There are 2 main things we have noticed about Australia......it is EXPENSIVE and not many places have free internet so we are now going to try to remember all that we have done over the last 2 weeks in the next couple of journal entries!
We landed in Sydney at 7am on Wed 4th Jan and caught the train into the city ($16 each! and we couldn't haggle them down.....we tried $8 for us both but sadly they wouldn't have any of it). Our hotel room wasn't going to be ready until 2pm so we wandered into the Botanical Gardens for a fabulous view of the Sydney harbour bridge and opera house. It was still pretty early and not many people were around so we found a nice quiet shady spot under a tree and both fell asleep for a couple of hours. We spent the rest of the day wandering round Sydney, which is actually quite a small city and deciding what we were going to do the next day.
The following day we caught a ferry through Sydney Harbour to Manly, with great views of the opera house as we sailed right past. At Manly we wandered over to look at Manly beach, known for its great surf. The beach was packed as many Aussies were still on their summer holidays so we beat a hasty retreat and began the 9km Manly walk, which follows the ins and outs of the harbour round to Spit Bridge. It was a fantastic walk, taking in great views of the harbour, past Aboriginal carvings of Kangeroos and fish, and through bushland (even though Sydney is fairly built-up, Sydney Harbour National Park is really well preserved and has retained some of the natural bush). We saw plenty of lizards and were constantly on the look-out for snakes!
The next day we visited the Hyde Park Barracks museum, which is where many of the convicts brought to Sydney from England were taken. Some convicts were transported to Australia for really small crimes such as stealing a cow! They also had databases where you could search to see if you had a convict ancestor. The search for "Hockley" brought up no matches but there were 9 matches for "Bryant".........
That evening, we headed to Surry Hills in Sydney to stay with the lovely Sharon, a friend of Sarah's from university, for the weekend. She & Cillian have a gorgeous apartment and they took us out for dinner that evening at a lovely Japanese restaurant. We then met up with Dhiren (another friend from uni), who we were not expecting to see at all! Many beers were consumed and a good evening had by all!
Waking with slightly sore heads, we had a leisurely morning and spent the afternoon wandering round Sydney with Sharon & Cillian, who showed us many of the sights we had missed whilst on our own.....including a fabulous Irish teahouse which did the most enormous scones with jam, yum!
On Sunday morning, we said goodbye to Sharon and Cillian and headed off on the train into the Blue Mountains, 2 hours west of Sydney. We arrived in Katoomba, found a hostel and set off to look at the spectacular views John remembered form his last trip here. We found a walk following the clifftops, but unfortunately a section of it was closed due to bushfire so we had to walk part on the road (we later heard on the radio that the police had arrested a man for deliberately lighting it). When we got back on the trail it hugged the incredibly high cliffline, and several minutes were spent with Sarah trying to persuade John to come down onto the path. Alas, she had no success and they agreed to meet at the Echo Point lookout, which John could reach via the road (JH - it seems that my vertigo is determined to persist despite numerous attempts to scare it away! I actually have no fear of heights... it is the fear of falling and dying that seems to bother me!). Echo Point looks out over the Three Sisters, three enormous rocky outcrops set against the magnificent vistas of the mountains and valleys. The Blue Mountains also do look blue! Apparantly this is due to the oil from the Eucalyptus trees in the air.
Katoomba was a little bit touristy for us so we left the next day and made our way to the quieter Blackheath, where we booked into a lovely camping ground close to some good bushwalking. We set off through the bush towards Govett's leap, which was on the cliffline. We saw some gorgeous red and green parrots and hundreds of lizards. However, we climbed steadily higher, and came round a corner onto the cliff path. The views were amazing (SB - I don't think I have ever been that high and still been on solid ground!). But John could be persuaded to go no further so he waited on a rock whilst Sarah walked round to Govett's Leap, a huge waterfall cascading over the enormous cliffs. Needless to say we headed back to the campsite the way we had come!
We wanted to do a slightly longer hike the next day (after all, there was...and still is....the SE Asian weight to lose!) but we got spectacularly lost trying to find the trail and walked round a good deal of Blackheath! Finally we found it and headed off into the "Grand Canyon". We walked through the canyon but again the trail started to twist higher so John headed back to the road and Sarah carried on. John then spent the next hour in a panic assuming that Sarah had somehow slipped off the cliff, and that he shouldn't have let her go on alone, and was relieved to see her at the agreed rendevous point!
We had decided to hire a car as we wanted to try to get to some more out of the way national parks in Australia and we only had 1 month to get up into Queensland before we fly to NZ. So the next day it was back into Sydney to pick up the car.
