New South Wales

Brush Tailed Possum

As we travelled north so the weather has improved, with nice sunny days, and clear, but still cold nights. The Jervis Bay area has some beautiful beaches and dramatic cliffs, and also offers whale watching - at this time of year the whales are migrating north to the warmer waters to breed and we spent several days enjoying the area, including camping by honeymoon beach - a small, almost circular sandy cove - walking along the dramatic cliffs, and crawling through a 10m long rock tunnel to a platform 30m above the crashing ocean.

Honeymoon Bay

Humpback Whales

We twice took a boat out to see the whales, the first time it was more of an adrenaline ride with 3m of swell and strong winds, but no whales. On the second attempt we were fortunate to have a pod of three whales come straight to towards the boat and the skipper had to reverse rapidly out of the way.


Skirting Sydney we headed inland to the Blue Mountains which offer some dramatic waterfalls - the Fitzroy falls dropping over 300m, and spectacular vistas across the deeply cut valleys from the sandstone escarpment around Katoomba.









There are numerous walking trails and lookouts giving different perspectives on the landscape. We spent time visiting a number of them before heading north through the Great Dividing Range and its beautiful varied scenery, with its dramatic autumn colours on the trees.







Pulpit Rock Lookout

We eventually dropped back down towards the coast through Gloucester and picked up the Pacific Coast Highway to make faster progress north. 

 

Queen Elizabeth Lookout

 



 

     

Back to the Mainland

Cradle Mountain
 

The Edge of the World

The wild north west of Tasmania provided some dramatic seascapes west towards Patagonia with one viewpoint named The Edge of the World. One of Tasmania's main attractions is Cradle Mountain - an area of Alpine scenery. Spending a couple of days in the area reminded us more of Scottish weather with mist and drizzle - and overnight lows of -4 Celcius, but through the mists we caught glimpses of the more rocky outcrops of Cradle Mountain and wandered through some of the valleys where ancient pine trees, many over a thousand years old sit in the temperate rain forests covered in mosses and lichens - all very atmospheric.

Tasmanian Devil

With time running out on Tasmania, and not having seen a wild Tasmanian Devil we visited Devils @ Cradle, a centre where they are maintaining a breeding population of Tasmanian Devils, and Quolls isolated from the current outbreak of facial cancer amongst Devils which is decimating the wild population.



Russel Falls on Tasmania
 

Our last day on Tasmania was spent driving through the beautiful central mountains and stopping at Sheffield to view some of their extraordinary displays of wall murals and on to Latrobe, and the Mersey River to look for platypus. We were fortunate to see a couple of platypus - strange creatures,  searching for food in the meandering river.



Duck Billed Platypus

Back on the mainland we drove around Melbourne to get a feel of the city and enjoyed its fabulous Botanic Gardens, then headed south to Philip Island with its beautiful beaches and rocky headlands. It is famous for its little penguins and as we walked some of the tracks we spotted some resting in their burrows. However with the weather still mainly dull and drizzly we decided it was time to head north and east to find more scenery and to get away from the static weather pattern which had established itself over the Tasmanian Sea.


Little Penguin in its Burrow

Driving north we crossed into the Great Dividing Range - tree covered mountains with beautiful winding valleys. As it is out of season the roads and campgrounds are incredibly quiet. Canberra - the Capital is a planned city with huge spaces of grass and trees between its public buildings, but driving through it had a feel of Milton Keynes - lots of roads with wide grass verges and roundabouts.

Dramatic East Coast
 

We are now on the East Coast of New South Wales about 200kms south of Sydney enjoying the wild coast and beautiful beaches of Jervis Bay. This is a popular area for vacationers and as a consequence some of the wildlife has become very friendly - we have had close encounters with wallabies, kangaroos, possum and have even been attacked by a Kookaburra!

We plan to head north now to explore the Dividing Range and head to Queensland and hopefully even warmer weather.

 



Frosty campsite Cradle Mountain
 

 

 

Tasmanian Mountains

 





Captive Spotted Quoll

 

 

Back on the Road

Anzac Day Parade

After 5 months "enjoying" the British Winter we eventually returned to Australia in late April - managing to arrive in Sydney on Anzac Day. Despite 26 hours of travelling we went in to the centre of Sydney to witness this event. It is amazing the level of involvement - the parade of servicemen, ex-servicemen and organisations took around 4 hours to pass, with over 50 brass, pipe and drum marching bands; even a Sikh pipe band. It was extraordinary to see. The parade concluded with a lovely service at the Anzac memorial in the centre of Sydney. Well worth making the effort.

Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House

We had a couple more days in Sydney visiting the sights, which are every bit as good as the photos, before flying down to Melbourne to be reunited with the van. It was just as we left it and once we had connected the batteries it was fully functional, even starting on the first turn of the ignition. It was great to be back.



Eastern Grey Kangaroo

We had four days around the coast near Melbourne while we recuperated from the jet lag, and did some long waited for maintenance before catching the ferry across to Tasmania. With two weeks before our return crossing we headed east, then down the beautiful east coast with its pure white squeaking beaches and granite outcrops, stopping at some of the National Parks to see waterfalls, huge Gum trees and some special wildlife, including our first sighting of a wombat, two species of possum and even little penguins. The latter surprising us crossing the road, after we had sat for over an hour in the dusk watching their beach with no success.

At the southern tip of Tasmania is the infamous Port Arthur - the punishment centre for repeat offending convicts from across the Australian penal colonies. The weather had started to deteriorate, but it gave a better feel of some of the raw conditions the inmates had to suffer.



Wombat

With bad weather forecast we first visited some spectacular coastal arches and blowholes, before heading to Hobart - a lovely town set in a beautiful landscape under Mount Wellington. Choosing the camp in the grounds of a tavern 15kms outside Hobart we enjoyed blazing log fires and a steak dinner before settling down in the van to the sound of drumming rain. Around 11.00pm a thunderstorm broke overhead, and continued for around 2 hours. As it subsided we could feel vibrations and hear large rocks rumbling in the nearby river. Looking out we were in 2" of flowing water and the river could be seen above its banks. Deciding discretion was the better part of valour we move uphill, further away from the river.

Possum

The morning news headlined with the biggest storms in Hobart with the centre of town flooded and roads closed due to landslips, flooding and washed away cars. Mount wellington recorded over 220mm of rain.

With less than a week left in Tasmania we have started heading up the western side, much more mountainous - rather like Scotland, but with a lot of tree cover, and we are currently in a small town Strachan, on the west coast, with nothing but ocean between us and Patagonia!

 

 

 

   

Change of Plans

Well, our expected return to our van in Australia has been delayed as a result of Sue tearing her Achilles tendon at the beginning of the New Year. As a result she is on crutches for 8 weeks so climbing in and out of the camper van is not really possible. We will be staying in the UK until after our eldest son's wedding and we plan to recommence our travels in Australia in late April. Meanwhile it has ben lovely to be able to spend more time with the family and Ed has been busy with various jobs for the family such as helping to install a new bathroom, decorating and gardening occupying much of the time.
 

  

Charging down through China

Beijing Forbidden City Palace

Great Wall of China

With two weeks to fill before our flight home from Singapore we decided to revisit China while our Visas were still valid. Landing in Beijing was a shock with the temperature of -4 C, after leaving Melbourne with temperatures in the low 30's. Entering China without a vehicle is so much easier, and we breezed through immigration and customs.

Summer Palace - Beijing

The trip has turned out to be another tour of world heritage sites, China has so much history, culture and fantastic scenery that many of the sights have been listed by UNESCO. Our first stop was at the Forbidden City in Beijing, which was the home of the emperors. It is a huge site in the middle of the city with hundreds of temples and palace buildings, which after a while all start to look somewhat similar. However it is an incredible place and reflects the size of the court the emperor had. Despite the sub zero temperatures there were still thousands of tourists, something we had to get used to right through China.
The great Wall runs relatively close to Beijing, so we took the bus to the wall and spent the day, again in freezing temperatures walking the vest restored section of the wall. The weather ensured the wall was not too crowded and we could walk some of the less popular sections (where tour groups do not venture) and have sections almost to ourselves. It is an incredible structure, built over some of the most inhospitable terrain. In places the wall climbs up slopes greater then 50 degrees and it is very convoluted as it maintains the highest points of the mountains.


Ping Yao Street

Back in Beijing the emperor and court moved to the summer palace on the outskirts of the city for the hot period of the year, where the empress had a huge lake excavated and palace buildings, temples and follies constructed, using monies which were meant to be spent on building their navy. As with many things Chinese the scale of the endeavour is huge.


Ping Yao City Wall

Taking the excellent bullet trains which travel at up to 300kph, we headed south, stopping briefly at Ping Yao, a mediaeval village which has remained completely intact within its old city walls. One of the oldest Confucian temples as well as the location of the oldest bank lie within the walls, and it has retained its original street layout. Now a significant tourist attraction the centre has been renovated to offer all a tourist needs.


Bullet Train

Xian our next stop is another huge city which lies at the eastern end of one of the old silk roads. It is being developed into a new industrial centre but has retained a lot of its old charm in the centre where again the huge city walls protected the inhabitants. The Shanxi museum has some fantastic displays of artefacts from excavations in and around Xian some dating back to 5000BC which demonstrate remarkable advanced culture and technological skills.

Pottery from 5000BC

A visit to he terracotta warriors is a must, and again it is difficult to appreciate the scale of the work. Pit 1 - the most famous is absolutely huge and housed thousands of warriors. Whilst most pictures show the lines of restored warriors they do not show the immensity of the pit, and the painstaking work required to excavate and reconstruct the warriors. With only a fraction of the pit excavated it will be tens of years before it can all be reconstructed. The detail on the warriors is incredible, although standard mould were used to make the heads the detail of the faces was all done by hand, so every one is different, and the facial characteristics reflect the variety found across greater China.

Terracotta warriors in Pit 1

For a change of scenery we caught the train to Huashan Mountain. Huashan is a large granite mountain which rises 4000ft almost vertically from the adjoining plains and was sacred to Taoists who built many temples on the very rugged top. Nowadays there is a cable car which takes 10 minutes and saves climbing the 21,000 steps to the top. However, even when at the top there is a continuous series of steps mainly carved into the granite to enable you to access the various temples on the peaks. Incredible scenery, and incredible endeavour to build temples up here, having to carry all the materials up 21,000 steps!

Hua Shan Mountain

Hua Shan - spot the cable car gondolas

Our whirlwind tour continued to Chengdu - a fast developing megacity in the south west where the main attraction was the panda research centre. This remarkable place houses and breeds pandas with great success. Pandas are notoriously difficult to breed in captivity, but Chengdu have managed to breed over 130 pandas and are aiming to reach 300 when they believe they will have sufficient stock to reintroduce some into the wild. These docile creatures live solitary lives in the mountains but their habitat is being progressively destroyed. There are currently around 1500 wild pandas and 500 in captivity, so breeding 130 is a significant achievement. As well as the giant pandas they breed the beautiful red panda.
The other attraction outside Chengdu is the giant 72 metre high buddha carved into the cliff at Leshan. The site is the junction of three rivers and the Buddha was cut as a means of appeasing the gods to tame the torrential rivers at its feet.

Giant Panda

A 14 hour train ride then took us through the mountains, the high speed rail line has many long tunnels and huge sections built on stilts, to Shanghai where we had time to see the famous view from the Bund and get a flavour of this very cosmopolitan city before our final stop in Hong Kong.

Leshan Giant Buddha

So what are our impressions of the eastern side of China,
 - it is remarkably well developed and there is a huge amount of new building of blocks of flats and infrastructure.
- it has a long history of which the Chinese are justifiable proud.
- the public transport system is very efficient and cheap.
- they design and construct on a huge scale, and are investing very heavily in tourism, manily domestic.
- there are vast numbers of people - even the small cities have populations of over a million.  

Shanghai skyline

 
 

 

Terracotta warrior

as excavated - Before restoration

Young Giant Panda                                                              Red Panda

 

Night time street scene - Xian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goodbye Australia ~ for now

Red Gum trees on path to Wilpena Pound

As we headed south the temperatures started to reduce and heading NE out of Port Augusta we headed into the Flinders National park. This is the first area of non-sandstone mountains we had seen for a long time and are the first range south of the generally flat north and centre of Australia, so were a welcome sight. We first visited Wilpena Pound, an almost circular valley formed by a syncline in the rocks which has a narrow gorge for an entrance.

Bark of Red Gum tree



Wilpena Pound

The walk into the Pound wound along the creek overarched by enormous gum trees to a viewpoint overlooking the valley where in the past times of greater rainfall wheat had been grown. A drive through the North Flinders wound up ridges and down valleys, and while walking part of the long distance trail up a beautiful secluded valley we encountered Scottish type drizzle and low cloud - a real contrast to the previous few weeks.


Tasmanian Tiger skeleton at Narcoorte

South of the Flinders we headed to the Murray River - the largest river in Australia. This magnificent river meanders through its floodplain leaving large areas of marsh and many ox-bow lakes, but out of the floodplain the land is heavily cultivated, irrigated by water from the Murray River, with vast areas of vines and fruit orchards. A number of the famous large Australian vineyards are in this area along with a host of specialist vintners.
Heading south through regular rainstorms we reached the Naracoorte National Park - which has received a world heritage listing for its accumulation of recent fossils in Victoria Cave. The fossil bed was found in the late 1960's and is still being researched, with the involvement of some of the original team which discovered the beds. It is unusual in that the fossils are from the last 500,000 years and include parts from over 130 species and provides a unique picture of animal extinctions and the effect of the various ice ages.

London Bridge, without the left hand arch

Our route south headed for the coast which we have then followed all the way to Melbourne along the fantastic Great Ocean Road. Portland is a working port where thousands of tons of timber from the huge coniferous plantations along the coast are shipped, either as logs, or as woodchip, which is much easier to lead from the huge piles of woodchips on the quay. There is a constant convoy of trucks bringing logs to the harbour. Despite this the old town away from the port is very attractive. Shortly after Portland the great Ocean Road proper starts. It was constructed immediately after the first world war to provide employment for returning soldiers and is a fantastic achievement, in places cut into the cliff face or zig zagging inland over the limestone mountains.

Australian Fur Seals

New Zealand Fur seal

Along the route is some fantastic coastal scenery of sandy beaches, vertical cliffs with arches and stacks and jagged offshore islands. Notable along the route are London Bridge - which until 1990 was a double arch promontory, but one collapsed leaving a single arch stranded in the sea, Loch Ard Gorge, a series of deep inlets and blowholes named after a ship which sank there in the late 1800's, and the 12 apostles, a very atmospheric series of stacks offshore from high vertical cliffs.
On one of the headlands there are two seal colonies, one Australian Fur Seal and one New Zealand Fur seal separated by a few hundred metres, but apparently never intermixing. Several seals were pulled up onto the rocks with some playing in the water nearby. Further along the coast we pulled off to Cape Ord where Koalas were introduced into the forest some years ago, but have bred uncontrollably and are now killing the eucalypts they feed off.
We had to exit the country by 27th November to meet the Visa requirements and with just over 2 weeks before our flight home from Singapore we decided to take the opportunity to visit China before our visa expires and have left the van at a caravan storage yard near Melbourne and headed north to Beijing.   

The 12 Apostles

Loch Ard Coastline

Wild Koala