David and Enid's Travels

Darling Harbour and the Pyrmont Bridge

Saturday, April 22, was quite rainy.  We stayed in the motorhome for the morning, then after lunch went shopping at Chatswood.

Yesterday, Sunday April 23, was a nicer day, and though partly cloudy we went to the National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour in the morning.  There were some very interesting exhibits, including one on the 100,000 children that were sent overseas from Great Britain.  Most of them went to Canada, but there were a significant number that came here to Australia, as late as the 1960’s.  There are also a number of exhibits about the maritime history of Australia.  We ate lunch on the dock, where there are a number of historic ships docked.  You can tour these ships, but instead we decided to go to the aquarium.

The Sydney Aquarium is back across the Pyrmont Bridge towards the centre of Sydney.  We spent a couple of hours there looking at the fish.  We enjoyed seeing some of those that we had seen while snorkeling in both the Great Barrier Reef, and on the Ningaloo Reef.  They also have a couple of dugongs which we got to see more clearly than the one we saw at Shark Bay.

Today, Anzac Day, we began to pack up and clean out the motorhome.  Once again it was very wet and raining this morning.  This will probably be my last post to the blog from Australia.  Tomorrow is our last day in the motorhome, Wednesday we will complete the sale and stay in a hotel in preparation for our flight home.

Fairy penquin

We spent today at the zoo.  Originally we had planned to take it easy today, and just stay around the park here; however, it was a very nice day, and the forecast wasn’t so good  for tomorrow and Saturday, so we changed our minds.

We took the train to Circular Quay, and then the ferry over to Taronga Zoo.  We enjoyed the zoo, which was very busy as it was full of kids on their school break.  They have a good collection of Australian animals, some of which we’ve seen in the wild, including many colourful Australian birds.

Fountain at Sydney Eye Hospital

We went in to Sydney again this morning, planning to go to the Australian Maritime Museum.  However on the train in we talked about our banking, and decided that we needed to go in to a branch to clear up our accounts before leaving.  We got things arranged for our departure.  When we left the bank we turned the wrong way and walked a block before we saw a sign that said “Art Gallery of NSW”, so decided to go there instead of to the museum.

We took a guided tour  for an hour, then ate our lunch in the botanical garden grounds before returning for another hour in the gallery.  There were a lot of young children in the gallery, and also in the park.  They were eating their lunches, feeding their lunch to the birds, and two young boys spent at least half an hour running full speed after the birds and chasing them.  There was an item on the television tonight about young children spending too much time in front of the television, and not getting enough exercise.  These two boys did not fit that description.

On the way back we got off at Chatswood Station which is right beside a large shopping district.  There is a multi-story shopping mall there, as well as many shops in the streets.  All we did though was buy groceries.

There was a knock on our door just as we were preparing supper tonight.  Over the last two days there has been a film crew in the park here.  Yesterday they were set up with lights shining in through the windows of a caravan parked right across the street from us.  The man at the door was just informing us that they were filming, and that there might be a bit of noise (there wasn’t).  I asked him what it was they were doing, and he said that they are filming an episode of “Deadly Women” for the Discovery Channel.  Perhaps we will see the episode when we return to Canada..

Manly Beach

We bought a week long transit pass today.  It allows us travel on the Sydney rail, bus and ferry system for the next seven days, and only cost $48 apiece.  That is a good deal, as a daily pass costs $20.  We used it today to take the train from here at the tourist park to the Sydney core, and then took the ferry across the harbour to Manly.  The talk on the news tonight was of the poor state of public transit in Sydney, but frankly it’s the best system I’ve ever been on.

It was a pleasant day though cool this morning when we started.  At Manly, a thirty minute boat ride, we walked down the Corso (a pedestrian mall) to the beach.  There is a nice walk along the beach.  There were many, many grandparents with young children at the beach, on the ferry, and on the walk (it is school holidays now).

On the ferry ride back to Sydney the woman sitting next to me asked what part of the United States we were from.  I said we were Canadians from Saskatchewan and she told me she’d been to Regina.  When I got up to take a picture, Enid slid over and talked to her for the rest of the trip.  The woman sitting on the other side of me said that since we were tourists she’d tell me all about what we were passing, and talked for the whole time about the submarines that invaded Sydney Harbour during the second world war, and how they were caught in the submarine cable.  She also pointed out all the old naval gun emplacements on the banks.  I’m sure she probably got it all right, since her son was a career officer in the Australian Navy.

Rainbow Lorikeet nest, Lane Cover River National Park

Yesterday, Sunday, April 17, we left Nambucca heads after we had walked on the beach for one last time in the morning.  We had to cut short our walk, as it began to rain, and so it rained as we drove south for much of the morning.  It had stopped by noon, and we continued on into Morisset under, for the most part, cloudy skys.

Today was a very nice sunny morning, though very wet in the grass as it had rained again last evening.  I spent about an hour walking around with the video camera, trying to film some of the birds.  Following that we drove in to Sydney, just a bit over an hour and a half drive.  The traffic was not too bad, though I can’t say I really enjoy driving the motor home on busy city streets.

We are now checked in to Lane Cove River caravan park, which is in the national park of the same name right inside Sydney.  It is about 10 kilometres from here to the business centre of the city, but it is a very nice quiet park.  The park is busy, so it is good that we had a reservation.  Provided that everything works out well, our motorhome has sold, so that is a big relief.  We now have the next nine days to spend here in Sydney, and we will do that by doing some sightseeing.

Nambucca Beach

We’ve spent the last few days in Nambucca Heads.  We were here in mid-December, and it’s where we first went body boarding.  There are many great beaches in Australia, but this one is nice as the Nambucca Beach Big 4 Holiday Park is right on the beach (though because it’s Easter school break it’s costing us almost twice as much per night as it did in December).  Just a short 25 metre walk on a path takes you through the trees and right out onto gently sloping sand.  Firm packed, you can walk for miles on the beach.  The surf is also great for us for body boarding at our abilitiy level.  The water has been warm, warmer than the air, which has been in the mid twenties.

Today though it is colder and raining.  We’ll be leaving tomorrow and heading south to Sydney.  We should arrive there either Monday or Tuesday, and then we’ll be staying put until we leave, touring around Sydney on the trains and busses, until we leave on April 28.

Flynn's beach, Port Macquarrie

We are back in Port Macquarie where we have spent a couple of days trying to get our motorhome ready for sale.  We were first here on November 11 last year, the very first day that we travelled in our motorhome.

Yesterday we drove across the winding road from Tamworth to here.  The road, like almost every road we have been on in New South Wales, is not very good.  It is full of potholes, and the edges of the road are soft and broken.  At two different spots through the mountains the edges of the road are completely washed out, and the road was open to only one lane of traffic.  Several places there were signs that read, “Shoulders are Closed” which is curious, since there are rarely shoulders on the roads to begin with.  While it has rained a lot here, I don’t recall the road being much better when we went through it last December either.  At that time though we didn’t know that there actually are good roads in Australia, just not in New South Wales.

Today we just relaxed along the beaches.  We read, sat and watched the ocean, and enjoyed the day.  It was cool, about 22 °C, but for us Canadians that is a very comfortable temperature.

Bogan River, Nyngan, NSW

It is now 10 days and 5000 kilometres since we left Exmouth.  Ten days of driving through not much more than short scrubby brush and desert.  The scenery has not varied much, except for a couple of glimpses of the Southern Ocean as we left Western Australia at the Nullarbor Plain.

Today for the first time we began to see the signs of all the rain that took place in this part of Australia in January.  The rivers were still high, even the smaller creeks had some water in them.  The edges of the highway showed water damage, and a couple of times we crossed creeks where the road repairs being done indicated that the bridges must have washed out at these spots.

Tonight we are camped in the Nyngan Riverside Caravan Park, for the first time in months beside a river (and just now we’ve learned right beside the railroad – a train is passing noisily on the other bank) and we can hear a chorus of frogs outside.  It is a nice pleasant temperature out this evening with a cool breeze.

Great Southern Ocean and limestone reef, Nullarbor Plain

We left in good time yesterday (April 5) morning, knowing that we had a long drive ahead of us. Fuel got progressively more expensive as we got farther east, until at the Border Village it cost $1.991 per litre. Unfortunately we hadn’t bought fuel just 15 kilometres farther west at Eucla, where we saw a sign on the road advertising it at $1.82. Other than the price of fuel, it was a good day to drive, as there wasn’t too much wind and the temperature was nice.

We are camped on the top of the Nullarbor limestone plain 100 metres above, and almost a kilometre inland from the Great Southern Ocean. We thought we would walk down to the ocean and so followed a four wheel drive track that went in that general direction. However the trail didn’t get right down to the water; instead it turned off and skirted around a large gully. We walked close to the water, but didn’t bother climbing down the last 10 metres of elevation, which was quite steep. There is a large limestone reef here that the waves break on about 100 metres out from the shore. At higher tides the waves would be right at the base of the cliffs.

This morning we left early and drove to Ceduna.  Fuel got more expensive all along the way to the Nullarbor Roadhouse where it was $2.049 per litre.  It was also the highest price here on the way in a month ago, but then it was 10 cents per litre less.  Here in Ceduna tonight fuel is available for $1.56 so that is a huge difference in just under 300 km.