Next Stop: Unknown

Sydney, next stop in our Australia Adventure.  Home of the famous Opera House, and the “Blue Mountains.”  We had arranged to meet up with two friends we met in Indonesia, but they weren’t going to be available the first two days we were in town. So, instead of going into the city, we went from the airport, direct to the town of Katoomba, NSW.  (New South Wales).  The train ride was really nice… I even slept through most of it! 

The blue mountains have a very photographed rock formation called the “three sisters.”   Our hostel person gave us an area map and drew some routes we could take to circle the area.  So, the next morning we took off on a 3 hour walk, which turned into an 8 hour trek through the mountains.  It was warm and sunny and quite nice to get some nature in. 

Jenn stopping to smell the flowers.  The wildflowers here are amazing – so much color and different varieties.  Sadly, the scotch broom was also in season, which Jenn is allergic to.  Thankfully we had some meds for that!

Stopping to rest in the sunshine on a rock outcropping overlooking the mountains. 

They built up a nice platform from where you can view the three sisters.  They weren’t as impressive as we’d expected!  There is a legend about the formation of the rock spires which deals in magic and folk lore.  Evidently the locals are still waiting for them to return to their human form!

After the Blue Mountains, we headed into Sydney proper to meet up with Jess and Doug.  They were fantastic hosts, and their apartment had an amazing view!  This is a picture from their deck, overlooking the business district.  Doug and Jess took us out to a local bar to celebrate their official new status: Australian permanent residents!  Congrats guys!  Besides giving us a place to stay for a couple days, they cooked us two amazing meals.  Hopefully they come to Seattle so we can repay the favor!

We took a walk downtown through the city to see the sites.  It was cold and rainy, much like a Seattle winter day.  In fact, the city reminded us much of home.  Tall buildings on the water, grey skies, and bridges!  The ferries here are more colorful than the ones back home though!

All of the pictures we’d seen of the opera house were magnificent.  So, when we got there, we couldn’t figure out what was wrong.  The place was pretty grey and drab!  The architecture was stunning, so I think it was just the weather which seemed to damper its awesomeness. 

At least the birds were entertaining.  They didn’t seem to fear us at all, and when we’d run at them, or startle them, they would just hop a few feet away and look at us like we were stupid.  This one must have thought Jenn was hiding a can of worms in her jacket, or he was just really hungry!

Next to the Opera House are the Royal Botanical Gardens. We meant to take a short stroll through them, but ended up staying for a few hours.  There was so much life to be found inside!  Beautiful flowers, birds, insects, eels, bats, and more!

Jenn’s turning out some amazing pictures… this one is so simple, yet mesmerizing to me. 

This little guy turned out to be pretty friendly.  However, he was wild, and wouldn’t let us touch him, but we could get fairly close.  The few times I tried to put my hand near him, he showed me a pretty sharp and ferocious looking beak.  I took the hint after the second attempt at losing a finger.  Peace out bird, I just wanted to pet!

This mama had three little chicks swimming with her.  She was swimming around looking for food, and then feeding it to the little ones.  One was a total crybaby and would not shut up.  I think he got the most attention.  One of the others wouldn’t leave the nest… and the third was out and about doing it’s own thing.  They were all swimming in a little pond that was full of eels.  A sign nearby said that the eels often eat the little chicks when they are small.  We kept waiting for one to be snatched up, as we could see the eels swimming under them in the water… alas it didn’t happen.  They must have been full already!

After seven months of travel through Asia, we had mixed feelings about heading back to the ‘Western World’. We were really looking forward to wine, cheese, and steaks – those had been decidedly absent from our travels through Asia. Koalas, Kangaroos and Oz’s other strange creatures were also high on the list of ‘To Dos’. Less exciting to us, was the strong Aussie dollar and how retched it made all of the prices. Yikes!

First stop: The Pinnacles Dessert! It’s located about 300km north of Perth’s Airport. Sounds like a long ways, but a local informed us that Perthinians think nothing of even a 600km daily drive. We were exhausted from our flight though – we’d taken the red-eye from Bali to Perth and barely gotten any sleep. So even the 300km drive was a bit too much for us in a straight shot. We ended up pulling over the parking lot of a gas station for a snooze mid-way there.

We’d seen these amazing photos of The Pinnacles – soaring limestone outcrops set against bright red desert sand – and were psyched to take some of our own. We were surprised to find that these ‘soaring outcrops’ were sometimes only a few feet tall. Hmm? Creative cameras at work?

We left the pinnacles and headed down to sand dune territory along the coast. The beaches had beautiful white sands and were completely deserted. It was a lovely place to take a lazy romantic walk.

Getting to and from the Pinnacles we saw so much kanga road kill. We were both disappointed that our first few views of these animals were as they lay mangled on the side of the road. Obviously there were a lot of kangaroos about, but where were they hiding themselves during the day? We spent an afternoon searching them out in a national park and came up empty until just about dusk. Then hundreds of them wondered out from the grasses to lounge about in the dwindling sun.

Australia has so many strange beasts! Check out this Emu. She jumped out of the grasses moments later and sauntered across the street with her two babies.

And we also were lucky enough to see some Koalas! They were roaming in the protected areas of a National Forest. As cute and cuddly as they are, the koalas aren’t really that interesting to watch. They basically just sit there, eat eucalyptus leaves, and then sit there some more!

 

Before we left Perth, we drove downtown at night to take in the cityscape. Quite the view with the Ferris wheel in the skyline and a great parting memory.