After spending a few hours on Rangitoto Island with my friends Martin and Lydia, we ferried back to the Auckland wharf, grabbed my bags from storage, and caught the last ferry of the day out to Waiheke (why-HEK-ee) Island where Martin's family stays. Waiheke is a 45-minute ferry ride out from Auckland and it is a wine-lover's paradise with dozens of vineyards strewn across the island. (I am not a wine connoisseur, so I don't really know what types of wine grow best in Auckland Harbour) The island is surrounded by sparkling water, private coves and inlets, and because of the loose sedimentary rock underneath, the hills are very steep and I don't think there was a straight road on the island! Quite a few people live on the island in a number of little communities connected to the wharf by the main road, but even more private drives twist and turn their way through sheep and cow pastures, over steep ascents, and between white sandy beaches. It reminded me a lot of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, or Nantucket due to it's seclusion, it's high-end residents, it's scenic water views, and the awful traffic (though nothing really outdoes Cape Cod traffic on a Friday summer afternoon!).
Martin's whole family was celebrating the holidays at his parent's place and they couldn't have been more welcoming to me, refusing to let me do anything but relax, eat, and help myself to wine or beer no matter how much I insisted I could help out! The house was situated way back away from any main road and up on a hill with a beautiful view of the little cove below, the New Zealand mainland across the water, and the sun setting down behind the adjacent hillside, all surrounded by native forests! It was spectacular! After I set up my tent in the back yard, Lydia, Martin, and I walked down to the water's edge and strolled along the pebbly perimeter of the estuary. It was high tide then, but during low tide the water retreats and reveals an expansive shelf of sticky, mucky, salt marsh. Little crabs darted around the rocks, and rock oysters were fastened to almost every little bit of rock covered by water at high tide.
Sunset over Awaararoa Bay (don't ask me how to pronounce that!) on Waiheke Island
To be honest, not much happened those next few days. We did go to Onetangi Beach the morning after I arrived and spent a few hours there. Being as terrified of swimming in the ocean as I am, I was determined on this trip to start getting over that fear! I'm a fine swimmer, but I just am hesitant when it comes to the ocean. Well, I enjoyed the warm waters of Onetangi Beach, but the wind was a bit much so we decided to call it quits and headed over to Wild on Waiheke, a beautiful vineyard/brewery with delicious pizzas and beer, cider, and wine (had to try a bit of each!) and there were all sorts of games for Martin and Lydia's little nieces and nephews to play, but it looked too fun so we eventually joined in the extra-large chess set and bocci ball - but there were also more grown-up activities like volleyball, laser-skeet shooting, and archery! Soon, though, the rest of the family headed back to the house while Martin, Lydia, and I drove up to the Peacock Sky Vineyard, which the rest of the family had raved about earlier, for a little bit of a wine tasting. It was good wine, and the food they paired it all with was delicious, but again, I just don't know my wines well enough to be able to say, "The acidity of the Cab Sav really brought out the flavour of the garlic chicken skewer." (I don't even know if cab savs have acidity or if they pair well with chicken. Probably not. Oh well. I do know that Cab Sav is a wine, though, so there's a plus!
Rows of grapes on Waiheke Island
On the way back down the road to the house we saw a few pukekos which are these birds with brilliant navy blue plumage and a bright red beak perched up on top of spindly legs. There were just two of them rummaging around a fence post, but I didn't have my camera handy enough to get a photo of them before they darted off. People always say that New Zealand is the place to go if you want the Down Under experience where no animals will kill you (unlike Australia) and this is true. What took me by surprise were the number of amazing birds here! Not only did we see the pukekos, but at night you could hear moreporks calling to each other across the bay (here's a YouTube video which doesn't show much, but you can at hear their distinct, "More-pork!" calls), and during the day we would frequently see tuis (TOO-ees) flitting through the trees with their black bodies and white bobble-feathers at their necks. Also, just down along the bay below the house is a protected nesting ground for the shore dottrels and we frequently saw them flying around.
I think it was New Year's Eve by this point and after a great barbecue dinner and the little kids soon went to bed. Us adults then sat around drinking and playing a card game called, "asshole" which was really fun and I'll probably introduce it to my family at some point - but I forgot how to play... That was a nightly occurrence, but after playing this night, we walked up the very steep driveway to the top of the hill to see if we could get a good show from the Auckland New Year's Fireworks. Well, we saw the fireworks, but they were extremely uninspired and dull. There were maybe two or three big sprays of pyrotechnics from the top of the Sky Tower, but then the show was over and we had to manage our way back down the driveway.
The next morning was the first day of the new year and Martin and his brother impressed us all with homemade eggs benedict and it wasn't long before everyone packed up into the cars for a mini day-trip out to the northeast point on the island to the Stoney Batter Historic Reserve - a WWII gun battery that was part of a network of stations around the perimeter of the Hauraki Gulf. Built by the Kiwis and funded by the US Military, this network of battlements were set up to protect Hauraki Gulf and Auckland Harbour from any incoming threat from the enemy. The US got involved because the US Navy's ships used the protection of Auckland Harbour during the war. Stoney Batter's guns could fire far beyond the line of sight so the various radio stations would report the location of an enemy ship to the radio control centre on top of Rangitoto Island who then would call to Stoney Batter and let them know which way to point their weapons. While the threat of enemy invasion was real (3 Japanese subs did sneak past Sydney Harbour's defenses and sank a British battleship), the enemies never came and the battery never saw real action. The entire complex is pretty astonishing though - the three gun batteries are all connected by over a kilometre of underground tunnels which you can tour with the aid of a very bright torch, provided by the very knowledgeable woman who was attending the station, though she was a bit gruff and insisted on giving a little lamb a bottle of formula before taking our money. There is also a little "museum" there which is nothing more than a storage room full of photos, maps, and bits and bobs from the machinery that used to be in the tunnel systems. It appears as though the tunnels and bunkers are being renovated, but we couldn't be sure. It was nice to get out of the heat though and into the dark, dank, echoey tunnels! It's definitely something to check out if you're ever there. Once we got out of the tunnels and back into sunlight we walked up the hills in the sheep paddocks to the outside of the batteries and the views of the Gulf were so clear we could easily see Great and Little Barrier Islands way off in the distance!
Exploring the depths of Stoney Batter Historical Site
On the way back to the house, the whole family regrouped at Man o' War Vineyards for some tasty cheeses, olives, meats, and some wine, of course! What a fun time we had just sitting around talking, joking, watching the little kids play cricket, and eating! But the day was hot and everyone was exhausted so back home we went and while everyone else decided to do a little napping, I nipped down to the bay and took a stroll to the dottrel preserve and around the bend to a wide beach used as the launching site for rock oyster farmers whose farms were just out in the little bay. I was leaving the next morning so I also got my things together to make a quick pack-up in the morning and the rest of the evening was just relaxed on the porch looking out over the water while the sun set over the hills.
New Zealand became the 15th country I've been to (or 18th, depending on how you count the countries of the UK) late last year. I knew I wasn't going to be able to afford the ticket back to the US for Christmas/New Year's but then I heard that my friends Lydia and Martin - classmates of mine from Vermont - were going to be spending a few weeks in Auckland with Martin's family, half of whom live there, for the holidays. I politely asked, not wanting to intrude on their family time, if I could stay with them for a few days, figuring that if I couldn't get home to see family, I may as well see friends in a new country. And with their blessing, I planned my week-long trip, packed my bags and tent, and was on my way.
I flew Air New Zealand for the first time and was giddy with excitement when the Flight Safety Demonstration Video came on because being shortly after The Hobbit came out in cinemas, New Zealand's Middle Earth tourism sector was booming again. The video was well done and includes all of your favorite Hobbit/Lord of the Rings stars teaching you about the safety features of the aircraft. Take a look:
And upon landing, the fun just continues as you exit the airport through a tunnel of rocks presumably from the Dwarf Kingdom and once you reach the baggage claim area you are greeted by one of the Dwarf Lords! I don't think I could stop smiling!
I had a little bit of trouble getting my tent and camping gear through customs. Because both Australia and New Zealand have sensitive native species, both governments to above and beyond the call of duty to make sure you're not tracking foreign-born plants or animals along with you or your gear. It takes an extra 15 minutes when you pick up your bags, but if your stuff is dirty, you'll get a free wash out of it! But soon I was on my way on a shuttle bus into Auckland.
It was almost 9PM when I arrived at the City Road YHA hostel, which was a nasty, dirty, bare-bones hostel, and I was told I'd be lucky to find anything open for dinner, so I quickly stashed my bags in my room and headed out in search of a good New Zealand bite to eat; I found a Manhattan pizza by the slice shop about to close up, but they gave me a few pieces of pie which I scarfed down and then headed out to explore what I could being so late. I took a stroll down Queen Street into the CBD which still had all the Christmas lights and decorations up. It is a pretty city, about the size of Grand Rapids, Michigan, I'd say, though its skyline is more iconic, I think - especially with the domineering Sky Tower which was all lit up at night and rather beautiful! I found a few local pubs on Vulcan and Durham Lanes where I started my New Zealand beer sampling, really enjoying my Moa Original Lager. I didn't stay out too late because I needed to get up early enough to meet Lydia and Martin down at the ferry wharf.
Auckland city skyline from the Rangitoto Ferry. It's an impressive little city, but I stress it is a little city - very walkable and not ever too busy. Quite relaxing, really!
The next morning was Sunday and while it was early, it was not bright and threatened to rain all day. I dropped my bags off at a hostel's storeroom closer to the CBD and waited for Lydia and Martin's ferry from Waiheke Island to come in. And sure enough, right on time, I saw my two good friends, who I hadn't seen since their wedding a year and a half ago in Vermont! It was so good to see familiar faces, especially after a less than exciting Christmas. We went back to Vulcan Lane for a nice breakfast, though we missed our ferry out to Rangitoto Island and had to wait another 45 minutes for the next ferry which gave us a little bit of time to walk around the CBD, do a little bit of souvenir shopping, and catch the next ferry on time.
Auckland is a city built on a series of hills that have all, in their past, been active cones of volcanoes since about 250,000 years ago. Rangitoto Island is the most recent of these volcanoes, having erupted only 600 years ago! Before Rangitoto erupted, there was an island in the harbour, but Rangitoto rose up out of the water right next to Motutapu Island, and Rangitoto is huge! It's hard to believe that this island erupted out of the Earth within the history of human habitation of New Zealand (having been discovered by the Maori people only about 800 years ago!). While mostly forested now, there are still wide expanses of bare basalt (lava rocks) where plants haven't yet colonised. One of the dominant species found on Rangitoto, and throughout New Zealand for that matter, is the pohutukawa tree (PUH-hoo-tuh-KAH-wuh) - a very regal tree with wide, shady, leafy branches and hundreds of bristly red flowers. The pohutukawa is revered in Maori culture and it is now illegal to remove the trees from wherever they grow.
Rangitoto Island from the Ferry Wharf
The ferry ride took about half an hour to get to the island and offered some nice views of the city, though the weather was still threatening rain. Once to Rangitoto we started the relatively short and easy ascent up to the caldera at the top which only took about an hour. At the top, the first thing we came to was the gaping pit that is the caldera of the volcano. It was a bit odd because you typically think that at the top of a mountain there should be a summit, but with volcanoes you get to the top only to look down into that hole. And it was deep! I'm not sure the measure, but I was impressed with how deep it went!
The red flowers of the pohutukawa tree on Rangitoto Island
Because of it's high elevation and unique position guarding Auckland Harbour, a radio station was built as part of New Zealand's WWII defenses and a few of the buildings are still up near the top. The weather was starting to clear up and we were getting our first clear views of the skyline and the rest of Auckland Harbour with it's beautiful islands poking up out of the water, and far off in the distance to the north and east we could see the larger islands of Great Barrier and Little Barrier Islands and the Coromandel Peninsula. If there's one thing I learned about this part of New Zealand it is that volcanic activity makes very large landforms that dominate the landscape around them! And if I thought Rangitoto and the Auckland volcanic field was impressive, I was sure in for some awestriking moments in the days to come.
On the way down from the Rangitoto Summit we followed another short trail to the Lava Tunnels. These tunnels are formed when the very fluid basaltic lava flows down the side of the volcano. The surface of the flow is in contact with the cold air and it forms an insulating crust under which the hot lava can continue to flow. This process forms these conduits or lava tubes which can be large enough to crawl through once the lava all hardens. A great example of lava tubes can be found at Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve in Idaho in the US. We navigated our way through a few of the tunnels and then had to hi-tail it back to the ferry wharf to catch the ferry back to Auckland so we could be on time to catch our ferry out to Waiheke Island.
Well, my first Christmas away from home and family was more than dull. Let's be frank. It was terrible. Sydney was rainy, gloomy, and gray. I would much rather have been at home in Michigan in the cold and snow, driving 10 miles under the speed limit because of icy roads, shoveling the driveway, and spending an extra five minutes just putting boots and winter gear on every time I left the house. Oh, I wouldn't have minded the extra ten minutes it takes to get the car running, brush off the snow, and scrape off the ice from the windshield. Had I had a nice sunny day down at the beach in 30-40°C (90-110°F) weather, maybe my tone would be different, but nah.
Christmas Eve wasn't bad, though. A friend of mine had some friends over at his apartment for a nice cookout on his new grill (or in Aussie terms, to have a barbecue on his new barbecue), which was fun, but I left around 10:30 because I wanted to maintain some semblance of Christmas tradition so I headed down to really the only church I know of, St. Mary's Cathedral, for part of their Christmas Eve services. Really, I just wanted to hear and sing some traditional Christmas Carols like our church back at home does for the midnight service, but I arrived at the Cathedral an hour late for that. It was packed, though, and every single seat in the nave was full with spare pews lining the outer aisles, but few spare seats; people were standing and sitting wherever there was an open spot on the floor. I did, however, find a seat next to a very nice Asian woman who reminded me a lot of my grandmothers. She was there for the services, too, unlike many of the tourists poking their heads in, but between songs and scripture, she was all ears and wanted to know what an American like me was doing in Sydney, why I wasn't at home with family, and why I would come to St. Mary's if I was not Catholic. I smile thinking about her because even though I'd never met her before and never will see her again, I sensed that she wasn't spending her holiday with many family members either, and so in some way we were supposed to sit next to each other and be a surrogate family for the next two hours.
The service was very nice and included your traditional scripture readings (albeit all sung on the same note like in all Catholic churches which I do not understand - kind of like the sing-speaking in "Les Misérables"), the classic carols (which when over 500 people join in with the organ in a massive Cathedral is amazing!), and all of those little other Catholic rites or call-and-response songs that seemingly everyone knows but follows no real melody and for an outsider like me is just complete confusion! But I did my best and I wasn't there to nit-pick the service. It was very well done and quite inspiring to share that experience with so many people! It's a good feeling to know that churches still do fill up these days, even if it is just for Christmas.
Midnight passed and the service finally came around to partaking in communion, which I know that since I'm not Catholic, I do not take at a Catholic church. I also know, from my Aunt's church back at home, that serving communion to a few hundred people can take over an hour, so with a Cathedral full of people, I figured it would take until next Christmas! I said, "Merry Christmas," to my surrogate-grandmother and ducked out of the Cathedral. Sydney was empty, and since I wasn't tired yet, I walked down to Martin Place (the Wall Street of Sydney) to see the Christmas Tree they had set up, and then walked up George Street to the Town Hall station where I caught the last train home.
Martin Place Christmas Tree, Christmas Day 2012
Since I've already mentioned how not-great Christmas was, I'll move on to Boxing Day! Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated in most other current or former British Empire countries and commonwealths. It is the day that workers would receive gifts from their employers upon returning to work after Christmas. Nowadays, most everyone has Boxing Day off and there are lots of festivities around the city, the most exciting of which is the Sydney to Hobart (capital of Tasmania) Yacht Race which begins at the Harbour Bridge. All of the boats, ships, and yachts then race out to the Harbour Heads, out into the Pacific Ocean and then follow the coast all the way down to Tasmania. It is a massive event and I was told to make sure to get a good view somewhere near the Harbour Heads, which I was going to do but not after treating myself to a breakfast fit for a king: scrambled eggs, french toast, real bacon, and pineapple - delicious! The time it took me to make and eat breakfast set me back, though, so I caught a bus out to Watsons Bay, the suburb right on the South Head, distraught that I was sure I'd miss the good spots because the traffic was heavy and people were everywhere! But as it turns out, I found a great little spot on the edge of the cliffs at the Gap Park where my view was looking directly north to the North Head, perfect for watching the Yachts come through the Harbour Mouth and turn to head south.
For a while there was no excitement other than watching the 14 helicopters flying around overhead like a swarm of flies. But then a series of motor boats rounded the South Head and soon enough Wild Oats XI came streaming through the mouth of the Harbour, sails full, and you quickly realise just how big some of this boats are! I was a good distance away and above the yacht, but comparing the size of the yacht to the size of the cliffs behind her at North Head, you came to the conclusion that there wasn't much difference! (Wild Oats XI, by the way, eventually won the race.) Soon to follow were a few more large yachts and a dozens more smaller yachts, each being accompanied by a speedboat and being followed by locals in their own speedboats, tourists on the Manly Ferry, and patrons out on the tall-ship, the James Craig. Once the yachts made their way past North and South Heads, they were in the open ocean, turned south, and started following the coast toward Hobart, their final destination, almost 1,200 kilometres away!
It was fantastic to watch and be part of such a large crowd, but soon the crowd thinned and I headed over to the Laings Point Reserve, spread out my blanet, took out a few papers and a beer and read in the shade of a tree, with beautiful views of the city all around! Overall, not an entirely bad Boxing Day...though I forget what I did with the rest of the day...
The Great Ocean Road starts in Torquay, about an hour and a half south from Melbourne. Knowing that from this point on, there would be only a few towns with grocery stores, Caitlyn and I stocked up on food for the road. I'd driven to Torquay but Caitlyn hadn't driven in the two years she'd been in Australia, so I let her take the wheel from here on out, which was fine, because being a geologist I like to look at the rocks and coastlines and landscapes which is kind of a hazard while behind the wheel!
It didn't take long for us to get out of Torquay and through the small coastal town of Anglesea before we got a taste of what the next 200 kilometres would be like as the road stretched right along the tops of staggering cliffs, windswept beaches, and some of the most colourful water I've ever seen. Not only was it bluer than blue, but parts were emerald, turquoise, green, and gray and since the coast borders the Southern Ocean, where some of the world's largest waves are created, portions of the coastline were bleached white with seafoam and breaking waves.
Down the road from Anglesea is the town of Airey's Inlet with a magnificently white and red lighthouse you could see from a good distance away. It was late morning and we decided it would be a good place to stop for lunch. This part of the coast was inundated with lava and ash 29 million years ago from a volcano whose caldera was right at this point. Global sea-level rose around 24 million years ago and the basaltic rocks got covered with thick layers of sandy limestones. Now, at the base of the cliffs here the basalt rocks are more eroded from wave action than the limestone above it which forms the rocky cliffs and headlands along the Great Ocean Road.
We spent the next hour driving along these cliffs and beaches, but also into the backs of coves where small rivers flowed into the ocean and up the hills skirting the dense coastal forests. In the little town of Lorne - which seemed to be a sort of more posh holiday town - we turned inland up Erskine Falls Road, not necessarily to see the falls, but because of the wildlife. See, I did a little bit of research before hitting the road because one of the things I wanted to check of my list was seeing koalas out in the wild, and lucky for us, some of the best koala-spotting territory is in the coastal forests of the Great Ocean Road. One of the tips was to drive up Erskine Falls Road and we were sure to see the little furry critters in the trees. Well, we didn't see any koalas, nor did we really get a good feel for Erskine Falls because the path down to the falls was under construction... At least it was a pretty little detour.
Back on the road, we passed through the town of Wye River (another spot the guidebooks said we'd be sure to see koalas) and shortly thereafter, we did stop in Kennett River to find some toilets, which were in an RV/camping holiday park across the road from the ocean. I stopped in to the park's office to see if they could give us some tips on where and how to spot wild koalas. We were in luck! Just that morning the office clerk had seen a few in a tree in one of their camping lots and we were free to have a look around. So after emptying our bladders, we strolled through the caravan park with cameras in hand. We knew what koalas looked like from photos, but had no real idea what to be looking for or in what type of eucalyptus tree they'd be in. But then, just as plain as day, we looked up into a tree and saw three or four koalas lounging around in the higher branches of the tree!
Koala snoozing in Kennett River
It was awesome! These little gray puffs of fur just lazily walk from one branch to the other, stretching their arms out to reach for a clump of leaves and then pull it toward them with surprising dexterity! And then they eat or sleep, or both at the same time it seemed! Koalas are pretty simple animals, but they were fascinating to watch and with our cameras, we circled the tree looking for the best angle to take a photo. It was odd because we'd been looking for these guys for a while not knowing what to look for, but once we found them it was if we couldn't stop finding them! On our way back to the car we saw some other road-trippers by a tree where another koala was perched right in the crook of some branches just out of arm's reach and this time there were no twigs blocking it from view and he just sat there looking from side to side, just begging to have his photo taken! I've never really had such an incredible wildlife experience before with such a rare animal that even many Australians have not seen in the wild. But it would only get better from here.
Back in the car, we drove a little ways up the Grey River Road right from Kennett River and stopped just a few hundred metres up the road because again there was a koala just chilling out on a eucalyptus branch right at eye-height, and this guy was hungry! Without really paying much attention to us, he kept eating and eating in perfect photographic poise! Caitlyn and I had him to ourselves for a good few minutes before a crowd of people walked up from down the road. Satisfied with our amazing encounter, we hopped back in the car and drove on.
The afternoon was drawing on and shortly we arrived in the small town of Apollo Bay where we stayed at the spacious, clean, and quiet Apollo Bay Eco YHA. YHAs are oftentimes notorious for having run-down accommodation for cheap (I'm looking at you YHA Auckland City Road...), but this was completely different. Everything about it was designed to be sustainable - from the no flush toilets (they flush if you really need them to), to big plate-glass windows that let in heaps of natural light, to the herb garden. And for $50/night for a room with two beds, it was perfect! We checked in but then got back in the car because we wanted to go check out the Cape Otway Light Station at the Australian mainland's second southern-most point.
The road to the lighthouse is a 20 minute turnoff from the Great Ocean Road and winds through Great Otway National Park without any other cars on the road. It was along this road that we came upon not just one or three koalas in a little tree, but an entire colony of koalas. It would be impossible to miss seeing them as there were dozens of them hanging out in a handful of trees with wide branches stretching across the road and back into the forests behind them. We stopped the car and stepped out taking quality photo after quality photo. And these ones weren't just eating (some were) but others were actively calling to each other in these terrible-sounding grunts, groans, and screams. It was soo bizarre! I tried catching some of it on film, but it didn't turn out great. Caitlyn and I sat there looking into the trees, bewildered, and amazed at what we were seeing! You couldn't ever see anything like this in a zoo, and the best part was it was totally free and we had these dozens of koalas totally to ourselves!
If it weren't for seeing these koalas here, our little afternoon detour would have been a bust because the lighthouse was closed for the day, anyway, so back to Apollo Bay it was. Caitlyn took a quick shower and I walked down to the harbour to take some photos at sunset and we met at a little Chinese restaurant where I was introduced to handcrafted beers from the local Prickly Moses microbrewery. The beer was delicious (I had the Summer Ale, Otway Ale, Red Ale, and Otway Stout throughout the course of the night) and I particularly liked, Moses, the echidna on the logo.
The next day was a big day. We had some impressive sights to see and yet we had to be back at the Melbourne Airport by 7pm to catch our flight home. That morning, we couldn't resist trying to blueberry pancakes at the Bay Leaf Cafe right on the main road in Apollo Bay, and we were not disappointed with the homemade stack of pancakes, bacon, and maple syrup. It was a brekkie to die for and I think I can say it was my only culinary winning-pick of our trip since Caitlyn was the one who found all of our delicious meals in Melbourne!
We got back on the road, stopping only a few times to check out a lookout over secluded beaches, but we had a new destination in mind that we wanted to be sure to save enough time for: The Twelve Apostles!
Possibly the crowning glory of the Great Ocean Road, The Twelve Apostles are a series of seastacks, or pillars of rock separated by the rest of the rocky coastline by erosion and wave action eating away at their bases. And the stretch of coast between Princetown and Port Campbell, is home to Port Campbell National Park and one of the most recognizable natural features of Australia. We parked the car at the Gippsland Steps and followed the path down to the beach where, save for a handful of other tourists taking photos, was relatively empty. Empty and beautiful! It was a sunny day with a bright blue sky and we meandered down the shoreline gawking up at the massive seastack in front of us! And surprise! It wasn't until we actually got closer to the seastack that we realised it was blocking another enormous pillar of rock behind it! As beautiful as this site was, we were in luck because these weren't even part of The Twelve Apostles!
Just down the road from the Gippsland Steps is the Twelve Apostles Visitor Center (which is nothing more than toilets and a cafe) but we walked along the path, under the road, out to lookout points right at the edge of the tops of the cliffs. It was from this point, looking north up the coast, that the classic photographs of the mammoth blocks of stone are taken. Originally, the area was known as the sow and piglets, but it was soon renamed The Twelve Apostles because locals figured that would entice more tourists - and they were right. But don't be fooled by the name: there are more (or less) than 12 seastacks depending on who you talk to or what you consider to be the difference between a seastack and an eroded pile of rock. Nevertheless, this is an awe-inspiring vista that is worth spending some time at! I was hoping we could find a way down to the beach, but there did not appear to be any paths or trails, so after an hour or so, we hopped in the car and continued on to Loch Ard Gorge.
The Loch Ard Gorge gets its name from one of the most storied shipwrecks along this reach of the coast - arguably one of the most dangerous waterways in the world. The Loch Ard was carrying 54 people on board at the end of a three-month voyage to Melbourne from England. On 31 May 1878 mists shrouded the coastline here and once they lifted the Loch Ard found itself in a precarious situation right next to the massive cliffs and while Captain Gibb tried steering the ship away from the cliffs, strong winds and currents carried the ship into a reef and oncoming waves slammed up against the sides of the ship and swells eventually caused the ship to sink. Only two of the 54 people on board survived, an Irish immigrant and the ship's apprentice, both of whom were carried into Loch Ard Gorge (a protected inlet from the treacherous coast). It was hard to imagine such trauma happening in such a beautiful place, but easy to see how an unforgiving ocean, strong winds, and rocky coastline create the perfect recipe for disaster! Caitlyn and I walked along the cliff tops and down into Loch Ard Gorge for a quick gander at the beach but were soon on our way.
The rest of the day involved driving the short distance to Port Campbell where we had a very average fish 'n' chips lunch and beer before heading inland toward Melbourne Airport to catch our flight back to Sydney that evening.
I am always amazed at how much you can pack into such a short vacation if you're willing to put the energy into doing it! I mean, over the course of four days we saw a historic jail, ate at tons of amazing restaurants, visited museums, drove 200 kilometres over some of the most rugged and beautiful coastal scenery in Australia, and saw wild koalas up-close. Four days! It's why I love traveling. There is so much to see in the world with so little time to see it all, but you sure can come close!
After spending a week at a geomorphology conference (and the months before it preparing), my friend, Caitlyn and I decided it was time for a bit of sightseeing. She's been in Australia for a while and hadn't yet been down to Melbourne and since I also had not yet been down there, we found a cheap deal on tickets with EasyJet and the day after my conference ended, were on our way to Victoria where we would spend two days in Melbourne and two days driving the famous Great Ocean Road!
Melbourne (pronounced "MEL-bin" and not "mel-BORNE" as my dad likes to say) was awesome! It's the second largest city in Australia, only a half-million behind Sydney, but has been able to retain a larger amount of it's Victorian charm. A lot of people say that Sydney is the cosmopolitan international city in Australia whereas Melbourne is the cosmopolitan Australian city in Australia, and I was able to see that. The city, while big and having everything a big city must, was so much quieter than Sydney and it just felt more relaxed and easy-going. In fact, it took us a while to figure out why the city was so quiet, and we realised it is because there are no buses in the whole of the Downtown area! It's true! Melbourne has maintained its tram network, the world's largest, which dates back to 1885! And while the trams are noisy when they rumble on by, once they are gone, you don't hear anything but cars going by, which is so much quieter than buses constantly starting and stopping.
Melbourne tram in front of Flinders Street Station
We flew into Tullamarine Airport (Melbourne International) and were able to hop a bus to the city for relatively cheap, and then the bus company, after dropping us off at the Southern Cross Train Station, had other mini buses that drove us right to our hostel, free of charge! Caitlyn booked us a room in a clean hostel, right down near Federation Square, arguably the main central meeting place in the city. The hostel, the Greenhouse Backpackers, was located just around the corner from Federation Square on Flinders Lane, right in the middle of all sorts of alleyways lined with tiny cafés and coffee shops and stores of all kinds. We were super-hungry and Caitlyn, who had planned most of the goings-on of the Melbourne part of our trip, led the way east to a Chinese restaurant, Chin Chin, she heard about and we gorged ourselves on a delicious smattering of menu items. Caitlyn was always on the lookout for restaurants that didn't just offer your everyday generic menu items but something more and unique that you couldn't just get anywhere else. I was glad she'd done her research because we dined like royalty in Melbourne!
After lunch, as full as we were, we walked back toward the hostel and wandered around the lanes and alleys for a little bit, taking in some of the nearby sights including the magnificent Flinders Street Station and St. Paul's Cathedral. It felt a bit odd walking around because it was early December and everything was decked out in Christmas decorations all over the city, but it was HOT! It was such a weird feeling seeing and hearing all the Christmas cheer without the cold and the snow that we are used to back home in Michigan! But our destination was another place Caitlyn had heard about called, Little Cupcakes. After walking past it two or three times, we finally found it and stepped in for a wee coffee and some of the dare I say cutest cupcakes I'd ever seen!
It was still early in the afternoon and we decided we'd walk off our lunch on the way to the Old Melbourne Gaol (jail), an historic building in both the city's and Australia's past. We got there right before the last tour started, and while it was a bit more expensive than the general ticket to get in, it was SO worth it! You get put in a group that is led into the Gaol as if you had been arrested. The men are lined up across from the women and everyone is given an inmate card with the background of a convict and then your guide, the Warden, makes it very clear that you are to follow all rules of the Gaol and address him or her as Sir or Ma'am throughout the tour. It's kind of funny at times, but if you have a good guide, like we did, you quickly become afraid of stepping out of line (though humourous comments were appreciated). The warden checks you for any contraband and then leads you into the holding cells for the inmates, one of which is a giant padded room, and you learn how certain inmates, like the pedophiles, get a separate outdoor space in the yard during physical activity time because otherwise they'd surely be beaten to a pulp by the other inmates. It seems short, but the tour took about half an hour and culminated in a photo op where you get to hold up the inmate clapboard and have your mugshot taken! The tour only takes you through the holding cells, but the other half of the Gaol is in the main Men's hall - three stories of cells just like in the movies, lining a central corridor with walkways around the perimeter and stairways at the ends. In each cell you learn about specific convicts, or about jailed women, or immigrants, or whatever the case may be, but the Gaol is almost most famous for being where Ned Kelly, the famous Australian outlaw, had his last meal before being hanged.
Thoroughly worn out by history, Caitlyn and I headed back toward the hostel, but not without stopping at the James Squire brewhouse (which I thought was just a Melbourne thing, but apparently the first James Squire brewery is along the Parramatta River near Sydney). The beer was good anyway and we were back to the hostel soon enough for a wee nap before once again heading out for more alcohol and food! We got dressed up a bit and Caitlyn lead the way to Mamasita for some delicious late-night Mexican food and drinks in this upstairs restaurant that was well-worth the 20-minute wait for a table! Good food, delicious drinks, and great music put us right in the mood to find a place to go out for the evening. And while we asked around for a good place to find free live music, no one could tell us of anything nearby aside from places with $20 covers, so we went off to find our own adventure.
And find it we did in the form of Cherry Bar on AC/DC Lane where there was a live band covering The Doors in celebration of Jim Morrison's birthday. It wasn't really a dive-bar per se in that it was crowded, loud, and everyone was having a great time! The band played for another hour or so before calling it quits, and we followed suit, headed back to the hostel and crashed pretty quickly into bed.
We woke up early the next morning and headed off to one of the nearby cafés in the alley-ways for a good breakfast place. We found a place, and it was good, but the food was pretty generic, and not much to remember. Caitlyn wanted to do a bit of shopping so we stopped in a few stores and then headed out to the Queen Victoria Markets which are the largest open-air markets in the Southern Hemisphere. Frankly, I was pretty unimpressed; the market stalls were filled with the usual knick-knacks, Aussie t-shirts, and iPhone covers that you can find in Sydney's Paddy's Markets. Maybe the produce was good, but we weren't planning on cooking, and there was only one aisle, off to the side, where local Melbournian vendors were selling their art. Needless to say, we didn't stay long but made our way over to La Trobe street and hopped on one of the free trams that loops the Downtown area.
Back at Federation Square, Caitlyn and I decided to split up for a few hours. She stayed in the Square and stopped into the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and National Gallery of Victoria and I took my camera and headed off to the massive Botanical Gardens. While much of Melbourne is relatively flat, the Botanical Gardens are anything but! Paths wander in and out of groves and parks and plazas and statues of royalty, but I eventually found myself looking up at the the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne's ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) Memorial. Sydney's is nice, but Melbourne's is Grand! I hadn't planned on spending as much time as I did there, but the memorial is so full of symbolism in the carved reliefs high up in the central sanctuary and an outer hall with the flags of each of the main branches of the armed services. You find marvelous views of Melbourne's skyline from the rooftop terrace of the Memorial and down in the crypts are more rooms honoring fallen soldiers and special moments in military history.
Looking at my watch, I needed to get a move on to meet Caitlyn back at the hostel but I still had a bit more of the Botanical Gardens to walk through, and I was going to go a little out of my way to see the Melbourne Olympic Stadium (which I found out is actually the Cricket Grounds and farther than I was willing to walk!). But I did walk along Batman Avenue and I passed the Rod Laver Arena where the Australian Open is held.
The afternoon was drawing on and after rendezvousing, we headed out to the suburb of Fitzroy to have dinner and beers at the Little Creatures Dining Hall where we had delicious pizza and amazing doughnuts!! Fitzroy reminded me a lot of Burlington, Vermont, with its anything-goes attitude, hole-in-the-wall boutiques and cafes, and somewhat bohemian vibe. I think it was in Fitzroy that we decided what we'd do with the rest of our evening and concluded that the best option would be to go to an open-air cinema in St. Kilda, hosted by Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream to see a showing of the sing-a-long version of Grease! Haha.
The trams took us from Fitzroy down to St. Kilda and there was plenty of time before the movie started for us to walk out to the end of the St. Kilda Pier Breakwater where the Lonely Planet Guidebook mentioned we could see tiny fairy penguins swim ashore to their nests in the rocks of the breakwater at sundown. Not too many people were out on the breakwater when we got there which allowed us to enjoy a little bit of fresh air out and watch kite surfers on Port Phillip Bay in front of the Melbourne skyline. We didn't see any penguins swimming ashore, but more people were coming out to the breakwater and soon we noticed tourists pointing between the rocks and shoving their cameras into the holes. Clearly, there were nesting penguins already ashore and we walked right past them! I kind of felt bad for the little penguins, having all those cameras and flashes being shoved in their faces, but they took it like champs and either didn't notice or pretended not to, anyway. I was conflicted because I didn't want to be part of the mob, but these were the first penguins I'd seen in the wild and had to have my own proof, so I briefly joined the mob of tourists, took my photo and left. The sun was actually setting now, so we headed over to the open-air cinema, got our free samples of B&J ice cream, rented some seats (and blankets because it was windy and freezing!), and kicked back to enjoy singing along to Danny and Sandy, Frenchie, Rizzo, Jan, Kenicke, Doodie, and the other guy. I should have known, or realised before, but it only dawned on me that Sandy was a new student from Australia, played by then-breakout-star Olivia Newton-John. Who knew? Apparently everyone else.
Once the movie was over, Caitlyn and I headed back into town to get some sleep before our road-trip started the next morning. But before any good road-trip can start, one must have a good, filling breakfast, and Caitlyn was back on top of things and we found ourselves the next morning having an amazing breakfast at The Hardware Sociéte where I wish I could remember what I had for brekkie because it was to die for! And Caitlyn was in Heaven, too, snapping photos of the light and cheerful café before heading back to the hostel one last time to pick up our bags and then it was off to pick up the rental car for our journey along the Great Ocean Road!
Sometimes it's nice just to get out of town for a few hours and have a change of scenery. That's exactly what I did this Saturday. My friends Quazi and Grant and I drove up, an hour north of Sydney to the little town of Woy Woy, on the other side of the bay from Killcare and Terrigal, which I visited a few weeks earlier. There isn't much to do there except have a coffee and move on, which is exactly what we did. A little bit to the south, you enter part of the Brisbane Water National Park - which is oddly enough about 700 kilometres from Brisbane. Brisbane Water NP ends where the Hawkesbury River flows into the ocean and there is a great scenic overlook at Warrah Lookout. We had to walk about 200 metres from the car to the overlook through a scabby forest with thin eucalypts and squiggly gums - which are gum trees that beetles have burrowed underneath the bark, forming these squiggly patterns.
The lookout is great! It's about 200 feet up from the water and you can get good vantage points from the fenced-in viewing area as well as non-fenced bedrock platforms. It was a bit of a gray day, and threatening rain the whole time, but you could still see up the Hawkesbury and out to Palm Beach and Barrenjoey Head on the other side of the river.
After the lookout, we drove down into the tiny town of Pearl Beach, which as a geologist, I loved because of all the different street names: Beryl Boulevard, Garnet Road, Onyx Road, Jade Place, Agate Avenue, Coral Crescent, Diamond Road, Emerald Avenue, Amethyst Avenue, Pearl Parade, Opal Court, Tourmaline Avenue, Crystal Avenue, Gem Road, Cornelian Road, and Silex Lane. Now most of these I understood because they are all names of minerals, gems, or rocks. But the last two, Cornelian and Silex, I had to look up. It turns out that cornelian is a reddish mineral in the chalcedony family which is a type of microcrystalline quartz - akin to jasper or flint. And Silex is any type of finely-ground stones with very high (or pure) silica contents. So they, too fit in with the rock/mineral/gem theme Pearl Beach has going on!
At the beach we walked out to the rocky headland of the Paul Landa Reserve and watched the tide come in a bit but then the waves started to crash a little too much, so we decided to head back before we got stranded. The sandstone bedrock out here was pretty cool too because it was chock-full of little weathering pits that created a honeycomb texture in the rocks. And between the rocks, near the water's surface, little rock crabs darted in and out of tiny fissures.
With a little lunch from the Pearl Beach Cafe in our bellies, we headed back to Sydney, refreshed!
A week after my hike through Royal National Park, I headed west with two friends from Uni, Louise and Ben, to the Blue Mountains National Park. A few days beforehand we were talking over lunch and decided to do a one-night camp out in the mountains - which I had been to before, but either just driving through or staying at a hostel in Katoomba. But I love camping and really hadn't ever gone backcountry camping - especially since I am terrible at starting fires or doing any sort of reasonable cooking over them - so I typically just camp out of my car...
We drove up into the mountains on a Saturday, stopped in Katoomba to pick up some last minute groceries, and then parked our car near the Golden Stairs and started hiking. The thing about the Blue Mountains is that to do any bushwalking through them, you have to descend from the rim of the valleys along very steep paths, often involving steps hewn into the strong sandstone or very steep metal steps. Going down wasn't too rough, really - at least for Ben and myself. Louise's knees started acting up, though, which plagued her the rest of the trip.
Once down in the bottom of the valley, the walk is long, but fairly flat. The path took us through gumtree forests with an undergrowth choked with ferns that blocked the sunlight giving us a fairly nice cool walk. There's the saying, though, that what goes up must eventually come down, and well, the converse is true: what goes down must eventually come up. Clearly, a place called Mount Solitary is not going to be at the bottom of a valley and soon, our flat, valley-bottom walk ended and we began to climb back up through a gumtree forest with a more open undergrowth and flowering waratah - the state emblem for New South Wales. Ben said he'd seen koalas here before, and you could definitely see evidence that they live here (aka poop on the trail), so for the next hour or so, I was straining my neck up into the trees to see if I could catch a glimpse of my first koala. We had no such luck, and with a strained neck, we reached our lunch spot at the bottom of the trail ascending Mount Solitary.
After lunch, our arduous climb up a fairly steep ridge, over boulders, between rocks, and alongside sheer drop-offs began. Louise's knees were not helping her out much, but we didn't really have a choice to turn back at this point. I grabbed her pack to ease her carrying load and slowly but surely, we reached the top, stopping at a few flat lookout points along the way. But the trek to the campsite wasn't over yet. We were at the top of Mount Solitary (a plateau, really) but the campsite was on the other end of it and a little ways down the other side! But at least the hiking here was flat.
Soon enough, though, and with only another hour or two of daylight, we reached the campsite and chose our spot underneath an overhanging rock ledge nestled down in a little valley. Even though it was kind of gray and threatening all evening, a lot of hikers run into trouble here because they don't bring enough water and expect to find some they can purify once they reach the campsite. Ben had hiked this area extensively and showed me a creek bed, that even during dry spells, usually has some water left in it, but this time around it was bone dry. Good thing we had plenty of our own water with us!
We dropped our belongings off at the campsite and walked a few hundred metres to a rocky lookout facing south toward Lake Burragorang. Like all areas in the Blue Mountains we were flanked by high and steep sandstone cliffs jutting up out of the eucalypt forest below. The sun was setting and you could really get a sense of why this area is called the Blue Mountains - oils in the eucalyptus leaves gives off a haze that appears blue in the right light. We sat there for a while, taking photos, watching birds fly around the trees and branches growing out of the cliff walls below us. Eventually we headed back to the campsite where Ben and Louise started a fire, but then Ben and I (Louise's knees wouldn't let her) walked to the opposite side of the plateau and looked north toward Katoomba and the Three Sisters - a very famous and sacred Aboriginal rock formation on the opposite side of the Jamison Valley. We found a few more rocks to climb for an even higher view of the cliffs and valleys shrouded in mist, but soon headed back to camp before it got too dark.
The next morning we woke up fairly early and I took the chance to catch the sun rise over the mountains. I was hoping the valleys would be filled with morning mist like the year before, but I was out of luck this morning. Nonetheless, there were some pretty spectacular views here. Back at camp, we packed things up, but took Louise over to the rock ledge facing the Three Sisters Ben and I were at the night before, and after a few more photo ops, went back to our bags and started the trek back out.
Once again, getting down the bouldery slopes off of Mount Solitary proved to be slow-going, but we safely made it down, all accounted for into the open eucalyptus forest. Louise insisted Ben and I go ahead of her since we also wanted to climb the shorter Ruined Castle - a big rock outcrop rising off the valley floor. The climb up to the Ruined Castle was rough. It was a lot steeper than it looked, but we eventually made it to the rocks at the top and followed a group of 20 senior citizens (at least in their mid-60s for sure!) up the side of the outcrop to the top where we all took turns climbing up to the highest point. Now, I don't know what is it, but I am terrified of heights like this. It's not that I'm unsure of my footing or looking down, but I am just afraid that I'll do something stupid and loose my balance and fall off the rocks. Getting up to the top of the outcrop was fine, but it was getting from my knees onto my feet that really did me in. But after seeing these old fogies climbing up there like it was nothing, I was determined to do it - no matter how ridiculous I looked in my photos! Well, I did it, and I did look ridiculous, but what can I do about that now?
Ben and I finished up at the Ruined Castle and we made it back to the valley floor just as Louise strolled up to us - good timing, eh! We stopped for a wee bit of lunch and had fun taking photos of a curious little bird who was scrounging around for snacks. Louise lured the bird pretty close to her hands with some broken crackers, and the bird was calm enough to give it a go...once, but he he was too suspicious otherwise and nothing more than a blur in most of my photos.
Soon enough we were back at the base of the Golden Stairs and the long climb back up to the car. Again, Louise insisted we go ahead of her so we each took our own pace getting up to the top. Ben is an avid hiker and reached the car well before me and we waited a little while longer for Louise, but we all made it in one piece and all very eager to take off our hiking boots. Overall, it was a great weekend with awesome people in a beautiful national park. Can't go wrong with that!
After living in Sydney for three months, and still not really knowing many people, I decided it was time to take the initiative and go do something. A while back, I'd come across a Facebook group called, Gay Camping New South Wales. It had over 1,000 members, so I figured it must be a legitimate organization but hadn't been able to attend any of their events. Finally, an event was posted advertising a 28 kilometer (17 mile) hike through Royal National Park, just south of Sydney. It was free, all access was by public transportation, and it was just one day, so without further delay, I signed myself up.
Royal National Park is the world's second oldest National Park - only second to Yellowstone National park in the US - and covers nearly 60 square miles (or half the land area of Rhode Island). National Parks in Australia are a bit different than those in the US. While the parks in each country protect large tracts of land, preserve the cultural and historical history, and support populations of rare plants and animals, the US National Parks seem to be much more restrictive in terms of what land is permitted to be administered at the National Park level. In Australia, there are a vast number of National Parks that seemingly protect nothing more than a swath of land similar to that in nearby parks. In many cases, it seems that many Australian parks were designated more for recreation than protection of a specific site, history, or environment. I am by no means belittling the National Park system in Australia because each one I've been to (and I've been to 13) offers something special - though admittedly, some offer more than others!
The plan was to meet anyone going at Central Station in a specific train car, and sure enough there ended up being about 20 guys who decided to do the hike as well! Most of the guys who showed up clearly knew each other from previous hikes, events, camp-outs, and whatnot so it was fun getting to know them a little bit on the train and hear about where they came from - which was really all over the world! I'd never really actively participated in any sort of gay social group before, so to me, it was really exciting to see that all these guys, living in Sydney from all over the world, actively got together to go on hikes, 4WD adventures, road trips, rock climbing, day walks, and just do the things guys like to do without any pretense or social activism motive.
We took the train down to Cronulla and got on a small passenger ferry that took us across Gunnamatta Bay and Port Hacking to the town of Bundeena where, after a short stroll through a neighborhood, our real walk began.
I've reiterated thistimeand time again, but I really cannot get over how rugged the Australian coast is. And Royal National Park is no exception - the huge, sturdy, sandstone cliffs rise up out of the ocean in a mixture of vibrant of colors and shapes, each uniquely shaped by the wind and waves. The northern end of the walk took us right over top of these cliffs, sometimes where you could just look over the edge and peer down more than 100 feet, and through shrubby bush country. In 2001, over 740,000 acres burned across the greater Sydney region - most in Lane Cove, Blue Mountains, and Royal National Park. It was part of the worst drought in 100 years and the landscape here was blackened. Though you can barely see any trace of the fires now, the trunks of many of the trees still bear those charred black marks.
Eventually, we descended on to some beautiful, sandy, wide, wind-swept beaches where fisherman were doing their best to catch a few fish and surfers were warned not to enter the waters. The trail went back up into the hills above the cliffs, and over a few creeks which were dammed at some point to create a little pool of water, almost like an infinity pool. We stopped for quick water break at Wattmolla Beach, where I was able to snap a photo of a kookaburra on a Coastal Walk sign that just begs to be in a tourist advertisement!
We kept going over the cliffs and through the bush until we walked down the big hill to Garie Beach, a long, narrow beach pinched between towering cliffs and the ocean. We stopped for a bit of lunch and some of the guys took a swim in the ocean, which I decided to opt out of since it still scares me some! But then we carried on and changed environments to kind of an open grassy section of the walk. I get the feeling it felt more open because all throughout this region of the park are these little cabins. Privately owned, for now, these cabins were the homes of families who could not afford any other lifestyle during the Great Depression. They moved out to the coast where they sustained themselves off of fish they caught and food they grew. The cabins are still used, and what better place to spend a day at the beach, though the deeds are apparently being transferred to the National Park Service if not passed down to a direct descendant of the current owners.
The last leg of the walk was through an expansive palm tree jungle that steeply angles down into the water below. The path at times takes you through a tangled knot of vines and walls of palm fronts you have to duck past, climb through, and push into if you want to keep going. Not dangerous by any means - unless you forgot your water! Finally, one last climb and a walk along a wide two-track brought us to the Otford train station where we perfectly timed a train back into the city. Everyone was tired and a bit sore, but it was a great day that a few of us then celebrated over a few beers and dinner back in Sydney.
I will definitely be revisiting Royal NP again because even though our trek was intense, we barely scratched the surface of all the things there are to do at the park, and we only saw a fraction of the rest of the park. Until then!
Every year, in the middle of Spring - the Southern Hemisphere's Spring, that is - a festival out along the coastal walk between Bondi and Tamarama Beaches draws thousands of Sydney-siders and tourists alike! It is called, Sculptures by the Sea, and it is a very interesting festival. Now, I am no art critic by any means, nor do I know even the slightest about art, but sculpture art is my favorite. My all-time favorites are the big, geometric sculptures made from metal, stone, and wood. Something about the simple clean lines that tend to follow an unwritten set of rules just seems to please me. With that said, I also like abstract sculpture art, as long as it feel natural, not forced, and not overly symbolic, political, or preachy.
My friend Caitlyn (a fellow Michigan Wolverine) and I decided to see what all the fuss was about and spend a few hours one Sunday afternoon weaving our way through the throng of crowds of amateur photographers and tourists with their DSLR cameras trying to get the most abstract angle of each sculpture in the best light possible. I don't look down on these people, nor can I get frustrated by them, because let's face it, I am one of them!
Sometimes it's nice just to get out for a wee bit of fresh air. Wayyy back in October, I did just that. On an overcast Sunday, I decided that I would continue my coastal walking excursions, but instead of continuing on the south side of Sydney Harbour (like I did from the South Head to Bondi or Bondi to Maroubra Beaches), I wanted to give the north side of the Harbour a try. I took the ferry from Circular Quay out to Manly - a great beachside suburb - and just started walking.
Sydney Panorama
Sydney is a fantastic city if you want to get out into a wilderness park without really leaving the city. Sydney Harbour National Park is made up of numerous parcels of land all throughout the area, most with access to the Harbour itself, and the North Head of the Harbour is no exception. As you walk, you quickly leave behind the busy suburban life and find yourself walking across small beaches at the heads of tiny inlets off the Harbour. And you see wildlife, too! One of the animals I have yet to see - though I haven't really sought it out yet - is the Sydney Harbour's population of Little Penguins. Apparently, there are only a few breeding pairs that call the Harbour their home and they all make their nests around the Manly and Fairlight suburbs. In fact, along the walking path from Manly to Fairlight, you see notices painted on the sidewalk telling you to watch out for the little penguins, which only grow to be a few tens of centimetres tall! From Manly out to the North Head, you see the signs telling you that you're in the penguin habitat, but they don't tell you where they actually are - nor will the locals divulge the nesting locations - because they want them to be protected from suburban dangers like dogs, cats, boats, and overzealous tourists - which, believe me, Sydney has and they all go out to Manly! If I were a Sydney Harbour penguin, I would be glad my nest was a secret worth keeping!
Further along, the path led back to a few houses and up to a former military training ground that is now being completely renovated into a community-led initiative focusing on the unique habitats the North Head protects. In fact, you frequently see signs warning you to keep an eye out for bandicoots - little weasel-like marsupials that were once very common throughout the Sydney area. While their populations in the suburbs are fairly healthy, the population of bandicoots in the National Park at the North Head is very very small. In fact, a hotel at the old Sydney Quarantine Station, has it written into their contract that if more than 7 bandicoots are killed by cars driving in or out, they will lose their business licence, so vehicle traffic to and from the hotel is limited in the evening, night, and morning hours when the bandicoots are most active. A colleague of mine also told me that a few years ago, a fox got in to the National Park and wreaked havoc on the bandicoot population, killing 6 bandicoots, thus reducing the gene pool by something like 20%!
So the North Head really is a little sanctuary of wilderness in the big Sydney city! At one of the welcome stations, I spoke with a volunteer who told me of the other wildlife in the park, including echidnas. Echidnas are one of the three species of monotremes - or egg-laying mammals - in the world (platypus and the long-beaked echidna are the other two). They look like mini porcupines or engorged hedgehogs, and their hind legs are twisted around to help them burrow. Anyway, the volunteer told me that they are not uncommon sightings in the park, but I was highly unlikely to see one. And with that, I had a goal for the day!
Continuing on along a raised metal-grate walkway (which is such a great idea for national parks to have because plants can grow under it, animals can pass underneath, and the only damage to the land are the post-holes for the walkway supports), I headed toward the view point at the very tip of the Harbour.
The amazing thing about the Australian coast around Sydney is that you have your nice wide sandy beaches, but between them are these massively huge sandstone cliffs that drop into the ocean and are eroded by the salty waves below. Just like on the South Head, there are battlements built up all around the North Head to protect Sydney Harbour during the World Wars. Many of the constructions still remain today and are built in to the scenic lookouts.
Being October, it was a little late for the main right and sperm whale migrations, but at one of the lookouts, I noticed that a Sydney whale-watching boat was out in the ocean and since it guarantees its customers to see a whale, I figured I'd see if I could see anything. I had no luck, but a man who was there with his family was more patient than me, and sure enough, he saw the tell-tale sign of a whale's presence: the steam from the blowhole! We determined there were two whales, very far away, and they would only come up every five minutes or so, so it seemed like forever waiting for them to come back to the surface. Thankfully, I had my DSLR camera with the telephoto lens and while you can't really see the whales in the photo, you can see the breaking water and blowing mist as they breached. And then, wouldn't you believe it, just beneath the cliffs below us a small pod of dolphins was spotted and I watched them for a good ten minutes before they turned and went in a different direction.
The view of the city and the South Head from the lookout is fantastic, even on a gray day, like when I was there. You really get a sense of just how big Sydney Harbour is, how rough its coast is, and how green and beautiful the city is on the hills surrounding the Harbour. I started to head back to the path, because I wanted to find the correct trail down to Manly Beach, and just before I got to the parking lot for the North Head lookout, I saw a few people gathered on the walkway looking at something. I got a little closer and was surprised and excited to see an echidna digging and scratching in the dirt just off the sidewalk, looking for his dinner. They really are bizarre looking little guys! He took no notice of our small crowd and maybe even posed for a few camera shots! I felt lucky to have been able to see another Australian animal that many Australians haven't seen outside of the zoo (and I've seen 5 of them!).
I got back on the path and saw a sign pointing toward some rare cliff-top swamps or bogs that are just perched on top of the flat sandstone and decided to take a little detour. The walk was great and almost no one else was on it. The metal walkway seemed to hover over these perfectly still ponds while dragonflies and birds zoomed around.
Soon enough, though, I was back on the trail and working my way over to Manly Beach. The sun was beginning to get low in the sky, turning it a nice pink color, but off in the distance, well north of Sydney I could see the rising smoke of controlled fire-burns being lit to limit the advance of a real bush fire, should one occur during the summer months. A few years back, a big bush fire did burn its way through Lane Cove National Park right out near Macquarie University, where I study, so the chances of a fire coming close to the city are very real and all precautions in the outer suburbs are taken to prevent loss of life and property.
Manly, the North Head, and the ferry ride back into the city are some of my favorite spots in Sydney. This walk was the last time I was out that way and after writing this, I have an urge to make another visit soon!
**I am way behind in updating my blog. I have about 10 mini-trips that I need to write about, so here we go with the first**
In August, I moved down to Australia from Glasgow, Scotland, to start the next stage of my PhD, studying landscape change of the Tablelands of southeastern Australia. The crucial part of my research is based on the samples I collect in the field, which I was finally able to start doing in October 2012, after a preliminary trip in August to scout out potential sampling sites.
View from the lookout in Namadgi National Park in the Australian Capital Territory
The first trip in August was fairly relaxed. My supervisor from Glasgow came down for the week and we were joined by my supervisor from Australia and a local colleague of my Glasgow Supervisor's for a few days each. The Tablelands is a landscape dominated by rolling hills - sometimes mountainous - with gum tree forests and flat open grazing pastures in the valley bottoms. They spread a good distance, over 500km from north of Bathurst to south of Cooma, and almost 200km wide from Goulburn to Gundagai - roughly. When the European Australians first arrived to the Tablelands, the valley bottoms were soggy swampy meadows with sometimes large ponds in them. Water flowed through the landscape, though not in defined channels. With the introduction of grazing agriculture came lots of deforestation, which, paired with Australia's variable drought-dominated and flood-dominated climate regimes, led to the incision of these waterways into the valley bottoms, carving out deep gullies. As gullies were eroded in some parts of the landscape, the sediment released from them was deposited further downstream, covering the swampy meadows. Whether the cause of this widespread landscape degradation came from introduced grazing agriculture, from natural cyclical processes that happened to start at the same time as European grazing, or from fire-agricultural methods employed by Aboriginal Australians, we cannot be sure, and that is the purpose of my research.
So fieldwork involved me, and one of a handful of great field assistants, going into these gullies and collecting sediment samples from the gully walls and later I will determine burial ages for the sediment which will help me interpret when widespread gullying and sediment deposition on the Tablelands began.
While this region of Australia is arguably not all that scenic - there are no rough coasts, rainforests, mountains, or outback deserts - the rolling hills are beautiful and we frequently drove in and out of Australian bush land which provided plenty of opportunities to see amazing Australian wildlife.
In August, I was more focused on tuning my eyes to what was happening on the landscape. At one of our first stops, near Bevendale, we visited a site my Glasgow supervisor had previously worked on. A few years ago, to get to the landowners' house - we always asked for permission to gain access to land and let them know we were there - you'd just drive over a bridge spanning a 5 metre-deep gully. My supervisor was shocked to see when we got there that the bridge had been totally wiped out. We forded the stream and when we found the homeowners, they told us that the bridge had been washed out by the biggest flood they'd experienced. The water level rose up those 5 metres to the bridge and just plucked it up, carrying it downstream. This was not in any sort of gorge or steep landscape, nor was the upstream area all that large, but seasonally, this part of Australia can be subject to massive floods!
A few days later we visited another site along a stream called, Birchams Creek, and it ended up being one of my favorite sites that I returned to a few times. At this site, just 40 minutes outside of Canberra, the Australian capitol city, I was guaranteed to see at least 20 (sometimes upwards of 50+) kangaroos! Australians kind of see kangaroos like we, in Michigan, see deer. They are everywhere and often end up crushed by cars on the side of the road. But here, back in the countryside, they were everywhere and each time I visited, I would see them hopping up and down the hills, in and out of the paddock fences, and sleeping under trees in the middle of the day. So cute to see, too, when the little joeys are sticking their heads out of the mothers' pouches!
Overall, August field work was kind of dull - more driving than work. But I did get one experience most Australians do not: I was in the middle of a snowstorm! It was the second to last day of field work and we'd kind of exhausted the options of places to visit, so my supervisors and I took a drive to a peat bog on the southern slopes of the Brindabella Range which makes up the border between the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales. We drove up through the mountains through Namadgi National Park, through a snow gum forest, and stopped at a scenic overlook where you could see the flat valley bottom below, surrounded by steep mountains. It was windy and cold, so we didn't stay long and kept driving down the other side of the mountains. We stopped at the Yaouk Peat Bog on the other side of the mountains and discussing how we might use it in my research and while we were there it started to snow. It wasn't really a blizzard, that would be exaggerating, but there were plenty of small specks of snow falling all around us as we got back into the car and drove toward Adaminaby for lunch. By the time we arrived and sat down in the small town's cafe, it was near blizzard conditions - big wet flakes of snow were swirling around outside and even the woman who ran the cafe ran outside with her camera because she had never seen anything like it! It cleared up enough as we left for me to see the Big Trout (Australia, like the US, is proud of their BIG roadside attractions) but then we drove back into the storm as we headed to Cooma and up to Queanbeyan.
October eventually rolled around and it was time to head back out into the field to actually collect some samples. I had two field assistants lined up to help me out over the two and half weeks of work and they were both great (we will call the first Britney and the second Tracy). Both were gung-ho undergrads who wanted to get experience with field work and couldn't have been better suited for the work. Britney was more interested in biology but hadn't had any field experience before and was curious to know what it was like and while I got excited about sediment and rocks she got excited about all the different animals we came across from sheep and horses to cats and puppies. Tracy was a seasoned environmental science undergrad who had a keen eye for approaching geologic problems and often kept me on track for what I was supposed to be doing. Both were Australians, which was important for me because I would be talking to landowners, asking their permission to go on their land, and knowing how suspicious Americans can be about people coming on their property, I didn't want to say the wrong thing or ask the wrong question, so it was good to have Britney and Tracy as field assistants. Also, both had excellent taste in music which was important for the long car rides.
Britney and I went into the field first, sticking around the Goulburn area. We visited a few streams nearby and collected samples, and scoped out a few more sites I could potentially come back to. But after a few days, Britney had to be back in Sydney so we drove the two hours back, I stayed the night in the city, and then picked up Tracy the next morning and drove back out to the field. Tracy and I went a bit further south, more toward Lake George - an inland lake with a large surface area (so it looked big) but a small depth of only 2 metres (so there wasn't much water). While at one of my sites, situated right next to a wide and long section of the stream that was more like a pool, we saw a few splashes and this little brown-backed critter with its nose just sticking out of the water, zig-zagging back and forth across the pool, spending a lot of time under the banks where sticks and weeds were all mashed together. It was mid-day, and though we both knew that platypuses are typically out in the evening and at night, we were sure that is what we saw! It was difficult getting photos of the animal (which I desperately wanted!) and when we asked some landowners further downstream if they ever saw any platypuses we were discouraged to hear that they'd only seen one platypus, thirty years before. They tried convincing us we saw a water rat, but the animal we saw did not have the white fur on its back like a water rat would have had and water rats swim on the surface whereas this critter spent most of its time underwater. Though unconfirmed, we decided that we had been some of the lucky few Australians who have seen the elusive platypus out in the wild and I got to check another Aussie animal off my list!
Tracy couldn't stay more than three days in the field, so off we drove, back to Sydney, where the next morning I exchanged field assistants again and Britney and I headed back toward Goulburn, but kept driving and eventually steered north toward Cowra. The next few days were fairly uneventful, and wet. Also, I was getting frustrated because I hadn't been to this part of the Tablelands before so I didn't really know where to go to find appropriate sample sites, so there was a lot of driving around. I felt so bad for Britney because she was so patient and tried to be helpful, but sometimes my stress got the better of me. But we got some good samples over those few days and met some friendly landowners who couldn't have been more helpful for us. It wasn't long before a few exciting things happened. We were driving in the hills around Mandurama and off in the distance, on the high hilltops, we could see snow. Britney had never seen real snow in her life before so I drove back up into the hills until we crossed the snow line and stopped the car. Now, I've been in real blizzards, buried under feet of snow, and spent so much time in good snow that I was pretty unimpressed by the light dusting of white we saw on the ground, but it was real fun to watch Britney get out and stomp around in it, packing it into a little snowball and throwing it, and I got a good kick out of her answer when I asked, "Well, what do you think?" and she responded, "It'sso WET!" Haha. It was a great moment and on the way back down the hill we crossed paths with a rural postman who was also stopping to take some photos of the snow. It was definitely a rarity for that time of year and a rarity for Australia in general! The next day we got a bit more excitement when I saw something unusual in one of the grazing paddocks - a small flock of weirdly gangly, 8-foot tall, dinosaur-like birds was strutting across the field a good distance away from the road, but I knew what they were immediately: Emus! I pulled over and grabbed my camera to take about one million photos of them. I wanted them to come closer and even though they didn't, we watched them for a good ten minutes or so!
And then November came around. It was time for me to head back into the field and collect some samples from sites I hadn't focused much time on before. I started off on my own this time, driving through the Blue Mountains north, back toward Manduarama to a site along Grubbenbun Creek I'd been to before, but didn't take samples. After Grubbenbun, the landowners gave me directions for the back-road route to get to Crookwell. It was already the evening and the two-hour drive took me through some beautiful dirt roads through tiny hill-towns with names like Thalaba, Abercrombie River, Peelwood, and Trunkey Creek. I would be sampling the next day north of the town of Laggan, so I stopped at the site to see if I could introduce myself to the landowners. The old couple who answered the door were so nice and and man had been living on the land since his family settled down here, the first European Australians to graze the land, way back in the 1830s! The next few days were standard work days. I'd go to the creek, clear off a fresh sediment surface from the gully wall and remove my sediment samples. After Laggan, I drove down to Queanbeyan where my Glasgow supervisor's former colleague, Jane, lived. Jane had been out with us for a few days in August and was happy to help me over the weekend. We went back to the Birchams Creek site, where again we saw dozens of kangaroos on the hillsides, and we also revisited a site on the western boundary of the Australian Capital Territory. Jane is a geologist and has had a bit of experience working on the Australian landscapes, so it was fantastic to work with someone who brought a professional geologist's perspective to my research and helped guide my field work strategy to be able to collect samples that would best answer my research questions.
But Jane could only help out over the weekend, so Monday I worked by myself again, and on Tuesday, I drove into Canberra to pick up my next field assistant, Drew. Drew had just finished his Honors Thesis on river erosion and sedimentation and happily, for me, was willing to give up a few days of surf to come dig around in the mud and dirt with me! I had a few hours before Drew arrived, though, so I checked out the Australian War Memorial on the outskirts of the city. Canberra isn't much as far as cities go, but it is chock full of museums! I only had about ten minutes in the War Memorial museum, but I will definitely be going back to spend more time there!
I retrieved Drew and we headed south for an hour or so and turned off down a long dirt road. I wanted to collect a different type of sample, mud from the valley bottom of a modern swampy meadow, one that hadn't been gullied through or buried yet. We saw a house that looked like they might own a bit of land and as we drove up, dog started running toward us and a very imposing man stood on the porch of the house. We exchanged hellos as we walked toward each other, and the mood changed immediately. This guy and his wife had just moved out into the country from a small town nearby and were in the process of building a Sabbatical Recording Studio in some of the sheds out back. I forget what his name was - MC something-or-other - but MC was really into his music and worked with local and international recording artists and he and his wife wanted to be surrounded by peace and quiet while working with artists who wanted to get out of your typical city sound studio and into a more relaxing setting for recording their music. They gave us a tour of their recording studio, which was a work in progress. And though I believed their story and liked MC's enthusiasm for music, we were still a little wary to follow them into these sheds where the studio was being built, though MC was so excited to show us the sound-proof rooms and a bathroom with a microphone built into the shower head so the artists could sing before their session and get rid of the jitters. I was actually pretty impressed and excited for their business. It was just such a cool combination of beautiful land, quiet scenery, and high-tech modern recording equipment! Though I do have to say, Drew and I both felt like we'd just stepped onto the set of a real-life horror movie when they took us on the tour of their studio. "Sure, come check out these sound-proof rooms. I won't knock you out with this hammer we're using to install the keyboard. Wait 'til you seethe sound booth shed!" But really, MC and his wife were great people to chat with!
Drew and I carried on with our work, and the next day drove south from Cooma to a little town called Dalgety and turned down a road that ran a 20 kilometre loop through grazing country. We were headed to a town on my map called Jimenbuen, which was at the far end of the loop road. The road we were on went from being paved to dirt and eventually it turned into a small two-track that wound through wide open grazing pastures. Eventually, though, the road stopped and we were definitely not in any sort of town but in front of a creepy old house. It didn't look like anyone was home and it didn't seem to be near anything else, so we decided we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere and started to head back. While on that little two-track, though, we spooked three emus which were only about 30 metres away! Drew told me to stop the car and roll down the window. Apparently emus are notoriously curious and sure enough, they started toward the car. I couldn't believe just how massive these birds are! They're at least 8 feet tall, with spindly legs, and a relatively small body compared to their long necks which are covered with thick, tufty feathers. Honestly, they just look top-heavy and like with any step they will tip over! They got bored with us after just a few minutes and took off in the opposite direction, but it was so cool to be so close to these amazing birds out in the wild!
November was a warm month to be doing field work in and the days were hot and sweaty and Drew and I were bothered by flies wherever we went those few days, but as quickly as field work started, it ended for the year and we drove back to Sydney after a few days in Cooma. So now, with samples in hand, I was ready to start getting some data back from my samples and the story of when landscape change started on the Tablelands was beginning to take shape. The story continues, but I am waiting to be trained in the laboratory to process the rest of the samples, and while I have a few weeks of field work in the books for 2013, nothing yet is planned.
