Here's a not so brief account of our time in the land of Rolf Harris, Crocodile Dundee and Dame Edna Everage.
Adelaide:
A lot of people that we spoke to in South America and that had already been to Australia had the same reaction when we told them that we were starting our Australia leg in Adelaide: "what are you going there for?". Undettered by this we were determined to find out for ourselves if there was actually anthing to do and see in Adelaide. By the end of the few days there, we were of the opinion that for a short stay it was easy to keep busy.
Adelaide is extremly bike-friendly so on our first day, we took advantage of the free bike-hire in our hostel and took a cycle round part of the city, and through the central parklands, along the River Torrens. The palindromic, sea-side suburb of Glenelg was just a short tram-ride away and so, after returning the bikes, we made the journey, taking in the pleasant view from the pier.
One of the things we were most looking forward to doing in Adelaide was the Coopers Brewery tour. Coopers are a local success story, now exporting their beer to multiple countries all over the world, including the UK. Their Pale Ale and Sparkling Ale range can be found in some supermarkets and practially all specialised beer outlets. Due to their rapid increase in production levels, they moved to a huge, custom-built site around 10 years ago. On the tour of the brewery it was apparent how much thought for the environment had been put into the design of the facility, with water and power usage being kept a minimum.
After seeing the brewing room and the enormous bottling and packaging area it was time for the main event of the tour; the tasting. We were given samples of all of Coopers range from the low-carb Clear to the 10% vintage range. This in itself was not a trivial amount of alcohol, but once the full range had been sampled we were offered a choice of beer for a schooner (half pint). And another. And another! Very good value for money at $22!
The next day, an early rise was required as we had arranged for a trip to nearby Kangaroo Island. Regretting the 2 pints of Coopers we decided to have after returning from the brewery, we set off for the bus at 6, which took us to Cape Jervis where the ferry to Kangaroo Island departed from. A choppy crossing did nothing to help our states, but I had recovered by the time we reached the island and collected our hired car.
Kangaroo Island is famed for its natural beauty and the range of wildlife that can be seen here. In fact, when being briefed by the hired car company, the possibility of hitting wildlife was stressed to us again and again. The main point for our visit to Kangaroo Island, however, was that I wanted to visit the place where my late brother-in-law Dougal had tragically lost his life 7 years before, in an attempt to rescue a fellow tourist. The accident occurred at Remarkable Rocks and after a 3 hour drive, which featured a miscalculation in directions resulting in us driving 20 miles along a dirt road, we made it to Remarkable Rocks. A memorial plaque to Dougal and Daniel (the local tour operator who lost his life in the same accident) is to be found in the information shelter, along with warnings about disobeying the "No Access" signs, which is just what happened in the case of the person Dougal and Daniel attempted to rescue. The weather was foul the day we were there, it was hard to even stay upright while standing on the rocks, and so after a short time wandering around the rather eerie place, I was glad to leave.
Melbourne:
After a mammoth 12 hour bus and train journey from Adelaide, we arrived in Melbourne. Our hostel was in the St Kilda area of the city, but the excellent tram system made it very easy to get in and out of the centre of the city.
One of the draws of the hostel we initially stayed in was a free pancake breakfast every day so we eagerly rose on the first day and headed to the kitchen where the pancakes were being freshly made. Half an hour later we were full and ready to face the day. A downside of this was that we had to listen to the big-mouthed pancake preparer chatting with one of her friends and announcing all the most intimate gossip of some of the presumably long-term residents of the hostel - and I mean intimate gossip! She repeated this the subsequent day to confirm what a complete and utter moron she was. This daily ritual, combined with the fact that our room was directly above the noisy smoking area for a busy pub, resulted in us changing hostels after a couple of nights.
Melbourne is an extremely cosmpolitan city. One startling statistic we learned was that it has the highest Greek city population outside of Greece and the highest Italian city population outside of Italy! It also houses a large number of Asians in the unsurprisingly named Chinatown area. As well as giving Melbourne an amazing variety of cuisine options, it gives the city a very cool, multi-cultural, New York-like atmosphere.
We spent several days seeing the tourist attractions dotted around the city centre, including Federation Square and Flinders St Station at the very heart of the city. A free tourist bus and tram circuited the attractions, making it extremely easy to see everything, including the National Museum, St Paul's Cathedral and Queen Victoria Market. The vast city library houses a Ned Kelly exhibition, giving the story of the life and death of the famous outlaw. It also usually houses actual pieces of his armour, but we were unfortunate enough to go to the library on a day when the armour was on a tour of the country! Of course, despite the free transport on offer, we also performed the Lonely Planet walking tour of the city. One site which we missed out on, only finding out about its existence after having left Melbourne, was AC/DC Lane, a street in central Melbourne named after the legendary rockers. Missing out on this photo op was devastating for us!
Melbourne is big on sports too. As well as the amazing, 100000 capacity Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) which hosts AFL (or Aussie-rules as its known back home) in the winter and cricket in the summer, it can also boast the Rod Laver tennis complex, which hosts the Australian Open, and the very recently built AAMI stadium, built for hosting football and rugby. It was to the AAMI that we headed for our first taste of football on Australian soil, to watch the A-League debut of Melbourne Heart, a newly formed side and the second Melbourne team in the A-League along with Melbourne Victory. Although the 10000 seater stadium was far from full, a reasonably healthy crowd created a pretty good atmosphere, despite the shockingly bad club song introduced before kick-off and the eventual 1-0 defeat to Central Coast Mariners.
The following evening, we experienced a rather different atmosphere when we attended the MCG for an AFL game between Essendon and Carlton. We were accompanied by 2 Melbourne residents, Miriam (a Kiwi) and Karmen, whom we had met in Buenos Aires and kept in touch with. We bombarded them with questions about the rules, but to be honest, I think we knew as much about the rules as they did! The crowd was extremely vocal, probably helped by the beer on-sale inside the stadium. It's an all-action sport, and there are very few breaks or lulls in the excitement so it makes for a really enjoyable spectacle, especially with a beer in hand. The league culminates in a Grand Final, played at the end of September. This year's was contested by Collingwood and St Kilda with the first game ending in a draw and the subsequent replay being won by Collingwood.
Melbourne made a big impression on me, it's probably my favourite city that I've visited on the trip and is somewhere I could quite easily imagine myself living.
Sydney/Blue Mountains:
After another overnight bus (we had by this point purchased a Greyhound bus pass which would take us from Melbourne all the way to Cairns), we arrived in Sydney and headed straight to the Springwood in the Blue Mountains. This is where a first cousin of my mother's, Elizabeth, and her husband Hugh live and we were met off the train by Hugh and immediately made to feel at home in their house. Hugh, on his way to a family get-together where Elizabeth was, dropped us off in the Blue Mountains national park in the town of Wentworth Falls, having suggested a good walking trail for us that afternoon.
For a couple of hours we navigated some of the trails fairly well, apart from a disastrous detour where we ended up on an "advanced climber" track and after reaching what appeared to be a dead-end, returned up the track rather than attempting a suicical descent of the cliff.
The views were amazing, the bluish mist which hangs over the area (caused by the vapour given off by the Eucalypus trees) and which the area is named after, clearly visible across the valley. Finally, we walked back into town and, after a late lunch took the bus back to Springwood. When Hugh and Elizabeth arrived home later, they treated us to a barbeque dinner and we got to know each other, never having met before this trip which made their hospitatility all the more impressive.
The following day we all took the journey to Katoomba, probably the most popular tourist spot in the Blue Mountains, and home to the 3 Sisters, 3 stacks of rock which sit next to each other and which an ancient Aboriginal tale states were originally 3 human sisters who were turned to stone by a tribal elder in order to protect them from an imminent battle. The death of the tribal elder during the battle was a bit of a blow to them though, as it meant that they were never turned back into human form. Bummer, huh? Still, they have a cracking view over the Jamison valley from their resting point if that's any consolation to them.
Taking the Scenic Railway to the bottom of the valley - the steepest passenger railway in the world and formerly used to haul coal up the cliffside from the mines below - we walked for a couple of hours along the trail. Hugh was an excellent guide, giving us lots of useful information on the wildlife and plants in the area, trying to be heard above the piercing, high-pitched squawk of the numerous White Cockatoos. Having relied on mechanical means to descend the cliff side, we had to revert to physical exertion to get back up, climbing the Giants Stairway, 900 steps carved into the cliff-side. Sweating buckets having reached the top and in between 2 of the 3 Sisters, our reward for the climb was a spectacular view over the Jamison valley. After a short walk, a trip on the Skyway cable car brought us back to where we started and ended an energetic and enjoyable day. Later that evening, as Hugh took us through his photos of their trip to the UK and Lewis from a few years back, we were amused to see some familiar local characters from their photos of Stornoway, including a guy known to Ally as Uncle Fidget!
After saying farewell to Hugh and Elizabeth, we took the train back into Sydney the next day. Our first day in Sydney was a washout however, as by the time we had walked into the centre of the city from the Kings Cross location of our hostel via the Botanic Gardens, the rain was torrential. So we sought an indoor activity, settling on a trip to the cinema to watch Inception, an excellent movie which requires large amounts of concentration!
The following day the weather had cleared, so we walked to the Sydney Opera House and admired the view over to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, before taking the ferry across the harbour to the suburb of Manly. We spent a few hours there, walking the length of the very nice beach and childishly trying to find the most amusing sign containing "Manly"; "Manly Boatshed" and "Manly Life Saving Club" being the 2 overall winners.
The next day, a walk of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was called for, and so, after finally finding how to get onto the bridge, we walked the length of it. You can in fact scale the bridge, and hundreds of people do that every day (including such well-known faces as Robert De Niro and Bill Clinton according to the photos in the climbing tour agency's office) but we felt that the 200 hundred odd dollar outlay couldn't be justified so we settled for appreciating the view over the harbour from a few hundred feet below.
Our final item to tick off the Sydney sight-seeing list was a trip to the famous Bondi Beach. The weather in Sydney was as changeable as back in Scotland at this point though, and by the time we had reached the beach it was grey, wet and overcast and very much bereft of bikini-clad babes.
Another overnight bus awaited us but, while enjoying a last pint in Sydney, I managed to spot a former Home and Away star (Rhys Sutherland for any fans) and have a little chat and my photo taken with him. Considering I approached him with "Didn't you used to be in Home and Away?", as I couldn't remember the name of his character at that point, he was pretty obliging and even mentioned that he'd spent last new year in Pitlochrie! Judging by some of his storylines in Home and Away, it's a miracle Pitlochrie wasn't hit by some freak natural disaster during his stay there.
Byron Bay:
Byron Bay is a beachside town, very touristy and with not a lot to do other than lie on the beach. So for the couple of days that we were there, we did just that! The weather was good, the sea was warm and we had books to read so our couple of days there passed very quickly. Our exercise was provided on the last day by walking to the light house which overlooks the beach and town, and taking in the sunset from there.
Brisbane:
A short bus journey to Brisbane, and we had crossed over into Queensland, known as the Sunshine State for obvious reasons. Again, we had been told that there wasn't much to Brisbane but we found it to be quite an interesting place, spending most of our one full day there walking the city centre, aided by our Lonely Plant guide.
Rainbow Beach/Fraser Island:
Our next destination was the little beachside town of Rainbow Beach, named after the colourful sand dunes which are found there. Tourism in Rainbow Beach centres around trips to nearby Fraser Island, considered to be the largest sand island in the world, and it was for that reason that we were in town. At the briefing the day before the tour departed we met up with our group for the 3 day tour. They were a group of 4 Irish girls and 2 cockney siblings. We got on well with them straight away and much of the next 3 days was spent talking in Cockney. It's unusual to be in a situation where you get to take the piss out of someone's accent rather than have it ripped out of you!
The next day, after having packed all of the food and camping equipment, we set off in our 4 wheel drive jeeps. Everyone who could drive would take turns in driving over the 3 days, and with the lead car being driven by an experienced guide, it was fairly straightforward. Driving on the sand was fun though, and the driver's seat was often the best place to be with the cramped conditions for the 5 people who had to sit in the back.
After the short ferry ride to the island we set off along the seemingly endless beach to set up our campsite. On this journey we saw a big, dead turtle on the sand with a large chunk having been taken out of its shell by a shark - if we needed any confirmation that the strict instructions not to swim in the sea should be obeyed, then this was it!
After having set up our tents (Cockney Dan, Ally and I were in one tent) and having had lunch of ham salad sandwiches (after Fraser Island I can appreciate where the 'sand' in sandwiches came from), we drove to Lake Mackenzie, a beautiful fresh-water lake where we could swim and relax for an hour or two. By the time we returned to camp, the sun was setting and the race was on to get dinner cooked before darkness fell. The lads were in charge of dinner on the first night and we rustled up steak, potatoes, vegetables and sand. Delicious! Once the dishes were kind of washed (it's pretty tricky when there's no soap and everything has sand floating in it) we settled down to make a dent in the considerable amount of beer and goon (goon is cheap - very cheap - australian wine) that we'd brought to the island. Several hours later, we had succeeded!
Nursing a considerable hangover the next day I was glad that I had performed my share of the driving the previous day. We set off for Indian Head, a headland and lookout point from which we had been guaranteed that we would see at least one whale. Sure enough, after clambering to the top we saw stingrays, dolphins and whales in the water beneath. After some of us had returned to the jeeps, Jake - the lead driver and ultra-laidback surfer dude - who remained up at the headland for a little while longer, spotted a shark in the waters below.
Before continuing the heavy drinking we visited the wreck of the SS Maheno, a luxury liner built on the Clyde in 1905, which ran aground in 1935 while being towed to Japan and which was used as a target for bombing practice during the Second World War by the Royal Australian Air Force.
That evening while at another group's campsite we saw a dingo roaming around (we had seen quite a few over the course of the trip) and as instructed, we made lots of noise to scare it off. When we returned to our jeep we found that our rubbish bag had gone missing and had in fact been dragged by the dingo halfway to the beach and ripped open! Thankfully there wasn't too much devastation as the patrolling rangers can issue on the spot fines for littering.
Our final morning on Fraser Island was spent at Lake Wabby, another fresh water lake inhabited by catfish. After a couple of hours relaxing there, it was time to listen to the group's theme tune one last time (Chas and Dave's 'Rabbit' in homeage to our cockney friends) and head back to Rainbow Beach for a shower, an early (sober) night and failed attempts to get the sand of Fraser Island out of bags, shoes and body cavities.
Bundaberg:
Our next stop after Rainbow Beach was a night in Bundaberg, mainly famed for the Bundaberg Rum which is produced in a distillery there. It's a nice little town but, having decided we weren't going to shell our for the distillery tour, there wasn't a lot to do. Probably the only thing of note to mention about our stay there was that we spent the night in a hostel called Cellblock, which was formerly a prison!
1770/Agnes Waters:
The village of Agnes Waters was our next destination and we decided it was time to get some more exercise under our belts. So hiring bikes, we took a tour of the village, seeing a local kangaroo hot-spot, the lookout across that section of the Queensland coastline and the nearby village of 1770 (so called as it was the second landing site of Captain Cook and the Endeavour in May 1770) where we realised there was nothing much to see at all.
Airlie Beach/Whitsunday Islands:
After another overnight bus we arrived in the town of Airlie Beach, a nice little town with a large marina where boats of all sizes depart for the Great Barrier Reef and Whitsunday Islands every day. We were in town for a Whitsunday Islands trip and after checking in for the trip we relaxed by the man-made lagoon in the scorching temperatures. The following day, however, the weather had turned and as we walked to the marina with our 'slab' of beer, the rain was torrential. The ship we were on, a little catamaran called the Tongarra, was supposed to house 20 passengers, but there were actually only 13 of us onboard; 15 including the hilarious, Kiwi, Will Ferrell-lookalike skipper Noel, and the friendly Tasmanian cook Shani. We sailed for 3 hours out towards the islands before anchoring for the night and enjoying a delicious dinner of barbequed fish and salad for dinner (there was enough food on the boat to cater for 20 passengers so we feasted at every meal!). Some heavy drinking followed, resulting in much hilarity when the ship's puppet (which we called Stevesie) was discovered and everyone's puppeteering skills was put to the test - I think you probably had to be there!
The next day we set sail early for Whitsunday Island and, after coming ashore, took the short walk to the lookout over Whitehaven beach. The view was stunning, the white sands of the beach and the aqua blue water stretching over a huge distance. It's said to be the most photographed beach in Australia and it's easy to see why. After exhausting the photographs we headed down to the beach and spent an hour or so there before heading back to be picked up by Noel in the dingy and transferred back onto our floating home.
After lunch it was time for some snorkelling. While Shani was preparing to give us a briefing, a family of whales passed extremely close to the boat and practically did a full circle around us which was extremely cool. After the whales had disappeared into the distance and Shani had finally delivered her briefing, it was time to get into the water. It was the first time I had ever snorkelled and, I have to say, I look prettay prettay good in a wet-suit! It took me quite a bit of getting used to and, as a fairly weak swimmer, I was glad for the 'spaghetti' float we had all been given. I saw lots of fish of varying sizes, but missed the large turtle which others in the group had seen.
Our final day on the Tongarra saw the best weather of the trip and our final snorkelling trip gave us the clearest view of the coral on the ocean bottom and the shoals of multiples types of fish surrounding us, after which it was time to return to shore.
Cairns:
Cairns was our last port of call in Australia and we had been told to expect roasting hot temperatures. Instead, we got comfortable temperatures but almost constant rain and it was in these conditions that we took our day trip to the Great Barrier Reef. The sea was really quite choppy and a couple of girls onboard were really seasick (being experienced ferry travellers Ally and I didn't suffer from this!). This made the snorkelling quite challenging as the current was quite difficult to swim against. It was actually warmer in the water than out of the water though, with the water temperature at a toasty 28 degrees. The sensation of being in such warm water but being pelted by torrential rain was very strange.
We had several snorkelling opportunities at different spots during the day and, even though the water wasn't as clear as it would have been on a clear, sunny day it was amazing to see the different types of coral covering the ocean floor.
We had originally planned to stay in Australia for seven weeks when we booked our round the world flights, but had reconsidered after hearing the horror stories from fellow travellers as to how expensive the place was, and had reduced our time to five. We'd had a lot of fun in Australia, met some great people, spent a lot of money, drank a lot of beer and spent more time on the beach than either of us expected we would. Although we had only really managed to see the east coast, we still covered a lot of ground. But now it was time to leave the comfort zone of an English-speaking country and head to the madness of South-East Asia.
Graham
The Blue Mountains: http://picasaweb.
Rainbow Beach/Fraser Island: http://picasaweb.
Agnes Waters/1770: http://picasaweb.
Whitsunday Islands: http://picasaweb.
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