Sydney (Sid the Kid...)

Hello from Sydney!!

We arrived in Sydney almost a week ago and time really has been flying by!  This is a huge city--about 5 million people--and lots and lots of things to do! As we traveled through the city, we were impressed with the diversity of the architecture and appearance of the buildings impressed with the beauty of the city.  Much of the waterfront buildings have been renovated from its former merchant style storage buildings to stylish offices and condos. The planning of the development was great for walkers and bikers as we were able to follow the waterfront all along the Sydney coastline.

We started off staying in a hotel in an area of Sydney called Ultimo.  The city is broken down into all sorts of little neighbourhoods that make up the greater Sydney area.  The Ultimo was a great location for exploring the city--we could walk anywhere within 15 or 20 minutes of our hotel.

Our first day in the city we spent time exploring the Darling Harbour area.  As you are all familiar, Sydney is on the water and has numerous harbours throughout the Greater Sydney area.  Darling Harbour is one of the bigger harbours and they have done a really good job of utilizing all the area and making it a great place to hang out.  They have playgrounds, splashpads, a merry-go-round and lots of restaurants/bars surrounding the harbour.  We had a nice lunch on a patio here, watching the tour boats go by.  In the afternoon we joined in on a free city tour--the University students offer tours daily and make their money off of tips.  It was nice to be on a tour with a young local, as it gave lots of insight into the city.  They took you through the heart of the downtown shopping area, showed you the original buildings that were put up after England sent off the convicts to start this new country, as well as many important parks and fountains throughout the city.  It was quite interesting to hear some history about the foundation of Sydney and Australia, because its not something we would ever have learned about in history class!  The tour ended up with a view above the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge--the views in Sydney that even people in Canada can recognize!!  We were commenting to ourselves that since we really know so little about New Zealand and Australia, living so darn far away, these were really the first big tourist spots that we were waiting to see--kinda like the Eiffel Tower of Australia.  And they did impress--very nice to finally see them in real life!  One of the stops on the tour was a building that had a revolving restaurant at the top and the tour guide noted its a great place to go and see the views of Sydney and its harbour, without going to the main tourist tower. We took the guides advice and at the end of the tour had some food and drink in the revolving restaurant. We took some great pictures and were able to experience great views of the Sydney skyline.

Darling Harbour

Harbour Bridge

The Opera House

Random fact we learned on our tour of Sydney: This is a picture of the Australian Coat of Arms.  The kangaroo and an emu are on the coat of arms, because they are two animals that cannot walk backwards, making some notion about Australia always moving forwards.  Well, the interesting thing--they eat both of these animals!  They are the only country to eat the animals on their coat of arms.  Apparently you can get a roo and emu pizza at a pub in the city!

Our view from the Australia Tower revolving restaurant

On our second day in Sydney, we went on a tour of the Opera House.  We really debated between buying tickets to a show vs going on the tour, but the big problem was since it's summer holidays here, there really isn't much playing.  No true operas, and no symphony performances--just some American magicians and a bunch of kid shows!  So it made our decision easy, and we were quite impressed.  Our guide had been working at the Opera House for almost 20 years and it showed.  He knew everything about the place and was a great insight into how things really work.  We got to see into three different theaters (there are seven in total at the opera house) and they show you a few different informational videos about the design of the building and issues they had trying to create the Opera House.  The design is so truly unique, and the shape you see from the outside is reflected inside--they did a great job to use all the angles of the building to make a very beautiful structure.  After our Opera House tour, we decided to walk over the Harbour Bridge.  Not the "Harbour Bridge climb" that Oprah did--where you go over the top, all harnessed in--but the backpacker version....literally walking over the bridge!  Now neither Steven nor Angela really like heights all that much, and with the wind blowing this was quite a feat.  But--we did get some great pictures and it was good to say we've done it--but there is no way we could have gone on over on the top of the bridge!!!

Views from inside the Opera House

Staircase at the Opera House

View from outside the Opera House--there are a number of bars and restaurants along the outside, just underneath the Opera House all along the pier leading out the Opera House.

View from the pedestrian path along the Harbour Bridge; note the barbwire preventing you from jumping off the bridge!

Harbour Bridge, showing you people doing the bridge climb, going over the top of the bridge

View from the other side of the bridge, with downtown Sydney in the background

Our third night in the city was a real treat--since the big draw in Sydney is the Harbour, we treated ourselves to a dinner cruise throughout the Sydney Harbour.  It was a big boat, seating about 350 people and had a wonderful seafood buffet.  The cruise started at 730, giving us about an hour or so before sunset to enjoy the city skyline.  The boat cruise went until 1000, so we got to see the skyline through all the different lighting of the evening.

Views from our sunset dinner cruise

Sydney skyline after dark

After a few days in the city, we had planned to get out of the city and explore the surrounding areas.  We booked a few nights out in the Hunter Valley, one of the oldest wine regions in all of Australia.  We stayed at a quaint little hostel amidst the grape vines.  We went on a really nice wine tour of the area, sampling four different vineyards and a cheese shop--the smelly cheese shop to be exact!!  We found some very nice wines specific to this region and really enjoyed the rolling hills full of fruit trees.  And we had a big breakthrough on this trip--we finally found a spot to hang our hammock up!  For those of you who don't know, we found a double hammock that folds up really small and decided it was a must have for our trip.  But, hammock trees have been harder to find than we realized--until the Hunter Valley!  It was a very relaxing way to enjoy our time in wine country, and we only wished we had longer in the Sydney area to explore the Hunter Valley more thoroughly.

Wine Country hammock adventures!

We are back in Sydney now and have a few more days before heading off to Thailand.  The weather spoiled our day at the beach today, but we still went out to Bondi Beach--home of "Bondi Rescue", the reality version of Baywatch and had a great afternoon walking along the coast.  They have built a beautiful trail directly along the waterfront that leads from Bondi Beach down to Coggee Beach, another small neighbourhood inside of Sydney.  You walk through about four other beach areas and the coast line here is very impressive--rivals the Great Ocean Road.

Bondi Beach, with the Bondi Iceberg swimming pool.  The pool is literally in the ocean--the waves crash over the pool! 

This is a pic of the Bronte pool--similar to the Bondi Iceberg pool, but this one is literally connected to the ocean--you can climb down stairs to go from the pool to the ocean.  These pools embedded in the ocean seem to be common, with about four of them as you walk along this 3km coastal walk.

Picture of the coastal path we were walking along.  Lots of waves as the weather was a bit stormy.

Tomorrow we are heading over to Manly, another suburb of the city that has a nice beach and coastal walk.  We are meeting some friends for dinner who we met on our Abel Tasman hike.  We likely won't post again before we head off to Thailand--crazy to think we are almost done our time in Australia!!

Melbourne

Hello blog followers!!

I told you the break from posting was just a Christmas thing--we are back, and posting regularly!!

We've been in Melbourne for the past five days.  Melbourne (actually pronounced Mel-bin....and don't say Melbourne or you'll get pointed out by locals!!) is in the south of Australia and is the gateway to the Great Ocean Road--a 200km highway that stretches right along the Southern Ocean coast.

We arrived in Melbourne on Wednesday afternoon.  We checked into our hostel and set off to explore.  There are lots of neat shops and parks downtown--a very pedestrian friendly town.  Thursday morning we rented a car and set off on our road tour of the Great Ocean Road.  This road was initially made by hand, in the early 1900s as a thanks to the war veterans.  It is one of the biggest tourist draws in all of Australia and is a pretty neat drive--you are literally winding around curves with the ocean only a few feet away.  There are lots of little stops along the road, as well as little towns scattered along the few hundred kilometers. A driving route that we assume is similar to the Cabot trail in Canada.  One of the highlights that we couldn't capture in a photo--there is a golf course in one of the small towns that is home to a kangaroo population.  Literally as you are golfing, there are kangaroos hopping down the fairway!!  Ang desperately wanted to get some pictures cause we know lots of our readers would appreciate this, but they have numerous signs at the golf course saying you aren't allowed on the course just to look for kangaroos!  We did use the bathroom there, though, and happened to see a kangaroo just hanging out!  This looks like as good a reason as any for Ang to start golfing!

We ate breakfast at a park called Tower Hill Reserve.  Here you find emus, koalas and kangaroos just roaming around.  Well we didn't see any kangaroos, but had some emus who were very interested in our breakfast!!

Logan family--we have a beach!!  Isn't this exciting!!!

This is a pic of Logan Beach.  They have this huge boardwalk above the beach, which is supposed to have some excellent whale watching during their breeding season.  

This is known as the grotto, one of the interesting stops along the way.  The whole coast is made of limestone, so with the continued beating of the waves you get some neat formations as the limestone wears away.

Bay of Islands.  Again, you see the beautiful colour of the limestone coast, and you can also see all the reef just under the surface of the water.

London Bridge....well, London bridge fell down!!  There used to be a walkway between these two pieces of rock that tourists were free to walk between.  Well, the limestone is quite soft and the constant waves lead to breakage.  This is a point that two tourists will never forget--when the "bridge" collapsed, they were out on the outer piece and had to be rescued by helicopter!

Steve and I at one of the gorges.  This is known as Lord Arg Gorge and become famous when two people swam into this gorge, surviving a shipwreck.  There were hundreds of shipwrecks along the coast of the Great Ocean Road because of the strong waves and the difficult shoreline to navigate.

The 12 Apostles.  These are stacks of limestone out in the sea.  No, you aren't missing things--there aren't twelve of them!  We could see about 7 or 8, and they state you can see a few more from the air, but they renamed the towers of limestone the 12 apostles to get more tourists.  It is now one of the most photographed sites in all of Australia, so we think it worked!

This pictures is taken from the Otaway National Park, home to many koalas.  Quick--how many koalas do you see???  (Answer revealed further in the blog!)

Isn't he cute!!  He must be just a baby, because he was much smaller than the other koalas around them.  We starred at the koalas for probably close to an hour, and only saw one of the almost 30 koalas wake up--they really do sleep all the time!

We were out on the Great Ocean Road for three days and really enjoyed our time.  We made it back into Melbourne and continued to explore the city.  Today we rented bikes and rode to a little beach area known as St. Kildas.  The waves were huge and the area was really windy, but we had a nice bike ride around the bay.  

Tomorrow we fly off to Sydney and we are quite looking forward to it.  Well keep you posted about our adventure as things continue!

Happy Belated Birthday Jenny!!  And there were four koalas in that picture!!

Miss you all!

Talk soon!

Queensland

Ladies and Gentleman--the long awaited post!  We are very sorry for the long delay...can we say we took a Christmas holiday???  But the fun didn't stop and we are going to update you in a very interesting (but long!!) blog. Lots of pictures included, so shouldn't be too difficult to get through!  We hope everyone had a very safe and Merry Christmas and the happiest of New Years!!  And congrats to Alison and James for their New Years gift!

Rainbow Beach

When we last wrote, we were leaving Brisbane to head up the Coast.  We rented a car and set out to Rainbow Beach, a town about three hours north of Brisbane.  This is a town of about 1000 people, known for its "rainbow" coloured sand dunes surrounding the beach (not so much rainbow, as more different hues of gold/red....)  We based ourselves in Rainbow Beach for the night, as we were to take off on our Fraser Island adventure the next day.  The beach was quite nice in Rainbow Beach, however, the large amounts of blue bottle jelly fish on the beach deterred us from enjoying the water!

blue bottle jelly fish; apparently they wrap their long tail around you, and it feels like a burning sensation, like having hot water poured on you, but they aren't deadly...

Rainbow Beach at sunset

not so "rainbow" sand dunes!

Fraser Island


On the morning of the 21st we met up with our 4x4 tour bus to head over to Fraser Island.  Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world--yes, other than a piece of lava from a far off volcano, the entire island is made of sand.  Its about 125km long by 15km wide and has a number of fresh water lakes, rivers and rainforest all on the sand.  We went on a three day, two night tour of the island which we really enjoyed.

This picture lets you see the mainland, just outside of Rainbow Beach, as well as the edge of Fraser Island.  There is really only a kilometer or so between the two, and it is believed that years ago the water level might have been low enough that you could walk between the two.

The ferry over to Fraser Island: The Manta Ray!

Our 4x4 tour bus

Us in the rainforest

panoramic shot of Lake Birabeen--a perched lake of fresh water on top of the sand

The compound we stayed in had a fence around it to keep the dingoes out.  Fraser Island is home to lots of dingoes, which are a native species to Australia, but can be quite dangerous to humans (and babies!).  The pedestrians walk through this gate, but the cars drive over an electric fence that the dingoes can't cross.

Maheno Shipwreck; this ship washed ashore during the 1930s and has become part of the island

We walked through one of the many beautiful sand blows on the island.  This one is full of native artifacts that our guide was able to show to us and explain their significance.

This island is full of 4x4s!  This is at Eli Creek, one of the fresh water creeks on the island.  It moves so fast that you can float through it like a lazy river!

Rockhampton


As we finished off our sandy adventure, we set off on another--driving 12hrs north to Airlie Beach, to the Whitsunday Islands where we were set to sail for Christmas.  This is when we realized that Australia is a massive country!!  There was no way we could do the drive in one chunk based on the time our Fraser Island tour ended and the fact that your advised to not drive after dark due to kangaroos on the road.  We took off from Rainbow Beach and drove to the halfway point--Rockhampton, the Australian Beef Capital!  Rockhampton is a nice town on the river, but we didn't do much more than stop over to the next leg of our journey.  On Christmas Eve we awoke (after spending the night with some geckos in our room!!) and made the second leg of our long journey up to Airlie Beach.  Now, the drive from Rainbow Beach to Rockhampton has lots of cute little towns and nice places to stop, if you didn't have a driving deadline, but the drive north of Rockhampton was LONG!!  There are even signs on the road about this--kids asking their parents how much longer, and driver trivia to keep you awake while driving! (Apparently we didn't snap a picture of the trivia...sorry!)

Rockhampton river; if you look really closely you can see the little treat we got while driving into town--a double rainbow!

We drove through a town called Sarina, but kept reminding us of Sarnia!

lots of funny signs to make the long drive a bit more bearable!

Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands


We arrived into Airlie on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, with plenty of time before we set sail at 7pm on the Solway Lass.  Airlie Beach is a small town that is full of tourists enjoying the turquoise blue waters.  We had a nice afternoon exploring the town--lots of little shops, big open air bars and waterfront paths to enjoy.

A bus picked us up from town and took us out to the marina where we were to board our tallship.  Solway Lass was built in the early 1900s and was used in a few different battles before being turned into a pleasure ship.  There is room for 32 people as well as 7 crew members.  Our first night was a nice way to spend Christmas Eve--the sun had already set when we set sail, but the night air was quite warm so we were able to enjoy the stars while we cruised through the Whitsundays.

We awoke on Christmas morning ready to head to the beach!  Our Christmas day destination was to anchor near Whitehaven beach, one of the most beautiful beaches in the world and one of many white silica sand beaches throughout the Whitsundays.  The way it works to get you to shore, is that the boat anchors near your destination and then they take you across in a little dingy.  Whitehaven beach was really quite nice--shallow turquouise waters, squeaky silica sand and lots of wildlife to enjoy--we saw a few sand sharks and rays swing in this bay.

Our boat, Solway Lass

Whitehaven Beach

Christmas has come to Whitehaven!!

Where the boat was docked near Whitehaven is a popular spot for turtles to feed--we got to see them pop up to breathe all around the boat!

A panoramic of the views from the look out above Whitehaven beach

Boxing day was a day in the water.  They were taking us to two different areas of reef to snorkel in.  The Whitsunday Islands are one of the Southern areas of the Great Barrier Reef that is close to the main land, making for some really nice snorkeling.  The fish were great, but the coral was unbelievable--we have never seen such vibrant colours and life from a reef during our other snorkeling adventures.  Sorry no pictures of the fish/coral--our underwater cameras is acting up, but we are going to try and get some pics from a friend on the boat, so cross your fingers those come through!!

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We're ready to snorkel!!  You have to wear "stinger suits" during their summer cause the risk of getting stung by jelly fish is so high--and these jelly fish don't just hurt, apparently they are neurotoxic...

Our final day on the boat was supposed to be a third snorkel site, but the weather was taking a turn for the worse, meaning the visibility wasn't good and we weren't able to see any fish.  There had been a cyclone off the coast of Australia (Southern hemisphere speak for hurricane!) since Christmas Day, but it hadn't bothered us at all until the 27th--and we still had a beautiful day, just a bit more choppy water.  We took the opportunity to spend time on the beach and sun on the boat.  As we pulled into the harbour, though, this cyclone reared his ugly head--the rain came down like we've never seen before and didn't stop all night!  It was so bad, that the next group set to go out on Solway Lass that evening had to sleep in the harbour--it wasn't safe to sail!

     

Us on the rope seat at the bow of the boat

After our sailing trip we had two days in Airlie Beach.  We spent our time enjoying the waterfront and spending time with the friends we had met on our sailing trip.

East Coast Beaches

After Airlie Beach, we were driving back down the coast to Brisbane, to spend a few more days at Mike and Kellys place before we fly off to Melbourne and Sydney.  

Our first day of driving was a long one--over 8 hours!  We drove down to Agnes Water, a very tiny town on the coast that is known for having a few different islands off shore that have really nice access to the Great Barrier Reef.  We enjoyed ourselves on the beach for the day, and then headed a bit further south to explore Hervey Bay.  Again, another nice beach to spend our time at!  We arrived back in Brisbane for New Year's Eve and saw some wonderful choreographed fireworks.  They had at least 6 classical songs and the fireworks were perfectly in time with the songs.  Our New Years Eve was complete with a river cruise--a very nice way to start off 2012!!

January 1st saw us heading a bit south, down to explore the Gold Coast and Surfer's Paradise.  Surfer's Paradise is a long, long stretch of beach that has become quite touristy and commercial.  However, we were able to find a small beach just outside of town and really enjoyed ourselves on the beach.  We rung in the New Year with some time in the rip curl--you've got to be strong to beat those waves!!  We went into Surfer's Paradise to explore, finding lots of highrises, shops, and ofcourse--another beautiful beach!!

This gives you an idea of how the Australian beaches work--there are these lifeguard stations set up along the beach, and it is recommended for you to swim between the flags because otherwise it isn't necessarily safe.  This whole lifeguard thing is pretty big business--they have little boats to go patrol, and helicopters looking for sharks overhead!

January 2nd took us back North to a small beach town called Noosa.  This is a much smaller scale than Surfer's Paradise, but again, a great way to spend our day on the beach!

Our sunrise in the Noosa National Park

January 3rd was a day around Brisbane to get our final housekeeping things done before heading off to other Australian cities--we got our passports back and have our Indian Visas, so we are officially going to India (eventually--more of Australia and Southeast Asia first!!).  Tomorrow we head off to Melbourne and to explore the Great Ocean Road.  We do promise not to have another two week lag in blog posts, but hope you've enjoyed all the pictures from our last few weeks!