D&K'S RTW Adventure

The Blue Mountains

After a great week in Sydney, we picked up the banana mobile (our yellow rental car!) and headed off for a few hours drive into the beautiful Blue Mountains - so called because the oil from the ecalyptus tree's gives the mountain top a blue haze (enough techno babble..). We stayed in the quaint town of Katoomba, which is the main village and World Heritage site. This is a total Art Deco haven and is completely geared around tourists visiting for the dramatic cliff top and rainforest/bush walks. It has managed to develope without the usual tourist trappings (that means there's no McDonalds or 7-11's!). There was so much to see and do, that a car is the only really way to get around. It is also site of the world's steepest railway - at 51 degree's and the world's steepest cable car that both run from the tabletop down into the rainforest basin. We spent the week visiting most of the bush walks View image and cliff top walks, whilst enjoying the cool humid-free climate of the mountains. We also took a day out to the very interesting Jenolan Caves, which are a large number of underground caves and waterways.
Here's a few of inside the caves View image, we think this one was called beef curtains...View image
The site is also very reminiscent of the Swiss Alps...

All in all, it was avery chilled out week, spent in a great hostel (called the No.14 in Lovell Street) which is a great reminder of how a hostel should be - very clean, quiet and not full of over sexed tenagers thinking they are so cool because they are travelling on budget (of what we'd spent on a good meal out), and think they now how the world runs - oops I think we may have been tramatised by our Sydeny hostel experience...

Whilst on one of our treks, we met up with some fellow Scots with whom we spent some time with. Ewan and Sally had just married and now live in Sydney, Kirsten (Ewan's sister) and John had travelled out from Glasgow for the wedding. We also bumped into one of David's ex-work collegues (Sue and Archie) who migrated to Sydney about 7 years ago - funny the people you bump into when out and about here!
We also encountered another 3 snakes whilst on our walks - all poisonous and one even tried to have a go at David (well I'm not surprised it was scared!)
Here's a couple of the pics we took - unfortunately it's hard to capture the scale and beauty of the Blue Mountains, but here you go...
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Sydney

Arrived safely in sydney after our first virginblue flight( better than squeezyjet and ryanhell). Good pick up service for the hostels at the airport( the airporter), only cost 8 bucks each and drops you at your hostel door, our hostel also reinbursed the cost.
Then we arrived in the luvly Noahs City centre backpackers hostel.
What can we say about noahs........ emm not the cleanest hostel we have stayed in, really needs a complete refurb. very shabby and run down. Staff were friendly and a fairly good location, although you do get some nutters hanging around the central railway station nearby.This was our first sighting of aboriginals.....not the best examples Im afraid.....lets say they confirmed to the stereotype that they now seem to be famous for.
Coincidentally we were in sydney just in time for the mardigras parade, so of course it had to be done!.....
Heres us kilted up and ready to go.....

Rather than watching the parade we decided to be in it !.
We got kilted up (thanks to a scottish clan shop over in the drummoyne area), and managed to blag our way into the parade thanks to some nice blokes from the sydney harbour bears club.
Unfortunately it pished down the night of the parade, so we got really soaked but it was quite abuzz to walk down oxford street etc and have 350,000 people screaming at you and to get on tv! ,we had very sore fet and legs the next day, somuch walking and standing about. Heres a pic of Kris with his flag, weve finally got rid of that english thing......lol.. View image
Hes finally crossed over to the dark and tartan side, may the sweaty sock force be with him!
heres another pic of some of the mad mardigras goings on..
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And emm there was this bloke marching with us( despite his build and goateee its definately not david!), Im sure he was a tad chilly in the rain, but good on him!...

Our tiredness was compounded by a stinking hangover from the night before, we got into the mardigras spirit the night before and went skipping and swishing around the bars in our kilts!... and as we very rarely drink these days, we were a tad pished and felt rank the next day!.
The harbour area/opera house and bridge is as good as we expected,View image
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it looks really impressive both during the day and at night. We took a ferry to Manly which gives a great view of thre harbour and is much cheaper than any of the harbour cruises. Manly itself is reallynice,amazing surf beach and nice cafes etc. We also visited Bronte and the famous Bondi beaches. Bondi wasnt really what we were expectingView image
, its a nice big beach but has a slight british seaside town feel about it, hard to describe, parts of it are a bit run down looking and victorian. Ttok a stroll along the darling harbour area and couldnt resist slipping into the IMAX , also continued our cinemas around the world tour by visiting the reading cinema.
Took a trip up the skytower which gives amazing views over sydney and lets you get your head around the geography of the city and areas. Theres also a skytour ride/audiovisual presentation . This was really bizarre and cheesy, it describes the origins of australia and tells how the original european settlers were sent here for stealing a loaf of bread..........thats an awful lot of bread stealing going on !...... interestingly you were permitted to select your language on your headphones, we were informed that there was japanese and germanetc but of course you could choose australian!.......didnt know there was one!....we settled for english.... meeow!..
Took a stroll through the famous botanical gardens which are just behind the opera house basically, they are really nice. Here the massive colony of fruit bats live whch fly accross sydney everynight at dusk...its like something out of a horror film!..
In summary enjoyed our week in sydney, its a very busy city veryt like london in many ways, the rush hour periods are very busy. Weather was very variable, some days unbearable 40 degrees and other days a chilly and rainy 20.
Were now off to the bluemountains for a week, decided to hire a car for the week theres a cheap place next door to the hostel that lets youdrop off for free at the airport - too good to miss.

Melbourne

A couple of weeks late with the melbourne journal entry but better late than never !...
After another fab flight with Emirates we arrived safely in Melbourne. Oz immigration wasnt as bad as we had heard and we got through very quickly without any searches etc.
It was so nice for the very first time to have someone waiting for us when we arrived - Kris's big brother Simon who now lives in melbourne.
After 2 months in south east asia it was yet another culture shock for us, but a much more welcoming climate, an esacpe from the humidity.
We stayed for two weeks in the melbourne area, the first week based in the city in South Yarra which a very posh suburb. Its only 10mins from the city centre and we managed to find a really good cheap hotel, the Claremount.
Whilst in the city we visited the Rialto tower whcih is the tallest building in melbourne and gave us a great view of the whole city and the bay.
We spent a day in St Kilda which is beach suburb about 20 mins from the city, considering it is so close its areally nice beach with cafes and bars. We met kris's brother and his wife Lisa for a few beers, sitting in the sun outside the Prince of Wales hotel, watching the world go by.
I was dsperate to see some australian wildlife especially all this marsupial buisiness, so we took a drive up to Healsville animal sanctuary, where we got to see all things of the ozzie animal variety to satisfy my curiosity. Whilst checking out the tazzy devils, roos
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and wombats we stumbled upon a real live wild snake!!..on our first day in australia!...it was a four foot long red-bellied black which is apparantly very venemous. I was chasing after it with the camera and simon and kris were having a prolapse at my curiosity and lack of fear!. I was just so excited to see a proper wild snake.......im very sad !...anyway he was too quick for me, he slithered away and all I got was a shot of the end of his tail before he disappeared under a log.
It was nice to see the austrailan countryside or bush as they call it, all the trees and stuff look really different. Bit disappointed in the koalas, they looked really grubby , but afterall thay are meant to be semi permenantly stoned out their heads on the eucolyptus.
Took a drive up to Ramsay street where they film neighbours.View image
We didnt realise that it was a regular real street that they use as the set, but was strange to be standing on madge and harolds driveway!..
Simon and Lisa organised a sunday late afternoon barbecueView image
for us on the banks of the yarra just opposite the Rod Laver Arena( and yes I was gutted I missed the auzzie open by a couple of weeks!).
Its amazing that you can just drive up and use these massive free barbecues, you just bring your own food and cook it there for free!...can you imagine if we had these in the UK......I dread to think what they would be used for...not cooking food anyway...
We also took the chance to visit good old trailfinders to finally organise all our onward flights as the dates were ficticious before...so sadly we now know the very date we will be coming home....but we dont talk about that!...
Whilst in the city we hopped aboard the free tram which goes round the city centre, its a great way to see the city for free.
We thought the city centre was really nice with some interesting modern architechture and lots of green park areas, we wandered through Fitzroy park and Captain Cooks cottage.
Spent a couple of evenings along Chapel Street and enjoyed the Jam Factory (a massive mall and cinema complex) just walking distance from our hotel. We like to continue our cinemas around the world journey.
In general we really liked the city,it had a really relaxed feel about it and everyone was really friendly. The Claremount is a great cheap place to stay, really clean and with lots of character...but beware of the week day breakfast dragon..... a certain lady who's not very happy in her work place and fits the proverbial "face like a smacked arse" pretty well...nuff said..

Then our second week we popped on the train down to the Mornington peninsula. We were very spoiled here as we were staying with some old friends of Davids: Teresa and Derek. It was great to see Teresa again as they emmigrated from scotland a couple of years ago and now live in mornington. We also caught up with some other friends: Maureen and Gavin who also emmigrated about 5 yrs ago. Of course they havent changed a bit and still sound refreshingly scottish !..its obviously a hard accent to shift.
It was great to stay with friends and do some regular stuff like sit and watch tv, and enjoy some home comforts and privacy away from hostels. Teresa and derek made us very welcome and showed us around the beautiful peninsula.
Mornington itself is a really quaint little place with a nice beach and some cafes and bars. We visited Arthurs seat for a view of the bay and some of the surf beaches on the ocean side, the very pleasant Safety Beach View image
(renamed from Shark bay a few years ago...), the very scenic Phillip Island for the day to feed the Roo's, have lunch in Cowes and visit the boadwalk by Seal Point (which has a high shark population near by...). We also had the pleasure of expanding our cinema experience - this time by going to a drive in cinema! it was like something from '60's america apart from you tune your radio to get the movie sound, instead of those old hang off the window speakers you see in the movies!
After a relaxing week in the peninsula, we picked up a hire car to check the world famous Great Ocean Road. We spent 3 days driving the several hundred kilometre's of ocean and forrest road up past Apolla Bay, Otway point and onto Port Campbell.View image
This is the route you have to take to see the amasing Twelve Apostles,

which are rock stacks that have been left after the ocean has eaten away the cliff face.
We had a bizzare expeience whilst eating in an Italian restaurant in Port Campbell....we bumped into a Canadian girl who we'd been speaking to at breakfast 2 weeks earlier at the hostel in Singapore!
Our accomodation in Port Campbell was a great little B&B called Sea Breaze - which we highly recommend.