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Oz 2016 - very nearly forgotten

December 5 - Adelaide - the last day in Oz!

My dear, late father-in-law would be telling me "I told you so"! Always write it down as he did for all of the chronicles of his travels.

But, I didn't. After nearly nine weeks of travelling, making notes most evenings and suffering unbelievable frustration on many evenings when trying to post my jottings with photos on the blog only to lose them due to poor bandwidth I got lazier and when I looked into my notes for December 5 I found a blank page!

Anyone who has ever watched a trial in the magistrates court will be familiar with the exchange with a police officer giving evidence:

"When did you make your notes?"

"Would your memory have been clearer when you made your notes than now?"

Hopefully, but not always the reply is

"Yes"

"You may refer to your notes but do not read them verbatim".

So here we go - from memory with no notes.

The Rundle Mall is one of the main shopping streets in Adelaide and was buzzing with activity and some interesting buildings

You will see the frequent signs saying "Polites". This is not an exhortation to be nice but a Trump like statement of the properties' ownership by one of the richest families in the City if not the country.

There are several nice arcades off the Rundle Mall including the Adelaide Arcade

From the Rundle Mall we made our way up King William Street, past the Edmund Wright House, originally built for the Bank of South Australia which was only rescued from demolition by a public outcry in 1971

past the town hall

to Victoria square.

The, by modern standards, ludicrously grand and ornate post office

standing in one corner on the North side and the Supreme Court

and Magistrates' Court

(what a palace compared with Croydon and Camberwell)

on the South side.

Majesty's Theatre and the Central Market, in line for the biggest Father Christmas competition were also interesting to see.

We then headed to the Australian wine centre located just by the Botanic Gardens. This was an excellent exposition of the history of the Australian wine industry with an enormous store of wine

and a very nice facility to try a variety of wines accompanied by food

And so we said goodbye to Adelaide for the long haul back to Dubai.

Bye bye Oz

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Oz 2016 - nearly forgotten

December 4 – Kangeroo Island to Adelaide

Waking early for our last night in the campervan we had lots of time to get to the ferry to return to the mainland.

It was extremely windy for the drive north but again sat nav got us directly to the drop off point for the van and a taxi took us the short ride to our hotel.

The Playford

was the best hotel we've been in on this holiday in the centre of the city and as our room was not ready we dropped off the bags and set off on foot to  explore.

Sorry but we are back again to viewing lovely buildings starting with the Railway station

now partly turned into a casino, the old parliament house

and the new parliament house

The inevitable war memorial

and other grand buildings all part of one of the multitude of universities that Adelaide rejoices in and this city has more universities than we have ever seen in one city!

Here in Adelaide we saw more examples of the Australian risk awareness (or pathetic over caution depending on your viewpoint)

As usual hotels were beautifully adorned for the period when they were built

and we found some other very attractive buildings as well

As with most colonial cities from the same Victorian era Adelaide has lovely botanic gardens and we took a tour.  

Lovely roses

a super lily pond

an old tram shed used as a research centre

and a beautiful greenhouse

Inevitably the flora attracts the fauna and there were some superb birds to see

After all that fun we retired to the Playford for the best meal we have had in Australia!

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Oz 2016 - almost forgotten

December 3 - still Kangaroo Island

First stop today was a eucalyptus oil distillery

The eucalyptus trees are not the giant trees the koalas climb in but rather more like our will trees that are grown for coppicing and they are harvested using a special sort of mechanical harvester.

Our next stop was to be the sealion colony and we spent a long time there watching their antics.

and here the golden mane of a big male is clearly visible

We stopped at a cafe beside the road and there in a solitary eucalyptus tree was what proved to be our last koala of the trip

We made a very quick stop at the local golf club

which reminded me of the old days in Nigeria!

In the afternoon we headed back to Kingscote where we had a nice lunch in the best hotel in town but it was still only fish and chips.

Kingscote was the site of the first settlement established in South Australia, more or less in the area shown by this picture

Some of the early buildings are still there like the police station with gaol behind.

There is said to be a colony of little penguins in the town but it is a very small population and we did not want to wait until dusk. We did however watch the daily pelican feeding

from the range of a telephoto lens!

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Ox 2016 - nearly forgotten

December 1 – Kangaroo Island

We were only a five minute drive from the port at Cape Jervis so no trouble checking in for the 9am ferry

and the 45 minute journey to Kangaroo Island.

Australia maps and distances had won again – KI is 100 miles long, far bigger than we had expected so we had to do some rapid planning of what we were going to do in our 2 and a bit days here. We had thought there might be some spare relaxation time but that is looking unlikely.

One of the trucks waiting for the return ferry to the mainland gave us a good clue as to what one of the main occupations on the island was going to be.

The camp site did not open until 2pm so we drove to American River (named by some American sealers in the 19th century) and did a fascinating walk through the bush to the site of a former fish cannery (disused in 1909) returning via the beach. A lovely walk but oh the flies!!Noone ever mentions the flies but we have found them a nearly constant menace. They are generally not big and bitey but annoying none the less. Many years ago the archetypal Australian hat had a broad brim with corks hanging down off it on strings – Crocodile Dundee had one. Now we can understand why but we have never seen one since we have been here.

On to Kingscote, the “capital”, to get supplies then on to the camp site. We had invested in international phone calls from my mobile to ensure we had reservations at the camp sites we wanted after the disappointment at Noosa but it was all totally unnecessary – the sites were almost totally empty.

A quick sandwich lunch then off to Emu Bay to prospect for dolphins. We didn’t see any but Cheryl did win the “who can get closest to a pelican without getting pecked” competition.

We then set off on what we thought would be a gentle drive to Stokes Bay but……….. The road soon deteriorated and after a few Km became an unsealed gravel road. Well, 40 Km later, with no alternative turn offs or routes and in complete violation of our rental agreement for the van, we eventually got back to tarmac! Phew. You have no idea how many things can rattle in a campervan until you have done a bit of road like that.

Stokes Bay was actually not worth bothering with, a couple of houses and a boat launch, but no more than 100 yards up the road on our way back we saw a large group of kangaroos in a field on the right side of the road – so we stopped. In a minute we saw a large kangaroo on the left side of the road behind a fence, actually it appeared in someone’s, large, garden. As we watched he looked longingly over the road at the group of kangaroos in the field and hopped up and down alongside the fence. (Sorry we have so many photos of kangaroos I did not bother to photograph these ones). We have often wondered how kangaroos managed to get past fences which we have assumed have been mainly there to keep stock in but with a secondary purpose of keeping wildlife out but now we saw the answer. This, large, kangaroo hopped along the fence until he found a gap and crawled under it and hopped across the road. Then he (I am sure a lady kangaroo would have been more clever) hopped along the fence on the other side of the road until he found another gap and squeezed under that and hopped off, joyously one assumes, to join his colleagues!

It is one of the great good fortunes of nature that kangaroos (and wallabies, wombats and possums) do not carry diseases like bovine TB that might infect sheep and cows and that they do not eat grape vines otherwise their survival might be in great danger at the hands of Australian farmers!!

Kangaroo Island is promoted to tourists mainly for its wildlife and there are many signs warning to drive carefully because of the wildlife but despite this and despite the extra wide margins they have on some of their main roads we have seen more roadkill here than anywhere else since the Princes Highway in NSW. Maybe it is the relative density of wildlife or the number of visitors but at the very least you might think they would reduce the speed limit below 110Kph for most of the roads to protect the wildlife.

After a fairly customary BBQ (when it has been warm enough)

It is goodnight

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Oz 2016 - nearly forgotten!

November 30 – to Cape Jervis

This was to be one of the longer days, 400Km to get to the destination.

The Southern Ports Highway to Kingston SE where we met Larry the Lobster

(who I think Bill Bryson also commented on) was like most of the other roads we have been on but when we rejoined the Princes Highway there, running along the coast between sand dunes and what the French would call etangs, satnav said that it would be 198Km before we made any change of course! In fact the first 80Km was done using cruise control at 110Kph without human interaction or coming across any habitation and not more than a handful of other vehicles in either direction.  

One thing that was also unusual was the total lack of roadworks on this stretch of road. We have become very used to frequent roadworks on all of the Australian roads (which accounts for their excellent condition compared with many if not most UK roads. On other highways we have been used to the signs warning of roadworks ahead and reducing the speed from 110 to 80 to 60 to 40 to “be prepared to stop” and at the stop sign 99 times out of 100 there has been a man, or sometimes lady, with yellow hi viz jacket, Australian standard hat and a lollipop saying “slow” or “stop”. The concept of using automatic signals (which admittedly often do not work right) is almost totally unknown in Australia. What did you do at work today daddy?

At about 80Km there was a roadstop where we stopped for comfort and a few Km further on we stopped to look at some islands where the enormous Australian pelicans breed. Typically the breeding site was at the limit of camera range but just try to imagine what an island full of pelicans with their young should look like.

Eventually we crossed the Murray River on a chain ferry

and proceeded on the South Australia Ports Highway round the shore of Lake Alexandrina.

This was a geography lesson in itself as I had always thought that the river was the Murray Darling but it was only when we got to the other side of the lake that the confusion was resolved.

The river Murray runs into the Lake Alexandrina and exits to the sea via a very small gap between the Sir Richard peninsula and the Younghusband peninsula. Just behind these peninsulae there are barrages linking the various islands across the whole south edge of the Lake which separates it from the sea with locks in them to allow ships to pass. When we got to one of the barrages at Goolwa we were able to see presentations of why the barrages were built. It all goes back to the 1930s when people in the area wanted/needed more freshwater. Possibly for domestic use but cynically I think it would have been the farmers wanting water to irrigate crops and water livestock. Eventually the government agreed to build the barrages over the Murray Darling Basin (the Darling River which rises way to the east joins the Murray River somewhere in Victoria) which would separate the salt water from the ocean from the fresh water coming down the river systems. The barrages were completed in 1940 and the water level behind them is just 0.75m above the sea level.

All the changes to the rivers and waterways have dramatically changed the fortunes of towns around the lake shore. Milang used to be a major port but is now left with a just heritage railway

and Goolwa is left with just a heritage paddle steamer that used to ply the trade up the Murray river

and another more substantial historic railroad,

This one interestingly is built to a 5’3” gauge (most of the rest of the railways in Australia use standard 4’8.5”gauge) and we were told it does run steam engines but not during the high fire risk season which unfortunately coincides with the peak holiday time.

We went on past the wetlands with further displays of interesting birdlife

until we got to our camp at Cape Jervis very close to the ferry for Kangaroo island.

The main, if not the only virtue of the camp was its proximity to the port. It was very basic and was infested with galah

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Oz 2016 - almost forgotten

November 29 – heading West to South Australia

It is pretty much a straight forward route north west to head for Cape Jervis where we are going to get our ferry to Kangaroo Island  the day after tomorrow more or less following the coast.

We stopped for coffee in Portland one of the first places of settlement in Victoria and now a major deepwater port.

There was not a lot to see here but the original court house was still in use with the original townhall (now a museum) in the background.

I’ve mentioned Pokies (poker machines ie one armed bandits) before but the sign advertising them outside the Gordon Hotel, together with the inevitable disfiguring Carlton Brewery sign,

reminded me of another issue regarding Australian gambling. A few days ago we had a local news on the radio early in the morning and in the sport section of the news they were quoting gambling odds for almost every conceivable sporting meeting or event – never heard anything like it before.

One of the major commodities going through Portland Port was obviously timber and woodchips

which ensured we had the company of a constant stream of massive timber lorries thundering down the roads towards us from the vast forestry plantations as we headed west along the Princes Highway.

They were no great observers of speed limits and when one of these passes you at a combined closing speed well over 200Kph the slipstream really buffeted the van around.

When we were driving through Queensland it was common to see big signs with strict instructions that sugar cane plants or banana plants were not to be moved from one area to another to try to stop the spread of plant diseases. As we entered South Australia

there were signs prohibiting the transport of potatoes and grape vines across the state border. There was also a sign saying fruit and vegetables should not be transported over the border and advising of a “Quarantine Bin” by the road and we had visions of having to surrender our lunch sandwiches and bananas but there was no one there to enforce it so our lunch was safe!

We stopped at Mt Gambier, just across the border, for a picnic lunch and to view the most amazing blue lake.

Formed in an extinct volcano crater the colour turns brilliant blue in the summer but then reverts to grey in the winter and no one understands how or why.

In Mt Gambier we visited the Information centre to get some maps and information about South Australia (while the information centres are all very good they tend to be a bit parochial and we could not get any information about South Australia while we were in Victoria). At this centre there was also a reconstructed replica of a ship, the Lady Nelson

that had played a significant part in the development and population of SA.

A second purpose of this photograph is to illustrate the roses that are so widely and beautifully displayed in Victoria and SA.Standard white roses lining paths and drives are especially popular. Apparently the roses will flower profusely until March/April!!!

We stopped for the night in Robe, an undistinguished little townbut with a very nice camp site with direct access to the town and on to the beach.

Here we discovered three things. Firstly, South Australia time is 30 minutes later than Victoria time so we had to reset our watches, secondly South Australia takes recycling seriously (there were separate bins for every type of rubbish and strict instructions to put recyclables in the right bin and take everything that won’t recycle away with us. Elsewhere in Oz the attitude has been distinctly lackadaisical with free plastic bags in shops and not even separate glass bins.) and thirdly, a South wind over the Southern Ocean direct from Antarctica can be cold! As is the Southern Ocean.

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Oz 2016 - almost forgotten

November 28 – Back to the Great Ocean Road

We are by this time quite a long way from the coast as the GOR tracks inland so we take a diversion to Alvie where there is a noted lookout called Red Rock. From here we got the most amazing view of a landscape formed by repeated volcanic activity leaving craters and hills across the vast plain.

But, oh the flies! We have rarely been without them except when the wind has been very strong but at Red Rock they were worse than anywhere we had been since the Northern Territories.

Then back down to the coast on the GOR where the journey is punctuated every few kilometres with lookouts on to coastal scenery and geology. I am tempted to add the trite phrase “each more splendid than the previous one” but that would not be true. The rock formations are splendid (not unlike some in our own West Country) with the added drama of the surf from the swell starting in the Southern Ocean crashing against and over them.

Many named structures including the Twelve Apostles, London Bridge (or London Arch now a bit of it has fallen into the sea) and Razorback and many other unnamed views.

At every stop the places were full of Chinese. We have noticed a lot of Chinese influence throughout Australia but here in particular there seemed to be people with fleets of minibuses ferrying Chinese tourists everywhere and as we have said before it only takes one Chinese to teem!

Although this was meant to be a landscapes and geology day two creatures chose to star on the day.

Just as we were leaving the car park for the 12 Apostles sitting on a fence post was a yellow tailed black cockatoo

Then just as we were walking along the track to the Loch Ard gorge, the scene of a famous 19th century shipwreck, Cheryl saw this little fellow stroll across the track in front of her.

An echidna. If platypus was my first ambition to see in Australia then echidna was a very close second, the only other egg laying mammal in the world.

After all of that excitement it just remained to find a camp site in Warrnambool, get some supplies (food and booze) and settle down for the night.

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Oz 2016 - almost forgotten

November 27 – Cape Otway

When I woke this morning at 6am I was hoping that the noise on the roof of the van was koala poo dropping out of the trees, unfortunately a quick peak through the curtain confirmed that it was in fact raining so thoughts of an early morning nature walk were quickly put aside and eyes were allowed to close again for a while!

Well it wasn’t actually raining when we did get up but it was cold and damp enough for us to have breakfast in the van. I tried a short nature walk but the undergrowth was so wet that my boots and jeans we soon soaked so I aborted that idea. As it was not actually raining we decided to do the walk to the “nearby” lighthouse station described, ominously, as a 2 to 4 hour walk. The route was going to take us through the bush, over some sand dunes, along the beach then back up the dunes to the lighthouse said to be the oldest in Australia. Well after about 45 minutes we got to the top of the dunes with the sea in sight and it started to drizzle. We were at this stage seriously starting to doubt the duration of the walk in any case so we decided to retrace our steps and drive to the lighthouse by the road route. Half way back the drizzle intensified and we were very happy with that decision by the time we got back to the van.

So we decided we would approach the light station by road but this ended up taking rather longer than we anticipated. After the overnight rain the eucalyptus was smelling oh so sweet to us and obviously to those other notorious eucalyptus eaters the koalas. They were all on the move this morning and all required looking at until one particular mama stole the show

Oops, nearly slipped there

Having spent an inordinate amount of time watching little (and not so little) furry things looking cute we continued on down to the lighthouse going through a scene of utter environmental devastation.

The manna gum (eucalyptus) has been dying off and it is a disastrous landscape. Apparently the main reasons are the lack of fires in the woodland which have a regenerative affect and the fact there are too many blooming koalas. Apparently they were brought to Cape Otway from a nearby island some years ago but with no natural predators they are now eating themselves out of house and eucalyptus!

The lighthouse itself was built in 1848, only the first or second on the Australian mainland. One of us climbed

and one of us took photos.

After that we headed inland to a camp called

Which was OK but the reason we had gone there was to do an evening explore for platypus and this turned out to be another mistake on our part.

We also saw

These are king parrots and they are not meant to extend as far west as this but, as my bird book says, there are isolated colonies established near feeding stations further west than their usual range. Obviously our camp was one of those.

The camp was ok despite the name and we had a little fire by our van before we set out

We met our guide at the local brewery

drove up into the woods then took the long walk back down through the woods to the lovely little lake where we boarded a pair of canoes lashed together.

We had wanted to do this particular trip in the morning but only evening was available so the light was failing when we did eventually see a platypus in the distance

then we had to retrace the climb through the wood in the virtual pitch dark!

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Oz 2016 - almost forgotten

November 26 – The Great Ocean Road

Our target for the day was to start the Great Ocean Road but we couldn’t leave Ballarat without having a look at the city which is renowned for its collection of old buildings.

I had promised you before that I would not bore you with more pictures of buildings but Ballarat was so spectacular I just must break that promise and again let the photos speak for themselves. The buildings were mainly late Victorian or Edwardian concentrated in the period of great wealth during and following the gold rush and the statuary reflected a period when they loved and respected the "old country" more than they do now.

The former prison is now a campus of the university

Does this remind anyone of a disgraced Australian's well known song?

I think the proud legend Victorian Railways is meant to refer to railways in the state of Victoria rather than the age of the trains despite the old signalling not having been dismantled.

Then it was on to the "Great Ocean Road".

Built after the First World War by returned soldiers it gives fantastic views along the Victoria coast.

A short detour to the Anglesea Golf Club is the closest I got to golf on this holiday but the reason was to see the resident kangaroo population (in the background).

Back to the coast

We took another short detour to a place rumoured to have a koala population, which rumour prooved to be true.

Our first truly wild koala and a crimson rosella for afters.

Then it was off to our camp for the night, parking the van under a eucalyptus tree - truly camping under koalas.

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Oz 2016 - almost forgotten

November 25 – to Ballarat and Sovereign Hill

The wealth and development of Melbourne specifically and Victoria generally was initiated by the massive gold rush in the 1850s. The town of Ballarat was at the centre of that and in the 1970s constructed a replica gold rush mining town on the site of several former gold mines at Sovereign Hill on the edge of the town.

We woke late, it was cold (about 11C) so we decided not to have breakfast outside, or even inside, the van and left Melbourne about 8.30 intending to stop on the way for coffee and a muffin. We were straight into what passes for a Melbourne rush hour heading out of town but after crawling for a few miles we got to the road to Ballarat which was a two lane highway with speed limits up to 110Kph the first time we have seen that in Victoria even on their toll roads and motorways.  

We stopped briefly in Ballan

for coffees and muffins and idly looked at the local paper while we were drinking the coffee. It could almost have been Croydon! Complaints about the train service (into Melbourne presumably) and report of heinous crimes dealt with in the magistrates court.

Gold was first found in Ballarat in 1851 and the wealth that brought enable a building boom in the town with some lovely buildings but first we went to visit Sovereign Hill, the replica mining town. It was built over actual gold mines from the boom years and depicts what a mining town would have looked like in the middle of the 19th century. It looks very much like a cross between Ironbridge in Shropshire and Williamsburg in the US and has some restored machinery powered by steam as well as replica buildings. There was a lot of evidence of the considerable Chinese influence on the gold fields and they also did a genuine gold pour with the gold itself actually retrieved from and returned to a safe(unlike the one I saw in Johannesburg where they didn't dare to use real gold) but I'll let just a few of the photos speak for themselves.

A very interesting and enjoyable day.

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Oz 2016 - almost forgotten

November 24 – Melbourne

It was actually dry, but cold, when we woke up and the chairs and table had actually almost dried out so we reverted to having breakfast outside the van under a watery sun.

The weather forecast had been for rain and the drive to  Melbourne was through continuing bands of heavy rain which did not make us optimistic about our visit but the roads were good. A highway system appropriate to a major city that used to be the capital of the country.

Satnav, bless it, guided us through the suburbs to our camp site that had been specifically chosen to be close to public transport into the city centre. A very nice camp and less than a mile to the tram stop into the middle of the city. It was surprising that this camp was situated in a residential area but it did give us an opportunity to see what some typical, we assume, middle class suburban housing looked like. The houses were nice, mainly quite small although some were built on double plots, and with small well kept gardens.

Melbourne is famous for its trams and ours into the town was very new.

It took nearly an hour to get into the centre of the city the tram stopping at nearly every intersection as it crawled through the suburbs including Fitzroy.

A disadvantage of visiting anywhere at around Christmas time is the disguise of major buildings by decorations, for example the town hall

with free digger in the picture and, at this time of year in Australia, hordes of school children  on outings, like outside the city library.

We didn't find the buildings in Melbourne as impressive as other Australian cities but the public baths

and the railway station

were impressive from the outside and the Regent Theatre

had a superb interior restored after a fire in 1945.

There were two lovely arcades dating from the 19th century, the Royal Arcade

and the Block

The historic City Circle tram

provided a good tour round the city.

We walked through the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Kings Domain, past the Government House that we could not get a glimpse of, up to the Shrine of Remembrance

then walked back down to the city centre and had a very expensive beer in a riverside bar.

before getting the tram back to our camp, stopping in Fitzroy for supper in a fairly bohemian cafe.

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Oz almost forgotten!

November 23 – Philip Island

It was only raining gently when we left the camp site but the chairs and table were still sopping and had to be thrown into the van still wet. As it was raining we did not have breakfast outside the van but set off and stopped for coffee and a muffin at a café in a village as we were on our way. We were going to stop at Fish Creek but it had seen better days

and the cafes only opened at weekends and even the famous giant fish had been demounted from the hotel roof!

Our destination today was Phillip Island and on the advice of our friend from the caravan park we set off to do the slower coastal route to the island and we passed some lovely beaches and bays which I thought were almost as good as the English West Country.

The main, if not the only reason, to visit Phillip Island is the Penguin Parade where you pay to watch little penguins emerge from the sea in the evening as they return from their fishing expeditions to their burrows to feed their chicks.

The main town on Phillip Island is Cowes which was quite crowded with tourists, many, many Chinese, bussed in for the Parade and is quite neat with a nice mosaic

and a splendid avenue of golden cypress trees originally planted in the early 20th century

There has been a long project to clear development from the penguin beach and hinterland and over 100 houses and at least one hotel were systematically bought and demolished/removed to avoid disturbing the penguins.

A virtual arene has been created to enable viewing of the parade while keeping the audience as far away from the penguins as possible

From the arene you could see the beach directly in front where the penguins came ashore  but also the other beaches where we saw them.

Very disappointingly they do not allow any photography of the parade to prevent the birds being scared, presumably by people of unnamed nationality who cannot turn off the flash on their cameras. This is a great shame as it is impossible to describe the over 1,000 penguins that we saw coming out of the sea.

These little penguins are the smallest of their species, not much more than a foot tall  and they are very vulnerable to predators so they dither about in the sea, coming and going in groups until someone judges that it is safe to cross the beach and the group waddles as quickly as possible to the relative safety of the dunes. There were over 1,000 of them and as we left well over an hour after they started emerging they were still streaming up the dunes.

As I can't show you a picture of the penguins, here are pictures of a Cape Barren goose (only found in South Australia)

and a kestrel

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Back from Oz

November 22 - Wilsons Promentory - the Wildlife Orgy!

We were driving through the park, turned off on to a gravel road and saw a car stopped just ahead of us. Just like an African safari one rushes up to see what they were looking at and the answer was - nothing!

So we passed that car and almost ran into a herd (??) of kangaroos that had been lying in the undergrowth invisible from the road and had not been seen by the people in the other car.

Not our first wildlife but the first for a long time.

We returned to the main road and in a short distance came to a car park where there was an advertised nature walk over what turned out to be a former airfield.

On the field we were greeted with galahs

and a kangaroo

an emu

more emus

and more kangaroos

We finished the walk and drove on to Tidal River which is the headquarters of the National Park and has camps, surfing schools and lots of activities with lovely beaches.

Birds provided the wildlife interest at Tidal River

although a single kangaroo surprised us amongst some woods - note the different darker coloured coat.

On the drive down to Tidal River I saw a wombat at the side of the road but he had disappeared by the time Cheryl looked up from her map so our priority was to find a wombat for her to see.

We drove back out of the park and found a camp site  quite close to the park entrance. Not the best park we have been to, more a work in progress, but when we mentioned to the park manager that we were really anxious to see wombats (well desperate really) he said "no problem". Just go back to the airfield at dusk and the wombats will appear 20.30!

So we had an early supper and went back to the airfield.

First there were loads of kangaroos

including mummies

totally unconcerned with our presence

and fighting males (well I assume they were boys)

Then at almost exactly 20.30

also unconcerned with our presence

The end of a surprisingly great day.

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Back from Oz

November 22 – Sale to Wilsons Promentory

It rained overnight in Sale and was raining when we woke up!

The day had started very unpromisingly and we had no real idea what was at Wilsons Promentory (apart from the need for a lesson in the use of the possessive apostrophe) but the guide books had spoken of it highly hence it had got on to our itinerary.

After the blistering hot day yesterday it was now down to 15C and the rain was depressing. My temporary repair of my last remaining sandal was a lot more temporary than I had hoped so getting some new ones was a priority as was getting some more wine and some hayfever tablets so we set off for the biggest mall in Sale about half a mile down the road.

There is a big program in this part of the country for turning old disused railway lines into hiking and cycling tracks and bits of unused railway infrastructure had been preserved as art outside the mall.

This gave us our first piece of encouraging luck for the day. After getting our supplies we found a branch of Shoes For Less in the mall, the purveyors of the 3 week old totally wrecked sandals. To give them their due they took one look at what I was wearing and offered to replace them on the spot however I decided to take a risk of upgrading to a more expensive pair that should have better durability.

It was still raining when we got out of the mall but we decided to go to The Prom anyway in case the weather improved as we had not much else better to do.

We stopped in several small towns on the way each with its streets of buildings with nice period pieces mixed with more recent, less distinguished buildings. Everywhere a hotel was one of the first buildings to have been built usually followed by a school, town hall and often a grandiose post office.

Yarram Courthouse was built in the early 1900s and used until 1986 (sorry about the rain on the lens!).

It was now an information centre but they had retained the original bench inside.

The Maritime Museum in what is now the sleepy little fishing village of Prince Albert had once been a bank where the gold recovered from the nearby mines had been stored pending shipment to Melbourne.

Eventually we got to the Promontory National Park for what turned out to be a wildlife orgy! But that must wait for another post!

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Back from Oz

November 21 – Canberra to Sale

A side attraction of the camp in Canberra was the selection of colourful birds that made the place their home.

We weren’t quite sure where we wanted to get to this evening. Our next planned destination was Wilsons Promentory but that was going to be a very long drive so it came down to where we could best break the journey.

We set off on this long road, mainly single carriageway and ploughed on stopping for a mid-morning coffee at, hub of the universe, Bombala.

The first thing they built in any town was a hotel

or two

It looked like it has enjoyed better days

but still, just, had a local paper

As we drove the temperature outside rose inexorable and unbelievably to 35C!

We saw virtually no wildlife while we were driving but a large amount of road kill which suggested that the animals thought it was safer to come out at night.

When we reached the coast we were able to drive along past The Lakes National Park and Lakes entrance which were splendid views.

We ended up stopping in Sale, an interesting town originally a trade hub with a port on the river and a canal. We walked along the canal and around their wetland centre. This school showed that education has the same issues in Australia as here

The clouds gathered as it got dark and soon it started to rain.

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Back from Oz

November 20 – Sydney to Canberra

This has not been our greatest day!

We got up at 5am to see the ship entering Sydney harbour chased by Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas.

The view was lovely and the disembarkation worked quite smoothly until ……….

We had looked at the maps and decided that it would be easier and cheaper to get the Princess Cruises transfer from the dock side to Sydney Airport, which we understood was not too far from the depot where we were going to pick up the next camper van.

Well, firstly we had to wait for the last of our slowest moving former co-cruisers to get on the same coach as us (where we had been waiting impatiently for 20 minutes). Then as we approached Sydney Airport there was a humongous traffic jam and it took us nearly half an hour to get into the airport. Then when we trekked down to arrivals to get a taxi we found an enormous queue for taxis. Then just as we had got to a taxi Cheryl noticed that we would have to pay a “ground access” charge of about A$4 on top of the taxi fare so the whole trip took more in terms of money and time than if we had just got a taxi straight from the port!!!

Then when we got to the Maui depot the van reserved for us had a loose vent in the roof so we had to wait another half an hour while they fixed it!

At last we got on the road on our way to Canberra for the night. Once we got out of Sydney, big city rules applied, everything was fine, dual lane road and 110Kph speed limit so we made good progress. We stopped for a short break and to get supplies at Gouldburn which describes itself as the first inland city in Australia and the centre of the sheep trade advertised by the biggest sheep you ever did see.

Then we ploughed on to Canberra finding a nice site, in fact one of the best we have been in. Quite modern, well laid out and very nice “amenities” and camp kitchen. After checking in we went on an explore. We took a map and advice from one of the girls at check in who pointed out places we could park in the city and walk from there. Well we obviously did not listen to her instructions carefully enough because we parked the van right next to the theatre behind the hump that should be one end of the drive up to Capitol Hill, which we could see in the distance,

and set off.

Australian distances strike again! It was a lot further than either of us thought and it ended up being a good long hike!

The building of Canberra to replace Melbourne as capital city of Australia was started in 1913 but was delayed by the World Wars and the lake, one of the city designer’s key points in the architecture, was only completed in the 1960s. Canberra has got some lovely wide avenues and beautiful vistas but overall we found it was very disappointing and looked very sad and neglected. There were quite a lot of buildings trying to look classical while contemporary but none of them was a patch on the Old Parliament House.

which also had a lovely monument to George V in front of it.

In front of this there were a number of protest camps, presumably because they were not allowed to protest outside the new parliament building, including the inevitable protest for or on behalf of aboriginals.

These people continue to amaze me. The aboriginals are claimed to have been in Australia for 38,000 years in which time they managed to progress by their own efforts to the stoneage.

There were large grassy swards throughout Canberra, well at least they should have been grassy but the grass was very poor and mainly weeds in many places and there was lots of litter everything looking like it needed some money spend on it. That included the National Rose Garden where the beds were full of weeds and the display was not as good as Morden Hall Park!

When we got back to the camp site we told the girl in reception where we had walked and she said in true Australian fashion “you must be buggered – that’s a long way”!

While we had been walking around the city we had been being chased by a big thunderstorm and just as we were getting the chairs and table out of the van for dinner the storm reached us so it was a rapid repack and sandwiches in the van for dinner!

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Back from Oz

November 18 & 19

At sea again.

Not much to report really but on the 18th we had the worst seas we have had all trip with quite a heavy swell and Cheryl took to her bed for most of the day as did many other passengers.

I spent time watching the affect of the on the water in the swimming pools.

and trying to get the perfect shot of a gannet that kept us company for miles.

On the 19th I had wangled an invitation to the bridge

The extent of the digitisation and automation was amazing.