Land down under, part 4 - Great Barrier Reef and Sydney

Cairns

 We had originally booked flights to spend 5 days in Sydney but after we’d done our PADI in Bali, we couldn’t miss out on diving the Great Barrier Reef, so the Blue Mountains had to wait and we booked a flight up to Cairns. We got there on a Thursday evening, dived the Reef on the Friday and flew back to Sydney on the Saturday. We spent the 2 nights in Cairns which seemed to be the place to be for stag parties; pubs were rammed and everyone seemed to be on shots of tequila by 7pm.

 

Not us, we wanted to be clear headed for our early morning pick up and the three dives we’d booked on the reef. We had arranged an all-day boat trip on a catamaran out of Port Douglas, a gorgeous little town about an hour from Cairns. The whole trip with breakfast, a buffet lunch and afternoon tea, as well as 3 dives including all the gear and coach transfers from Cairns and back was about $350 each. The boat went out for about an hour to an area of the Reef called Agincourt, where we stopped at 3 different sites to dive. 

 

The dives were great, but I made the mistake of changing to a smaller mask after the first dive and bursting a blood vessel in my eye from the fact that the mask was too tight or because I didn’t equalise the mask properly, so the change in air pressure acted like a vacuum. We saw a great deal of different types of fish and coral and it was a fantastic experience. 

 

We were shown some areas of coral that were suffering from stress bleaching. This is mainly due to a change in water temperature on the Reef, which has been blamed for killing a lot of sealife there. 

The Reef has been officially declared dead according to some sources, but others told us that although some parts of it had disappeared, there was still an enormous amount of life there which wasn’t going anywhere. It was maybe not as colourful and as vibrant as we had pictured, but apart from my horrible red eye, I think we would have been kicking ourselves if we hadn’t done it. On the way back we spied a minke whale a couple of hundred metres from the boat. 

 

The next day (after waiting the requisite 18 hours between multiple dives and flying to ensure the nitrogen in our blood had dispersed of course!) we were back in Sydney. 

Sydney

Sydney

As we had sacrificed some of our stay in Sydneyto go diving, we only had 2 full days in the city. This time we were being hosted by my colleague’s parents who live in a beautiful part of North Sydney, just a 5 minute walk to the harbour bridge. The first night, our hosts, Mike and Rosie, took us with them to Rosie’s sister’s house for a takeaway curry with her other brothers and sisters and we had a lovely evening with them all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sydney

The next morning, Baby D and I strolled the 2km over the bridge to an area called ‘The Rocks’ where we mooched around the market, and visited the Museum of Contemporary Art where Rosie works. 

The Rocks

This was a really interesting gallery and it was free to get in to, and we grabbed a coffee in the café which has great views of the harbour, including the bridge and the opera house. We walked up through the botanic gardens towards Hyde Park (the UK really needs to stop nicking Australia’s place names) and strolled through the centre. We’d made plans to meet Will and Denice, a couple we’d met on the slow boat to Laos who had been living in Bondi Beach for a couple of months, so we headed over there to watch the surfers, and had a few drinks and dinner on the seafront. 

Bondi beach

We had a bit of a late start on our last full day in Sydney after too much wine the night before, but we made it down to Circular Quay to get the ferry over to Manly.

Erm, Manly Wharf

The journey took half an hour to get to this part of Sydney, famous for its stunning scenery and walks, the surfers’ beach, little penguins, art gallery and sealife sanctuary. 

The art gallery was closed but we met up with Denice who had a half day, and we went into the sealife sanctuary to see the endangered nurse sharks and the penguins there, along with the usual other sea creatures. 

We found out that the sanctuary is actually closing for good soon which is sad, but the aging building it is in is not sustainable and we were told that part of the roof had actually caved in after a recent storm. 

Penguin in the sealife sanctuary

Back in the city we met up with Will after work, and headed across to trendy Surry Hills for dinner with some other travelling buddies, Lara and Clay who were also living in Sydney. We had a great catch up and a nice meal and all too soon Sydney was over and we said goodbye to our lovely hosts (who even got up to drop us at the airport at 6am the next morning!)

Turtle in the sealife sanctuary

We spent almost a month in Australia and I can’t believe how much we managed to squeeze in. Australia is an AWESOME country but I am breathing a sigh of relief that we are off for the sole fact that my credit card bill is eye-wateringly high. Onto Christchurch in New Zealand for 2 weeks in a campervan!

#australia #cairns #diving #greatbarrierreef #manly #therocks #moca #museumofcontemporaryart #bondibeach #manlysealifesanctuary #surryhills

Land down under part 3 - Melbourne and Tasmania

Melbourne

Royal Exhibition Building

We were staying in the CBD (Central Business District) and in probably the dirtiest hostel we’d encountered so far. We spent the first day in Melbourne strolling round the city, visiting the laneways, including the famous Hosier Lane which is covered in graffiti and street art, Federation Square where street food and entertainers gather, and visiting the fantastic Melbourne Museum.

Grafitti on Hosier Lane

The next day we hired a car to drive down the Great Ocean Road and back, stopping in Geelong to catch up with our pal Dan, who we’d met in Goa all those months ago. We decided to take the highway to the end of the Great Ocean Road and make our way back to Melbourne.

Twelve Apostles

This was mainly to avoid the tourist buses who would have been doing it the other way round, finishing up where we started, at the Twelve Apostles which is large rock formation coming out of the sea. There are several large rocks – there used to be 9 but one has crumbled into the sea. We drove down to some other rock formations in the sea including London Bridge and Lock Ard Gorge. 

London Bridge

On the way back we stopped off for lunch and weirdly it was the exact same place I had been to for lunch when I had done the Great Ocean Road tour the year before. Baby D chose it even though there were several other places to eat, and several other towns to stop in, and I had no recollection of it until I went to the toilet!

Not sure where this was

We saw a sign to a lighthouse which was one of the well-known stops on the route, in Apollo Bay, but this was before lunch and as it was a 12km drive off the main road, we changed our minds about 3km along. We did pull over next to a Chinese family who were koala spotting and they pointed out several wild koalas to us which was great. There was no way we would have spotted them otherwise. We then stopped in Lorne to go to the beautiful Erskine waterfall.

Erskine waterfall

As darkness was falling we just had time to stop in Anglesea where we’d spotted another lighthouse at Split Point. The light was on as the sun was going down and we got some pretty good pictures. Turned out this was the lighthouse from the 90s kids TV show ‘Round the Twist’ so we were proper happy – we’d forgotten that the guide at the lighthouse in Augusta had told us it was in Victoria, and it was pure fluke we chose not to stop at the one in Apollo Bay and instead look at the one in Anglesea.

Split Point Lighthouse

We finally reached Geelong where we went for dinner with our friend Dan. It was great to catch up; some of the fun of travelling is catching up with people we’ve met and travelled a bit with. We were back in Melbourne around 1am and up the next morning for me to get my hair cut and for Baby D to go on the free city walking tour (which I had done in October). We then headed over to Footscray, about 15 minutes out of the city, for a meeting and lunch with a colleague who had just emigrated from the UK.

We were desperate for an early night, especially with an early flight in the morning but we wanted to see Dan again before we left Melbourne, and he met us in the city for some drinks and food. Too much beer and wine later, we were back at the hostel setting the alarm for 4 hours later to fly to Hobart, Tasmania.

Tasmania

Church in Hobart

Our hotel was above a pub and a 15 minute walk from Battery Point which is the centre of the city. Hobart is the capital of Tasmania, which is an island not much smaller than England about an hour and a half flight from Melbourne.

Salamanca market

Unlike England, the population of Tasmania is about 500,000 and this was really noticeable. We’d arrived in Tassie on a Saturday, and this was the day that the famous Salamanca market was on in Hobart.

We mooched around the harbour and the market for a few hours, before going to a great little fishy pub called The Drunken Admiral for some oysters and wine, and then going to the Indian restaurant next door for dinner and more wine. We couldn’t find anywhere to rent a campervan even though it was mid-winter, so we hired a car and got ready for a trip around the island.

Hobart boats

First of all, we wanted to see Mount Wellington which was about half an hour’s drive out of Hobart. When we got to the ‘starting point’ we saw that the road up to the top of the mountain was closed (probably because of the weather) so we couldn’t drive up.

Top of Mt Wellington

There were a few walks we could choose from instead of driving up, and we decided to do the full monty and climb to the top. What started as a sedate, leisurely walk with beautiful scenery, soon turned into a nightmare with strong winds whipping around us, hard snow and ice, and steep, treacherous trails leading up to the top. I thought I was sure to be blown off the mountain. During the summer, it would be a fabulous, easy climb, but in the winter, it was a different story. We met 3 other guys climbing, all of whom looked like they knew what they were getting into, and the lack of people on the mountain was probably an indicator of how difficult conditions were.

Top of Mt Wellington

At the top, we were met by hundreds of people in cars as they had re-opened the road soon after we set off on the hike. Typical. We could either climb the couple of km back down the mountain (not a cat in hell’s chance of that happening) or we could walk the 5.5km down the road. We were completely numb by this point so we cadged a lift off a nice couple, after one guy trying to charge us $10 each, and another guy pretending he wasn’t going down the road (there was no other way to go). When we had defrosted, we set off to Port Arthur, on a peninsula south east of Hobart.

Looking across Tasman National Park

There are a number of interesting places to see round Port Arthur, in Tasman National Park – a lot of the sights are similar to those on the Great Ocean Road, such as the Devil’s Kitchen, the Blowhole and the Tasman Arch. A weird phenomenon there is the tessellated pavement which is where the coastline has a tiled effect after millions of years of erosion of siltstone.

Tessellated pavement

After stopping at the various spots along the way, we went to the Unzoo. This is a wildlife park for Tasmanian devils, kangaroos, wallabies, birds and quolls. We got to feed the kangaroos and we saw the devils and the quolls being fed which was pretty savage.

Feeding time

They are all marsupials, but the devils and the quolls (which both look super-cute) are meat eaters and they soon turn aggressive in front of a bit of dead wallaby. Tasmanian devils have been suffering from facial tumour cancer which is spread through saliva mainly, and is fatal. Because they are aggressive over food, they bite each other on the face and this is how it is spread.

Tasmanian devils in the Unzoo

The cancer has massively knocked the numbers of devils on the island but thankfully it appears to have been eradicated on the Port Arthur peninsula. Interesting fact about the devils, their gestation period is 21 days and their offspring is only 4mm! Only a few of them will make it to the pouch though and the rest die off.

Tasmania was originally a convict island, and there is a famous historic site in Port Arthur illustrating this, but it was too expensive for us ($39 each) after spending $35 each to get into the Unzoo.

Wineglass Bay

Next stop in Tassie was Wineglass Bay further up the east coast. This beautiful spot is in the shape of the bowl of a wineglass, but no one is sure how the name came about – it might be the shape, or it might be the fact that the sea off the coast was often red wine coloured with whale blood as this was a big industry in days gone by.

Oysters

We visited some of the beautiful sites along the way including Coles Bay, stopping off at a place in the middle of nowhere for oysters.

Further down the road I spied a tiny wooden structure on the side of a road which was like a large bird house. On further investigation, we noticed that it was actually a dinky library with about 10 books in it.

Mini library

Once we got to Wineglass Bay, in Freycinet National Park we had to hike about 3km to the top to get the best views. 

Bay of Fires

That evening we carried on up the coast to the Bay of Fires, stopping in St Mary’s for the night.

Bay of Fires

We got up early the following morning to catch sunrise over the Bay, heading to Binalong Bay.

Sunrise over Bay of Fires

We just about made it before the sun appeared, and even though there were probably better viewing points, we found a tiny deserted beach to watch the sun come up. We spent the morning in the Bay of Fires, so-called because of the red rocks that make up the coastline, caused by red lichen. We were absolutely loving Tassie by now, it was stunning. 

Bay of Fires

As we didn’t have long on the island, we wanted to squeeze in as much as possible so we drove on, to a place called Sheffield, about 50km from Cradle Mountain, which was where we were off to on the following day. The B&B we’d booked was lovely, it was a proper house with a living room and real fire, and there was a family of 4 sharing with us. It was so nice to stay somewhere cosy and homely for a change.

Start of Ronny Creek

Cradle mountain view

Cradle Mountain is about 1500m high and there are several trails to walk if you don’t want to climb the mountain in its entirety. We took the shuttle bus to Ronny Creek and did a 6km circuit up to an altitude of about 1200m. It was a fairly easy walk with some steep parts and en route we saw several lakes, a waterfall and hundreds of wombats finally.

Back to Hobart for the night before heading to Cairns via a quick change in Sydney, to dive the Great Barrier Reef.

Tasmania used to get a bad rap – it is the butt of many an incest joke (how do you tell if someone's from Tassie? Look for the scar on their neck where they've had a head removed) but it is a beautiful island with so much to see and a tiny population living there. We will definitely be back and for longer than 5 days.

#melbourne #hosierlane #melbournemuseum

 #greatoceanroad #twelveapostles #lockardgorge #splitpoint #erskinewaterfall #tasmania #hobart #portarthur #wineglassbay #cradlemountain #salamancamarket #mountwellington #bayoffires#unzoo