From Australia


Dear family & friends who read our blog,

We hope you all had a great holiday and Happy New Year to you too! We joined our friends Jan & Rich from Slip Away & celebrated Christmas with some of their close friends who live in Sydney. A big long table with family gathered all around sharing an impressive home cooked meal made us miss our own family and the big get togethers of years past. We got to have "Christmas Pudding" (fruit cake w/ brandy sauce) to make it truly Australian. On Christmas Eve, Cammeray Marina hosted its holiday party complete with a delicious seafood dinner. I think everyone we know who's sailed to Australia this year has ended up at Cammeray Marina. And all this holiday stuff comes with "champers" (what they call champagne) so we have been walking around with headaches the past couple of days....

I don't really know how to sum up this past month except to say we've been having a lot of fun and we've gotten a little smarter along the way, at least in things Australian. We think this is a great country and there seems to be no end to the things you can do here. It's also got great wildlife.

From Australia


Sailing in to Sydney Harbor was a milestone for us. We passed by the Opera House, sailed under the harbor bridge and tucked into Blackwattle Bay anchorage right in the city. We spent 3 days touring around and getting to know Sydney. To us, it sparkles. We visited Parliament and got to sit in the "big chair" in the Aussie version of our house of reps, we toured the botanical gardens, went to the museums, went to see the Sydney symphony orchestra at the Opera House, and just enjoyed being in a big city for a change.

Then we moved to another finger of the harbor called Middle Harbor where Cammeray Marina is. We have a mooring in a very protected area with high cliffs all around in a residential area. There are something like 110 stairs to get from the water to street level. And then everything is generally stright up or straight down but lush & green and loads of trails right nearby. It wouldn't feel right without a bunch of sqwawking birds so we have those too.

From Australia

From Australia

We were only at the marina for a few days before picking up a rental car to start a 3 week trip inland. It was a small (but brand new) car, for good mileage and so the entire time we had it, we felt like our stuff was always in a state of disarray that was very stressful! We set out toward the northwest headed for the Blue Mtns, a world heritage area. The park campground was way out on a dirt access road, surrounded by beautiful, high, red cliffs, a large grassy lawn by a stream and kangaroos everywhere. We got to sit back in our chairs in the evenings just studying their behavior, and once we got in to the tent at night, we read while listening to the snapping sound of roo mouths eating grass just on the other side of the fabric. They use their forelegs in a human like way and are constantly fidgeting, scratching, picking, messing up their fur. The joeys seem way too big for the pouch but they dive in whenever they feel like it and the mom just hops away with this big bulge in her abdomen like it's nothing. We took some great hikes there and at one point, spotted a wombat who was so busy itching, he couldn't be bothered to run away from us. Closely related to koalas, they have about the same energy level- none! They seem to have a square butt, which they sit on a lot and the cloud of red dust that puffs out as they itch makes sense because they live in huge holes that they dig into the ground in the woods. It was great to see one.

From Australia

From Australia

We moved on to an adjacent park in search of wild emus and found two. Like an ostrich, they are an impressive bird and do take some getting used to when you look out into a field. I like how they stretch their necks out to see further and then lean forward when they run. At this point we were 3 for 3 with evening thunderstorms, some of which were violent. We found out recently that on one of these nights that we were trembling in the tent, friends of ours in a boat near ours were struck by lightning which blew out a bunch of their electronics. On the 4th afternoon, we sprung for a cabin to stay dry and enjoyed a more civilized night in a real bed while letting all of our electronics charge, and we could pig out on ice cream since we had a freezer. The next day we drove to Kanangra Boyd national park which has some famous caves nearby and a deep gorge with plateau level trails and great views. The park campground was just beautiful and even had a covered cabin so we could duck out of the.... you guessed it... rain.

Moving southwest to drier territory, we visited Australia's capitol, Canberra. It was a planned city, opened in the late 1980's and it seems like no one you talk to thinks much of it. They say it has no life to it, everything is too spread out and that it isn't particularly pretty. We went because we wanted to see it for ourselves, the national art museum is highly regarded and we were hot to tour the mint since Jon loves coins. We threw the tent up in a great downtown campground and hit the museum, which was lovely. Full of paintings from world renowned artists and plenty of Australian landscapes, it was top notch. The mint was also very interesting. Australia has beautiful coins featuring platypus, kangaroos and the 50 cent piece has their official seal on it with an emu & kangaroo. Australia was the first country to make polymer note currency too using equipment they engineered themselves and now sell to other countries. They have a fancy robot that picks up huge barrels of blank coins and dumps them into the machine that sends them on their way to be stamped out as currency. It was a little creepy watching it "work".

From Australia

From Australia

Next it was on to the Snowy Mountains, home of Australia's highest mountain, Kosciuszko. Only 2.228meters high, it isn't quite like what we have back home but there was still some snow and it did have some beautiful alpine scenery. What was new to us were the snow gum trees. They only grow at this type of altitude, just before the alpine flora starts. They have curvy, striped bark and create a unique landscape. On the day we hiked through them, it was uhh, raining, and we saw lots of bright blue earthworms. Thanks to friends Peter & Laura who let us rent their time share, we had a great place to stay for the 3 nights we were in Thredbo. In the winter its a bustling ski town but in summer it was quiet and just filled with fun trails to hike on. We did the 23k hike to the summit on a clearing day so while we were nervous the first half heading up into the clouds with tons of wind, it did clear and settle down so we could enjoy the scenery and not get into trouble.

From Australia

From Australia

From Australia

After the cool of the mountains we headed into Australia's outback. We couldn't wait to see some of this, after all, it's what we pictured Australia would look like. It was an 11 hour drive but we broke it up into 2 days and made the main destination Mungo National Park because it has the "red dirt" we were looking for, a lot of history and some interesting rock formations. Mungo Lake, which is nearby, conjures up images of water but all the lakes around there are bone dry of course and in the 110 temps we had, you don't even want to open your car door without a bottle of water ready to go. It was so dry & hot there it was like moving around in a convection oven when the wind blew but still, we loved it. Mungo Park used to be an old sheep ranch back in the 1800's and we stayed in the park's restored sheep shearer's quarters that had AC and a great kitchen since there are no stores or restaurants anywhere. We would explore all day on trails, driving expeditions to see the sights and the visitor center museum and then go back to our flat to rehydrate. The Walls of China are at the far SE end of the dry lake and represent years of sand blown up from prevailing west winds. Over the years, this material has created a lunette which is a windformed crescent dune that has interesting shapes & colors. It was in this area that the oldest human remains in Australia were found- "Mungo Man" and "Mungo Woman". The man dates back some 40,000 years ago depending on what you read. The park has a 70km loop drive to take in various points of interest and one was a natural watering hole for the area. We came upon about 75 emus and a few kangaroos kneeling down into shallow holes they'd dug to sip water. It made us laugh that prior to this, we'd seen just a few isolated emus. It was kind of otherworldly enough to be in the surroundings we were in and then having these huge birds in such numbers was even more bizarre. Since they really didn't want to leave the water, we could get really close which was neat.
From Australia

From Australia

We left Mungo in search of more outback since we liked it. We headed to Broken Hill which is a popular town with a few interesting sights to see and a long history of mining. It was between Mungo and Broken Hill that we drove for hours on straight, red dirt roads and absolutely no one around, anywhere except kangaroos and eagles. And then you come upon the oasis of the town of Broken Hill. They are one of the central locations for the Royal Flying Doctor Service which is the government sponsored medical group that services the outback for health emergencies and more recently, routine care. Nearly every aspect of their service is by plane, flying to remote areas of the outback. We toured the facility & hanger since it was of interest to me and we learned a lot about the obvious health challenges of living so remote. Broken Hill is Australia's longest lived mining city. The mined remains of it's massive ore body, called the Line of Lode, is visible from pretty much everywhere in town. We visited a geology museum there since some stones were even discovered and named from this mine.

Just next door is another town called Silverton (a lot of silver was mined here) and it was sort of the quintessential outback town as far as looks go I guess. It had a dilapidated campground, set in a grand park that was the only gig in town and we decided to set up there for the night. Years ago, this park was a major recreation attraction and people arrived by train to enjoy the grounds and petting zoo. Most of it is long gone with lack of maintenance except for a few birds and goats. They had peacocks, geese, lots of finches & parrots and a special cockatoo named Jack. We were told that he used to be owned by an old lady who had taught him lots of phrases such as "How you going'?", "I'm talking to you" and "Come over here", and she must have taught him to imitate because we got a kick out of watching him imitate Jon. Here is a clip of Jack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-YdF7hQULc

We spent a lot of time standing at his cage and wishing we could bring Jack back to the boat. About 200 of his free cockatoo friends hung out at the campground getting free food which made the noise so loud that we couldn't sleep. So we broke camp once again the next morning and moved on down toward Melbourne. Along the way, we passed the grand Murray River, Australia's longest river of 2500km and it separates New South Wales from the state of Victoria. So, in the 3 weeks we drove around, covering something like 5300km, we just barely got out of New South Wales to see a bit of Victoria. That just goes to show how vast this country is. We stopped in the town of Bendigo because we wanted to tour a gold mine. The Central Deborah mine stopped operating in the 1950's but you can tour it to get a feel for what it was like. Going down 60meters in the loud elevator, I wondered why I had wanted to tour it at all and getting down to the dark, dripping tunnels made we wonder even more. But it was interesting to see how they did the drilling since it was demonstrated with the very tools they used to use, we got to walk along the long tunnels and get a feel for what life was like (not too healthy!), see the veins of gold lying in the quartz and understand better how they process the gold filled stone.

We didn't know that for years, Melbourne and Sydney rivaled for the status of being the world class city for Australia. And even though Sydney eventually won, Melbourne is really impressive and has a feel all it's own. We liked how the Yarra River runs right through it and the locals seemed even more "Australian" for some reason. We went to the aquarium there since they had penguins, sea dragons and elephant fish, not to mention a massive, massive saltwater croc named Pinjarra. He's about 50 years old and was taken into captivity after he was found stranded on a cattle farm after a large flood. His accommodation was specifically designed for him at the aquarium because he's so big. It would be nice to do some diving around here to see the underwater world but I'm not sure we're going to do it till we get further north.

From Australia

On the way back to Sydney, we toured the eastern coast stopping in Eden to do a popular "light to light" walk in Ben Boyd Park. Pretty lighthouses but we weren't crazy about the trails. It took practically an entire day to get back to the city given the holiday traffic and roads that aren't really interstates. It felt good to get back to the boat and have a break from the disarray of the car. When we turned it back in it definitely wasn't new anymore- it was dirty, had a few ants, needed an oil change and smelled like a gym sock! But this was good practice for the trip we have planned to Tasmania next week. We're flying over with Jan & Rich for 3 weeks to tour around. We're looking forward to seeing Richard & Ali on Vulcan Spirit, hopefully do some backpacking together and then tour some on our own. Richard and Ali sailed there but we didn't feel we had the time or wanted the pressure to get back. We really hope the backpacking is good in Tassie since we didn't do any on our most recent mainland trip. There were virtually no loop trails which makes it hard to arrange transportation so we just day hiked instead. Anyway, we're really looking forward to the trip. I wonder if we'll get any rain down there???

On Boxing Day, we hiked out to North Head at the opening of Sydney Harbor to watch the start of the Sydney to Hobart race. It was such a great walk, running for miles along the harbor shore, passing by numerous parks and thousands of Aussies out having their summer BBQ's. Bottles of champers everywhere, sausages sizzling, kids running back & forth to the water. It's a great scene. Seeing all the sails crashing out to windward was exhilarating. From the huge maxi race boats to the 45 footer everyday sailors, anyone can join if they're equipped for it. It was a beautiful day, but windy. We're contemplating taking our boat out into the harbor for NYE if the weather is good. We're told you've got to do it at least once.

Well that is the gist of our December anyway, minus a lot of funny details I had wanted to remember to tell you but.... can't remember now! But it's been fun. Will try not to wait so long before the next post. Happy 2015!

From Australia