to Sydney, then strolled through the Botanical Gardens on the way back to our hotel. We only saw one “flying fox” bat actually fly, but plenty of them were still sleeping in the trees, some stretching their wings as they were waking up, then hitting the snooze alarm. 😉

We quickly rinsed off the salt water then were on our way to Martin’s Place station to catch the train to King’s Cross. Amy wasn’t so worried about shopping there since she bought out a store in Manly already, so we just wanted to find dinner in a supposedly up & coming area. Well, with the nudie bars & massage parlors right at the train station entrance I asked Amy where she was taking us, and none of the place in her guidebook were still around, but we found the Gazebo wine bar and had an absolutely delicious dinner with some very tasty and expensive bottles of wine! Worth it for my last night in the country!

We left the Gazebo about 9:30, and caught a 10pm train back to city center, where we tried the pub across from our hotel. Some interesting conversation with an Australian native and several cocktails later, it was 1am already, and we needed to be on the 4:30am train to the airport! We definitely made up for the early night last night, and we can always sleep on the plane! Unfortunately I wasted the one hour I had for sleep fighting with iPhoto, and I still can’t get today’s photos to import from my camera, so I just posted without photos anyway…sorry!

My Australian holiday was a wonderful trip, and just barely a taste of all the places I visited. Hopefully I’ll be able to visit again someday, but at least I’ve seen this much! Thanks for reading along the way!

Thankfully we slept well our first night in Sydney, had a simple breakfast at the cafe in Australia Square one block from our hotel, then leisurely headed towards the Opera House to check on tours, stopping along the way for photos in daylight this time. Luckily there was a tour starting in ten minutes! It was very interesting about the concept & history, we got to hear a violinist rehearsing on stage in the main concert hall, and some dancers rehearsing an upcoming ballet in the opera hall. No photos allowed inside the halls, but the other areas were okay. Not my personal style, but very interesting structure with exposed concrete ribs inside, and the engineering required to keep it all standing is amazing.

After our hour-long tour, we headed to the Orbit Lounge, a revolving restaurant at the top of the tower in Australia Square. They had a tapas menu, nice & light but very tasty & enough to keep us going, and we each had another crazily expensive cocktail, made even funnier by the fact that each cocktail I kept trying to order wasn’t available for some reason. The view was amazing, and sitting down out of the beating sunshine made it even more worth it.

Refreshed by our tapas siesta, we walked through The Rocks, a colonial district of the old Sydney, to the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Many people had recommended the bridge climb, but Amy looked it up, and not only are you required to wear special suits and not take your own photos, but also if you’ve had a major injury in the past 6 months, you’re not allowed to go. Ms Recent Shattered Elbow Amy might have been able to handle it fine, but honestly the day was so hot & muggy that being cooped up in full coveralls climbing stairs only to purchase photos at an exorbitant price didn’t sound that great to me anyway. We decided we could walk up the stairs at Pylon Lookout and get a good enough view and our own free photos. It was a lot of stairs in the sticky weather, but the view was spectacular of course, just catching the last of the fading light on the opera house before the bridge cast its long shadow.

They have exhibits inside the pylon, including models of how the workers had to ride the steel girders to direct them into place. They definitely could not be afraid of heights, and it was so dangerous that 16 men died during the years of construction. They had signs from older exhibits too, one slamming Melbourne as city rivalry which struck me funny. We kept walking along the entire bridge, watching the sunset from across all the traffic & through many levels of metal mesh. I liked the center point view with the sun setting in the distance.

The north end of the bridge just went around the bend away from the harbor view so we just turned around and went back, hoping to make it to the botanical gardens at dusk to see the flying foxes. By the time we hiked the whole way back around the Circular Quay, the fading light was great for photos along the way, but the park grounds closed at 6pm, just before we arrived. We saw some cool architectural salvage set up as lawn sculpture, and if we get the chance we’ll come back in the daylight to see the gardens properly.

Since there is a special elevated pathway from the bridge over the Circular Quay to the gardens, we didn’t walk past any restaurants to scope them out for dinner, and we hadn’t noticed anything that caught our eye earlier in the day. We strolled Opera Quays again, just like last night, with the difference being everything was open this time. We checked out menus & decided on sharing a pizza and salad, with our second comedy of cocktails of the day…running out of one brand of whisky I can understand, but what bar runs out of gin entirely? Hilarious!

It was a tasty dinner that hit the spot without being too heavy, since we already had our eye on the Belgian chocolate place next door for dessert! Amy had a Belgian waffle while I had a glorified hot fudge sundae, then even though I was up for more city action somewhere, Amy was too tired to keep going. We were back at the hotel by 8:30pm, which seems tragically early to me for one of our few nights in Sydney, but at least we should be well-rested to be able to enjoy our last day tomorrow. We’re taking the ferry to Manly Beach for only our second chance for beach relaxing time in the sunshine the whole trip!

We got up early so we were on the road by 9:15am, stopping for a view of lovely Jervis Bay before we left town, then continuing up Cambewarra Mountain and through Kangaroo Valley, Bowral, stopping at Mt Trafalgar for another lookout view.

Along the drive we had called the Avalon in Katoomba as recommended, but they are only open Wed-Sun, and for lunch only Sat-Sun, so no luck there since it was only Tuesday. We kept heading for the Blue Mountains anyway since they sounded worth the view…and we were not disappointed!

The local information center had recommended the highlights since we needed to be in Sydney by the evening, so our first stop was Wentworth Falls. The falls themselves were only a trickle due to being autumn and far down the mountain, but the red cliffs in the afternoon sunlight among all the green trees and the blue haze was gorgeous!

Next was Leura, driving through the town center where all the shopping was, then finding Leura Cascades for some nice photos, then along Cliff Drive to Echo Point. That reminded me a lot of Glacier Point, with the nicely-built lookout points, gift shop & convenient parking, and stunning view. The Three Sisters are interesting rock formations that were just fading from afternoon sunlight when we arrived. There is a lower lookout point so you can look straight down the cliffs, and we even took the walking path down a bit to see them closer but from the end.

We left Echo Point, drove up through the center of Katoomba, then continued to Blackheath, since the info center recommended that view looking back on Grose Valley. We tried Evans Lookout but found Valley View Lookout first…well worth the effort! The light had mostly gone from Echo Point, but here the sun was still just above the hills…and I wrapped the GorillaPod tightly around the railing to get a great photo of Amy and me with the view.

Our breakfast was bakery fruit bread bought the day before, and our lunch was our cheese & crackers bought in Yarra Valley, so we were very hungry by 6pm and decided to eat before leaving the Blue Mountains. We settled on the Savoy Cafe, next door to the Avalon, and I had kangaroo sirloin in red wine sauce with mashed potatoes. I’m not a huge steak fan, and I would compare kangaroo to a slightly tougher steak, but it was tasty enough I ate the whole plate.

We called ahead to let out hotel know we’d be late, and the drive to outer Sydney was uneventful and fairly quick…it was one wrong turn and nowhere to turn back that led us the entire outer-city circuit all over again! Frustrating for me as driver, but we got there in the end, even finding parking close enough to the hotel to unload our bags fairly easily. The drive to the airport was fine, and I checked in the rental car about 20 minutes before they closed the desk…then it was finally relaxing time as we took the train from the airport to Circular Quay!

The Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Opera House are beautiful at night of course, so we took lots of photos & strolled around. We found the Opera Bar barely open for one last drink order, so we had a yummy but expensive cocktail each while enjoying the view.

We strolled to the bridge side of the Quay by the museum, then my feet were finally pooping out around 12:30, so we walked back to the hotel. Sleeping in a bit is the plan, then the bridge & opera house, with other city wanderings, then the ferry to Manly Beach on Thursday. We only have 2 full days in Sydney, so we need to plan our time well!

We were out the door of Melaluca Grove by 10am, even seeing its fairy garden, with recommendations for breakfast, some nice views, and hopefully wild koalas. Breakfast was tasty, the view at Bastion Point was gorgeous, and at Double Creek it took the short walk through the forest first to be coming back the other direction before we found the koala chowing down in the tree near where we parked!

On the road again…we crossed the border from Victoria to New South Wales, and there were more rolling hills with fluffy clouds today. Lots of photos from the car, and we did stop a couple times for a better view. It was another late lunch, which doesn’t work well in small towns when places close between lunch & dinner, so we grabbed some bakery sandwiches & ate them out in the sunshine. When the sun was already fading behind the hill, we found the road to Long Beach, which supposedly also led to Pebbly Beach where the kangaroos hang out, but that didn’t seem to work. Long Beach was pretty and the water wasn’t too cold, but we wanted to find the kangaroos if we could. We went back up the hill & tried another road, ending up at Malroneys Beach, where we saw one kangaroo in the grass, so we stalked him for awhile. Then we got back in the car, drove around the bend and WHOA! Kangaroos all over the neighborhood! A lady was walking by just shook her head at us & smiled & said “They’re here all the time, just walk up to them slowly.” We couldn’t get close enough to pet them, but they didn’t mind us getting pretty close. It was really funny to see them hop away, but they’d only take a few hops just to keep some distance, then go back to chewing their grassy dinner. Yay for kangaroos…but wait, there’s more!

We thought Amy’s travel book was just plain wrong, and maybe the beach had been renamed or something, so we kept on the road north to Jervis Bay. Lo & behold we saw a small sign for Pebbly Beach Road, 8km of gravel road down to a campground & beach…and even though the light was almost gone, there were about five roos chowing down on the grass, calm as could be. They even let us pet them many times…hooray! Very soft & very cute…and I even got a nice photo of the Southern Cross over the water to end the day.

We finally made it to Jervis Bay Motel, then found a Thai place nearby still serving dinner, which was tasty. Tonight was a flurry of wifi for Google maps & iPhone loading for directions for tomorrow, then when I decided to repack my suitcase, I found the honey I bought in Margaret River somehow opened itself & leaked all over! Thank goodness my clothes were on the other side, there’s a barrier so only half of one side was sticky, plus it’s not lined, so the plain plastic was fairly easy to clean…but what a mess!

We’re driving through the Blue Mountains next, ending the road trip in Sydney!

Ahh…8 full hours of sleep felt so nice! I woke up at 7am, then rolled over again until about 9, and Amy didn’t get up until later! We had asked for our hot breakfast at 10:30am so we could get on the road well before noon. Even after chats with Tom suggesting which roads to take & where to stop for lunch, we were still on the road by 11:30, for the last time through the Yarra Ridges forest. I drove the first leg to Sale, which went pretty smoothly. Most of Victoria looks even more like the California Central Valley since the foliage is also the same. According to the signs, this is wombat crossing and kangaroo crossing country, but we haven’t seen any in the wild.

We didn’t want to go as long without eating as Saturday but thought dinner might be early too, so we stopped just for scones in Sale along the way. We did find our way to Metong, where Tom had suggested a pub that overlooks the water on the south coast, but unfortunately their restaurant was closed for a wedding…darn! We got some nice water views in the fading light at Metong, then made it down the highway again to Lake’s Entrance, the other place Tom recommended. It was too dark to see by then, but we had a nice dinner at a seafood restaurant on the water.

We called after dinner to check in with Melaluca Grove in Mallacoota near the border of Victoria, and he estimated another 2.5 hrs until we arrived, which was spot on. We got in at 10pm, driving through lots of smoke from what we assumed was a controlled burning very close to the highway. At Amy’s request, we staged a silly photo escapade at the Snowy River, the same river of the movie “The Man from Snowy River”…heehee! Melaluca Grove is an old motor inn with separate bungalows with 2 bedrooms each, kitchen, living room, even a washing machine, so that will be nice to have separate rooms one night. No internet here, and only 4 TV channels with nothing good on, so I held up my iPhone for both of us as Amy finally saw Dr Horrible in its entirety, and she enjoyed it as much as I expected…yay!

Tomorrow is another long drive to Jervis Bay, but hopefully with Pebbly Beach along the way, rumored to have wild kangaroos that hang out on the beach!

Until next time!