Our Australia Journey

With more relief than I thought I'd experience, we surrendered the car back to Hertz yesterday following a 2 1/2 hour drive in from Jervis Bay. This trip has been interesting as much for what we've learned about ourselves as what we've learned about Australia. I had occassion to drive on the left a few years ago, for example, and I was able to get into it; taking pride in being able to quickly adapt. This time and although "dread" is too strong a word, it wasn't something I relished.  Weather is sunny and warm and promises to remain this way for our final few days - high of 27 today. Our hotel is adjacent to the harbour and Opera House and we're glad of it as we are tiring of travel. 3 to 3 1/2 weeks would have been plenty versus the 4 1/2 weeks of this trip. Last night we took the city ferry to Cockatoo Island to attend Opera Australia's open-air production of Carmen.  The ferry ride passed under Harbour Bridge offering a view back towards the Opera H...

He was staring at me . I could tell he was considering a confrontation. I got so excited I couldn’t unzip my back pack to get my camera out. Finally we were face to face with a big Kangaroo, plus he wanted a fight. He no doubt couldn’t see I was just a person as my hat was so big I looked like a different species. We stood completely still hoping he would come closer. He did and paused for a little bit. I started to take pics.  He suddenly twigged we were people and hopped around us. A family watched the interaction and told me they thought he wanted a fight with me. After almost 4 weeks (of trying) this was our first fully grown kangaroo citing we had had outside of the zoo. I got 2 slightly blurry pics and one video poorly shot as I was too excited. Rats. People here are bored with kangaroos. At home our roadkill is squirrels and raccoons. Here roadkill is kangaroos. There are plenty of them (so they say). We are now in Jarvis Bay and this place is incredible.  ...

We are on our way to Sydney and have stopped in Paynesville, (as in the Payne group). This is a quaint and exceptionally pretty town. We are on the waterfront, along with everything else here. Yesterday we took a 5 minute ferry ride to this little island. The ferry dock is out the front of our motel. The owners here suggested a “Koala” walk. You are guaranteed to see Koalas, they say. Well they are hard to spot.  We did see three, but at the second one, Doug said “Can you hear that”? At first I could not, then I heard this strange humming noise. It turned out to be a large swarm of mosquitoes coming for us. We ran. As I was running I tried to remember what colour mosquitoes are attracted to. If it was dark I would be chosen, if it was light Doug would be attacked. It was dark. In my panic I went off the path and found myself in a dirt area with little holes everywhere. OMG snakes. Run harder. We never totally escaped but were impressed by all the pretty birds here. The ...

  Melbourne is much bigger than I expected.     Many of the buildings here were built in the 1800’s and often by French designers. The result is beautiful building facades with lots of stained glass archways.     New construction has obviously considered esthetics. City design took into account details such as the size of hoop skirts in the 1800’s. We are staying 4 days in the central business district and cannot even begin to see half of everything here. We are on the top dizzying floor of the hotel here.      We went to see Jordan Peterson (U of T & Harvard prof) from T.O. in a stadium completely sold out with 13,000 in attendance. I was thrilled to go and listen and was not disappointed. He lectured for over 2 hours. Jordan is back on Twitter and threw a dart (or two) at Trudeau (hahaha). He has 3,500,000 followers and is about to have 3,500,001.       The next night we got tickets to see Hamilton...

About 2/3 of the way from Adelaide to Melbourne is the small coastal city of Warrnambool and, for east bound travellers like us, this marks the start of the Great Ocean Road. This iconic drive is heavily promoted around here and we allowed two days to cover it. For the first half of day 1, not many trees as the terrain is covered in low vegetation consistent with a wind swept area. To view the sights (and they're quite dramatic) you have to stop periodically at the many well marked turnouts and walk out to a viewing platform.  Huge limestone cliffs plunge several hundred feet to the sea. Waves constantly gnaw at the limestone abrading the softer rock while harder bits yield the rock stacks that you see here. London Bridge formation: Mostly you view from above but we were able to get down to the beach in one location.  The Twelve Apostles formation is the most famous although some in the foreground have collapsed. Fallen angels? T...

We stayed in a magnificent house in Mt Gambier. We had our own fireplace drawing room complete with every kind of drink you could imagine. Too bad we don’t drink. Upstairs was the largest billiards table I have ever seen. Apparently Edward VIII, when he was Prince of Wales, played billiards at this table (before Wallace). It was so large it was elevated to the second story before the roof was added to the house. Mt Gambier sits aloft a limestone rock formation. The limestone has eroded over many years and there is now an extensive underground cave system and a giant sinkhole. The sinkhole now 200 feet down appeared suddenly in the 1800’s and is still sinking.  The city has filled the sinkhole with gorgeous vegetation and Wombats call it home. A set of narrow steps invited us down all the way to the bottom.  Signage was there instructing us on what to feed the wombats. We left Mt Gambier after far too short a stay and are now in Port Fairy. The place we ...