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
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!)
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| 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
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