Archive for the ‘5.) Australia’ Category
August 2nd, 2006 | 
Author: With Australia being so large and diverse it would be a good idea to start this summary by going back over the places we visited as these form the base of our impressions.
The Australia leg of our world tour started with a flight from Bali, Indonesia, taking us to Darwin and into a state known as the Northern Territory (NT). The NT is the heart of the Australian outback and it took 3 days to cover the 1500km down to Alice Springs having already explored the Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks near Darwin. Once in what is locally known as ‘The Red Centre’ we took in the sights of central Australia. In all we spent a couple of weeks in the Northern Territory before flying from Alice Springs down to Melbourne. Here in Melbourne we met our first familiar faces in seven months of travelling, our friends Steve and Angela, and their newborn baby son Liam, who had recently set up home in Melbourne. Having spent a couple of days with Steve and Angela we flew to Tasmania, where we spent just under two weeks, most of which was in a campervan. After this it was a flight back to Melbourne where we briefly stopped over again with Steve and Angela before we met up with one of Alison’s friends, Helen, whom she had met previously whilst travelling in Turkey many years ago. This was the first time that Alison had seen Helen in 8 years. The following day we hired a car and travelled down the Great Ocean Road and up into the Grampians before returning back to Melbourne to catch up with an Australian relative, Lesley, and her partner Pete, two lovely people from the Box Hill area of Melbourne. After an evening swapping family stories, it was a drive back to the airport to board our flight to the Whitsunday Islands in Queensland on Australia’s north east coast. Here we spent just over a week, which included a 6 day cruise around the Whitsunday Islands on a Tall Ship. After juggling with our itinerary our following port of call was to Australia’s best known city, Sydney. Whilst exploring what the city had to offer, we caught up with another friend, this time one of Alison’s ex-work colleagues, Matt Young. During this time we also took the opportunity to visit the Blue Mountains, only an hour and a half outside Sydney. With Sydney all wrapped up it was another flight back to Melbourne where we caught up with Helen and her family again, and then Alison’s relative Lesley and her partner Pete.
So these are the places we visited but what did we think? Read the rest of this entry »
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Thanks to Chris giving us a lift into the city we were able to meet up with Lesley and Pete at a popular market. They had been there for most of the morning. Lesley, Pete and Andrew (Pete’s son) were at the market with their friends Ted and Heather and their children and a whole family of Swedes who were all lovely. Apparently Heather had been a penfriend with the mother of the Swedish family for years and years, and now they had finally met up for the first time. There was therefore quite a large group of us for whom Lesley and Pete had sorted out a visit to the Telstra Dome to watch an afternoon of football, Aussie style. Read the rest of this entry »
Well here we were once again back with Helen and Chris in Melbourne. Fortunately the timings for all our arrangements worked out well, mainly because everyone was so flexible, and the fact that we managed to slot things in at the weekend which helps. It can be quite difficult getting tours, flights, connections, car hire and drop offs all to fit, but things worked out quite nicely, in the end. Read the rest of this entry »
Having got to Sydney airport in good time we had to wait ten minutes before the check in opened. I had the problem of my baggage being overweight again so I had to empty some of the contents so we could avoid extra costs. I had pre-planned this, packing the heavy books in a part of the rucksack which was easily accessible.
Whilst we were in the Blue Mountains it had suddenly come to our notice after prompting from our friends Helen and Chris that our flight into Melbourne was not landing at the Tullamarine airport but at Avalon airport which is about a 40 minute drive from the city centre. Originally the plan was that Chris was going to pick us up directly from the airport. Once we discovered it was going to be Avalon we changed our plans as it wouldn’t have been fair on Chris to come all the way out to pick us up so what we decided on was pretty much as we’d done before, where we would make our way to their nearest train station.
Avalon airport is really out in the sticks and as such they provide a shuttle service into the city which only costs a couple of dollars more than the shuttle from Tullamarine airport. As I mentioned earlier it takes about 40 minutes to get back to Spencer Street (Southern Cross) where we then picked up our train to Broadmeadows, Helen and Chris’s nearest staion. This time there were no eingineering works and we made it all the way. Chris very kindly picked us up from the station and within ten minutes we were back at their place again.
Having seen pretty much what we wanted to of the Blue Mountains, having been to Scenic World and some of the lookouts, we decided to head back to Sydney via a circular scenic drive. The route we took was via Lithgow from Katoomba, back through the northern half of the Blue Mountains National Park via Richmond to Sydney. I have to say whilst the drive around the scenic route wasn’t bad in any way, neither was it really good, more of what I would call a nice drive so it wasn’t the sort of thing that I’d suggest as a must for people to do. I could be being a bit harsh as we did stop at a couple of lookouts on route, but it wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen already. Read the rest of this entry »
The next day and next up on our agenda was a visit to the Blue Mountains. We collected our car from the hire company and were in the Blue Mountain centre near Glenbrook, gleaning the requisite information before heading straight for Katoomba and Scenic World. Read the rest of this entry »
Having already caught up with friends and relatives it was time to catch up with some more. Matt Young, originally from Australia, had been working at Birkbeck College and was the one who gave us some excellent advice for our itinerary through the outback of the Northern Territory. Read the rest of this entry »
The day before we were due to take off to the Blue Mountains we decided to visit the Maritime Museum, our only mistake was not giving ourselves enough time. By the time we’d got up after a bit of a lie in, it was gone lunchtime by the time we reached the museum. There are several tickets you can buy which allow you access to various areas and exhibits. We decided to pay for the more expensive tickets which gave us entry to see the ships, submarine, and boats moored up outside in the harbour as well as to the museum itself.
What a fantastic museum this turned out to be. I was only sorry we didn’t allow ourselves a full day, as you’ll need at least this to do it properly.
Outside in the harbour we were able to visit a replica of Captain Cook’s ship the Endeavour, absolutely fantastic! Read the rest of this entry »
After our Opera House tour we took a stroll around the Royal Botanic Gardens which lie to the south of the Sydney Opera House. The gardens cover quite a large area and are a perfect place to unwind and take a stroll in quiet surroundings. If you walk around to the area known as Mrs Macquarie’s Point you can get a splendid view of the Opera House with the Sydney Harbour Bridge behind. This is a nice place for walkers and joggers alike. There is also a tropical centre which is quite distinctive with its glass pyramid construction. We did pay to visit the tropical centre but found it to be a little mundane when compared to what you can see at Wisley Horticultural Gardens or Kew, but perhaps that’s an unfair comparison. Read the rest of this entry »
Early the following morning we made our way back down to the Opera House and booked ourselves on the first tour of the day. It’s a good bet that you’ll get to see more of the Opera House the earlier you go, some areas cannot always be visited if there are rehearsals going on. We were lucky as we were able to visit the two most prestigious venues, the Concert Hall and the Opera Theatre. As well as these two there is also the Exhibition Hall, the Playhouse which doubles as a cinema, the Drama Theatre and finally the Utzon Room which used to be a reception hall.
During the hour or so long tour we were told of course about the history of how the Opera House came to be, and it’s quite an interesting story whose completion still has fingers in a truly modern pie. Read the rest of this entry »