Wednesday, January 2 Sydney - Goodbye, Ryan

     Finding a place to stay near Sydney so close after the New Year had been one of the tricky chores we'd worked on while staying with our Kiwi friends in Brisbane.  Diana persevered and found an opening at the Royal National Park, which looks quite close on a map. In fact, it's only about 11 km from the Sydney airport, as the kookaburra flies, although its more like 43 km as the wallaby walks.
     But driving there the evening before showed that a red line on a map is more easily traversed by a finger than a winding, narrow, hilly road is traveled in a car loaded with six people and all their possessions.  We pulled into the campground at around 8:45 pm, lucky that the ranger hadn't locked the gate yet.  He said it would take around an hour and a half to get to the airport, which in LC terms means more like two hours.
     With Ryan's flight at 11:45 am, he wanted us to leave by 8.  We've got a scheme to get the gang going; if you are so much as a minute late for a departure or a meeting time, you have to put $1 in the ice cream cone kitty.  Works amazingly well.  Diana was a couple minutes late for the 8 am departure, but we made it to the airport in plenty of time.

Bye Ryan, we're going to miss you!

     After saying our goodbyes we headed into the city for the day, the first time Kelly and Dan would get to see Sydney.

Our first stop was a quick trip to the roof-top terrace at Sydney Central Backpackers,
 the hostel where we stayed when we first arrived, and also with Kristy and Ryan.
Notice the Opera house and Harbor Bridge in the background

      We walked through the Royal Botanical Gardens, checked out the Opera House up close, meandered over to Darling Harbor and then took the train back to where we had parked the car.

Dan and Kelly

     We got a bit lost trying to find our way back to the campground, but made it before gate closing time.

Tuesday, January 1 Canberra to Sydney

     Happy New Year to all!  We hope the coming 365 days bring you perfect flyless days, mosquito and midgie free evenings, and silent birds and cicadas during the nights.

And perhaps, if you're real lucky, daily portions of Tasty and Tim Tams.

     We hadn't seen much of Canberra other than the War Memorial the day before, so before leaving town we decided to have a better look around.  First we went to the Parliament House, where we learned how the Australian system of government works.

Boomerang shaped front entrance.

Shenanigans on the roof

Lined up at the front entrance

     After dropping off the rest of the gang at the National Museum of Australia, Ryan and I returned to the War Memorial Museum.  We hadn't gotten our fill the day before in the best military history museum in the world I've ever visited.  The Memorial to the Fallen Soldier is especially moving.

The Memorial to the Fallen Soldiers

A couple dozen stone carvings of Australian animals lined the walls of the
courtyard of the Eternal Flame.  This is a cassowary, which we searched for so
diligently in Queensland.

     We left Canberra and drove to the Royal National Park just south of Sydney, our final camp spot in Australia.  It would be Ryan's last night in Oz.

Monday, December 31 New Year's Eve in Canberra

      We had gotten a couple of rooms at a hotel in Canberra for the last day of the year since it had been impossible to find anything in Sydney - campground, hostel, hotel or apartment.  Sydney has massive fireworks that attract hundreds of thousands of viewers each year.  It would have been nice to see, but we'd have to settle for Canberra.
     It was nice to have four walls and a roof (actually eight, since we had two rooms),as well as a free washer and drier.  We napped, laundered, watched a movie (Cowboys and Aliens) and fixed dinner.  Then around 10:30 pm we drove downtown to view the fireworks.  We walked around town for awhile checking out the action; loud music, bright lights, and lots of young women in skimpy party outfits and young men swaggering in a mild alcohol-fueled miasma through the central business district of the city.  You know, just the kind of stuff we Burts search out.  We moved away from the city center and after some wandering found a nice spot on a hillside near the freeway to view the fireworks.  We joined families and couples sitting on blankets or grass, and after a few minutes wait oohed and aahed the underwhelming display.  Oh well, Canberra is only the nation's capital, what did we expect?
      Afterwards we returned to the apartment and toasted the New Year with sparkling wine.  Our celebrations were complete when we found the 1980 musical comedy film "Can't Stop the Music" detailing the Village People's rise to stardom showing on the TV.  In our opinion, this should be a new addition to the annual New Year's Eve festivities, the entertainment value is unparalleled.  Incidentally, it was awarded the very first Razzie for worst movie of the year.
      So, we missed bringing in the New Year the proper way,  in costume with our family and friends, consuming mass quantities of delightful beverages and delicious food, and dancing the night away to the greatest musical hits of the past 50 years.  We can't wait until next year.

Sunday, December 30 Mallacoota to rest area near Canberra

     On Sunday we were back to the normal routine of driving to get to our next destination.  We did get in a few good stops.

Visiting a WWII communications bunker near the coast.  Except for Darwin on the
north coast of Australia, the country suffered very little direct damage from
Japanese forces during the war.  But in the days after the quick fall of Singapore
and the nearly complete destruction of British Asian forces, the country
was convinced that they would be the next target for invasion.  Concrete bunkers
can be found scattered along most of the coastline from Queensland to South Australia.

I put the LC into 4WD, probably for the last time, to drive up a steep
gravel road to visit these old church ruins.

A picnic at the small coastal town of Eden

A small town off the beaten path in rural New South Wales

Away from the tourist areas you see a lot of rusty corrugated roofs

       We found a pleasant roadside rest for a night of free camping.  We got in early enough to play a game that Ryan had made up during the ride.  A week or so earlier he had invented the Outback Farmer game, which entailed raising wheat or sheep and fighting off marauding dingoes or bush fires or drought.  Now it was a post apocalyptic Outback zombie game.  Much like Dungeons and Dragons, it requires a game master and dice rolling. Ryan has been inventing games like this for our road trips since he was 8.  I'm glad some things don't change.

Saturday, December 29 Playing at Mallacoota Beach

     Australian school Christmas and summer holidays run from around December 20th towards the end of January, providing a double-whammy of sun and adventure seekers migrating to all the popular destinations.  We knew that it could be a problem trying to find places to stay during that period, but so far we'd been lucky in finding a spot to squeeze into.  Heading up the Victoria coast we ran across a couple completely booked national park campgrounds but found private caravan parks where we could stay.  Mallacoota had been described as a great place to see and swim in the ocean, so we headed down the twisting road out to the peninsula to check it out and find a place to stay.
    As usual, all the public spots were full, but there was one spot left in the huge caravan park lining the shore of the bay.  We took it, set up our tents, and marveled that people payed money to live like war refugees, crammed into smallish spots with their cavernous tents, screen houses, boat trailers and other assorted necessities for enjoying the great outdoors.  Unlike we vagabond Yanks, these Ausssie holiday makers had set up to stay the duration of their holidays in one spot, even if that meant being closer to their neighboring refugees ... er, campers, than twin joeys in their mother's pouch.

In the least populated big country on earth,  we squeeze
onto our small bit of camp

     Not surprisingly, the caravan park is overrun with families, and it was enjoyable to see mobs of kids, from tiny toddlers to peripatetic teens, enjoying their partial freedom from parental or teacher control.  And, as we soon discovered, one of the most amazing beaches we've ever seen sits only a few kilometers away.

A small river flows through a small tidal bay into the ocean.  At low tide
small children can wade safely in the sandy-bottom bay.  

Bigger kids building sand castles on an inter-tidal sand island

     The river narrows as it approaches the ocean, and the rushing current is a fun place to float or swim

The current picks up speed a hundred meters from the ocean

    Body surfing is the order of the day in the ocean itself.

Everybody's body surfin', surfin' AUS

      After drying off in the sun, Diana and I went for a short walk on the trail along the coast.

Except for the village of Mallacoota, the shoreline here has a hundred kilometers
of wilderness

A view of the coast, where trees, rocks and sand meet the ocean

     After we'd had our fill of fun, we drove into town and each bought ingredients for a proper Oz barbecue. Then we returned to the beach to use the barbie.  The large crowd of people that been there earlier in the day had cleared out, and we had the whole place to ourselves.

Sausages, marinated roo and beef steaks, onions, potatoes, zucchini, butternut squash,
mushrooms on the barbie ...

... some soft after dinner background music ...

... watching the tide come in ...

... and the moon rise.  

    After three days of driving and look-and-books and car based sight seeing, it was great to finally have a relaxing day at the beach.  I guess that's why the Aussies make refugees of themselves in the cramped caravan parks, to be able to have long summer days like this.

Friday, December 28 - Diana Turns 60!

     I guess it's time to go home now, we've finished the triad of objectives for the KD Trip Down Under.  With our wonderful traveling companions Kelly, Dan, Ryan and Kristy we had penne and veggies and cake and candles at a nice campground on the Victorian coast.

The gang gathered for Diana's birthday party

That's a pretty small cake.  Good thing the kids were creative in coming up
with a way of candling.

Yay, it's official.

Best present, getting to Skype with David

  It's been nice being married to a younger girl this past month, and after looking at these photos of us, I reckon I still am. (I really do look much younger with the beard trimmed...  honestly.)  I love you Diana, happy 60th!.

Thursday, December 27 - Melbourne

     We had thought about staying at the campground we'd found in Melbourne for a couple nights, but after sampling the noisy late arrivers, the stinking amenities, and the crazy lady next to us sharpening her machete in her tent at night,  we decided to check out and hope for better arrangements further down the road after our day in Melbourne.  (The part about the machete sharpening might have been a bit of storytelling ornamentation, but she definitely seemed off kilter).

Camping on the outskirts of Melbourne.  At least we had a table.

     We'd seen a little of the city the evening before, so Thursday would be our finishing up day, probably not long enough to do Melbourne justice, but it would have to do.

View along the river

Melbourne has some interesting public art

     We decided to divide up and visit the two main museums at Federation Square, a new public space opened in 2002 to much controversy and considered by many (including myself) to be one of the ugliest pieces of modern architecture in the world.  Of course, the Eiffel Tower was also hated by the locals when it first opened.

Federation Square.  Ugly, but the center of public life in Melbourne.
The city hoped to claim some of the glory showered on Sydney with
its Opera House... not likely, in my opinion.  Perhaps it grows on you.

Deciding which way to go

Viewing contemporary Aboriginal art

     Diana and I rode on the free tram circling the city.  We didn't get too far because the driver went on break soon after we boarded and it sat there immobile for nearly 15 minutes.  We hopped off and walked to the park where Kelly and Dan were fixing grilled Tasty sandwiches on the same barbie we'd cooked on the night before.

Aboard the tram

Dan cleaning up after dinner

     We left Melbourne an hour before sunset and drove east, finding a free place to camp at cricket grounds near a small town, a huge improvement over the evening before.