Australia – Taran's Tales

Oz 2018 – Part 6 – No worries, mate, see you ‘gain sometime!

As a regular reader of www.taranstales.net you will have already learnt about our great side-trip to Darwin and the Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks; this was the last part of our travelling in Oz and the only part where we entrusted the driving to others and enjoyed the relaxation of being passengers. However, between our arrival back at my sister’s home in Bli Bli on the Sunshine Coast and our flight to Darwin, we got to know a bit more about life in southern Queensland.

We had spent the previous five weeks driving more than seven thousand kilometres, visiting three out of six Australian states or territories and sleeping in at least fifteen different beds, so getting back to Cescy’s house seemed like arriving ‘home’; at long last we could sleep in if we wanted and we didn’t have to re-pack each morning. Still, itchy feet made sure we didn’t get too settled and as we still had our rental car plus the additional luxury of occasionally being chauffeured around by Cescy and Richard, we were soon on the move again, albeit day-tripping only.

For our first local trip all four of us went to the Saturday market at Eumundi, a seemingly prosperous inland small town about twenty kilometres north of Bli Bli. What started out as a twice-weekly farmers’ market has blossomed and is now one of the largest country markets in the region. One could spend hours there as the range of goods was enormous, mainly lots of artisan work plus the usual gaggle of specialist juices, coffees and ethnic foods, and with stalls selling local farm produce seemingly very much in the minority. It was all rather civilised though and not really as much fun as the Fisherman’s Road market we had been to back in February, and nowhere near as outlandish as the small-town markets we enjoyed in France a year before.

In the end all that Celine and I came away with were a beautiful framed photograph of the local scenery, a CD of Didgeridoo music, a painting of local birds and a koala, and some traditional wooden toys for the grandkids “just like wot we ‘ad as children“; then we all chatted over coffee in a café across the road, enjoying the ambience of market day along with the music of The Raw Cigar Box Blues band.

Still nervous about letting the grass grow under our feet, the next morning we soon abandoned ideas of being sensible and checking our over-used credit card and sinking bank balances; instead we obeyed my inner man and went to a local food festival in Maroochydore. We bravely managed to avoid the many tempting but unhealthy offerings and instead shared a couple of actually very scrummy, veggie-filled, gluten-free tapioca wraps; apparently this use of tapioca is an old Brazilian recipe but it was definitely a first in our joint culinary experience. We followed that up with some beers, ginger for Celine and a very tasty schooner of Balter XPA for me, before getting home to a joyful reunion with my younger niece, Phillipa, the one member of that generation of the family I hadn’t seen for more than thirty years.

I love big, 3-generational, family dinners like this, “nerf” guns, spag bol, bubbly and all!

She hadn’t changed much at all and seemed anything but a stranger. She and her husband Mark moved to Margaret River in Western Australia many years ago ‘cos of the wonderful surfing to be found on that coast; the love of surfing is a recurring theme with nearly everyone in that generation of the McKenzie family, just like practically all Australians brought up on the coast it seems. So it was no surprise to learn that she and son George were spending most of their time in Queensland testing out the east coast surf again; after all this bronzed Aussie surfing girl was once the Australian Senior Women’s Champion, a ‘relly’ to be really proud of!!

Steve Irwin, his wife and children and their dog, and the crocodile that started it all!!

We had another large family supper together that evening and all agreed that we should take a family outing to Australia Zoo, the last chance for Celine and I to see some of Australia’s more elusive animals that we had missed on our travels. Australia Zoo is a wildlife conservation facility set up by the crocodile hunter Steve Irwin and his wife Terri, and it was inevitable that a show involving salt-water crocodiles was a ‘must-do’ part of the visit. It was somewhat contrived however, and the big croc that Terri and the younger Irwins, Robert and Bindi, were enticing to jump up and grab the proffered lumps of dead flesh, seemed to have lost some of his man-eating hunger and had become rather bored with the whole business of being a circus performer. Still, the wild birds that opened the show did some impressive flying tricks, including one large parrot whose speciality was to grab, in flight, a five dollar bill from the hand of a spectator standing up in the bleachers. It reminded me a bit of the cake-grabbing kookaburra in Sydney’s Botanic Garden (see Oz 2018 Part 2).

Tasmanian Devils are actually rather cute . . .

. . . until they open their mouths and show their fangs!

The rest of the visit, however, was eminently more satisfying than the croc show. We saw a very friendly-looking Tasmanian Devil – friendly that is until he opened his mouth wide and showed us his bone crushing fangs – who evidently wasn’t aware they are nocturnal animals.

Komodo Dragons are the largest lizards on earth, some males weighing up to 200lbs

Our first live wombat was only slightly camera shy, the komodo dragon was impressive compared to the other lizards, the dingoes were rightly proud-looking animals, even if they are described in Wikipedia as merely being feral dogs of debatable taxonomic status,

A handsome dingo does some people-watching.

The bamboo-eating red-panda is not averse to eating the occasional bird.

and the mainly vegetarian red panda and the omniverous binturong were cuddly, regardless of their predatory eating habits!

This cuddly innocent bundle of fur is an omniverous Binturong , also known as a Bearcat, from Southeast Asia.

The flightless cassowary, can do serious damage with those big feet!

Lots of beautiful birds though some, such as the bush turkey and the endangered cassowary, were not quite so endearing!

And yet, even though we had already seen plenty in the wild, the kangaroos and koalas were the real scene stealers, especially as we were able to get up-close and personal with them.

Phillipa, George and Mardae and a very friendly ‘roo,

In another encounter with Australia’s wildlife, Celine had an amusing meeting with parrots at Maleny Botanic Gardens. We felt we needed to take another look at the Glass House Mountains in real life, after purchasing a beautiful photograph of them at Eumundi market. The weather was somewhat threatening near the coast but unperturbed we took the pretty route out to Maleny again, only to see the mountains disappearing as they were quickly engulfed by the low clouds drifting inland; it also started raining so we paused to consider our options, and retired to the café for coffees and cake. Once the rain had stopped, the idea of a rain-forest walk appealed initially but we soon abandoned that plan as well, realising we lacked the necessary insect repellent, suitable waterproof gear and leech-resistant boots. Instead we started to head home and after a couple of kilometres came upon the aforesaid botanic gardens. Of course just as we were about to pay our entrance fee, the heavens opened up again, and as we were about to return to the car, we met the owner of the gardens who asked us if I would like to take a photograph of Celine holding one of his parrots. Well we thought he meant ‘one’, but with both arms outstretched, Celine soon had ten of the lovely birds perched upon her, all of whom were very polite and well-behaved including the large white cockatiel on her head.

The photo-opportunities involving Australian wildlife are seemingly endless!

Enjoying the beautiful view from the top of Mt Ninderry

The rain continued on and off for the next few days but we still managed a couple more local walks. We had a bit of trouble finding the start of the trail up Mt Ninderry that towers above Yandina, but when we did eventually arrive we were greeted in true Aussie style by a couple of kangaroos enjoying the neighbours’ grass. The effort was well worth while as we enjoyed a wonderful hike up a fairly steep, partially stepped path through pretty open woodland to the top, from where we had good views from a couple of designated look-outs; plus we found a bonus spot where we stood right on the edge of a rocky promontory, watching various birds of prey flying by below us. The only sad part was seeing the three monuments to young people who had chosen to end their lives from that same precipitous outcrop.

Noosa Heads – one of the many Australian beaches that make tourists go back again and again.

Other outings we took that week included a fleeting visit to the heavily developed and extremely busy beach town of Noosa Heads. And finally to get away from the madding crowds, we took a gentle stroll along the Heritage Tramway Walk in Mons, a village a couple of kilometres outside Buderim. This lovely, almost level walk skirts around the edge of very steep hilly terrain, now covered in re-growth sub-tropical forest. It follows a 2 kilometre segment of the the Buderim to Palmwoods railway line that was built in the early 1900’s to help local farmers to move their produce, fruit and timber etc to the main-line station at Palmwoods and thence to market in Brisbane. Built entirely manually without mechanical aids, it is a fairly impressive piece of civil engineering from the mainly horse-powered age (https://www.buderim.com/tramway).

Brisbane is fine modern city that still manages to feel friendly with its pleasing mix of old and new architecture

And so the day arrived for us to start out on our Kakadu adventure; but as our plane departed from Brisbane airport, we gratefully took advantage of yet another invite to relly-surf, this time with my godson David’s younger daughter, Alyce, and her boyfriend, Kris, who live in a green suburb a short drive from the centre of Brisbane. We arrived to find they had kindly planned a very complete day’s entertainment for us starting with a hike up Mount Coot’Tha. Less than five kilometres from Brisbane’s CBD, the look-out on the top gave us marvellous views of the city laid out below and out to the offshore islands protecting Moreton Bay.

With our lovely hosts Alyce and Kris on top of Mt Coot’Tha.

We didn’t tarry too long as we still had to hike back down to their car, and they had easily realised that my speed on the trail was no match for their fit young legs! After a quick change back at their house, we headed out again with the back of their SUV full of a portable gas barbecue and coolers of food and beers. This time we made a bee-line for the grassy park atop Kangaroo Point Cliffs Park , a popular downtown picnic spot overlooking the Brisbane River, so popular that Sunday evening that by the time we arrived parking was hard to find and many of the picnic tables had already been bagged. So with a slight change of plan we opted to picnic closer to the water; and as the sun set and the lights of Brisbane’s business district started to reflect on the river, we settled down to a wonderful dinner of barbecued steaks and all the trimmings.

The next morning being a Monday, we awoke long after Alyce and Kris had left to pursue their medical careers in the city, and only Harold the cat remained to see us safely off the premises. We took our time leaving their happy period home, built very much in the original Brisbane style, eventually driving to the south bank and parking in the bargain-priced Performing Arts Centre Car Park. There was lots to see in that very attractive city and we started off by visiting the Queensland Art Gallery. They had there, a very interesting collection of 20th century aboriginal art, much of which was inspired by Albert Namatjira, a resident of a mission in the McDonnell Ranges, who decided to break away from the traditions of his people, with their abstract designs and symbols, and started to paint beautiful watercolours of the outback, in imitation of Western artists.

Albert Namanjira, a portrait by his aboriginal associate William Dargie

His story makes fascinating reading, and he even became the first Aboriginal to be granted restricted Australian citizenship.

The other major gallery in that area of the city is the Gallery of Modern Art, which we found much less interesting, and so we walked across the unusually designed Kurilpa foot bridge and onto George Street in the CBD. The city centre has its fair share of modern buildings, all the same we enjoyed our walk towards the Botanical Gardens, where we had proposed to meet Alyce’s sister, Danielle, for lunch; however, after a rather slow meander through the park, we arrived rather too late for lunch and found the café had just closed. So we grabbed a quick snack at the university refectory and continued on our way, following the riverside path until crossing the Goodwill pedestrian bridge back to the south bank.

The Commonwealth Games were still taking place, the official opening of which was the reason for Prince Charles’ visit to the country; so after walking past the Maritime Museum and an artificial “beach” where children were playing in the sand, we stopped at a riverside café for a well-earned rest and to enjoy our coffees and “patisseries” as we watched the day’s events on a massive TV screen at the riverside. Eventually it was time to drive to the airport, drop off our trusty Nissan X-Trail SUV, and catch our evening flight to hot sweaty Darwin.

The Kakadu trip was really our swan-song as we only had three more days back in Bli Bli before we had to pack our bags and get ready to fly home. Cescy had organised one more lovely family luncheon with the local McKenzies, which also served as a joint early birthday bash for David and myself. And then on our last night the four of us, Cescy, Richard, Celine and I, had dinner at Maroochydore Surf Club, a cross between a fancy yacht club and a typical Aussie “hotel” complete with the Totalisator Agency Board (“TAB”) TV screens for betting on televised horse and dog racing, and a small casino which was actually no more than a room full of fruit machines and an ongoing weekly high-value raffle; they certainly enjoy their betting in Australia. Still the food was good value, and the club provided a free shuttle service to and from home so no complaints from this one.

Another happy noisy family gathering that made our relly surfing experience such great fun – this one courtesy of Giles and Kate.

All good things come to an end and after ten wonderful weeks exploring the eastern side of Australia the time came to say our farewells. You can only “relly -surf” for so long before they begin to fear you might be moving in, but it was a risk worth taking as we had some delightful times with them all. The trip was a real eye-opener for Celine and I, as we had arrived with no expectations other than we were going to see lots of interesting wild animals and birds, and meet all the McKenzie clan; and so we were surprised to find ourselves at times actually wondering whether we should consider migrating to such a fine country. I think that much of this had to do with the ease with which we struck up so many friendly conversations with the locals, ‘cos of the common language; though we did also find many attractive small towns and some very beautiful countryside which would have been easy to live amongst.

All the same, Europe is still very much in our blood, and Australia offered very little of the cultural heritage we so enjoy. Anyway, thank you Australia and all our family there for giving us such a wonderful holiday and showing us so much natural beauty; we certainly hope we’ll see you all again ‘ere long, but no, we don’t see ourselves applying for Aussie residence visas in the near future. Instead we are deep into planning our next foray into the Old World, this time to Italy, basing ourselves in the province of Abruzzo. We fly mid-September and I hope to be travel-blogging again soon.

Oz 2018 – part 5 – Excursion into the Top End

Saturday morning, 14th April, and it’s around thirty-two degrees centigrade outside, the humidity is just less than 90%, and partly obscuring the clear blue skies, lots of big dark grey cumulus clouds are stacking up in the distance preparing for another short sharp late-afternoon thunder-shower. It has been like that for the last three days, ideal weather to visit this tropical tip of the Northern Territory as nature starts to recover from the wet season and prepare itself for the annual dry-season onslaught of 200,000 camera-toting tourists.

We came to Australia’s ‘Top End’ to see the famous – infamous?? – “salties’, the salt water crocodiles that inhabit the waters all around, fresh, brackish and saline. As the largest crocodile in the world, and being extremely carniverous, they have rightly claimed a place in the tourist bucket list of dangerous animals to be seen but not touched; a ‘glamping’ tour of Kakadu National Park promised to give us the chance to see them up close and in the wild.

Darwin Airport is rather unusual in allowing flights to land at all hours of the night and so our 01.00 arrival at the Palm City Resort in downtown Darwin was quite normal to everyone except ourselves! As we have done for much of this Aussie saga, we used AirBnB to find our accommodation for a couple of nights before heading off into the wilderness of Kakadu and we were somewhat surprised to learn that hotel rooms are now considered “couch-surfing” territory. Still, in spite of the lack of ‘homeliness’ we get from sharing someone’s home, it was comfortable enough and very convenient for exploring Darwin’s Central Business District – “CBD” in the local vernacular – which is how we set about acclimatising ourselves the following day. Darwin is a modern city lacking the charm of some of the other state capitals we have visited over the last couple of months; there is good reason for this, namely the terrble destruction wrought by Cyclone Tracy in 1974, which flattened virtually the complete city. As we wandered past Parliament Building we encountered a couple of motorcycle cops barring the road with their flashing blue lights who told us that, as the royals tend to do so often, Prince Charles was about to plant a tree.

Prince Charles “plants” a tree watched by a stiff-armed Vicky O’Halloran, the Administrator of Northern Territory, a much more relaxed gardener and a handpicked audience of invited guests.

Unsure whether or not this ceremony was open to the public, we stood by the iron railings of Government House, along with precisely two other members of the great proletariat, carefully watched by a security type who seemed somewhat surprised by our presence. As one of the assorted staff told the waiting media, “He just won’t stop chatting”, but Australia’s future king eventually came out after his luncheon as the guest of Vicky O’Halloran, the Administrator of Northern Territory. He chatted with some of the waiting minions, fellow guests apparently, shovelled two or three spades full of clean soil around the already planted tree, swapped horticultural niceties with the gardener who was the keeper of the royal spade, and drove off into the afternoon sunshine having completed his regal duties in Darwin.

While waiting to board our plane in Brisbane Airport, Celine meets a colourful group of Jawoyn women from Katherine in Northern Territory.

We arrived in Australia having only limited knowledge about the indigenous population, the aborigines and the Torres Islanders. Visits to one or two museums – the National Gallery in Canberra in particular – had enlightened us somewhat, in spite of the predominance of displayed material about the lives of the early European settlers. But with a few exceptions, we hadn’t seen many aborigines in the cities, towns and villages we had visited. Our flight from Brisbane gave us our first close encounter when in the departure lounge we met a lovely group of Jawoyn ladies from Katherine, a town some 300km south of Darwin, on their way back from an International Women’s Federation conference that we think was part of the Commonwealth Games activities. Their laughter was totally infectious and they enjoyed having their photograph taken with Celine as much as we appreciated being part of their happiness. The streets of Darwin sadly presented a very different view of life for these people who have been so poorly treated ever since the white man arrived.

A street musician plays for his supper on a pair of crude “tap sticks”, more usually played as a backing instrument to the didgeridoo.

We have plenty of hopeless, homeless people in California but they don’t stick out in quite the same way as the many beautiful black faces we saw squatting alone or in groups, or wandering along the sidewalks, some slightly the worse for wear. The inequality of this still quite racial society became quite apparent, confirming what we had suspected but rarely witnessed earlier in our travels. We stopped in a small gallery that sold only aboriginal art, much of it being produced on site by a group of artists working cross legged on the floor; and there we bought another memento to remind us of our trip in future years, a stylised wooden carving of a Jabiru, the black-necked stork that is found in the local swamplands.

Wooden carvings decorated with the traditional patterns of dots.

Booking tours in such a popular tourist destination is often a bit hit and miss, but we seem to have been reasonably lucky in our choice of WayOutBack Tours. Trish, our Irish-Aussie guide for the “3-Day Dragonfly Dreaming” tour of the parks, arrived fairly promptly around the appointed hour of 06.30am on Wednesday morning, and we were soon comfortably ensconced into our seats aboard “Ziggy”, the seventeen seater, 4WD, Isuzu truck-based bus that was to be our transport for the next three days. Kakadu NP is a vast area covering some 20,000 square kilometres – about the size of Wales – and although ‘relatively’ close to Darwin, our first day’s destination was a good three-hours-plus drive away; nothing is ever very close by in this vast continent of a country. Our first stop was a short visit to Window on the Wetlands, an educational building on a small hill overlooking green pastures of the Adelaide River valley. This was followed by a picnic lunch at Jabiru.

Later on, a couple of side excursions to see some examples of aboriginal rock art at Anbangbang gave us a chance to stretch our legs on short walks up among the rock formations along the edge of the Arnhem Land Escarpment.

Your intrepid scribe enjoying the view towards Arnhem Land from atop Nawulandja lookout.

The second of these, a steep clamber partway up the side of Nawurlandja (aka Nourlangie Rock), presented us with expansive views over the surrounding countryside and towards Arnhem Land in the distance, an area that remains forbidden territory to permit-less tourists such as ourslelves.

A rare sighting, this dingo was spotted loping through the undergrowth near the road and obligingly stopped to inspect us closer.

Our destination that evening was the Cooinda Lodge Gagadju, a campsite and motel owned by the Murrumburr people who are the traditional owners of the surrounding land, though now operated by the Accor Hotel Group. When booking the tour, the idea of sleeping under canvas for a couple of nights seemed rather appealing but when we arrived, tired, hot and sweaty, aware of the unkempt grassy walk between “fixed tents” – the “glam” part of glamping – and the ablution and toilet facilities, and the threatening dark black clouds and the swarms of insects flying around, we were quite glad we had taken the advice of a couple of our fellow travellers and requested a late upgrade to a cabin, which turned out to be as good as many a multi-starred hotel room we’ve stayed in over the years! We still enjoyed a communal dinner with our fellow travellers in the group kitchen tent and afterwards experienced the challenge of finding our torchless way back to our cabin in the total blackness of the outback nights before the heavens opened up once again.

No place near water is safe in Kakadu. Floating motionless in the water this “saltie” patiently awaits his next meal . . .

. . . while this big boy hides out on the muddy bank.

Thursday started with a leisurely breakfast of cereals, toast and coffee, preparing ourselves for what would prove to be the highlight of the tour, two hours aboard a boat gliding along the waters of the North Alligator River, mistakenly named by the original white settlers who didn’t know the difference between ‘gators and crocs. Mandy, our Murrumburr guide, happy boat driver, and a wealth of local knowledge, was a delightful lady, full of tales from her life in this land of Ngurrudjurrudjba, which translates as Yellow Water. Her well-worn PA system was a bit unreliable and so we missed a lot of what she had to say and point out to us; nevertheless, we did see four of the “salties” we had been hoping for, three floating motionless and the fourth, quite a “big boy”, lying on the mud among the tree roots at the water’s edge.

Plumed Whistling Ducks stare at us staring at them!

Comb-crested Jacana guarding its well camouflaged eggs

Identifiable birdlife was pretty good as well: a couple of beautiful Black-necked storks or Jabiru in the local lingo, one or two Magpie Geese, two flocks of Plumed Whistling Ducks puddling in the riverside mud, Pacific Black Ducks, Snake-neck Darters, Magpie Geese, Cattle Egrets standing motionless among the tall riverside grass, a gang of Corellas squawking in the treetops and a very delicate Comb-crested Jacana guarding its two eggs laid among the lily-pads. The experience of floating along in such pristine wilderness, surrounded by nature on all sides, was sublime, and the time went by far quicker than we would have wished. All too soon, we were back aboard the bus being driven along the still flooded road to the lodge where Ziggy waited with Trish at the wheel to take us on another two hour drive to our next overnight stop near the entrance to Litchfield National Park.

While seeing the wild life and especially the salties is perhaps the major draw of this part of Australia, the tropical scenery has to come a close second. However, travelling with a group in a bus means one is very much at the mercy of the tour guide and we rather missed being our own masters, stopping as and when the whim takes us as had been the case when we were driving ourselves earlier in our trip.

All the same, we did stop at some very beautiful places of which our next destination was a perfect example, an unidentified, deep pool beneath a small waterfall surrounded by fern-covered rocks and tropical forest. “Swimmers” had been the dress order of the day, and once the bus had parked, a short walk through the forest found us ready to divest ourselves of our walking gear and take the plunge.
Other tour groups had got there before us and the place was already quite busy when we arrived, but after staking our claim for a rocky corner on which to deposit our belongings, most of us slid off the edge of the rocks into the deliciously cool water, and even those less keen swimmers took full advantage of its blissful refreshing properties.

The destination for our second night of “glamping” was what had once been an enormous cattle station. Mount Bundy Station was established in 1911 and in those days covered an area of 2160 sq.km. The tourist part of the station, close to the banks of the Adelaide River, is now more of a hobby farm; the area around the original station buildings offers both camping facilities, including the permanent tents that are jokingly considered to provide glamorous camping, as well as rooms in what were once the stockmen’s sleeping quarters. We again opted for one of the latter which was certainly a step up from a hot, mosquito-infested, fixed tent, but hardly The Ritz!

The main social meeting place is small bar complete with a miniature horse that hangs around among the customers and a swarm of cane toads that hide under the ancient beer cooler. Several regulars, including a few who came to visit years ago and have found it hard to leave and help with the chores to pay their rent, give the place a friendly atmosphere that make it one of those places one would be happy to return to if one ever happened to travel that way again. We took a couple of peaceful walks around the grounds, made friends with Nigel, the Brahmin bull, failed to see the pet pig, and tried in vain to photograph the many rather skittish wallabies that disappeared into the bushes near the river as soon as they were looked at.

Friday the 13th April was our last day of the tour and the main attractions of the day were the pools and waterfalls for which Litchfield NP is best known. We had an early start, just in time to see the sun rise and then disappear behind threatening grey clouds; peacocks and a jabiru were wandering the grounds, the wallabies were hopping everywhere and four highly-spirited horses were running around the adjacent field, enjoying the early morning dampness of the grass. Driving back along the Stuart Highway we judiciously gave road space to several of the ubiquitous 50+m long road-trains, most of which were hauling cattle. Flooding is another regular part of life in Australia’s Top End; our road passed through the town of Adelaide River where the river had risen 11m in January, the highest for years, causing the town to be evacuated for three days.

The Banyan Tree Cafe . . . the Australians are well into the 3-Rs, this one being a delightfully wacky example of “Re-use”

Just outside the town of Batchelor, best known for the Batchelor Institute, a technical and further education college with a strong focus on providing higher education opportunities for indigenous students from all over Australia, we stopped for a pee-break at the Banyan Tree Cafe.

A Children’s Python, named after the zoologist J G Children, ties Celine’s arms in knots . . .

Pytheta, the owner of the cafe, has a pet Children’s Python – a non-venomous snake named after the zoologist, John G Children – which a few of us were lucky enough to hold and discover how powerful these snakes are as they hang on to your arm, or neck!

. . . before trying her charms on yours truly.

And soon it was time for our first swim of the day at Buley Rockhole, a small pool just deep enough to jump into safely with a miniature waterfall at one end and a natural infinity pool effect at the other end where the stream cascades over the rocky ledge. We luxuriated in the warm water for much longer than Trish had anticipated, until eventually we reluctantly departed not realising that our next stop, at Florence Creek Falls, would be just as wonderful.

The day was marching on and so while Trish prepared lunch, we all trod the 150+ steps down to the pool, stopping only at the lookout for a birds-eye view on the way down. This pool was very different from Buley Rockhole.

The vast swimming hole at the base of Florence Creek Falls.

The water was extremely deep, the twin 20m high falls were in full spate and the resulting current across the large pool was so strong that swimming straight to the falls was well nigh impossible for all except the strongest swimmers. It was also quite crowded so we didn’t overstay our welcome and while some lingered, Celine and I took the scenic route back up to the car park along Shady Creek Walk, to find lunch awaiting us laid out on the rather grubby picnic table. Lunch this day was the leftovers from the trip so not much of a surprise, but welcome all the same after our healthy morning activities.

The afternoon involved another fairly long drive so a lot more sitting in the bus, but we did make a couple more stops to prevent terminal stiff-leg syndrome setting in. The first was to look at another fine waterfall, Tolmer Falls at the edge of Table Top Plateau, which we viewed from a very smart wheel-chair accessible platform. These falls drop some 40m into a plunge pool which is no longer accessible for swimming; it seems that this prohibition resulted from some thoughtless people who had been throwing stones at a rare colony of bats living in a cave near the base of the falls.

The second stop was at the “pièce de résistance” of Litchfield Park, Wangi Falls, a segmented waterfall dropping 54m into a large pool, that was also closed to bathers when we visited as it had not yet been declared clear of crocodiles; the rangers need to have at least six weeks of croc-free waters at the end of the wet season before they will run the risk of allowing people to swim in any of the pools, except for those that are high enough to be out of saltie territory!

A termite hill, this one about 20ft tall

Just one more stop to look at the Magnetic Termite Hills, an impressive demonstration of nature’s ingenuity in building structures that have minimal exposure to the midday sun, and then we were on our way back to Darwin. As we arrived at our respective hotels, we each made our brief farewells to our travelling companions and returned to urbanity once more. Celine and I gave ourselves a much deserved gourmet dinner at “Moorish Cafe”, which offered an eclectic mix of Spanish Tapas and North African cuisine, before retiring to our room, catching up on our electronic mail, watching part of a movie, and then falling gratefully into bed.

The next morning, on the way to the airport, we had time to make a brief but very educational stop at The Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory, with its well presented collection of modern aboriginal art; most of the artworks were an expression of frustration with the convoluted workings of the Australian Human Rights Commission and the legislation that it generated. We also learned more about the effects of Cyclone Tracy, and got close to lots of stuffed birds and animals, most of which we never got to see, or at least recognise, in the wild.

A final telling word from the indigenous first peoples!

All-in-all we had had a fascinating three day adventure; it was not exactly what we had expected in some ways but was well worth making the detour. We didn’t manage to see crocodiles jumping out of the water, but that was perhaps because our boat tour was aimed more at giving us an understanding of aboriginal life in the swampy wetlands of the Kakadu, rather than doing the touristy thing. We felt slightly short changed by the small selection of wild animals we saw. And like others who had written reviews in the past, we were disappointed by the large amount of time that was spent sitting in the bus. But then again, as we had already discovered for ourselves Australia is a big place and always involves a lot of travelling; and wild animals are very often elusive at the best of times!

Coming soon:

Oz 2018 – Part 6 – No worries, mate, see you ‘gain sometime!

Oz 2018 – part 4 – Canberra, aborigines and National Parks

It would have been rude to omit a visit to the capital city of the fine country we had been exploring these last five weeks, and conveniently our excursion to see Mt.Kośziucko had positioned us nicely to ensure such an offence was not committed. In choosing which route to take each morning, Google maps would often give us a couple of options. Whenever I saw an alternative route including a road with an interesting name such as “Snowy Mountain Highway”, that not only went in the right general direction but also veered off onto a “road less travelled” through yet another National Park, I would be tempted to take it even if Google advised it would take somewhat longer than the more obvious route following a major road.

So soon after we left the resort town of Jindabyne behind us, we turned northwards on the B72 in the direction of Adaminaby keeping a keen eye open for a minor road taking us into Namadgi NP in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains. Once found, this narrow road immediately made known its true character as it divested itself of tarmac, eliciting some slightly negative feelings from my co-pilot who, rather unusually, suggested that we might see the same scenery from a “proper road”. Driving on dirt roads was exactly the reason we had chosen to rent a half decent 4WD SUV, and my confidence in that decision was well rewarded as we drove into some superb up-country bush passing by the very occasional isolated farm.

One house in particular caught our attention with its rusting corrugated iron roofs, the lines of washing strung between trees and the nearby hydro pole, kids’ bicycles lying on the ground outside the fence and a child bouncing on a dilapidated trampoline. A young teenager walking his horse through a gate gave us a long stare as if questioning our presence, and with no sign of other habitations in any direction the place felt very remote.

Rose-breasted Galah cockatoos performing their hydro-wire antics.

We stopped nearby for our picnic lunch next to some large rocks and to take in the beautiful views of the surrounding countryside as we also watched the antics of a flock of rose-breasted Galah cockatoos, as they struggled to perch on the hydro wires. And we saw our first wild wombat, though sadly as yet another example of road kill.

The dirt road continued onwards and upwards, passing a gate of lost shoes, mementoes of travellers past, and as we entered the park itself, a sign advising us about poisoned baits put down for wild dogs; then somewhat ironically in view of the last hour’s driving, a second sign warned us to drive slowly as ahead of us we had another 19km of narrow winding gravel road with blind crests and curves! And it was a thoroughly enjoyable drive, with sightings of kangaroos bouncing along among the eucalyptus trees, and a short stop for a walk beside Rendezvous Creek, among huge rocks and some pretty red-trunked gum trees, with the sweet sound of the creek running close by. Finally around 6pm we arrived in Garran, a suburb of Canberra, where we were met by Matthew, our host for the next couple of nights.

The avant-garde architecture of the National Museum of Australia

As well as adding to our list of state capitals visited, Canberra is also home to the National Museum, where we had been told there was a fund of information about Australia, both after and before it was settled by the early white immigrants. We had come to realise that the fate of Australia’s original inhabitants was not something that seemed to cause much concern to many people, including some of our own family, and we were eager to learn more about these neglected people who had once lived so proudly in such harsh lands. The first few galleries in the museum focused on the white settlers, how they struggled to adapt their European ways and the farming knowledge they brought with them, to live successfully in the very different conditions they found surrounded by nature that was completely alien to them.

One of the tribal elders whose story helped us understand the history of the original peoples of Australia

Their story was interesting enough in its own way, but it was bizarre to realise that they appeared to make little or no attempt to learn from the locals, indeed finding them to be more of a nuisance than a fund of knowledge. So we were very pleased to finally find ourselves in a couple of galleries where we learnt the aboriginals’ side of the story as told by many elders with first-hand experience of their treatment as second-class “citizens”, and gleaned much historical detail passed down through their families. The fates of many of the Stolen Children, the half-caste children of Australian Aboriginals and of Torres Strait Islanders who had inter-married with the white settlers, who were forcefully removed from their families to be brought up in mission schools and white foster homes, is another particularly dark period in white man’s relations with Australia’s native peoples, and was well documented in the exhibits.

We ended up spending most of the day in the museum, which was just as well, it being a grey rainy day outside. When we eventually left, we took a tour around Canberra’s CBD and the artificial lake overlooked by The National Carillon. This latter edifice is a bell-tower gifted to Australia by Great Britain to celebrate the 50^thanniversary of the founding of Canberra, a purpose-built capital city that had been much maligned in its early years as “a cemetery with lights”, “the ruin of a good sheep station” and “six suburbs in search of a city”. And after driving around the CBD I’m sorry to say that neither of us was overly impressed by this rather ordinary city, full of post-war concrete architecture, and having a city-centre that was both dirty and untidy and had little about it that was graceful. It was in fact a pleasure to get back to our little pad out in the ‘burbs’ and the welcoming sounds of the birds in the trees.

Many colourful birds congregated in the garden in Garah. I think this one is a King Parrot, either a juvenile or a female! The enormous variety of parrot-like birds in Oz is amazing and identifying them requires an encyclopaedic memory!

Leaving Canberra the next morning, we continued heading north towards Orange. The drive took us through yet more agricultural lands with the now familiar scatterings of sheep and cattle, and as the day wore on, the scenery became more hilly and greener. As we got closer to Orange, we passed lots of fruit orchards and vineyards, though with many more kilometres still to travel, we decided against stopping to taste the latter’s produce! In the afternoon, as weariness began to take its toll, we arrived in the small town of Cowra where we came across one of the usual brown tourist signs saying “Japanese Garden”. During WWll there was a prisoner-of-war camp near the town confining a mixture of Italian and Japanese POWs. The story goes that there was a mass escape attempt by the Japanese prisoners that resulted in the deaths of two hundred of them along with three of the Australian soldiers guarding them.

Celine takes it easy in the Japanese Garden in Cowra

After the war, both sides let bygones be bygones and the result of this rapprochement was a charming peaceful garden with waterfalls, large koi carp swimming in the ponds, and many beautiful plants and trees; it was, in fact, the ideal place for us to slough off our fatigue, eat our sandwiches, and enjoy an afternoon ‘cuppa’.

The Junction Hotel, one of three old pubs along Canowindra’s “Historic Main Street”

A few miles further on, we stopped briefly to look at the “Historic Main Street” of the small township of Canowindra and buy some fruit and veggies before driving on to Orange and another night’s stay courtesy of an AirBnB host.

My dear Celine was still under the weather, so the next morning we visited a local doctor to get some idea what was ailing her. Somewhat buoyed by his prognosis, we collected the prescribed medications from a local pharmacy and took a quick turn around the city of Orange before going on our way and driving at a leisurely pace towards Coonabarabran.

Sheep huddling together in the welcome shade of a gum tree.

The sun was strong, the day was hot, and the scenery became flatter and drier. There were still many herds of sheep and cattle, but in the main they stood around listlessly and often sheltered in groups in the small amount of shade to be found beneath the scraggy gum trees; the farming conditions were by no means as attractive as we had seen closer to the south and east coasts. We pulled off the road for lunch at what was at the time a quiet ‘B’ road but rapidly turned into a noisy, major thoroughfare as several of the 34-wheel ‘B-double’ juggernauts thundered past, many of them transporting livestock; so much for our own hopes of a peaceful half-hour in the shade.

A livestock-carrying, 34-wheeler ‘B-Double’ disturbing our lunchtime peace.

After passing through the town of Wellington, Google Maps diverted us off the main highway and onto a very narrow country road which eventually included ten kilometres or more of ‘gravel’ road which was bumpier and lumpier than any we had encountered earlier and, rather surprisingly, had many puddles in the ditches alongside. Eventually, being in dire need of liquid refreshment, we did what we perhaps should have done more often on our trip, we stopped at The Royal Hotel (= ‘pub’) in the very small township of Mendooran, population about three hundred!

A rare sight indeed! Celine relaxing in the bar of the Royal Hotel, Mendooran

The obliging young barman who looked very much the typical street-wise city lad surprised us by telling us that he had never travelled outside New South Wales, though he had once visited Sydney! We then chatted briefly with his uncle, the proprietor of this worthy establishment, who dressed like one of the local stockmen but when asked if he now preferred owning a pub to life on the range, assured us the pub was definitely the better option in view of the lack of beer in the outback! He also resolved the mystery of the puddles in this very dry territory; a couple of days previously they had received a very localised, brief but extremely heavy dump of rain, the unusual nature of which partly explained the jovial nature of the bar’s occupants!

As the hot shimmering sun sank to the horizon, we arrived in Coonabarabran and our lodgings in a very dilapidated old house and were met by our charming hostess Grace. As we entered her home, the very original state of the hallway caused us some misgivings about our choice of abode, but when she showed us our beautifully clean, comfortable, newly decorated bedroom, and the open plan kitchen and living room which had been similarly refurbished, we realise we had actually found ourselves a real gem. We learnt that the building had originally been constructed as the town’s maternity home where Grace herself had been born. Grace and her husband had bought the property some twenty years previously, but it was only recently that she had finally found time to start giving the heritage building the TLC it desperately needed.

Grace told us about the local Warrumbungle Observatory, privately owned by the retired astronomer Peter Starr, and we decided to go there that evening. Josh, the young man who made the presentation to our small group, was very knowledgable and had four or five different telescopes set up enabling us to get wonderful views of the Moon, Jupiter and it’s four moons, and several galaxies. We also met there an amateur astronomer from Wales, who leased one of the small observatory “pods” where he kept one of his three telescopes he has around the world to study and photograph “dying” galaxies; some people have fascinating hobbies!

Grace’s home in Coonabarabran. A bit dilapidated but the solar panels should have given us a clue that things may be better inside.

The next morning we awoke to find that Grace had left for her work at a shop selling school uniforms and the like, and so we took a leisurely breakfast while meeting Jo, the young “woman who does”, and the neighbour who mowed the lawn. We were somewhat sorry to leave as this was such an interesting place, and it would have been lovely to stay a long time and help Grace fulfil her dreams of fully restoring her graceful home to it’s former glory. We hung on till well past 11am but we had to move on eventually; and so we continued our gentle progress north, aiming for the city of Inverell.

Fire scorched trees and new growth in Warrumbungle NP

But first of all, we retraced our steps past the observatory and up into the hills to visit Warrambungle NP where we walked the short trail up to Whitegum Lookout from where we had great views of the extinct volcanic plugs of the “Crooked Mountains” – a loose translation of the park’s aboriginal name. Like so many places we had visited in Oz, the park is recovering from a major forest fire; in 2013, this fire had passed through mainly at ground level, so the trees we walked past were bursting with new growth as young shoots sprouted optimistically from the flame blackened tree trunks. Later in the day we would drive through another fire damaged forest, where the fire had been mainly through the tree-tops and the blackened branches were sending out masses of little leaves which made the trees look as if they were covered in moss. It is truly wonderful to see how nature handles these catastrophes, many of which are nature’s own doing anyway.

The drive there and back took us through some lovely scenery and we were also well amused by the locals’ very artistic postboxes at the roadside. Passing back through Coonabarabran we filled up the fuel tank and drove out into some more really flat countryside, still mostly pastoral with some croplands, but all of very poor quality.

After a couple of hours however, we arrived in a quite hilly, rocky area, and following a sign for a much-needed rest stop, we found ourselves in the car-park for Mount Kaputar NP. After eating our sandwiches at a well shaded picnic table, we walked along Sawn Rocks Track, another trail among low-level fire-damaged trees, which led to a spectacular cliff of hexagonal basalt columns, some of which had fallen down and looked like neat piles of sawn stone logs.

There we met a couple of English gentlefolk about our age, travelling in a very luxurious Mercedes camper van, and had an amusing chat in posh accents; this was much to my linguist wife’s delight as it confirmed for her that I really wasn’t exactly the well ‘brung up’ English gentleman she had once imagined!

Our digs that evening in Inverell were very different from the previous night. We were met by our hostess who, excited to be receiving her first “foreign” guests, gushingly showed us into our quarters through a side door off our “en-suite” garage. The apartment was rather bare though clean and spacious enough, but the bathroom was miniscule and the kitchen decidedly limited. At least we had a working television, in front of which we sat eating our tasty salad supper with some of Grace’s chooky eggs, before retiring to our slumbers.

Next day we set off much earlier, there being little reason to tarry. But before we set out on the road we stopped in to look around Inverell’s CBD and were pleasantly surprised – though I don’t know why we should have been, considering the many fine towns we had seen on our travels. We took our usual stroll up and down the main thoroughfares, taking photos and looking in shop windows, and were struck by the unusual sight of several groups of aborigines, especially around the Law Courts, as we had previously seen very few signs of aborigines living among the whites. When I asked one of the guys, as he was leaning against his truck enjoying a snack of chips and gravy, “What’s going on?”, he replied “Nothing special”. When I explained that we were tourists interested in their ongoing problems he said “I guessed that. None of the locals ever take photographs of the Court House!” We found out later that there had recently been a rather violent fracas between a couple of the families resulting in police being called, and that was the combatants’ day in court.

Leroy, Irene and Celine, with our painting of an Echidna, an ant-eater that looks like a cross between a porcupine and a hedgehog.

Back towards the town centre, Celine stopped at Aboriginelle, a small art gallery, and while we decided which of the beautiful paintings to buy, we chatted with the artist, Elenore Binge Harrison, and her partner, Leroy, both of whom were teachers in the local school. It was an interesting conversation, Leroy in particular having some very strong views about the lack of a treaty between the native tribes and the white settlers, that left the original peoples in a much worse position than say the Maoris in New Zealand or the N.American Indian tribes. Then with our delicately detailed painting of an echnida in hand, we headed to the car again, stopping briefly for coffee and hot-cross buns at Funki Munki, a café-cum-health food store.

Ruston steam engine used on local farms to power threshing machines and other belt-driven machinery

With the car and us refuelled, we soon arrived at the outskirts of Glen Innes and an old hospital dating back to 1902, now lovingly(?) referred to as the “Land of the Beardies” Historic House Museum. We decided there probably wasn’t enough to see beyond what we read on the various plaques outside the buildings, and so we took a quick look at the old farm machinery in and around the adjacent “Bill Cameron’s Machine Shed”, before driving into the town. This town was even nicer than Inverell, being both very old and charmingly laid out with wide city streets, many of which were tree-lined. We noted another common factor among Australian country towns was the large number of independent bookshops selling both used and new volumes.

And in Glen Innes we also came across a couple of gun shops, notably one in what was originally a bank building. The proprietor of the second shop came out to talk as I was taking a picture of her window and assured us that, unlike in the States, she wasn’t allowed to sell any automatic weapons, and gun controls were far, far stricter ever since the 1996 massacre in Tasmania.

As we drove along the New England Highway looking for a good place to stop for our usual mid-afternoon luncheon picnic, we happened upon yet another national park, namely Girraween NP in the midst of the so-called “Granite Belt”.

We ate our lunch elegantly seated at a picnic table, and then walked along Granite Arch Trail alongside Bald Rock Creek where it flowed across and around large flat slabs of granite. The trail then started upwards through another forest of gum trees among a jumble of enormous rocks, three of which formed the impressive arch. A large kangaroo stood tall as he watched us warily before loping off into the undergrowth.

We had been so lucky in finding so many delightful places on this journey. And then as we drove away from this particular find, two more kangaroos gave us a perfect demonstration of why so many of them end up dead at the roadside. They hopped along the ditch beside us for a short way and then one of them suddenly decided the few feet lead he had on us gave it ample space to dart across the road in front of us, an exercise he repeated some yards further on; sadly they seem to have absolutely no idea of the danger that vehicles present.

Our last night on the road was spent in the home of a pleasant easy-going lady in Warwick, where we had booked a little en-suite arrangement that suited our needs ideally. We even treated ourselves to a tasty evening meal at Soban House, a Korean/Japanese restaurant in a town with very few eating establishments. Our short drive back to Bli Bli the next day took us along mostly narrow country roads, past well-husbanded mixed farms, through Gatton and Esk. Finally we arrived at the edge of the highlands and went down the steep twisty rocky-sided road from Peachtree to Woreema before joining the M1 motorway for the last twenty miles or so. We had forgotten about the change of hour between Queensland and New South Wales, and much to my big sister’s surprise arrived an hour earlier than scheduled; well actually a day earlier, as our e-mail telling them our expected day of return seemed to have been lost in the ether!

Nevertheless we were glad to get ‘home’ and relaxed contentedly in the knowledge that the next day we didn’t have to drive anywhere at all. All the same we still had our final adventure to look forward to, three days in Kakadu NP in the tropical lands around Darwin.

Coming soon:

Oz 2018 – part 5 – Excursion into the Top End

We go north to Darwin, look for seawater crocodiles in Kakadu NP and bathe beneath the waterfalls of Litchfield NP.

Postscript: “We’re here”, a poem written by Phyllis Pitchford in 1984, succinctly stating the difficulties that Australian’s aboriginal people have in gaining equality.

Oz 2018 – Part 3 – Cross country in search of Kościuszko

We left Tasmania with heavy hearts for not only had we enjoyed such a happy relaxed week with Alistair and his family, but we both thought that the State itself was the best piece of Australia we had seen to date. The major objectives of our Aussie trip had been achieved, we had been warmly welcomed by five arms of the Mckenzie family, we had visited three State capitals and had already driven around more than two thousand kilometres of Australia’s wonderful coastline. Furthermore, we had seen a veritable plethora of some of the amazing Australian wildlife that seems to be so abundant, albeit rather too much in the form of roadkill, especially in Tasmania, I’m sad to say. We still had one special trip up our sleeve involving sea-water crocodiles, and there was still the sixth arm of the family to meet, my youngest niece, Philippa, who was scheduled to soon be flying in to the Sunshine Coast from her home in Margaret River, Western Australia, a destination that we had decided was one too far to include in this already very busy vacation.

However, we had not really experienced very much of inland Australia, we had failed to visit the country’s capital city, we had not seen Mt Kościuszko, the country’s highest mountain, and we still had to experience the famed Great Ocean Road. So, instead of taking the direct route back to Bli Bli, a journey of around eighteen hundred kilometres for which I had reckoned about five days of relatively easy driving, we decided to take a few detours and ended up taking twelve days and driving nearly twice as far!

Once we had disembarked in Melbourne and bought some supplies for the road at the local IGA, instead of heading north, we turned southwest following signs for the Great Ocean Road which we eventually joined at Anglesea – a very different place from the eponymous island off the north coast of Wales that I remembered from my childhood!

Some of my readers may be aware that Australia has a bit of a reputation for its surf and surfers, and as we had already learnt from my nephews, the south Australian coast has some of the best surf in the world. Thus it was no surprise that as we drove west, the surf breaks became bigger and wilder and the shoreline got rockier and more dramatic.

Memorial Arch celebrating the ‘diggers’ who built the Great Ocean Road

But to make sure we understood the true significance of this splendid coastal drive, we stopped first of all at the Memorial Arch, which celebrates the three thousand returned Australian servicemen who built the Great Ocean Road a few years after the end of the Great War in memory of their fallen comrades. After a couple of hours, we reached the small seaside village of Lorne, where we sat at a park bench by the ocean and shared our sandwich lunch with a pair of parakeets, not to mention the usual gaggle of ‘flying rats’, a.k.a. seagulls. The parakeets made themselves seem so friendly that a young lady even asked us if the birds were ours; evidently, she hadn’t been in Australia long!

Celine shares her lunch with a couple of friendly parakeets while the seagulls look on enviously!

An aspect of Australia that is not so very different from California is the ever-present danger of forest fires. Wherever we had been, we had seen signs indicating the current danger-level of fires occurring, and on many a day, we had come across the latent effects of the multitude of fires that had occurred in recent months and years. This particular day there were several fires burning inland from our route and whilst in Lorne we met a detachment of fire-fighters, ready with their off-road fire engines to be called to action. With no reports of fires reaching the coast, we continued on our way stopping a second time for coffee and a very yummy brownie at “Balhanna Cottage”, a health-food café in Apollo Bay, another charming small village on this coast where such communities are few and far between. Many of these places were originally established in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and it was easy to imagine how remote the settlers must have felt before the Great Ocean Road was built. After Apollo Bay, the road turned away from the sea for several miles skirting inland of Cape Otway, and apart from a quick peek at the Cape itself, we didn’t see much more of the coast until we were close to the Twelve Apostles Marine Park.

The weather got wilder as we drove west and Cape Otway looked quite impressive defending the shore against the incoming rollers. An hour later the heavens opened!

The weather had become more threatening by the minute, and as we started on the short walk to see those much-photographed hunks of rock sticking out of the Southern Ocean, the heavens opened making picture-taking an impossibility and the likelihood of spending the rest of the afternoon sopping wet a distinct possibility. So, we jumped back into the car and drove on to Port Campbell, where we booked into the Loch Ard Motor Inn and Apartments, bought more supplies at the small grocery across the road, and finished the day noshing on very garlicy ‘home-cooked’ pasta in our fairly commodious accommodation.

Our last view of the Southern Ocean, at Port Campbell.

The next morning, we really had to face it, we weren’t going to see the sea again for another ten or twelve days. So, we took a stroll along the tidy main street to join the seagulls on the beach for one last walk at the seaside watching the breakers in the distance dissipating their force on the bar at the mouth of a pretty little cove before rippling gently up onto the sand. And then it was time to set off into the unknown Australian interior, our destination being the 1850s gold-boom town of Bendigo. We had very little idea what to expect on this part of the journey and were nicely surprised by the quality of the towns we passed through that first day.

Fine early 20th-century architecture and wide streets in Ballarat.

We had our morning coffee break and did a bit of shopping at Ballarat, enjoying its wide main street and lots of elegant late 19^th/early 20^thcentury buildings. Then we went to Daylesford to taste the waters at the natural springs; they were all fairly horrible and definitely not suitable for filling up our water bottles.

The sulfur spring waters weren’t tasty but at least the town of Daylesford was doing its bit to defend the country!

Near to Mt. Franklin, we turned off at a sign saying “Chocolate Mill” where we used the loo, admired the artistic ironwork, and came away with four hand-made chocolates that we consumed immediately, after we got back into the car.

Zany metal art outside the Chocolate Mill.

We shopped for knitting wool in Castlemaine which seemed to have some interesting shops, and much to our surprise, we found the ideal wool in a MaxiFoods supermarket.

The concrete bus stops weren’t usually very attractive – this was a notable exception!

A few miles further on, we went ‘offroad’ up a steep trail following a sign to a “Diggings Trail” hoping to see where gold was found in the old days but gave up after a mile or so and instead stopped atop a rough gravel knoll to have our picnic lunch and giving our driver some much-needed energy!

Probably the oldest building we saw during our trip, this was in the very original gold mining town of Maldon.

The final stop of the day was at Maldon, a very charming original old gold-mining town; the oldest building that we found there dated back to 1854 along with a butcher business which was established in 1857. It also had a traditional part-time fire service that we watched in action as the firefighters responded to the siren arriving by foot, bicycle, and truck to jump on the – very modern – engine as it departed up Main Street. We were once more reserving our accommodation using Airbnb, and we were grateful to that evening’s hostess, Jo, for her suggestions of places to visit that had made our day so interesting. Bendigo is a fair-sized city of 96,000 or more inhabitants, but Jo’s home was in a quiet green suburb, and the accommodation she provided was probably one of the nicest of our whole trip.

Our Bendigo hostess, Jo, with son, Jack, Missie, the collie, and Celine outside her very comfortable lodgings.

So we were glad to meet her the next morning, along with her young son, Jack, and their friendly border collie, Missie, and learn how the house and garden were very much a work in progress for her and her firefighter husband – firefighting seeming to have become a regular theme on this part of our trip!

We drove into Bendigo’s CBD before travelling on and once again found ourselves admiring these Aussie cities. The city planners of the early twentieth century seemed to have had a very good idea of what makes a city livable, and this one with yet more fine architecture, broad main streets, and green parks was another fine example. However, we did have some disappointments, Shepparton being one of them. Around mid-morning, after driving through a lot of uninteresting flat dry farmland, we thought we had arrived there and stopped outside a Salvation Store with grain silos across the street and more of the enormous ‘B-Double’ truck trailer rigs thundering past.

Typical “B-double”, the 34 wheeler juggernauts that thunder down country roads and main streets alike!

We wanted some plastic containers with lids for our comestibles, and the Sally Army store proved to be a good place for such stuff. Chatting with the sales ladies as we do, we were surprised to learn that this rather downtrodden town was actually Mooroopa, still a few miles from Shepparton. So we jumped back into the car, hopeful of an improvement, only to find Shepparton if anything a whole lot worse. The main feature of the town was a dilapidated steel observation tower open to the public but not offering any very promising views; the architecture was mainly ‘60s concrete ugly, and most of the locals seemed to be overweight and looked thoroughly bored hanging around the streets rather aimlessly. We did manage to find a reasonable cup of coffee and the public loos were very clean as we had come to expect in Oz, but we certainly weren’t inspired to walk the main streets any more than necessary.

Our next chosen waypoint was the small town of Cobram, where we intended to turn east and drive along the Murray Valley Highway to Albury. Somewhere in Cobram’s vicinity, Google Maps seemed to get totally discombobulated and took us off on a minor road towards goodness knows where, till finally we took control ourselves and eventually reached the highway, missing Cobram completely. It was a hot afternoon and shade was scarce, so spotting a house with a tree-filled garden down a well-kept gravel road, we parked next to the garden gate and ate our sandwiches in the relative cool. Up till then the drive that day had been along miles of very straight roads through bone-dry pastureland, from which the poor cattle were grazing ‘living hay’, and the only menace had been the occasional 34-wheeler monster breathing down our necks.

Close encounter with another big truck on the bridge over the River Ovens.

Several miles east of Cobram, the scenery became much greener, and we stopped just past a bridge across the very lifeless River Ovens to take one or two pics. Up close, it looked more like a swamp, but all the same, it was pretty photogenic; we just had to breath in and press ourselves against the concrete parapet when the big trucks swept by, taking no prisoners as they careered along at their 100kph legal limit.

At Yarrawonga, a few miles further on, we drove over the bridge across Lake Malwala, created by damming the Murray River. The lake seems to have made Yarrawonga a bit of a tourist town, but it has also resulted in a stark landscape of bear white skeletons of dead trees standing in the shallow water for miles around.

My dear Celine was still suffering from a debilitating cold that she had been incubating for the last few days. So, as soon as we had got ourselves ensconced in our IKEA furnished burrow beneath a rather smart modern home in Lavington, a hillside community on the outskirts of Albury, I nipped out to the local grocery store for supplies, and, as I got back into the car realised, I didn’t have the address with me, and I had very little phone signal. Slight panic, but nothing that couldn’t be solved by a bit of “reverse-driving”, a bit like reverse-engineering! Anyway, got back safely, in the end, to find Celine tucked up in bed and ready to be fed our salad supper, like a baby bird.

Albury church and park; ideal town for a peaceful afternoon

So, come the morning, we decided a day of rest from driving was called for and opted to stay a couple of nights in Albury; luckily, our hostess obligingly accepted our changed plans, as long as we left at 9.00am sharp the next morning as it was Albury Cup day, the “biggest social event of the year”, in which she was playing an active part though not on horseback. As it happened, we chose a good place to spend the day as Albury is an attractive small city with lots of green space including a very peaceful Botanical Garden, an ideal place for a cool restful afternoon stroll.

The peace and quiet continued in the Botanical Garden

The next morning, feeling much refreshed, we set off smartly at the appointed hour heading towards Jindabyne, a popular tourist destination overlooking the lake of the same name, near the Snowy Mountains and close to Kosciuszko National Park. This was quite a major detour which would eventually take us to Canberra, but the main objective of the day was to get as close as possible to Mount Kosciuszko, the highest peak in Australia.

A few miles outside Albury, we stopped briefly at the Bonegilla Migrant and Reception Centre, a camp set up for receiving and training immigrants to Australia in the post World War ll immigration boom. It wasn’t a very inspiring place and must have depressed some of the occupants escaping from the horrors of the war in Europe, but obviously, the authorities felt it was a necessary step in their integration into the Australian way of life. So we tarried not, and before long found ourselves at the entrance to the National Park at Khancoban, where we dutifully paid our $17 daily fee, stopped in the café for our mid-morning cuppa, and on the recommendation of a charming park ranger, drove to the Geehi Day Parking area, expecting to see one of the ever-elusive platypii (-uses?). We didn’t of course, but we did have a nice stroll along the river bank, before picnicking at a park bench and watching a rather energetic bunch of bikers from the Jindabyne Cycling Club preparing for the next stage of their arduous day’s ride along the park’s hilly roads.

“Mt.Kościuszko seen from the Victorian border”, painted by Eugene von Gerard in 1866.

Thwarted by the lack of platypus sightings but unfazed, we had fun driving the twisty mountain roads in scenery comprising yet more gum trees to the ski village of Thredbo, where there was a chair lift to take us up to the Mt.Kosciuszko lookout. The lift ride actually finished a good two kilometres hike away from the lookout, and as it was late in the afternoon, time was short. However, much refreshed by the clear mountain air, Celine set the pace, while I followed somewhat more slowly, and, I’m ashamed to admit, didn’t reach the goal. Finally, Celine came back looking radiant having seen the mountain named after her famous compatriot, General Tadeusz Kościuszko, by the Polish explorer Sir Paul Edmund Strzelecki.

Although the chairlift and ensuing hike was a bit of a rush, it had been exhilarating to be high above the tree line in a landscape of rocks and heather, so very different from the seemingly never-ending forests of eucalyptus trees of which we had seen so much on our travels. When we got back down into Thredbo at about 5 pm, everything was closing up, so we continued quickly on to our lodgings in Jindabyne. These turned out to be small, but clean and quite adequate, and they even had a washer and dryer which we made good use of as we watched “The Day of the Jackal” on TV while eating a Woolworths’ roast chicken for dinner. All in all, it had been a pretty satisfying day.

Sir Paul Edmund Strzelecki, renowned Polish explorer.

The next morning, we took a turn into the village and walked in the lakeside park, where we found an impressive monument to the aforementioned Sir Paul Strzelecki, who was made a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London and was awarded its gold medal for “exploration in the southeastern portion of Australia”. The Society still displays his huge geological map of New South Wales and Tasmania for public viewing. He was also made a fellow of the Royal Society, having gained widespread recognition as an explorer as well as a philanthropist. Nearby, there was a much more modest stone, topped by an Irish harp, dedicated to the Irish labourers who helped make the Snowy Mountain Hydro Project a practicality.

My lovely lady, happy with her veggie juice.

The locals were also out enjoying the day, with a group of youngsters risking life and limb on their scooters in the skateboard park, and a much more sedate bunch of senior citizens doing their thing on the bowling green. A very happy scene to have found, before getting back on the road, we rewarded ourselves with large slices of banana bread, the “best veggie juice in Oz” for Celine and a damn fine mug of black coffee for me!

Oz 2018, part 2 – South to Tasmania via Sydney and Melbourne

As much as these two rain-deprived Californians enjoyed the constant cloudy wet weather that greeted us during our first week on the inaptly named Sunshine Coast, it was almost a relief to be back on the road again and heading south to different climes. Cescy and Richard joined us in their car for the first part of our journey, so they could show us the village of Iluka where they lived for ten years before deciding to retreat north again. The drive there, going down the two-lane A1 highway in heavy rain with 34 wheeler juggernaut trucks like small trains – locally known as “B-Doubles” – breathing down our necks, was fairly fraught, and we eventually lost sight of our companions, not catching them up again until we found them exercising the dog in a small park on the outskirts of Iluka. But by then the rain had stopped, the sun was peeking through the clouds, we easily found The Iluka Motel, and we were able to relax and enjoy this little settlement well off the beaten track.

Sedger’s Reef Hotel – posh dining Aussie style

Richard told me how they originally found the place when, many years ago, their sailboat developed engine troubles as they were working their way up the coast against the prevailing wind, and they were rescued by a passing local fisherman who towed them into the harbour for the price of a round of drinks. This, we are coming to realise, is fairly typical of the neighbourly attitude of the ordinary Aussies who are always ready to stop and have a friendly chat. For supper that evening, we ate one of the dozen or more variants of the good old fish and chip supper offered at the same bar, Sedger’s Reef Hotel, where that salvage bill had been settled, and my bro’-in-law assured us it had not changed much over the years; the raucous chat among the fishermen was still fairly unintelligible as the beer flowed freely and the customary odour of deep fried food floated through from the kitchen. The building itself that looks like it was once a warehouse or similar, had seen better days, but the atmosphere of bonhommie was thoroughly beguiling and the schooners (half a litre or about a pint) of Toohey’s New also went down pretty well!

Known for their sense of humour, this kookaburrah laughed so much he nearly fell off his perch!

This land is full of new and for us unusual birds, and we are constantly grabbing for camera and camcorder. One unfortunate consequence of this occasional frenetic activity was the loss of a very nice lightweight pair of sunglasses as we took our early evening stroll around the village, partly to see the house Cescy and Richard once lived in. When we realised they were missing, we immediately retraced our steps along the well manicured grass verges quite confident in their retrieval, but it was not to be. As we had seen hardly anybody else around, we had no reason to suspect a felonious local and can only assume that one of these exotic birds we had been photographing had jackdaw-like instincts for shiny objects lying on the ground – a “laughing” kookaburrah perhaps?

Celine meets Russell, a genuine “Aussie Hippie Surfing Dude”, taking time off from tree-trimming.

The next day we said our adieus to sister and bro’-in-law at the Main Beach, and as I walked across the finest sand ever to dip my toes into the incoming surf, Celine chatted up a “Genuine Aussie Hippie Surfing Dude” – his words – named Russell, an arboriculturalist by trade when not playing in the waves. Soon we found ourselves on the road heading south again towards the strangely named town of South West Rocks. We started back on the A1, which is undergoing major roadworks to bring it up to near-motorway standards. Much of the land it crosses is floodplain territory and the work involves trucking in enormous quantities of ballast to provide a stable base for the roadway, plus the construction of numerous bridges to cross the many waterways running down to the sea from the nearby Great Dividing Range (the many estuaries of these same waterways also make for a wonderfully diverse coastline.) As a consequence of all this work, the A1 is a mixture of country lane, diversions and part-finished dual carriageway; so in many ways it is much more interesting to drive along than the new fast open motorway it will probably be one day, though not for a good while yet it would seem! When we reached the old town of Grafton, historically the first river port on this part of the Australian coastline, we turned inland, and after a pit stop at biker-friendly Coutts Tavern in Coutts Crossing to satisfy the inner man and woman with a couple of rather sloppy Harry’s Pies, we headed towards the hills.

From then on, the drive was sublime. Lots of cattle farms slowly gave way to sub-tropical forest as the road twisted and turned up the hills; eventually, at its highest point we came to more open farmland and pine forest. Everywhere it seems, the ubiquitous Eucalyptus grows in one of its many variants. We crossed a bridge of rusting reinforced concrete beams across the pretty Nymboida River. At Dorrigo we stopped to look more closely at an enormous collection of soot-blackened steam engines and old rotting railway carriages waiting for the proposed Railway Museum to see the light of day; a collection like that would be the envy of many a steam train enthusiast! Coming back down towards sea-level again, we happened upon a small-holding where the owner had a small flock of sheep, and, joy of joys, a half dozen emus in a paddock beside the road – more photos for the album!

Arriving at South West Rocks in the later afternoon, we checked out three or four inns before settling on the very historic Heritage Guest House, right on the waterfront. The next morning, we took our breakfast outside on the verandah overlooking the neighbouring cafe, making us feel like Lord and Lady Muck keeping an eye on the hoi polloi below. We walked out to the headland enjoying the sweep of the ocean rolling up the beach, dodging the drizzle as we walked the strand chatting to locals walking their dogs, and examined the few remains of the many wrecks of ships that mistook the bay for a safe haven.

As the drizzle turned into real rain, we drove a few kilometres to Arakoon National Park to visit Trial Bay Gaol, to learn about the harsh life of the convicts that were taken there to construct a long breakwater that would make the bay into a safe anchorage. Luckily for the beauty of the bay, the idea was a failure and little remains of the construction; however, the gaol itself is an interesting bit of Aussie history, made much more acceptable by the herd of kangaroos that now call it home, keeping the lawns trim, and, unlike the convicts, staying inside or outside the gates at night as they please.

Our first close encounter with kangaroos at Trial Bay Gaol.

Nelson Bay was our next two night stopover, where we woke up yet again to the sounds of birds chattering in the garden outside and breakfasted long and slow as we chatted with our hostess about local attractions and discussed the vagaries of welfare states and the problems with spoilt modern kids! This B & B was built on a steep slope with parking spaces atop a driveway that tested our SUV and challenged my driving skills as the acute angle meant I could hardly see over the bonnet.

Our first koala, the only one in Tiligerry Habitat!

Desperate to see our first koala, we went first of all to Tilligerry Habitat, a volunteer-run nature centre, where our guide, Sam, directed us to the tree where the one and only bear in town was resting, a female, he said, that was probably resting after an encounter with the dominant male that was no doubt somewhere close by. Multiple photos later, we finished our wander along the boardwalk, having searched unsuccessfully for the errant male but instead enjoyed the nature and the bay with the receding tide.

Lookouts with fine views were on order for the rest of the day and the first was Gan Gan Lookout on the way back into the town. We were able to drive up to the top and park next to the mobile phone antenna mast, a short walk around which gave us a good view of the estuary and the town below, but not much else. Tomaree Head Lookout on the other side of town was another matter altogether.

Another Australian exclusive, an echidna snuffling in the undergrowth for ants and other insects.

Parking the car at sea level, we commenced the 1.5 km hike to the top of the 161m high peak, and fairly soon we were greeted by snuffling sounds as an echidna shuffled into view. Looking somewhat like a cross between a porcupine and a hedgehog, this unusual creature is actually an anteater, and as we watched him (or her?) absolutely fascinated, it stuffed its beaked face deep into the piles of dead leaves and undergrowth beside the path and continued to snuffle up insects. The footpath was well constructed with a mix of rocky steps, steel staircases and platforms, taking us eventually to the remains of the WWll radar station right on the peak, the views from which were breathtaking. The headland guards the south side of the entrance to Nelson Bay and we had a full 360 degree panorama of the sea, the coast and the bay.

The golden sanded trio of Zenith, Wreck and Box Beaches, seen from Tomaree Head Lookout, Nelson Bay NSW.

Looking south we had the most beautiful view of our trip to date, the golden sands of the trio of fairly inaccessible Zenith, Wreck and Box beaches, and further away, Fingal Spit and Shark Island with Point Stephen Lighthouse thereon. It was quite breathtaking and well worth the fairly tough climb to get to the top. The end of the afternoon was not so special as, tempted by the view across the harbour, we chose a lousy restaurant for an early dinner of the most awful seafood spaghetti, that totally shattered our hopes of light Italian pasta with fresh-off-the-boat shellfish.

‘Roos love golf courses and make excellent lawn-mowers!

Luckily we still had ahead of us the pleasure of watching a large group of kangaroos as they congregated on the local golf course at dusk for their evening meal of tasty well-kept grass. We kept on watching until it was nearly too dark to see anything any more, and we retired happily to our digs.

The next morning we started our final drive into Sydney where we were going to stay with my eldest niece Nicola and her family; it is certainly a great way to travel around a continent as large as Oz, having family to visit in so many great places! It was a fairly short drive compared to the previous hops and we opted to follow the Pacific Highway for much of the way, making sure we avoided the many toll roads that we had been warned about on the approach to the city. However, our hosts of the previous evening had said we mustn’t miss the “spectacular” dunes along 30+ kilometres of the Worimi Regional Park coastline, and we duly turned east at the signpost for Stockton Beach, where we were faced with a sign advising us that one had to have a permit to drive on the beach. Interpreting this as being the limit we could take our admittedly fairly competent Nissan X-Trail, we parked and set off on foot towards the distant piles of windswept sand. Then we saw a very ordinary saloon driving towards us, the driver of which suggested that we go back and get our SUV as there was quite a long walk, “. . . though just be careful of the big dogs that are protecting their owner’s truck in the little parking space at the end”.

Typical fine, clean Aussie sand in the dunes at Worimi Regional Park.

Gladly we followed his advice, found the aforesaid vicious dogs to be really quite friendly, and tramped up the side of the hot sand dune till we could see the sea.

Fairly impressive but not really “spectacular”, we appreciated the excuse to exercise our lower limbs, and soon returned to the highway. We skirted around Newcastle which looked fairly industrial and eventually arrived at Nicola’s home in Middle Cove, an up-market waterfront suburb of Sydney.

My first swim in Australian waters – wonderful!

We have now learnt that what we have been doing is “relly-surfing”, taking advantage of the hospitality of your family connections, something that the locals seem to be quite familiar with. For starters we had a busy long-weekend exploring bits of Sydney and some of it’s outlying suburbs. Nicola took us on a hike in Ku-ring-gai Chase NP showing us some of the beautiful local scenery that makes Sydney such a desirable place to live; and there at last I was finally tempted in for a swim.

Looking towards Pittwater, part of the Hawkesbury River estuary, just north of Sydney

Pittwater and Avalon, nearby both of which my sister lived for several years when her family were young, were both very enviable, lots of sheltered sailing waters, little coves with boats on their moorings, and all within easy reach of Sydney’s “CBD” or central business district. We took a ferry to Manly which gave us great views of Sydney Harbour on the way. We enjoyed a Saturday morning visit to the produce market in the old railway sheds in the Burlington district, and a walk around much-gentrified Paddington where very small two-storey row houses, the main visual virtue of which was their very ornate cast iron balcony railings, sold for upwards of two million Aussie dollars.

Paddington, a district of Sydney, goes upmarket!

We strolled through the Botanical Gardens, wonderfully situated on the waterfront close by the famous Harbour Bridge, where we discovered the true character of kookaburrahs. As we drank our coffee on the cafe terrace, we watched one of these “sweet” birds suddenly dive down from a nearby signpost and grab a piece of cake out of the hand of a young lady as she was about to take a bite, and carry it off to share it with its mate waiting on the nearby lawn.

A couple of thieving kookaburrahs feeling well satisfied with themselves after eating homemade cake!

And of course, not wanting to miss out on Australian culture, we went to a performance of La Traviata in the Opera House. But best of all, it was a real joy getting such a warm welcome from Nicola and Robert, being fed so well and meeting all the family.

Lunch with some of the Sydney arm of the family at Henry Lee’s Cafe.

Our next relative that also made us feel very welcome was my nephew, Alistair, who along with his partner, Jo, and their two children, had moved to Margate in Tasmania about eighteen months previously. To get there we opted to follow the coast to Melbourne, making overnight stops at Bateman’s Bay, Pambala Beach and the strangely named Lakes Entrance. We used AirBnB for all three places and were more than satisfied with all of them, especially as they all provided rooms within the family home, the original concept of AirBnB before it became the glorified holiday-letting agency it is now. Booking wasn’t always plain sailing with poor internet connections, and a stop for lunch at Bodalla Cheese Factory one day provided us with very good wi-fi when we were having difficulties with clarifying a couple of reservations.

The countryside was mostly rolling hills and open farmland with lots of happy-looking cattle chewing the cud in green pastures. Lakes Entrance was probably the least attractive of the three towns but the flower-filled garden in which we ate our breakfast more than made up for the character the town lacked. And just a few miles further on we arrived at Paynesville where we took the chain-ferry across the narrows to Raymond Island, having learnt that there were a few koalas there. We followed the “Koala Trail” carefully scrutinising every gum tree until we found ourselves in a bit of scrubby parkland where suddenly it seemed that every other tree had one of the cuddly bears taking a late morning nap. What a koala bonanza to enjoy just before we arrived in Melbourne!

Mother koala and a not-so-little baby koala, resting in the fork of a eucalyptus tree. What a wonderful sight on Raymond Island.

Before getting the overnight ferry to ‘Tassie’, we decided to use our Air Miles to give us a couple of comfortable nights downtown – or “CBD” in local parlance – staying at the Mercure Melbourne Treasury Gardens Hotel. Melbourne is a very elegant city being an eclectic mix of late Edwardian architecture and ultra-modern skyscrapers.

Melbourne, a beautiful eclectic mix of old and modern architecture

It is a beautiful city, and, indeed, it does have a lot of fine buildings. We spent our time there well, starting with a quick visit to the very enlightening Immigration Museum where amongst other things, we learnt about the ever-changing immigration policies, and interestingly, how the Chinese immigrants had yo-yo’d between being very welcome and despised for taking jobs from white Australians! The Opal Museum turned out to be not much more than a sales outlet for Australia’s favourite gemstone so we quickly moved on, taking advantage of the ‘free CBD tram zone’ to ride the No.35 around the perimeter of the downtown area and out to Harbour City, a complex of very modern apartments, hotels and offices by the waterside.

We had a light lunch of good old fish’n’chips, sitting on bolted down chairs as we watched the seagulls and the large power boats moored nearby, all of which reflected no doubt on the clientele frequenting the neighborhood.

It was damned hot, so we took the soft option of the tram back along Flinders St, and then spent a contented hour or so “city-beaching” on Federation Square, that is relaxing in deck chairs in the contemporary urban surroundings and watching city life go by. As the sun went down, we took a walk into China Town looking for a particularly nice-looking cafe we’d spotted the previous evening called “Ca de Vin” in a small alley off Bourke St, only to find it was incredibly popular and fully booked. So we ended up slumming it at “Ajisen Ramen” where we ate bowls of kimchi and pork ramen soup. There are lots of Asians in Melbourne so it was no surprise that the restaurants in China Town were so busy!

“Cook’s Cottage”, brought over from Yorkshire, England, by Sir Russell Grimwade in 1934, as a set of numbered bricks packed into barrels!

As the ferry didn’t leave until 10pm, we had a second day to enjoy the culture of Victoria’s state capital. Fitzroy Gardens, across the road from our hotel, is the final resting place of the Yorkshire cottage that Captain Cook spent his youth, and thus Cook’s Cottage was our first stop of the day. Amazing to think someone thought it worthwhile dismantling the cottage brick by brick and transporting it half way around the world, but the end result is very good and does look quite authentic, even down to the vegetable garden. But as always, art galleries were our objective for the day, starting with the Ian Potter Centre – part of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) – where we were happy to find some excellent aboriginal art, as well as an eclectic collection of art, both old and modern, from Europe and Australia.

Yep, this is modern art – well, all except the old codger sitting on the loo!

The other main part of the NGV is inside the impressive stone edifice across the river on St Kilda Road. My goodness, what an extraordinary collection of modern art and art projects that building contains, some of which was totally outrageous; as we both agreed afterwards, it was probably the most original art collection either of us has ever seen.

Buddah and friends, resting in the entrance hall of the National Gallery of Victoria.

But like all cities, Melbourne was too busy for me and I also tend to agree with the person who said something along the lines “Sydney has the most beautiful location that is spoiled by a poorly designed city, and Melbourne is a very fine city built on the most uncompromising site imaginable”! So it was a relief when we got back into our car, drove down to the beach at St Kilda, and watched the kite surfers playing the wind and waves in the early evening as we enjoyed our beef sandwiches and waited to spend a wave rocked night aboard the “Spirit of Tasmania”.

And so to Tasmania, aah . . . beautiful Tassie, an island so different from it’s mother country ten hours sea-time away to the north, that it would seem to be on a different planet. In the early morning sunshine, we drove south across the centre of the island through wonderful countryside, very green hills and farmland with sheep and cows grazing everywhere.

Launceston, a historic town in northern Tasmania.

We made a couple of stops on the way, at Launceston, to take the chairlift and stretch our legs on the Gorge Walk, and then later on at the charming old heritage village of Ross, where we grabbed coffee and scrumptious cream-filled eclairs, and picked up one or two gifts at the old Post Office.

In so many ways the island immediately reminded me of New Zealand, a feeling echoed by a couple from those enchanted isles that we met one day as we visited Eagle Hawk Nest, the narrow isthmus that connects the infamous penal colony of Port Arthur to the main island.

With savage beasts such as this guarding the causeway, convicts rarely escape.d

The man’s opening remark as we regarded the statue of one of the “ugly and savage” dogs that once guarded the isthmus was “This must be one of the most awful things the Brits ever did”, referring of course to the transportation of so-called convicts, some of whom were guilty of such petty crimes as stealing a loaf of bread. But having established we both had the same UK heritage, the encounter became more friendly, and when I told him of my past, selling Hamilton Jets to Canadians, he most effusively declared me to be “an honorary Kiwi”.

Re-enactors leaving us wondering if maybe it was the warders who went mad, not the convicts!

The history of Tasmania closely follows the rest of Australia regarding attitudes to both convicts and the original inhabitants. However, Port Arthur was certainly among the most severe penal colonies and the settlers’ attitude towards the aborigines was also simply appalling. Surely the worst incident was the so-called “Black Line”, which attempted to drive every single native Tasmanian onto the Tasman Peninsular – where Port Arthur is situated – shooting any who attempted to escape and keeping the main part of the island as a completely white-only community!

Still, if one can blank out the horrendous past history of the island and concentrate on the here and now, it is a truly beautiful place and it was very tempting to immediately start searching for a house – our regular weakness when travelling! We were also very lucky in having such a comfortable place to stay, and in such a wonderful location. Margate is a small town about 20km outside Hobart, and Alistair’s home is in a quiet valley about 6km inland from the town centre. They have a spacious house sitting on about five acres of land which they are slowly making productive. Alistair is a commercial saturation diver but between contracts he and Jo work towards their long-term dream of one day achieving that age-old ideal of self-sufficiency, as their two children, Jessica and Archer, enjoy the freedom of an idyllic life in the countryside.

Snug Falls, at the end of the dry season.

Our first foray the next morning was a wonderful hike down to Snug Falls and back, before exploring further along Channel Highway, winding along the coast as far as Nine Pins Point, at which stage we realised we had better retrace our steps to get home in time for dinner with the family. One week in such idyllic surroundings was really never going to be long enough.

Downtown Hobart, a small friendly state capital that would be easy to live in.

As well as our ongoing discovery of Australia’s convict past, we took a trip into Hobart, a very liveable small city, and visited Tasmania’s other main tourist venue, the Museum of New and Old Art (MONA) housed underground in an old stone quarry. The main collection there is The Museum of Everything, an eclectic private collection of what is best described as “primitive art”, now donated to the state. Though definitely not the efforts of the Great Masters, the works on view are indeed quite eye-opening and thought-provoking; for instance, a mechanical working model of a cow’s digestive system, and a long wall full of plaster moulds of vaginas, are not things one comes across in the average art museum!

Nature frozen in time! Sometimes the most enjoyable art is found where it is least expected.

Another day we took the ferry from Kettering to Bruny Island, a 50plus kilometre long archipelago that shields Tasmania’s south-eastern coastline from Hobart southwards against the wild weather from Antarctica. The ferry lands on North Bruny and we immediately headed south along a mix of tarmac and gravel towards Cape Bruny Lighthouse, stopping on the way to climb the 250 steps up to Big Hummock Lookout halfway along the Neck, the narrow isthmus between the north and south portions of Bruny. There we also read a very moving memorial to Truganini, an aboriginal lady who was the last surviving member of the Nuenone tribe who had been raped multiple times by white settlers, and whose family had also suffered terribly at the hands of the white immigrants. Once on South Bruny, we paused briefly at Captain Cook’s landing place on the cove of Adventure Bay and ate fish and salad at the little cafe nearby, run by the local cruise company who operate boat tours along the coast.

The rusting remains of a boiler that once powered a log mill, deep in the forest that is now the Mangate Forest Reserve.

Still hoping to get to the lighthouse before the end of the afternoon, we took a short cut along Coolangatta Road, a “4WD-only” trail across the centre of Mt Margan Forest Reserve, where we came upon the remains of an old steam-driven timber mill. Nature had done what it always will do eventually when man moves out of the way, and taken back control of the forest. All the same there was a simple footpath for us to follow, with a few faded information boards telling us about the tough life these early lumbermen led in the early 1900s, as well as one or two rusting artifacts such as an old scotch boiler and the steam-driven winch they used to haul the logs up out of the valley. Moving quickly on, we eventually arrived at the lighthouse just in time to take the last tour to the top where we had great views of the coastline all around and were regaled with tales of lighthouse keepers of the past.

Realising that the day was passing quickly, we opted to drive the 66km to Dennes Point at the far north end of North Bruny, and then make a quick U-turn to get back for the 6pm ferry. Alas, after a fun rally-style drive, we arrived at the terminal to see the ferry pulling away and we settled down for an hour-long wait for the last ferry of the day. For our entertainment, a local guy was wading in the water off the rocky beach, picking up large stones covered in oysters which he smashed and fed to himself and his little daughter. Another local, along with his son, was jigging for squid to use as bait on his next fishing trip. Having last eaten around midday, we were also rather glad of the tasty loaf we had bought earlier at Bruny Island Cheese and Beer Company, and munched on it to keep the wolf from the door till we could find an open eatery back on the “mainland”.

Picnic with the Tasmanian branch of the family

Our final full day on Tasmania was a Saturday and with everyone at home we went out for a family picnic at the Huon Valley and a stroll along the Tahune Air-Walk.

This well engineered construction takes you among the tree-tops of a handsome pine forest, which includes a few remaining examples of the huge Huon pines that were so valuable to the “tree-getters” (=lumbermen) of yesteryear and are enormous, almost as impressive as our Californian sequoia trees. The walkway ends up cantilered outwards, high above the Huon River, where a few logs still remain caught along the riverbanks, having failed to reach their destination at some lumber-mill far downstream.

On Sunday morning, we sadly had to say farewell to our lovely hosts and set off on our drive to Devonport to catch the overnight ferry back to Melbourne. It was a damp grey rain-sodden day, the island seemingly also saddened by our departure; however, it did give us one last delightful surprise. We opted to take a more westerly route on the way back across the island, and after a couple of hours of driving up into the hills through some fairly wild rugged countryside, we had stopped for lunch and a warm-up in front of the blazing log fire at The Great Lake Hotel, a couple of kilometres outside the small village of Miena. Suitably revived we drove on, and as we started to descend from that stark plateau country, we came across a sign directing us to “Liffey Falls, 6km”.

Your intrepid travelling duo enjoying Tasmania’s parting gift, the Liffey Falls in full spate

With plenty of time on our hands, this seemed like a good way to pass the rest of the afternoon and so we set off along the dirt road which wound down around the edge of a steep-sided drop to the valley in the forest far below, slightly to Celine’s occasional concern as she was on the outside of the extremely narrow track. From the car park at the end of this precipitous descent, we had the most beautiful walk further down the hillside through a wonderland of enormous ferns among the giant trees of a thick sub-tropical forest, with the sound of falling water getting louder with every step, until we finally got to the upper shallow cascade, and then a bit further on we arrived at the falls proper. Suddenly we were thankful for that day’s non-stop rain, as the swollen River Liffey was in full spate, making the falls extremely impressive.

Our surprise gift fully appreciated, we drove the final miles through farmland with contented black Angus beef cattle munching the fresh green grass everywhere, eventually joining the queue for our return voyage on “Spirit of Tasmania. Nine hours later, after a slightly choppy crossing which half way through the night caused the skipper to slow down from his usual 28knots, we arrived back on the Australian mainland a couple of hours after sunrise, and thus the second stage of our Aussie adventure was over. Now all we had to do was a leisurely drive 1800+ kilometres across country back to my big sister on the Sunshine Coast.