Cairns

Cairns is on the coast of Northern Queensland – one of the most popular access points to the Great Barrier Reef. But as a coastal town it’s not quite what we expected. Gary and I have got used to tropical beaches over the last few months, and they usually look pretty different from beaches you’d find in the UK: crystal blue water, white sand, and no tide to speak of. A bit of a contrast to Swansea bay where a huge expanse of sand is exposed at low tide but on the very highest days the water virtually laps the coast road. Oh, and the water is more grey than blue there too! Strangely for the tropics, Cairns beach was more like Swansea – we arrived at high tide after an evilly early flight from Sydney and wondered why the sea looked brown from our balcony. Several hours of recovery later we wandered out onto the front to discover the answer - the sea had retreated on the tide, leaving a vast expanse of exposed mudflats. Not quiet what we expected when visiting the Great Barrier Reef!

We actually stayed a little out of the centre of town in a self-catering apartment. This proved to be much better than getting a hotel room – as the apartment block owners were decorating the pool area throughout our stay they gave us a free upgrade, so we stayed in an enormous luxury flat complete with full size kitchen, dining room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two balconies, and even a laundry cupboard! We even had two-full sized sofas to laze on in the evening after our long wanders into the centre of Cairns.

Actually wandering into town along the waterfront was probably the nicest thing about our trip. Even with the tide out and the huge mudflats exposed it was a really pretty route and you could see lots of creatures along the way. Pelicans preening their feathers, stork-type birds wading for fish, fruit-bats dangling from the trees or whizzing about at dusk, or little purple crabs scuttling into sand holes. The one disappointment was that we didn’t see any crocodiles! Ben had warned us back in Brisbane to stay off the beach in Cairns as there are meant to be huge salt-water crocs that come across the mud to dine on the odd tourist every now and then. So we’d really been looking forward to a bit of croc-spotting. But we didn’t see one of the devils all week! Not even when some kids and their parents were helpfully acting as bait by wandering along the sand! Grr!

Anyway, of course the main reason we came to Cairns was to see the Great Barrier Reef. This also proved to be trickier than we’d imagined – we had originally planed to scuba dive here, but this ended up being unfeasible for a really irritating reason. When I was a child I was diagnosed with mild asthma. Very mild mind you – so mild I’ve been able to ski race internationally, compete in I don’t know how many other sports and climb Kilimanjaro. Oh, and of course scuba diving in the past has never affected my breathing at all – asthma is not considered a problem in most places as long as it’s mild. And mine is milder than mild! But in Queensland they are more than a little touchy about such things, and after a barrage of mixed comments we were told (at the last minute before booking) that I wouldn’t be able to dive without seeing an Australian Dive Doctor first. Crazy unnecessary paperwork to satisfy a litigation culture. But we couldn’t get around it. And as we’d been told this wasn’t needed when we asked earlier in our stay we didn’t actually have time to see the Doctor and get the box ticked. So no diving. Sob.

They couldn’t stop us from snorkelling however. We went out to Green Island - a coral Cay. This is a small island formed over time from debris collecting on the sheltered side of an exposed section of reef. Mum wanted to see the reef from an island base as she tends to get a touch of sea sickness… and the wind had been blowing with avengeance ever since we’d arrived at Cairns! So we waited as long as we could for it to die down, which never really happened. Mum had a ride on a glass bottomed boat and semi-submersible while we snorkelled… and so she got to see the cool sucker fish in the photo below. We didn’t find any of those, but did see some startlingly big parrot fish and a large sting ray!

Anyway, we’ve now returned to New South Wales to go to the Blue Mountains. And after tropical Queensland it’s more than a bit chilly!

Cairns Photographs

Cairns at highish tide... water, and pelicans instead of mud. This flock of birds were always sitting in exactly the same part of the beach, facing the direction of the wind. Every day! We were fascinated by their beaks - it looks really odd to see them swallow a big fish. It just doesn't seem to want to fit, but somehow their entire head and neck just expands! Weird!

Green Island - the coral cay we visited. lovely sandy beaches, reef just offshore on the right, and a tropical rainforest in the middle. Shame the only hotel on the island is a bit pricey.

But our room had a nice view too - the photo of the rainbow below was taken from the balcony during a particularly dramatic rainstorm. And if you wander along the beach south into the town centre you come across lots of nice palm trees, swimming areas - complete with lots of stupid tourists baking on their backs in the sun! Turning intereseting shades of reddish pink...

This fish was seen by my Mum - it attached itself to the bottom of her glass-bottomed boat when she visited the reef around Green Island. Gary and I were a bit jealous - we've never seen one! But at least we spotted a nice big sting ray. He he.

Sydney

I feel a bit sorry for my poor Mum! By choosing Australia as the place to visit us on our travels she condemned herself to an evilly long set of flights (20+ hours), and some spectacular jetlag. And thanks to some dodgy advice from a travel agent, she even ended up arriving by coach in Heathrow about 5 hours before her flight… extending a reasonably long trip. Longer than any of the treks we’ve done so far this year - but at least she got to sit in a posh new Airbus 380 (which she loved and can’t stop ranting about) rather than some of the crumbly age-old buses and trains we’ve ricked our necks on in Asia!

Anyway, we arrived in Sydney shortly before my Mum did so we could pick her up from the airport. We then spent the next few days gently trying to realign her circadian rhythm with the local day night cycle – while exploring! Sydney is a great city to explore. I suppose the best thing about it is the location on the riverside. All of the best bits we’ve seen so far have been on the water edge. The Sydney Opera house for instance wouldn’t look nearly so cool if it was in the middle of town rather than stuck on a thin peninsular of land within a stone’s throw from the harbour bridge. Saying that, we haven’t actually got as far as the Opera house itself yet, but saw wonderful views of it from the Rocks - the outcrop of land below the harbour bridge that formed of the earliest European settlements. Darling Harbour is nice too – this is the other side of the headland so you can’t gaze at the Opera house. It’s formed by a small natural bay, which has been developed into a large pedestrianised area complete with lots of designer restaurants on the waterfront – and luckily a food court where us cheapskates could get a sandwich! Darling harbour also has a nice selection of gardens and parks with great water-features, palm trees and lot of ibises. In fact this is the only place in the world I’ve seen where they’ve managed to make the underneath of a motorway flyover look scenic!

We’ve also looked around China town, which has a pretty tree-lined central street which wouldn’t look out of place in one of the touristy regions of Shanghai. The rest of Chinatown is pretty dispersed and difficult to differentiate from the neighbouring parts of town expect for the odd sign with Chinese characters. But it does also have a small Chinese garden, which was surprisingly authentic: a lovely miniature lake with surrounding rock areas and willows, with the odd pagoda and hall thrown in for good measure. Best of all, it had plenty of lazy reptilian residents who seemed to have no energy to move in the cool of the afternoon. They left themselves draped over rocks and bridges throughout the garden - and as each was at least 2 feet long and would let you get REALLY close without batting an eyelid, they were by far the best animal models we’ve snapped yet on our travels. Great show-offs!

We will be returning to Sydney for a few days at the end of our time in Australia, so we will get a chance to see the Opera house close up – and catch the ferry over to Manley Island. But for now we’re moving on again, this time flying north to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some even better photos of lazy lizards from there… saltwater crocs maybe!

Sydney Pictures

The Sydney Opera house, on a beautiful day, with my Mum and Gary in the foreground. Mum looks surprisingly alive for her first day in the southern hemisphere… she passed out a bit later!

And below is the Harbour bridge. This picture was actually taken from almost the same place as the snap of the Opera house above – an area near the foot of the bridge called the Rocks. Mum loved it as it had loads of little shops. Gary wasn’t so keen for the same reason. Strange that…

OK, this is the same picture of the Opera House as the one above, I know. But I loved the sea gull in the air above Gary, so I put it in anyway. So there! And this is the Chinese Garden. It was a water feature garden, based around the lake that my mum and I are sitting in front of. Behind us were a few lovely waterfalls and streams, all surrounded by beautiful rocks with big lazy lizards basking on them.

The best lizard model I’ve ever seen. This one sat on a bridge (see below) and just stayed there. He didn’t care if anyone came close for a picture – and we weren’t the only ones interested. He was absolutely beautiful!

Gary and my favourite lizard on the bridge… it was a very pretty Chinese garden. Really authentic. And we have seen one or two this year to compare it too. We were really surprised to find one quite this good in Australia!

Newcastle

Confusingly for us, Newcastle isn’t up North. Its actually nearly as far South as Sydney – which is probably roughly equivalent in Australia as everything is upside-down in the southern hemisphere! Even more confusing was that Newcastle is in New South Wales, and has suburbs called Swansea and Cardiff! Now as I come from Neath that’s just weird – we kept on seeing buses and signs to ‘Swansea Heads’ and so on. If we’d come straight here from Asia the inverse culture shock would have been really bad!

Anyway, Newcastle Oz is a coastal town with a big shipping port - specialising in coal export according to one friendly local who didn’t’ want to stop talking to us. So if you walk along the river / sea front you see lots and lots of large ships being guided in and out by tugs. It’s a nice place for a drink in a nice bar at sunset. We spent a lot of our time wandering up the river towards the coastal headlands from here, where large waves break against the rocks and teenage blokes try (pretty unsuccessfully) to surf into the nearby beaches. Australia is dashing quite a few of our expectations – again, the sea is pretty chilly, and most Aussie men we’ve seen wrestling with surf boards don’t seem to be able to ride waves very far. I thought they were all meant to be natural boarders before I came out here! And of course it’s sunny and warm all year… maybe not.

To be fair to Newcastle, it may have been a bit chilly, but the sky was beautifully blue each day we were there. Perfect for wandering around the sea spits and beaches, or through the nice little nature reserve 10 km or so from the centre of town. This was very exciting – we saw our first koalas! Along with lots of other wildlife native to Oz, including kangaroos, emus, possums, and lots more. Loads of peacocks were wandering around for instance, completely unconcerned with the hoards of kids playing nearby. But my favourite were the koalas. They look so unbelievably cuddly! Small, fury, lazy – with fantastic fluffy ears! Lovely. Although most of the ones in the nature reserve were completely uninterested in anything but sleep, despite having a hoard of juicy fresh eucalyptus leaves supplied for nibbles.

Anyway, our next stop is Sydney, where we will meet up with my Mum. She is very sensibly skiving off work for a few weeks (unpaid leave they call it) to come and join us for our last few weeks in Australia. I can’t wait to see her, but also can’t help wondering what her jet-lag is going to be like after a 20+ hour set of flights. Poor thing!

Newcastle Piccys

Newcastle had some impressive waves breaking on its shores from the Pacific. We saw a few surfers braving the freezing waters, but they avoided these crackers of waves, and (to be honest) were pretty rubbish on the little ones they did decide to tackle!

Gary however didn’t mind standing close to the end of the harbour breaker for a dramatic photo. Not quite close enough to get wet of course.

And so it was only fair for me to perch on the rocks too… Not so many big waves hitting this one, but it was more of a balancing act to get to - with a higher risk of getting wet if I fell off! And below you can see Gary on the rocks… not quite where the waves are but close! Brave? Or foolish?

Newcastle’s wildlife reserve had a lovely spacious pen with some wallabies, birds, snakes, and a few gorgeous koalas. This one was particularly beautiful! They are sooooo sweet – but incredibly lazy. Most of the little things just slept while we were there, but two decided to move oh, a meter or so for a snack of eucalyptus leaves. The rest just perched on a branch and snoozed. Such a hard life! And there were also beautiful kangaroos. The Kangaroo enclosure was huge. So big that you couldn’t see across it – great for the animals, but not so great for all the people wandering around it trying to see the kangaroos! Luckily this little one stayed close enough to the outside of the pen to be photogenic.

Surfers Paradise

As you might guess from the name, Surfer’s Paradise is on the coast. And it has a beach where you can surf. Quite a big beach actually – you can walk along it for hours and feel like you haven’t moved… as we found out one afternoon. We set off northward along the sand for a nice stroll, and after several hours of messing around, talking about nothing, skimming stones and paddling in the sea we noticed the town behind us looked tiny. Which is saying something as one of the buildings has over 80 stories and is the tallest residential block in the world! We also noticed the sun was setting. So spent the next few hours walking back – still messing around, talking about nothing, skimming stones and paddling in the sea! We don’t learn.

Surfers is the focal point of the Gold coast – the area south of Brisbane full of hotels, residential blocks, shops and theme parks, all with easy access to the amaizing shoreline. Think of Miami meets Waikiki meets Brighton and you’ll have some sort of an idea! The same pristine, white, straight beach as Miami (but much less plastic, fake and pretentious). A similar feel to Waikiki (plus the surfing of course – but no nice big volcanos to explore here). But unfortunately the temperature is more like Brigton! Admitedly Brighton on a very nice summers day - but after Asia we didn’t really feel like b raving the water. We’ll have a go at surfing in Tahiti.

Getting to Surfers from Brisbane is meant to be easy according to the guide books as it’s only an hour away, and lots of buses run along the Gold Coast. In fact it turned out to be the easiest travel day of our holiday to date as Ben was working in Surfers the day we moved down, so he gave us a lift. We saw Ben and Catherine again the following weekend too as they came down to join us for a break, and showed us around the mountainous Gold Coast Hinterland, complete with a tour of local winerys, cheesaries, and even a vodka distillery. Gary was in his element – and at least we could buy Ben a well earned beer at the harbour pub later in the evening after having to pass up nice drinks for driving. We look forward to returning the favour in the UK.

Anyway, we’ve now moved an agonisingly boring 13 hours down the coast towards Sydney (after this year I’ll be happy if I NEVER see a coach again) to stay for a few days in Newcastle. Yep, Newcastle in New South Wales. Not quite like home, especially as it still has a thriving coal industry. Wierd!

Surfers Paradise Pictures

Surfers Paradise - a place with a very nice beach! You can see Surfers itself in the distance on the left. We'd walked for a few hours along the shore to get this far, and were quite astonished when we saw exactly how far we'd come. Saying that, we did have the company of a few kite surfers and a man with a nice sheep dog.
One lovely view at night from our bedroom window - a funfair I think. There were always a few distant screams drifting through the window anyway...
The Gold Coast Hinterland - a mountainous area just to the west of the coast itself with nice wineries, cheesaries, and a great vodka distillery. Poor Ben was driving!

Brisbane

When we booked our original around-the-world tickets we decided to hop from Perth over to Brisbane. Leaving out lots and lots of desert in between… and Ares rock unfortunately. We knew it was a bit of a cop-out, but Australia is very big, and we simply didn’t feel we had the time or money to cross it overland. And given that the flight was almost 4 hours long (i.e. further away from London than Moscow, Athens or Lisbon) I think we were right.

So, we skipped neatly over 2 time-zones to land just in time to catch the last train into town in the evening. One thing we did notice either end of the flight was the strange lack of people using public transport. It’s wired – in Perth they have a very convenient and cheap local bus to the domestic terminal but we were the only people on it with travel bags (everyone else was obviously only going to the local housing estates). And in Brisbane things were similar – the train into town was mostly deserted, but the queue to the (empty) taxi rank was over 50 yards long! Very odd.

Anyway, most of our time in Brisbane we’ve spent catching up with one of my friends from Uni that I haven’t seen for years… well, it’s been a little difficult to since she’s moved to Brisbane! Catherine and her husband Ben have really looked after us here. They’ve shown us around Brisbane, driven us to lovely towns, introduced us to local wines and beers, insisted on taking us out for dinner… just been generally fantastic. They even managed to find us some wild kangaroos and possums! Seeing twenty odd kangaroos bouncing around a secure mental health facility was particularly great after our deserted island in Perth (erm, I know, apparently there are always lots of them in the beautiful park maintained for the patients). It brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘hopping mad’! As you might have guessed from this, I got to know Catherine while I was at medical school, and she’s still practicing out here.

Brisbane itself if a lovely city. OK – we did have the benefit of seeing all the nicest bits courtesy of Ben and Catherine! It’s built on the river like Perth, and they have really made an effort to make the waterside area beautiful and used. The shore is filled with parkland, kid’s swimming pools, restaurant-lined walkways, or lively market areas. And I suppose it helps that the weather never seems to be anything but glorious – thankfully it’s a few degrees warmer than Perth here, and the sky never seems to be anything but a deep, brilliant blue. Saying that, we were told that Brisbane has suffered a severe drought for the last two years due to rainfall shortages… so there are drawbacks.

Anyway, our next move is just down to the Gold Coast to Surfer’s Paradise which also sounds a lot of fun (so highly recommended by Ben and Catherine that they’re going to come and join us for a day or so!). And from there we’ll start our trek down south towards Sydney, which will involve the most painful bus ride since Laos…

Brisbane Photos

Brisbane has a lovely waterside - especially nice on hot sunny days. Catherine and Ben (see below) showed us all around over the weekend, focusing on the botanical gardens, parks, pools and (of course) the boutique markets!
Here Gary, Ben and I are positioned in front of an old steamer which apparently does lovely cruise dinners... but a bit too expensive for mortals. And below you can see Catherine and me in the mountains above Brisbane - in a nice little town with pretty shops, views, and a fantastic winery (to keep Gary and Ben happy)!
We found kangaroos! OK, at night, in a secure mental facility. Hopping around like nobodies business. Which makes photographing them in low light very tricky... Gary did well to hold the camera still enough for this photo.