Last call, Sydney

All of a sudden our month in Australia has all but passed, and we find ourselves in Sydney, final port of call before flying across the ocean to New Zealand. Like Cape Town, South Africa and maybe Toronto, Canada, Sydney isn't the capital but it sure acts like it is - big, brash, confidently on trend, the kind of place where anything goes and everything happens. At first it's all a bit overwhelming, especially in the heat, which mid-way through out stay tops out at a blistering 38c. But it's a fitting place to end our trip, for sure one of the worlds must-do destinations.

 We don't do the harbour bridge walk, but we do do the opera house, starting with a guided tour and then coming back in the evening to listen to the Sydney Symphony orchestra perform in the concert hall. The radical, breath-taking design of the opera house comes at a price - way, way over budget by the time it was finally completed in 1973, and with narrow performance areas that pose challenges for ballet dancers energetically exiting the stage. But one thing is beyond doubt; the acoustics and sound in the concert hall theatre  are simply amazing. At half time in our concert we step out for an interval drink, the glass fronted bar area looking out across the harbour to the city lights. A highlight of our trip!

We cross the city by train, bus, ferry and on foot, catching the surf (tho not getting in it) at Manley and Bondi, and spending our last morning in cooler weather walking the spectacular cliff top path from Bondi beach to Coogee. Now, time to move on.

Happy campers (whose idea was that??)

Leave the tranquility of Lady Elliot Island and fly via Bundaberg back to Brisbane, where we have a night before picking up our camper van for the journey south down the Gold Coast. We hadn't given much thought to Brisbane, other than it would be a biggish city, but not Melbourne, not Sydney. What we find surprises us- a vibrant, humming central business district with a waterfront lined with über-cool bars and restaurants, tree-lined walkways and a great free ferry service that shuttles to and fro between various points across the harbour. A place the size of Adelaide with the vibe and vigour of Melbourne, and then some. We were sorry to be saying goodbye so soon.

The next phase of the trip - the drive south down the Gold Coast ending in Sydney - is perhaps the closest we've come so far to disappointment. The weather doesn't help - grey and damp a fair bit of the time - nor do some of the worst motorway roads we've come across in a long time, the tall, skinny little Toyota wallowing and bucking alarmingly through the ruts and cracks in the carriageway. But to be honest, the real problem wasn't so much the travel as the destination(s). Stay the first night just outside Byron Bay, the second at Port Macquarie, and don't exactly fall in love with either. BB is oh-so self-consciously hippy dippy twee, not to mention being in the throes of an invasion of schoolies (Australia's equivalent of the end of term exodus of sixth form students on a bender to Newquay). PP has an altogether more sober view of itself, and boasts a lovely beach, but on a grey, overcast Sunday it looks pretty much like any other seaside resort enduring a wet weekend, and to our eyes seemed, frankly, rather dull.

For our final stop en route we head inland from the coast to the peaceful little town of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains north of Sydney, and suddenly the journey seems all too worthwhile - stunning vistas, waterfalls,  sunshine and walks in fresh mountain air. Our last taste of wilderness Australia before Sydney.

And what of the camper van experience itself?  Turns out to be rather like living inside a Rubik's cube - forever moving A to get at B, but in the process getting in the way of C with the result that before long the whole van needs to be off-loaded and re-packed just to make a cup of tea. Nerves and tempers fray, beautiful friendships get put under stress. Admittedly we were starting to get a handle on it by the end of our very short trip, and with a bigger van and a bit more nouse no doubt things would be different. For the time being, though, once is probably enough.

On the East side

Say goodbye to Darwin and fly over to the East Coast and Cairns, jumping off point for tropical Northern Queensland. A bit less hot and humid maybe than the northern territories, but no need to break out the woollies just yet. Stay a night heading in and out of Cairns, in between renting another car for the short hop up the coast to Port Douglas.

Rise Saturday morning to the news emerging from Paris - grim echo of ten years earlier travelling in Peru when we woke to first coverage of the London bombings.

From PD we join a tour to Daintree national park - the main attraction on this leg of our travels. Daintree lays claim to being the oldest continuously surviving rainforest in the world - 120 million years old by conservative estimates and home to all kinds of  wonders including, on our trip, a sighting of the rare Casawary bird (imagine a metre high psychedelic turkey) along with its young. The following day we get another view of the rainforest from the air, taking a ride on the skyrail cable car that runs for 7.5 km above the canopy of trees, forest stretching out seemingly forever in every direction. Except that, once again, it may not be forever. The forest takes an amazing 40% of its water not from the ground but through "cloud scraping" - literally, skimming moisture for low-
hanging cloud. With global temperatures forecast to rise, cloud levels are expected to significantly diminish, with the result that...

After two nights in Port Douglas and a second in Cairns we hit the road - or the air - again and fly via Brisbane to Bundaberg, from where we will head out to Lady Elliot Island. Famous mostly for the rum that bears it's name, Bundaberg is a one-horse town consisting on one long, wide street of shops,
bars, food outlets and so forth. Not much to get excited about, but possessing a kind of vaguely old-
fashioned charm slightly reminiscent of small towns across the American mid-west. As a place to
visit, Bundaberg has a few claims to fame including the eponymous rum distillery outside the town, but what drew us was the protected turtle beach at Mon Repos, where we were lucky enough to witness a large and rare Loggerhead turtle laying her eggs. This was one of those very special
moments, particularly as once the old girl had shuffled back info the surf we were able, under the supervision of rangers, to join in moving the eggs - all 143 of them - to a new location further up the beach. Sounds like vandalism but in fact it's conservation - like many of her kin, our turtle had laid her eggs below the high-tide line, meaning that when the tide came in, they would have been waterlogged and destroyed. In moving them the rangers, and us tourists, are hopefully boosting this endangered species chances of survival.

Next day we board a light aircraft for the short flight across the ocean to Lady Elliot Island. By now
we are inescapably in the domain of cliche and hyperbole - remote pacific island on the Great Barrier Reef, clear blue waters,  waking in the morning to gaze out over golden beaches and coral
lagoons...Yes, it was not at all bad....

snorkelling (or doing our best to) in the waters of the reef gave us a chance to see see some amazing sub-marine life at close quarters; sharks (harmless); turtles (a local lad by the name of Buddy); barracuda and a host of flamboyantly coloured reef fish and coral formations. On shore, birds, birds and more birds - thousands of them everywhere, co-existing happily with their human visitors. Our island is so small you can walk right round it in under an hour. With a fully stocked bar and restaurant it wasn't exactly castaway, but it was a temporary flight from the modern world - no internet, no mobile phone coverage. Fittingly, when we found ourselves alone in the resort lounge on our second and final night, picking out something to watch on the VCR, it was an ancient VHS tape of "Groundhog Day" - a movie featuring an improbably young Bill Murray, plucked from a time before the digital world ever existed.

Northern territories - hot enough for ya now, Poms?

We travel on board the Ghan, the iconic Australian train that travels the best part of 3000km from the southern city of Adelaide all the way through to Darwin, in the process passing through some of the most remote, empty country on the planet. The Ghan is a sumptuous experience, a kind of mini-cruise on wheels where all your food and drink on board is free (as in, part of our very-sharp-intake ticket price) and the scenery tho desolate is often breathtaking. You encounter some very interesting people, like Bob, a retired particle physicist with an encyclopaedic knowledge of just about everything who confided he used to keep a box of depleted uranium under his desk at work...

The Ghan also turns out to be a time-machine, offering an un-asked for glimpse into the not so distant future. The average age of passengers on board has to be 70, with quite a few much older than than that. No problem in itself, but what is slightly depressing is that when we disembark to do the various off-train excursions in Alice Springs we found ourselves apparently morphing into generic Old People -  young woman at a coffee stop offering to carry our drinks for us, and, worse still, the guy at the reptile house going out of his way to see us across a busy (as in, one car per hour) road.

Meanwhile the weather is getting its act together. Leaving Adelaide it was 28c, in Alice the gauge was nudging 36, and by the time we made our penultimate journey stop in  Katherine the day temp was scheduled to hit 40c. It's getting very, very hot, and that's the way it is when we finally reach Darwin after two days and nights on board. We weren't expecting a lot of Darwin - just a launch pad for our Kakadu trip - but find we like it a lot. On Christmas Day 1974 Darwin was al but totally destroyed by cyclone Tracey, meaning that what is here now is almost all new - a young, funky city of about 110,000 people that feels like it has as much in common with tropical South East Asia as the rest of Oz. It's also unique in that, in Feb 1942, the same Japanese attack force that had bombed Pearl Harbour launched a raid  on the city and oil installations at the port of  Darwin - the start of an assault on the Northern Territory that lasted some 21 months and to date the only ever recorded external attack on mainland Australia. Walking out of our hotel one morning, we happened by total coincidence to find ourselves, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, witnessing the service  of remembrance on on the lawns in front of the war memorial - a small poignant moment.

The planned highlight of our stay up here was the trip to Kakadu - the vast area of national park deep in the outback beyond Darwin. The trip centred on a visit to some aboriginal rock-art sites and, before that, a wee cruise on the Mary river; allegedly the most croc-infested waters in all Australia with some 50 crocs per kilometre of wet stuff. Unlike those in Katherine gorge (the mini-cruise we'd done as one of our excursions from the Ghan) these were not freshwater but the much more dangerous saltwater animals, top of the food chain and they know it. We certainly saw plenty, and at close quarters, during the hour or so we were out. It's all perfectly safe, of course, so long as you follow some basic rules, such as remembering that the kangaroos in Cleland wildlife park in Adelaide are cute; they will feed out of your hand. The crocs in Kakadu are not cute. They will feed off your hand (and probably your arm, too.)

As well as some hefty reptiles we also caught views of a huge variety of exotic bird life, making Kakadu a truly special place to visit. Inevitably we spent a huge proportion of the long day sitting on a coach, but that's the deal - the scale of everything here is vast. It's also very much a case of catch it while you can. Kakadu has been there forever and it's easy to imagine it will be there forever, too, but it won't. Current forecasts on rising sea levels suggest that in 40 years the waters in the park will run salt, and then Kakadu will start to die.

Home comforts. Adelaide

Our journey west along the great ocean road into South Australia takes us from touristy Apollo Bay to dour Portland with a final stopover in the pretty little waterside resort of Robe. From Robe it's pretty much one long straight and seemingly unending road for 350km until Adelaide, and it pours with rain most of the way.

Arriving into Adelaide is briefly a shock. All of a sudden there are people, and cars, and houses, none of which had been much in evidence the last few hours of driving. But it's a smaller, calmer city than Melbourne, with an unhurried, easy-going vibe that sets it apart. We stay as guests of Bev and Mike, Sian's friends from way back - both originally from South Africa but long settled in Aus. As well as offering us their generous hospitality, they also show us the sights in and around the city - out to dinner with their son David and daughter Karmen and her partner Richard, the next day a tour of the wine-growing (and wine, and beer,

tasting) region around McLaren Vale and the day after that into the hills to Mount Lofty and the remarkable Cleland Wildlife park, where we make up big-time for our lack of kangaroo sightings,  Sian gets cuddly with a Koala called Stephen, and a gaggle of exotic geese mistake her for a mate and try to eat her shorts. A rare chance to get up close with a huge variety of beautiful bird and animal life without hordes of other tourists milling around.

Tomorrow, the Ghan - the train that runs the spine of Australia from Adelaide all the way to Darwin. Two days and two nights on board; we are looking forward to it.

Moving on: the great ocean road

Our last day in Melbourne was spent visiting some old haunts with my friend Meens and her chap Nifty, including a visit to The Rising Sun, owned at the time by Mina's parents where many a happy hour was spent!

From Melbourne we head out west to the Great Ocean rd and into South Australia, heading in the direction of Adelaide. In the process we see a few things and learn a few more, so, in no particular order -

1.Great myths of Aus #1 - the Australian climate is one long hot summer of prawns being thrown on endless barbies. Well, not round here it's not. The first few days in Melbourne were hot n sunny, but since then the weather has been distinctly mixed, cool and grey and - at times - extremely wet.

2. GM of A #2 - all the Aussies ever drink is Fosters lager. Can honestly say we have not seen the so-called amber nectar on sale anywhere so far. That said, most of the range of beers on offer seem very similar - long on chill and somewhat short on flavour. That said, the craft ale thing seems to be taking hold a bit here too, with the result that there are a few honourable exceptions to be found, especially a very nice locally brewed stout I could have drunk a lot more of in Portland....

3. Travel is relative. On a coffee stop at Cape Bridgewater we encountered Daren Carter, a gentleman explorer who left his native Dorset aboard his motorcycle in March and has no plan to go home anytime soon. Riding through Europe and across Asia he crossed from Malaysia to A us where he spends the next year prior to shipping himself and his BMW to New Zealand and thence to the Americas. Now that's travelling.

3. Koalas are cute,end of. Check out the photos of the one we found ambling along by the side of the road this morning.

4. Unique to this part of the globe, we believe, is the Drive-thru bottle store - to be frank, in essence a speedy pit-stop for piss-heads, where you can load up with stubbies without even the inconvenience of turning off the engine, let alone get out the car. Photo evidence provided below.

5. History is strictly relative too.Yesterday we made a significant detour to visit a much-hyped landmark,viz, the Cape Otway lighthouse. In return for our AUD 40 we were treated to a house which got built in the 1800s and used to be a telegraph station and a lighthouse about as awe-inspiring as the one in, er,   Shoreham. The telegraph station spotted various historic artefacts to gawp over, including a seeing machine to which Sian commented "my machine at home is older than that". We left disgruntled but others seemed blissfully happy so, as we say, it's all relative.

We are still somewhat at a loss with various aspects of this blogging lark. We think we have posted photos to accompany this entry. If not, little of the above will make any sense.