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| Love All The Birds in Australia |
Saturday, December 29, 2012 - Last Week in December and Countdown to New Year
Sunday, December 23, Russ and I rolled into Sydney with Awaltzing Matilda and installed ourselves in Lane Cove River Tourist Park. Immediately we navigated our way via the outstanding train system just a few blocks from the campground (for $50.00 each, we bought a week pass that gives us unlimited rides on buses, trains, and ferries) to the central business district and met sailing friends Ed and Cornelia on SV Acapella at the Sydney Westfield Tower for a holiday lunch in the revolving restaurant.
It was a beautiful day in Sydney and the views from the tower were spectacular. After lunch we introduced Ed and Cornelia to Geocaching which took us through some of the historic areas of old Sydney and the Circular Quay.
We bade them farewell as they were boarding a plane for their son's wedding in China. We will most likely see them in again in California.
Monday, December 24, Christmas Eve morning, we visited a local Flight Centre in Australia to just ask some questions and book our flight from Melbourne to Brisbane after we drop off Matilda with her new owner. We wound up booking flights and tours to South East Asia, India, Nepal, and Bhutan. We leave Australia on January 30 for travel to these countries before flying back to USA for visit in April.
Tuesday, December 25, Christmas day. Lightening, thunder, and rain kept most of the campers here in the park confined to their tents, campers, and caravans. We had planned a BBQ as most Aussies do for holidays, but wound up cooking a pot of chili, covered with cheese, and drinking red wine in the camper. It was low key and we missed being with family, but it was cozy and relaxing reviewing our travel plans for 2013.
Wednesday, December 26, Boxing Day. Both NZ and Australia celebrate Boxing Day as an official holiday. Boxing Day is also the traditional start of the Sydney-Hobart, Tasmania Race. The clouds were still in the sky, but it was no longer raining. We got ourselves together by 9:00 a.m. after making our Christmas calls to the US, and worked our way to Watson's Bay on the South Head of the Bay to Ocean.
With our handy-dandy pass, we got on to a train then ferry and walked up to the lighthouse area of the head which gave us an excellent vantage to watch both the start and exit of the race from the bay into the ocean. Wild Oats was the first boat out of the bay and has subsequently won the race, in 44 hours breaking the race record and their own record by 16 minutes.
It was quite exciting to watch the racers take off. There were an estimated 500-700,000 spectators on land and crazily racing along the margins of the race course in sailboats, power boats and kayaks. That was a spectacle unto itself. This year there were apparently no incidents, but in years past people have had terrible accidents ramming into each other. It definitely looked like accidents in the making. The other spectacle was our walk past the nude beach on our way to the head. There were no ladies on the beach, but lots of well endowed men either with implants or an overdose of viagra strutting back and forth strutting their stuff.
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| And the Sydney to Hobart Race is On! |
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| Wild Oats Leads the Way and Breaks Record by 16 Minutes |
Thursday, December 27. - The day after Boxing Day, we went into Sydney and met up with friends Oscar and Graciela from SV Zenitude. We first met Oscar and Graciela in the South Pacific at the Taravana Yacht Club and caught up with them again in Suwarrow and Samoa. They are hoping to help friends crew their boat from Tahiti to Suwarrow and on to Tonga. Of all the places we would like to return, Suwarrow would be at the top of our list too.
Friday, December 28 - Today we spent most of the day finishing up our travel plans and traveling downtown to the Vietnamese and Indian Consulates to get our our visas. Turns out we will need to wait for our Indian Visa and turn it in when we return to Brisbane, as we cannot apply before 90 days before entering the country, but we did drop off the Vietnamese application and should be able to pick up the Visas on Monday, New Year's Eve Day.
That brings us to today. We received an offer on Worrall Wind this morning. Happy and sad. We'll see how the negotiations work out.
Tomorrow, we are going sailing with Aussie sailing friend Maggie whom we met in Mexico, and her friends who are delivering a racing boat up the coast from Sydney. It will be an all day adventure. I imagine the ride might be fast and wet. We are looking forward to it. We will also be spending New Year's Eve with Maggie and her friends close to the harbor bridge in downtown Sydney.
Next week, I imagine we will get busy doing the touristy things that one does in Sydney and cap off the week on January 5 by seeing an La Boheme at the Sydney Opera House. We met a young woman who sings with the opera in Brisbane in October. She has invited us to a backstage tour before the performance. Very exciting.
Of all the things we have enjoyed about cruising and traveling are all the wonderful and generous people we have met along the way and through posting our blog. It has truly been a remarkable adventure, and not ending, just taking on a different direction.
UNDER DOWN UNDER - THE BLUE MOUNTAINS - CANBERRA
We have been so busy, I have been remiss about the preceding weeks arriving in Sydney. The Blue Mountains, hikes and caves we explored were beautiful.
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| Three Sisters |
Jenolan Caves
We visited two sets of caves. The Jenolan caves are more commercialized and in a grand setting.
We drove through a cave to the Hotel and Ticketing Area.
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| Looking down into the clear, green lit waters of the river |
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| Beautiful Reflections |
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| Giant Hanging Shawls |
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| Horizontal Helictites |
We took the Rivers Tour which was a 2.5 hour hike into the subterranean river areas of the cave system.
Wombeyan Caves
The second cave was the Wombeyan National Parks caves. These caves were not limestone but marble. Absolutely grand.
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| Stalactites |
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| Lot's Wife and the Cockatoo |
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| Crystal Glaciers of Marble |
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| Colorful Hanging Shaws |
One of the bonuses of the Wombeyan caves was the campground. It was remote and beautiful. The wild life was abundant. One evening we counted almost 4 dozen kangaroo hopping around our camper van.
The birds were everywhere, singing, squawking, tweeting, honking, whistling, twittering, and cawing. Bell birds, cockatoos, turkeys, minahs, ravens, crows, cat birds, lyre birds, and kookaburras woke us in the morning and sang into the night.
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| Five Foot Goanna Blends in with Tree and Hopes the Momma Magpie Can't See Him |
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| Magpie Momma Guards Her Nest and Dive Bombs the Goanna. Magpie 1, Goanna 0 |
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| This Little Minah Cozied up to My Feet and Nodded Off For A Nap! What a Kick! |
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| The Red Headed Gang Gang Cockatoo Came For A Visit |
We also enjoyed three days in Australia's capitol of Canberra
visiting Parliament House, the Mint, High Court, War Memorial, and Museums of Science and Art. Many of the photos for that leg of our trip are in the slideshow at the top of the blog page.
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| Old Parliament House in Upper Middle, New Parliament House Top |
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| Looking Down From New Parliament House Across Old Parliament House to War Memorial on the Hill |
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| War Memorial |
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| Gallery of Treasures |
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| New Parliament House |
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| Senate Chambers |
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| House Chambers |
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| Grand Hall-Back Wall is A Huge Tapestry of a Gum Forest |
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| Up Close View of Tapestry Weave. It took 2 years to make. |
All is Well with the Worrall Travel R's on Waltzing Matilda.
With our handy-dandy pass, we got on to a train then ferry and walked up to the lighthouse area of the head which gave us an excellent vantage to watch both the start and exit of the race from the bay into the ocean. Wild Oats was the first boat out of the bay and has subsequently won the race, in 44 hours breaking the race record and their own record by 16 minutes.
We drove through a cave to the Hotel and Ticketing Area.
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