Well I know it’s been awhile since our last blog update, but what can I say? It’s been a busy summer down under.

Since our return to New Zealand last November we’ve completed quite a few boat projects, spent a month land touring in Australia and another month back home in the States to visit our family. We are now back in New Zealand and have just completed a haul out for maintenance of the boat and are in the final preparations for our long passage back to the US. In this blog installment I’ll describe a little about our trip to Australia.

As with most of our travels, Wendy spent quite a bit of time researching our trip to Australia and her proposed itinerary did not disappoint! Upon our arrival, we drove straight out of Sydney to the NW and into the Blue Mountains, narrowly missing a small tornado that hit Sydney right behind us. In the Blue Mountains we spent several days hiking (and geocaching) this fascinating area that is rich in mining history and with its dizzying network of cliff-side trails and stairways. Here we also saw and heard large flocks of wild Cockatoo birds. They were quite noisy.

Our next destination was north to the Hunter Valley wine region, where we spent another couple of days wine tasting and sightseeing. I used to think Australia didn’t produce any really good red wines based on my limited exposure to the supermarket varietals in the USA. The fact is they make some excellent reds in Australia; they just keep them all to themselves! Consequently, Wendy and I bought nearly a case, which was far too much wine to schlep around the country for 3 more weeks. On our last day in Hunter Valley, we followed a small sign that said “Zoo” down a dirt road to a cool little zoo which was very hands on. We saw koalas, got to pet wombats and feed wallabys (small kangaroos) and all sorts of outrageous birds. It was pretty fun to see all these indigenous critters up close.

From Hunter Valley our next stop and furthest point north was the city of Brisbane which is a large modern city built on and around the Brisbane river. In fact the river is an integral part of the city, dividing much of the commercial from the cultural districts, with an active public ferry system and bridges to connect them. We spent 5 days exploring and geocaching among the many museums, botanical gardens, shops and eateries of this pretty city. Had we decided to sail to Australia, Brisbane would probably have been a destination for us. To that end, we decided to ride the entire ferry route that crisscrosses the river for the length of the city to investigate potential anchorages and marinas. To my surprise the anchorages were limited and somewhat exposed and I did not find any large marinas catering to transient yachts like we saw in New Zealand. I don’t think this would have been a convenient layover location for Bangorang, but I’m glad we had the chance to see the city. Nevertheless, I would keep scouting the marina districts as we continued our drive south from Brisbane along the Gold Coast towards Sydney.

In this leg of the journey we stopped at Byron Bay, Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Newcastle and Manly beach over most of a week. This beautiful stretch of Australian coastline has a rich and sometimes tragic maritime history which we learned from the many museums and waterfront stops we visited.