Well folks, it finally happened. After living in Oz for almost 3 years, we finally visited somewhere we don’t like! But I’ll frame this in the classic (and dreadful) feedback sandwich – will start with lots of good stuff, put the little bit of bad stuff in the middle, then end with lots of good stuff 🙂
Hugh and I have continued our regular beach walks and still frequently encounter new sights. One old sight, which I just love seeing, are the patterns made by crabs digging in the sand and kicking up sandballs:
I feel like someone should figure out a way to photograph these really well and turn them into art somehow.
On this particular beach walk, we saw LOTS of different crabs. We’d had a rather windy period of time so I don’t know if that blew them into shore or if they’re always around this time of year. I’ve googled and can’t seem to definitively identify the ones we hadn’t seen before. This was one variety, about 2″ or so wide, who was very good at quickly digging himself into the sand:
And here is another one of these that Hugh was trying to un-hide: https://youtube.com/shorts/KFvHZIWIMEk?feature=share. The video shows just how quickly they burrow. The crab wasn’t too happy about being discovered and pinched Hugh on his finger! Hugh is already missing part of one digit, so he really should be more careful 🙂 Fortunately, no lasting injuries this time! The reason he was trying to un-earth this fellow was because we’d seen a different type of crab that was quite unusual and we wondered if this might be one of them. It wasn’t. The unusual one had eyes on very long stalks and when he ran, he was really tall rather than being close to the sand. For now, the crab mystery remains.
We also saw a couple of these dead on one of the beaches:
We checked with our marine expert friend Kevin and they are toadfish – a member of the pufferfish family and highly poisonous. Glad Hugh didn’t try poking this one!
Another day on another beach and it was super windy. The water was really churned up and creating lots of what we’ve come to call Scrubbing Bubbles (from those ads in Canada some time back). They normally get pushed around by the waves but here the wind was blowing them everywhere: https://youtube.com/shorts/q0_MQCc16-g?feature=share.
Remember last blog I commented that I thought a bug we’d found was the famous Christmas Beetle but it was actually a Jewel Bug? Well shortly after that, our friend Bettina found a Christmas Beetle and sent me this photo:
The iridescent colours aren’t showing up well here, but check out the size! I had no idea they were that big. Not that I should be surprised, everything here is giant-sized.
Speaking of giant-sized, just before we went away, Hugh and the boys were golfing at their usual golf course and came across some kangaroos, as usual. What was less usual was the size of them. This photo doesn’t do justice but none of the guys wanted to get any closer:
These roos would be looking Hugh in the eye when standing up and were ripped – extremely muscular. No one wanted to get anywhere near them. Most kangaroos here are more moderately sized but when they get big like this, they are very intimidating!
OK, let’s move on to our adventure. Mom and John are doing a world cruise and they were docked in Sydney for a couple days, so we planned a trip around seeing them. We flew from Rockhampton to Sydney. While waiting for our plane to be ready, I got this funny photo of a “squeegee kid” cleaning the windscreen of our plane:
Prior to cleaning the windows, he’d been giving the nose cone a really good polish. Not sure if the plane hit something on the way in or what, but they really ensured the whole front was spotless.
Last time we were in Sydney, the weather was miserable and I was working. This time was much nicer. We walked along the Harbour Bridge:
Really great views from there:
Including of the Consulate General of Canada:
Google Reviews only gave it a 2.7 star rating, so we didn’t stop in 🙂
Here’s a nice shot of the bridge:
On the Thu morning, Mom and I went to the Opera House. You’re not allowed to take photos in the main concert hall (which is really too bad because it’s magnificent!) but you could take photos in one of the smaller ones. Gatsby is playing right now in this one:
Mom was able to get visitor passes for Hugh and I to board the cruise ship and have lunch on board. The ship is the Viking Sky and is quite awesome! Smaller than most ships these days, just 800 passengers, but really beautifully designed. Lots of nooks like this all over the place:
Here is a video showing the central area of the ship: https://youtu.be/a_sOC3iwYM0. Of course, Hugh found the putting green:
We also toured the spa, most of which was fabulous, however, being a Norwegian cruise line, there were some horrifying parts:
Note all the warnings about walking into the Snow Grotto! Brrr, no thank you.
We took Mom to the QVB (Queen Victoria Building) in Sydney, which is a mall but is just gorgeous:
That night we met up with my cousin Edward and his partner Andrew for dinner down in Barangaroo, Darling Harbour. Fabulous Indian restaurant and we had such a great time catching up with each other. Edward is just the spitting image of his Dad, my Uncle Johnny, and Mom would get teary from time to time as she remembered her brother, who was the first in her family to travel to Australia and who passed away too young. I still remember when Uncle Johnny came back from Australia when I was a little kid and he brought me a stuffed koala bear. Who knew that one day I’d be living here!
The next day we took the ferry to Manly Beach:
What a trooper Mom was – we walked all the way from Manly Wharf to Shelly Beach and back, with only a few rest stops along the way! Lots of lizards along the walk:
Beautiful colours in the ocean (water was rather cold, though!):
Neat artwork:
And fortunately, no freak waves crashing over unsuspecting pedestrians:
When we got back to the mainland, we had dessert at a little cafe in The Rocks. Hugh’s lemon meringue pie had the tallest meringue we’ve ever seen:
And it was delicious!
We said good-bye to Mom there so she could get back to the ship before it left port. It was docked in White Bay so would be going under the Harbour Bridge when it left. Hugh and I therefore went to the base of the bridge so we could wave farewell to Mom and John as they headed back to sea:
You can see Mom and John waving back to us in the middle of the photo. There may have been a few tears shed. In fact, there are more tears being shed as I write this now. I love you, Mom!
That night, we met up with friends Sue and Pete, whom we met in New Zealand last year. We went to the Lord Nelson for dinner:
I never did get to the Lord Nelson in Burlington, so it was fun to discover this place!
We had plenty to drink with Sue and Pete so figured we’d have an early night before getting up early the next morning to start the next leg of our adventure. But fate had a different plan! When we’d been standing at the base of the bridge to wave to Mom and John as their ship left port, there was another couple there waving to friends on the boat too. We chatted with them briefly then we each went separate ways. After dinner, when we were walking with Sue and Pete, we saw the couple again in the distance. After Sue and Pete went home and we had walked back to our hotel, we saw this couple yet again, looking at some art work near our hotel. So we went up to chat with them – and we ended up at the Fortune of War pub, drinking quite a bit more and having a blast! So now we have new friends Chris and James! Will look forward to visiting them in the future. So many awesome people in the world!
Despite a bit of a hangover, we were up early on the Sat morning to go pick up our car rental to begin our next adventure. Just to give you a lay of the land, this is the southeast corner of Australia:
We live where the blue dot is at the top. We had flown from Rockhampton to Brisbane to Sydney. Now we were driving. It’s been less than 3 years since we last drove in big cities and I have to say, I really don’t miss it!! Geez, narrow lanes and piles of traffic. Took us close to an hour just to get out of Sydney. This is the first part of our drive that day:
Our destination was Canberra. Kevin and Jo kindly put together an itinerary to take us through some great places en route. We stopped in Thirroul for a tasty breakfast and then our next stop was near Wollongong at the Sea Cliff Bridge:
Gorgeous views! I took this video of the waves on the rocks https://youtube.com/shorts/edPZ7FjkrX4?feature=share – totally mesmerising, I could have watched it all day (except it was hot and there was no shade).
There are so many gorgeous spots along the coast south of Sydney – we’re going to have to plan a trip just to spend several days there. But this adventure was focused on Canberra and Echuca, so inland we went.
We first stopped in Berry, a quaint historic town. We continued driving through the mountains, stopping at the lookout at Cambewarra, elevation 2200 ft:
A very Aussie sign (although we didn’t see any kangaroos or wombats along the route, and clearly the images are not to scale!):
Next stop was Fitzroy Falls, just over halfway between Berry and Moss Vale:
Then we headed west and stopped in Goulburn to see the famous Big Merino, built in 1985:
Very big indeed! Including elements on the backside 🙂
We went inside and climbed all the way up to look out of one of his eyeballs:
Definitely one of the highlights of the trip 🙂
From Goulburn we headed southwest. We happened across a fabulous olive oil producer – Fedra Olive Grove. What a lucky find! We bought a couple bottles and will start ordering from them online – nice to be able to buy Aussie-grown olive oil.
Another neat find was Lake George, which is an endorheic lake. I hadn’t heard of this kind of lake before (water doesn’t exit anywhere to an ocean), very cool. There were black and white pelicans swimming in it too. I think they were Australian Pelicans and just had more black on them than we’ve seen before.
Another endorheic lake is Lake Eyre, which hopefully we’ll get to before it evaporates. It’s rarely full, usually more like a desert, but after last year’s heavy rains, it’s apparently quite beautiful – see some photos here.
Our ultimate destination was Echuca, to visit our friend Stojko, but given that Canberra was en route, we decided to spend a couple nights there. Well. Here is the middle of the feedback sandwich. Canberra is the capital of Australia. Like Washington DC, it’s its own “state”, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). To avoid a fight between Sydney and Melbourne for who should be the capital, an international competition was held to design a new inland city from scratch. Well, I’d like to know who the judges were because the design is AWFUL. A lovely lake in the middle but it takes FOREVER to get anywhere – partly because of the lake and partly because of medians dividing streets so that you have to go all the way one way and all the way back to get to something that is right next to you. Limited parking and limited public transit – just an impossible city to get around. One night looking to go out for dinner, we actually gave up after driving for ages trying to find somewhere to park – we ordered a pizza instead (but the Uber Eats driver got stuck in the brutal congestion so the pizza arrived largely cold). Lots of ugly buildings too, notably, the parliament building:
Every time I see this funny-looking building, I think of the series on Netflix called Rake – if you haven’t watched that, you must, it’s an absolute hoot!
The old parliament buildings looked quite pretty:
I liked this series of flags – alternating between the Australian flag, the Aboriginal flag, and the Torres Strait Islander flag. We went to a little island in the middle of the fake lake and could see more flags along the shore in the distance:
Notice the one in the middle? Are you thinking it’s the Canadian flag? Wrong! If you click on the photo and zoom in, you can see it’s not a maple leaf in the middle. No idea what country it is (Peru, maybe?), but this had us going for awhile because we had also seen a Canadian flag on the other side and couldn’t figure out why there would be two! The flags of the world are arranged in alphabetical order. Here’s the correct Canadian flag:
Right near here there was a beer pub on the lake with live music and the singer couldn’t hold a tune. Starting to really question our decision to spend 2 nights in Can’tBearIt.
Then there’s this monument:
Looked like a seagull to me, but it’s supposed to be an eagle. It’s the Australian-American Monument.
Saw this in the distance:
We called it the space needle but it’s a Telstra (Aussie version of Bell Canada) tower. Usually you can tour it but it’s closed for renovations right now. Maybe that’s why the cell service in Can’tBearIt was so awful – I had better reception in the middle of nowhere than in the middle of Canberra.
This fountain was super cool because of its height:
It’s the Captain Cook Memorial Jet and sprays 500 ft in the air! Other than its height, it’s very dull and located in an odd spot in the lake. Another failed attempt to make the city scenic.
We spent Sunday morning at Questacon (a small and very kid-focused version of the Ontario Science Centre), which was pretty good. But the best part of Canberra by far was the Australian War Memorial. I’ve previously commented that Australia does an amazing job on its war memorials in general but the national one in Canberra is simply incredible. You would seriously need to spend a couple hours exploring each year of each war to even come close to taking everything in. Beautiful, respectful, informative, compassionate, heart-wrenching. Some random photos:
And then lining the corridors leading to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is the Roll of Honour, listing the over 100,000 names of Australians who died in the wars. You can buy poppies to put next to the names of your family members. This is one small section:
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is in the Hall of Memory. This hall is beautiful and standing there certainly brings emotions to the surface. Am I ever grateful for what countless service personnel have sacrificed so that I can enjoy freedom.
We left Canberra on the Monday and headed toward Echuca:
First stop was to see The Dog on the Tuckerbox:
Further down the road was the town of Gundagai and we noticed on the map that there was a restaurant called the Niagara Cafe, so of course that’s where we went for breakfast!
If you’re ever in Gundagai, definitely eat here! We just went because of the name, but wow, was the food ever good! I looked up why it was called Niagara and apparently there is no connection to Niagara Falls, except that in the 1920’s it was fashionable to use American names for places.
We then took some back roads and had to give way to a herd of cows at one point:
We then arrived in Holbrook (I used to work in the Holbrook building at Chedoke Hospital in the 1990’s – apparently the Holbrook family gets around). Holbrook is very much landlocked, yet it is the home of the HMAS Otway submarine:
The story is that the town was originally called Germanton but in 1915, they decided they needed a name that didn’t sound like Germany. They ended up choosing Holbrook, who was the first British submariner to receive the Victoria Cross. So the town became known as the Submarine Town. The Otway was launched in 1966 in Scotland and decomissioned in 1994 and was to be sold for scrap. A group in Holbrook decided to buy it and move it piece by piece to Holbrook. They got all the pieces to Holbrook and then ran out of money to re-assemble it. But Mrs Holbrook was still alive and living in England and she provided the required funds to complete the project. Very cool!
Next stop – Echuca, to see Hugh’s golfing buddy, Stojko:
Echuca is located on the Murray River, part of the Murray-Darling Basin. Echuca is on the Victoria side of the Murray and Moama is on the New South Wales side. Unlike many rivers, the state line doesn’t go down the middle – it’s at the edge of the Victoria side, so the whole river is actually in NSW. Not sure what that means for who looks after what.
Hugh and Stojko went golfing on the Tue morning and I wandered around town. That afternoon Hugh and I took the paddle steamer up the river:
Unlike the steamboat we took in New Zealand, this one runs on timber (Gum trees) – coal would generate too much energy for what these boats need. The steam powers the 2 big paddle wheels on the sides. Not the most maneuverable of boats – it was quite impressive seeing them dock! When we were coming back downstream, there was a very strong current that was pushing us in the starboard direction – and we got precariously close to a series of very fancy houseboats! Good work by the captain to power up those engines and somehow keep us away from disaster. And then moments later the same thing happened as we approached a swimming area: https://youtu.be/XADECJiOrSY. Brave swimmers!
As we were paddlesteaming around, we saw quite a few of these tiny houseboats: https://youtu.be/2LcCkpomId8. They could turn on a dime! One of the crew told us that people typically rent them for a week and rarely travel more than a kilometer in them. If I was going to be cooped up in a tiny houseboat, I would ensure I explored lots of the river!
The Wharf area in the Port of Echuca has been restored to its late 1800’s, early 1900’s glory:
They also had a fun art installation with sandstone sculptures depicting characters and scenes from Alice in Wonderland:
It was so nice catching up with Stojko and we look forward to when he comes back up here to spend time golfing in the winter!
From Echuca we headed down to Melbourne to visit our friends Rob and Lyn:
Echuca is at the top of the map and Rob and Lyn live near Frankston on the water, about 3 hours – but oh my, the traffic in Melbourne! Was very happy to return the rental car and be driven around by Rob and Lyn for a couple days! It didn’t seem to matter where we wanted to go, it was always an hour away. I have well and truly adjusted to being in Yeppoon where everything is 10 minutes away 🙂
On the way down, we once again stopped in a little town in the middle of nowhere for breakfast:
We have definitely adopted the Aussie tradition of eating meat pies with our hands for breakfast! That’s correct, you just pick them up and bite into them – no knife or fork. This obviously requires careful coordination to not have the filling spill everywhere, but we’re getting better at it! Our friend Ruth pointed out that only Hugh is doing it 100% Australian – because he spread “sauce” (ketchup) on top of his pie (gross). If we could get mushy peas on top, that would be even more perfect, per both Kevin and Robyn. Alas, mushy peas were not available at this bakery. Can’t even imagine how messy that would be to eat with your hands!
Saw this building somewhere after Echuca, made me think of all my friends at McMaster U in Hamilton:
On arrival at Rob and Lyn’s, we had instant flashbacks to our time living at the Gulch! This is the view from their house:
I definitely miss the fabulous view we had in Stoney Creek!
We had a blast catching up with Rob and Lyn. They spend about half their time in Melbourne, half in Yeppoon, but we hadn’t seen them since November. As we do anytime we’re in a city, we went to shows and ate at restaurants we don’t have in Yeppoon/Rocky. This trip included incredible Italian, Greek, and Chinese. Speaking of food, Rob and Lyn were trying to remember the Canadian drink we introduced them to – they said you know, the prawn juice or mussel juice one. Haha, they were thinking of the classic Canadian Caesar, with clam juice!
We went to the F1 exhibit, where, despite being 12-16 years older than the rest of us, Hugh outperformed us all on the reaction time simulator:
The show we saw was MJ, about Michael Jackson’s life. Wow, the actor playing Michael totally nailed his speech style, mannerisms, singing, and dance moves, totally incredible!
When Hugh and Rob were golfing, Lyn and I went down to Sorrento and spent a couple hours at a great spa there. We also all went for walks on the beach – despite the cold wind! Melbourne was 32C when we arrived at noon on Wed but the temps dropped like a rock that afternoon and barely got over 18C the rest of our visit. Melbourne is known for its wildly fluctuating weather (which you would’ve noticed if you watched the Australian Open this year: 42C one day, 23C the next). Exhibit A, sideways driving rain:
There are lots of these beach huts along the beach:
People buy them so they can store all their beach stuff there and also have shade to sit in. But from my experiences in Melbourne, I think they’re for staying out of the cold and rain!
Well, that’s another adventure in the books! Back to watching the Olympics. Poor Netflix is probably arranging a welfare check on us – between watching the Australian Open in January, then the Scotties, then going away, and then the Olympics, the Netflix button on the remote hasn’t been used in a month!