Rachel and Mike in Australia

Over Christmas and New Year’s, we spent 2 and a half weeks on the South Island of New Zealand (gotta love the Aussie attitude when it comes to vacation time–4 weeks is standard!). We had a fantastic trip. The island is much greener, mountainous, and sheep-filled than Sydney. Many of the mountains were carved by glaciers, some of which still exist, so there are massive lakes that are an incredible glacial blue color.

This picture of Lake Tekapo doesn't do the water color justice; it's like a blueberry pop-ice.

The southwestern part of the country is largely Fjordland National Park, which includes the famous Milford Sound. We did one of the New Zealand ‘Great Walks’ in Fjordland, called the Routeburn Track. The Routeburn is a 3-day ‘tramp’ through a remote area of the park. It’s a relatively easy walk covering 32 km (~20 mi) and 800 m (~2600 ft) elevation.

Pre-Xmas dinner drink in front of the Routeburn Falls.

There are several Department of Conservation ‘huts’ along the way where you sleep and which are equipped with running water, wood stoves, and bunk rooms. We started the hike on Christmas Day and lucked out with a gorgeous afternoon of hiking (following a cloudy/rainy morning).  For Christmas dinner we had carried up wine, ham, cranberry sauce, and some fresh veggies. I was expecting people to be on the trail with Santa hats and in a festive mood at the hut. I don’t know if it was because most of them had hiked in the wet morning, but most people weren’t acting as though it was any different than any other day. Luckily my elfish nature had though ahead and brought candy canes and Christmas poppers, so I did my best to spread some Christmas cheer!

Enjoying Xmas dinner and the bounty (crown and stickers) from my Xmas popper.

The second day of the hike we weren’t as lucky with the weather – it was solid rain and clouds, so we missed out on some of the best vistas. We were basically hiking up or down a stream or waterfall rather than a trail, and 95% of the day we were above the treeline, so there was no shelter at all from the rain.

It should have been miserable, but it was still gorgeous. Perhaps the thin air helped by keeping us a bit light-headed? It was like hiking in a cloud forest in some science fiction movie.

Rainy Routeburn

We were rewarded at the end of it by the hut ranger who, rather than just a 5 minute weather briefing, treated the hut to a ~40 minute impromptu stand-up comedy routine. He told us to expect more of the same weather on our last day, but when we woke up the sky was overcast but not raining, and as we hiked, the clouds cleared, so we got some welcome sunshine to dry out our coats, boots, packs, etc.

Return of the sun!

The Blue Mountains are situated about ~100 kilometers (~70 miles) west of Sydney.  Many Sydneysiders regularly escape to the Blue Mountains for bushwalking (i.e., hiking), rock climbing, seeking cooler weather, or just going for a scenic drive.  We have been meaning to make it up there, and when an impromptu celebration was in order, it seemed like the right place to go.  I got the fantastic news of a job offer on a Friday afternoon, and Mike was due back after 2.5 weeks at sea the following evening, so to celebrate my job offer and Mike’s return, we spent a couple days exploring the Blue Mountains.

Blue Mountain Vista

The Blue Mountains get their name from the bluish tinge of the mountains when gazed at from afar.  The trees in the Blue Mountains are mostly eucalyptus.  Tiny droplets of oil coming off eucalyptus trees scatter sunlight giving the hillsides a blue appearance.  Eucalyptus (a.k.a. Gum) trees abound in Australia.  There are over 90 species of eucalyptus trees in the Blue Mountains and more than 700 species of eucalyptus found in Australia (compared with only ~15 that occur outside of Australia).  Eucalyptus leaves are the main food for koalas, who are particular about what eucalyptus species they eat, though the species they prefer varies depending on what region the koalas live in.

Wentworth Falls

We drove to Katoomba, which is the main town in the Blue Mountains.  The name Katoomba derives from an aboriginal word meaning ‘falling waters.’  Hundreds of millions of years ago, the Blue Mountains were a shallow sea, until the area was uplifted to a plateau about 170 million years ago.  Since then, rainfall and rivers have carved deep gorges and canyons out of the mostly sandstone rocks.  The carving power is still apparent in the many modern waterfalls in the area.

Nice view!

One of the main tourist attractions in Katoomba is the Three Sisters rock formation.  Legend has it that long ago there were three beautiful sisters of the aboriginal Katoomba Tribe.  Three brothers from a neighboring tribe fell in love with them.  Tribal law forbade marriages outside the tribe, but the brothers were determined to marry the sisters.  A fierce battle ensued.  To protect his daughters from the fighting, their medicine man father turned them to stone.  He planned to turn them back once the battle was safely over; however, he himself was killed in the fighting, so the sisters remain in stone (let this be a lesson to fathers that want to be over-protective).  There is some dispute over whether the legend of the Three Sisters is a true Aboriginal Legend or one made up by those in the tourist trade in the first half of the 1900’s.  Certainly hard to say since Aboriginal history was kept orally, a tradition which no doubt suffered from Australian government policies (thankfully now defunct) of removing Aboriginal children from their families.

Mike and the Three Sisters

Another major tourist attraction in the Blue Mountains is Scenic World.  Scenic World is a theme park focused on the beauty of the Blue Mountains and has 3 rides that allow you to experience the Blue Mountains without breaking a sweat.  We thought it was a pretty bizarre concept and were expecting a lot of annoying kitsch or anamatronic koalas.  With so many good hikes in the area, it seemed silly to experience the beauty of the Blue Mountains packed onto a ride with 50 strangers.  But, after a day of hiking that included walking down many, many steps along the steep gorge to get to the trail head, we were quite happy to hop on the Scenic World railway to take us straight to the top.  And I mean, STRAIGHT to the top.  This is not a winding switch back choo choo train.  It was originally developed for hauling coal from the mine at the bottom of the gorge to the top.  Katoomba’s scenic railway is the steepest incline railway in the world and is not for the faint at heart.  Particularly since Australian safety standards are not the same as those in the U.S.  There were no safety harnesses, no safety belts, not even a safety bar.  I was nervous going up and would have been screaming my head off going down.  All in all, Scenic World was a lot better than we expected.  It allows people that wouldn’t otherwise have access get down into the gorge and had some interesting information about the history of mining in the area and the geology of the mountains.

Luckily the medicine man statue did not turn Rachel to stone.

Having now seen them in person, we can attest to the blue haze that blankets the mountains.  Thankfully, the haze didn’t make us blue at all—it was hard to keep smiles off our faces as we soaked in the warm winter sunshine and gazed on the gorgeous hillsides.

Downtown Adelaide

We visited Australia’s 5th largest city a couple weeks ago.  Compared to Sydney, Adelaide feels tiny.  The inner city, which is 10 blocks by 15 blocks, is ringed on all sides by parkland, giving the impression of a small town that you can walk across with ease.  I never would have guessed that it is a town of 1.5 million people.  The only thing that suggested a large population was their central market.  It was a huge smorgasbord of fresh fruit, vegetables, meats, cheeses, nuts, and flowers.  There were a myriad of different types of sausages and a number of fruits we didn’t recognize.  We decided to try the dragon fruit, which has a sort of magenta flesh and an outer look of a succulent but an inner look of a hot pink kiwi.  It was quite yummy!

The rolling Adelaide Hills great for gum trees and grape vines.

If you travel basically in any direction outside of Adelaide town center, you hit wine country.  To the south there’s McLaren Vale known for its reds, to the east the rolling Adelaide Hills for ‘cool climate wines’, and to the north the Barossa Valley, which is Australia’s best-known wine region where many a Shiraz is produced.  We drove up to the Adelaide Hills to a small town called Hahndorf.  Hahndorf was settled by German immigrants in 1839 and still has a strong German influence.  The food was perfect for a cold winter day.  We had Hungarian goulash for lunch and for dinner a sausage platter (6 different kinds!) with Hofbrauhaus beer on tap.  It was delicious!  I wish I could say we burned off the calories with a nice afternoon hike in the hills…but the rainy and cold weather kept us to indoor activities—wine and cheese tasting to be precise.  We tasted several wines that have won Australian and international awards.  Though our palettes aren’t nearly as discerning as international wine judges, we had to agree that there were some really tasty wines.

The Big Rocking Horse. Rachel's head is the small dot in the center of the rocking horse's head.

We made a detour between vineyards to visit another Aussie Big Thing (We are now up to 13 total visited).  The Big Rocking Horse stands more or less in the middle of nowhere next to a wooden toys store.  I think the Big Thing strategy definitely works here.  We never would have stopped (let alone made a purposeful detour) if there wasn’t a Big Thing out front.  While we resisted buying any wooden toys (some of which were pretty cool), we did pay the $2/pp to climb the rocking horse and purchased a couple coffees at the conveniently attached cafe.  Not a bad Big Thing experience, though it would have been truly awesome if the Big Rocking Horse actually rocked.

Mike making friends with a big 'roo.

We visited the Cleland Wildlife Park on our way back to Adelaide.  It’s a pretty big park and they have a huge array of Australian wildlife.  We saw a bunch of varieties of emus, ‘roos and wallabies.  They live in big enclosures that you can walk into and feed grass pellets to the animals.  It’s a pretty amazing opportunity to get a close-up view of these guys.  We had seen a lot of ‘roos during our drive cross country, but I still find them fascinating.  Their heads remind me so much of deers and their upper bodies have a very human-like look, but then looking at the tendons in their legs and their tails, they are like no other animal I know.

Red kangaroos are the largest species.

There were a number of other animals at the park that we had never seen before.  There were dingos, which it is thought were brought over to Austalia by sea about 4,000 years ago.  I was surprised to find out they are endangered in their pure-bred form.  I was also a bit amused to find out about the Dog Fence.  In the late 1800’s, the Aussie’s built the longest fence in the world (stretching over 3,000 mi) to protect southeastern Australia sheep herds from dingos.  The results were only partially successful.  There seem to be fewer dingos in southeastern Australia, but this has led to more rabbits and kangaroos that compete with the sheep for grazing vegetation.  I can’t help but smile at the Aussie spirit of trying to tame this wild land with really massive fences.

Our first koala!

We got to see our first koalas.  For a couple hours every afternoon, they bring out koalas (on 30 minute shifts) so that people can get an up-close view of these animals that are so tough to see in the wild.  The koala was bigger than I expected, though I suppose the ones at the park are probably bigger than average since they have to work even less than normal koalas for their share of eucalytpus leaves.  I was also excited to see our first hairy-nosed wombats.  There’s no feeding these guys, and I dare say I wouldn’t want to run into one in a dark alley!

Hairy-nosed wombats...their disposition matches their appearance.

I couldn't believe how close this wallaby let us get to her considering she had a small joey in her pouch. The grass pellets must have been really tasty!

No trip across Australia is complete without crossing the Nullarbor. The Nullarbor is a flat, almost treeless plain (name derived from Latin for ‘no trees’) that stretches for 1200 km from east to west and is the world’s largest piece of limestone.

Trees thinning as we approach the Nullarbor Plain

Crossing the Nullarbor remains a feat celebrated by tourist memorabilia (we’re proud owners of a magnet) as even with paved roads it is a bit daunting to see the signs signaling 100-200 km between towns…and towns out here are just roadhouses, which are gas stations, restaurants, mini-marts, and hotels/campervan parks all in one. The settlements historically consisted of one family and children attended school over the radio.

The day we were setting out for our Nullarbor crossing, the Ranger at Cape Arid National Park warned us that it was supposed to get hot the following day — up to 44C. We were a bit worried at how well our eastern european heritage and the 20 year-old van would handle such a high temperature.

46C is no fun!

Never ones to shy away from a challenge, we rose early the next morning and set out. The temperature never got above about 38C, so we thought we had survived the worst heat of the trip unscathed. Apparently the Ranger’s forecast was a few days off because the heat caught up with us. Two days later the thermometer in the shaded cab of the van peaked at 46C (115F)! We were using a 12L carboy for drinking and cooking water and it typically lasted 3 days or so. In 46C, it lasted only one. Between the two of us, we drank ~10L of water and 2.5 L of juice over the course of the day. Luckily, it was a dry heat so putting cold cooler-water soaked towels on our head and neck provided some relief.

Kangaroos remind us a lot of deer. They are most active dusk until dawn and have an unfortunate habit of getting hit by cars. Initially, all our kangaroo sightings were road kill. This was sobering enough for us to make every effort to be finished driving by sundown. On several hikes we managed to get pretty close to some roos. We started a hike in Kosciusko National Park around 3 pm, which I thought would be too early in the afternoon to see any roos (sundown was around 8:30 pm). Boy was I wrong! We had barely been on the trail for 5 minutes when we startled 3 or 4 nearby roos out of their sleep. We watched them hop away and started to continue on. We looked out across the valley and saw that our presence had apparently disturbed more roos than we thought. There was a whole mob of roos hopping across the valley. They just seemed to keep coming. We must have seen at least 100 roos. It was an amazing sight right out of National Geographic. It inspired me to try and capture some roo footage to share with all of you. There were several attempts, the best of which is below…but suffice it so say, I don’t anticipate to receive any job offers from National Geographic.

The last Australian phenomenon that we really enjoyed on our drive was that of ‘Big Things.’ We were first introduced to the concept of Big Things when we went to a screening of the film Big Dreamers at the Australian Embassy in DC. The film is a documentary on the building of the Giant Golden Gumboot in Tully, Australia.

The biggest Big Thing we saw.

Tully’s economy was mainly based on sugarcane farming and when less-expensive Brazilian sugar hit the Australian market, the town’s economy didn’t fair well. Some members of the local Rotary Club decided to give the town’s economy a boost by increasing tourism by erecting a giant Golden Gumboot (in honor of Tully being the wettest town in Australian–it received 7.9 m of rain in 1950). At the beginning of the movie we thought this was a novel, if not the most logical, idea. However over the course of the film, we learned that Big Things are all over Australia. The first one, the Big Banana in Coff’s Harbor, was built in 1964. Some towns embrace their Big things while in other towns the Big Things have fallen into disrepair. Big Dreamers made a special place in our hearts for Big Things, and we tried to stop at all those along the way. Some were better than others, but all provided a story, and what more can you really ask for?

The oddest Big Thing we saw.

We have the rest of our photos from the trip up on Google Maps now: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=100268592381595196808.000460d2637162a1f7cbd.

Driving across Australia, from Perth back to Sydney, reinforced the fact that Australia doesn’t do many things in a small way.  There are large distances between places (we logged ~4500 km total); ridiculously persistent insects; giant sweeping vistas of hills, plains, & beaches; and of course Aussie ‘Big Things.’

We flew out to Perth to pick up the campervan from “Team Westbound” and start our trip back east on January 3rd.  Luckily, we arrived in Perth around the same time as the dung beetle.  I am not enamored with insects in general and particularly not here, where so many are apt to kill you, but I quickly learned to love the dung beetle.  The dung beetle eats flies, and its arrival signals the end of fly season.  Australian flies look like American flies, and buzz like American flies, but they do not behave like American flies.

Flies on Mikey

They follow people and try again and again to land on your eyes and mouth, so you have to constantly wave your hand in your face to try and keep the dozen or so swarming flies off your face.  It can make you a bit crazy. We managed a truce with the flies during a hike in Cape Arid National Park—the flies rode our hats and backs for ~6 km, which was fine with us because they were leaving our faces alone…but why on earth flies would ride on us for a couple hours is a mystery to me.

Australian freight trucks also travel in sort of swarms.  Much of Australian freight is moved by what they call “road trains” which are multi-trailer tractor-trailers (something like 36-wheelers!).  They are particularly daunting because the highways are generally two-lane undivided highways without paved shoulders.  Depending on how strong and which direction the cross breeze is blowing, encountering a road train can mean a significant pull on your vehicle—scary!  We never saw more than two road trains in a row, but apparently, they stack up to 5 behind one another to improve fuel efficiency in some places.

The natural scenery in Australia is fantastic and we loved getting to experience so many beautiful landscapes on our trip.  The most striking was that of the Yeagarup sand dunes.  The sand dunes have blown inland from the ocean and are the largest landlocked dune system in the Southern Hemisphere.  The dunes are moving further inland at a rate of 4 meters per year and swallowing up the forest in the process.  On top of the dunes it looks like a desert scene straight out of the movies and at the edge there is this 100-foot tall wall of sand enveloping everything before it.  Truly an amazing sight.

Atop the sand dunes

Sitting on the edge of the wall of sand. The sand is taller than the tree tops!

I’ll write more about the trip in my next blog, and we’re working on getting photos from our trip up on this Google map of Australia: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=100268592381595196808.000460d2637162a1f7cbd

We made it back from spending Christmas in the States (where we enjoyed spending time with  family and friends and had a white Christmas in CT!) in time to celebrate New Year’s in Sydney.  We had a tasty dinner at a friends whose house has a view of the Harbor Bridge.  The fireworks definitely lived up to their reputation–they were phenomenal!

Sydney New Year's Eve fireworks

Watching the fireworks in Aimee's backyard

We’re starting 2009 with a truly Australian adventure.  Tomorrow morning we’re flying out to Perth (on the western coast of Australia).  We’re meeting up with a couple friends there who have driven their campervan from Sydney to Perth.  We’ll be driving the campervan back to Sydney.  Should be a beautiful trip, though parts of it will be pretty dull.  There will be 2-3 days of crossing the Nullarbor desert, which is mostly just flat, dry, and hot.  Mike’s a little nervous about how we’ll handle the heat after 2 weeks of freezing weather in the States and a couple days of the mild Sydney climate.  The temperature in Perth was supposed to be 41 C (you don’t have to do the conversion to know that’s freaking hot!).  We’ve rented a SPOT transmitter that should track our progress across the country at this website:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0vyHzuXhXIJgPHbm5WvjM9aOA1DG1KGCq

Think cool thoughts for us!

Little did I know that Tasmania had lots more to offer than just the Tasmanian devils. Tasmania had some absolutely gorgeous landscapes to see. And we really lucked ‘in’ with the weather (down here lucked ‘out’ means things didn’t go as you’d like). We had had two weeks of cold and rainy weather in Sydney (highs ~17C, lows ~10C, which doesn’t sound too cold, but they don’t centrally heat or insulate houses here, so it felt cold). In Taz, we had beautiful blue skies all weekend and pretty warm weather. Our first afternoon, we biked about 10 km north of Hobart to Moorilla Vineyards.

On the way back from Moorilla Vineyard

The winery is pretty uppity, trying to be very artistic and boutique. I felt like quite the boorish American rolling up sweaty and carrying a bike helmet, but I’m glad they let us in. The wines were all good. They didn’t taste terribly interesting but they had the most amazing smells. You could actually get a scent of the fruit or elderflower or a variety of other things wine labels say you should smell, but you never do. And they’ve recently begun making microbrew beer (which is very rare here). They had some descriptions about how awesome the beer was that ended with the phrase “an experience previously unavailable in beer.” With a statement like that, we had to try them. A couple were really good, but I don’t know about a “previously unavailable” experience.

Our second day in Hobart, we took a bus halfway up Mt Wellington and picked up a trail to hike the rest of the way. It was a really fantastic hike. Where we started was rain forest with tons of fern trees. As we got higher, it turned into primarily eucalyptus trees. We had our eyes out for koalas but instead saw lots of little black lizards and red-legged spiders (turns out koalas don’t live on Tasmania). We also saw our first Australian snake. I have no idea what kind it was. I saw big, black, and scary-looking, which was enough to turn me around yelling and running away. Luckily, that scared the snake off so we were able to continue sans problem. We got some great views from the top of Mt Wellington and then hiked back down a different trail that took us along the ridge where there were all these red rocks and low flowering shrubs reminded me of the southwest U.S. And at the end back in Hobart, we enjoyed a well-earned taste of fish & chips right on the docks.

Top of Mt Wellington

The next day we drove (on the left side of the road!) down to the Tasman peninsula where we hiked out to Cape Huay, which was another beautiful hike.

Cape Huay cliffs

It was through lots of wildflowers and then out along some rocky cliffs that drop a couple hundred meters down to the ocean—pretty spectacular. That hike ended on a beach that had some of the finest, softest sand I’ve ever felt…and it serenaded you as you walked (or jigged!).  Hopefully a click on the link below will bring up a quick video of it:   Rachel’s musical feet….

I went down and met Mike in Tasmania at the end of his cruise (which with some pestering I think he’d write a blog about) for a long weekend. I can’t say Tasmania was somewhere I would have thought about visiting if not for Mike’s cruise. I didn’t even know it was a state of Australia; I thought it was its own country. It was started as a penal colony of the penal colony — a place to send re-offenders to do some of the hardest labor of collecting timber and mining coal. I’ll write more in another post about the history and beauty, but for now, I’ll cut to the charismatic megafauna.

The devil looking longingly at some small children right before feeding time

We visited the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park, which has a bunch of bizarre Australian animals including kangaroos, wallabys, and of course Tasmanian devils. The devils are perhaps the most ferocious of the marsupials. One of the rangers was telling us that the Tasmanian devil jaw is 90% as strong as a crocodiles (human’s jaws are an order of magnitude weaker). We were there for a feeding, and the devils had no problem chomping right through wallaby bones. It was pretty gross! When they’re not tearing apart carcasses, they’re really cute animals, about the size of a beagle. Apparently devils used to be found all over Australia, but now they’re only found on Tasmania and that population is really struggling because of a cancer that has emerged in the last few years. The cancer can be transferred between animals during fighting or mating and kills an animal within about 5 months.

Two cute devils

They also have a bunch of kangaroos and wallabys (that look like small kangaroos). They have this big enclosed field that you can walk in…and that’s where the kangaroos and wallabys are…just hopping right around you (probably around 75 total). If you are there at feeding time, the rangers let you feed the animals, so Mike and I both had kangaroos eat out of our hands! It was neat to get so close to them. They weren’t overly interested in being fed by humans, which part of me thought was a really good retaining of their animal instincts. Mike pointed out though that it’s probably more a function of them being very well fed. There were a number that had joeys, ranging from seemingly newborns that looked like a little hairless greyhound head poking out of the pouch to full-on teenagers where I could just see a foot sticking out but that had to have been nearly a third the size of the momma kangaroo based on the added bulge. It made carrying around a human pregnancy look like a piece of cake!

Unfortunately the camera battery died after this shot, so it's the only 'roo shot I got.

P.S. So after my complaints about the way they do things differently here on the last post, I have to be fair and say that I much prefer airport security here. You don’t have to show your ID a hundred times (or even once with self check-in) and you don’t have to take off your shoes or sweater!

Look at those devilish grins!

Hi all,

We’ve made it safely to Sydney and had the best possible start: not being charged for overweight bags, getting lots of sleep on a smooth flight, and with all our luggage arriving! We even got an apparently rare landing path, which had us fly over the city and then turning around to land, which gave us our first glimpse of the Opera House and Harbor Bridge!

Our first few days we’ve been trying to get essentials like a bank account and cell phones set-up and been doing a bit of exploring. We’re staying with Oscar (friend from grad school) at the moment. He lives in Manly, which is probably the most popular northern beach. It’s got beautiful scenery and beautiful views, but it’s a ferry and train ride for Mike to get to Uni (the first bit of Australian slang that has made its way into our vocabulary). After a year and a half of Mike spending 2-3 hours a day commuting we’re hoping to find an apartment in a neighborhood closer in. Our favorite candidate neighborhood at the moment is Balmain, and I actually need to call some real estate agents there about rentals,

so I’m going to sign off for the moment…

P.S. I’m just learning the Word Press software for getting this blog going, so it’s going to take me awhile to settle on a ‘look’ for the blog, so don’t be surprised if the site looks different over the next few weeks. I figured it’s better to start posting now though than wait until I get it the way I want. Advice from blog aficionados is welcome!

A fine day in Manly Beach, though feels a bit cool to us coming from summer in DC