Orange is the new Stan: New South Wales is a little slice of Eden.
New South Wales greeted us warmly, literally. Quite quickly, the landscapes changed as we moved more easterly and definitely became a lot more beautiful (sorry Victoria). The trouble (and yes, first-world Australia problem) is that when you're somewhat restricted with time and money, you want to see what's "worth" seeing and when that notion is completely subjective, there is a little part of us that's started rating places and finding ourselves saying "Well it is lovely, but it's just another beach."- harrowing I know! Nevertheless, we've seen some stunning towns on our travels through NSW.
Eden by name, Eden by nature. This was our first (unintended) stop in NSW after crossing the border. Turquoise water and golden sands, it already felt a lot more tropical. Kjel was keen to visit the local whale museum that was created as a memorial to a killer-whale named Old Tom, whom according to the stories, helped the local whales kill other whales by driving them toward the coastline. The museum gave great views of the ocean, so good in fact that we actually managed to spot whales splashing about in the far distance. It took little to no persuasion, as we drove to the waterfront in the early evening, found the number of the local whale-spotting cruise and booked on for the next day. As many will have already seen on our Facebook profiles, it was amazing. We saw more whales than we could have ever hoped to have seen and viewed one that I'm sure thought it was more bird than whale as it spent more time out of the water than in.
We were asked by a lovely English couple if we'd heard of Australia Rock. The answer was no. I don't even know why we hadn't heard about it; it's a rock that has a hole that magically is shaped like the outline of Australia. What is not to love! It makes for a cracking photo, as long as you hit the tide at the right time. The rock is found in the most beautiful town of Narooma, with it's tropical tidal river sweeping around the area. We didn't really know too much more about the area so Kjel popped into the local information centre (our new favourite type of place), while I slapped on more suncream. I thought it was a bit odd that the first place on the agenda was to go straight back to the rock, we'd literally just seen it but as Kjel was being a bit shifty, I'd gathered we were going to see something else. We wandered along the breakwater and I was told to stop about half way. Down below, twirling in the water and lazing on the rocks were half a dozen seals enjoying the midday sun. It was a rather wonderful sight. We then took a short drive to a boardwalk on the other side of the river. Apparently, if the water is calm, you can see rays in the water. No word of a lie, we saw three. They were massive.
Leaving Narooma, our plan was to head to Hyamms Beach. On the way, we drove through Batemans Bay, which is one of the places on my list of "It's nice but just another...". You have to go through it but I didn't find anything particularly dazzling about it.
Merry Beach might have been a beach but we didn't see it; what we did see were the large groups of kangaroos that reside in the local area. At one point, one hopped under the fence and kind of looked like it was trying to square up to Kjel! Merry Beach lead to Pretty Beach. The beach was pretty; the carpark fees were not, so we got outta there quick.
We didn't see too much of the Jervis Bay area but we did visit Hyamms Beach as planned. Apparently it has the whitest sand in the world? I'm not quite convinced so I suppose we'll have to do more travelling to find out? It turns out this is another beach that squeaks as you walk on it (actually, a fair few have turned out to squeak since we visited Squeaky Beach).
We were actually rather excited to be heading towards Sydney. We'd found ourselves quite fond of it. Not too far from the city is a short yet rather fun to drive sea bridge that reminded us of our trip on the Ocean Road. We found ourselves a great lookout point of the area as there just wasn't enough time on the road to take any photos.
We were keen to visit the the Blue Mountains since we arrived. We wanted to spend a couple of days visiting so looked up all the well-known spots and planned our day. We drove to the furthest viewing spot, which gave wonderful views of the ridges in all its blue hazey magnificence. The Blue Mountains are named as such because of the hue created as light passes through tiny droplets of eucalypt oil in the air around it (and by gosh, it did look blue!). We took the opportunity to embark on the Grand Canyon walk. Having learned our lessons from the Dandenong Ranges, we made sure to stretch before we started (it was clearly required as everyone who passed us on the way up were drenched in sweat and panting profusely). We took maybe half a dozen steps down into the canyon before clap after clap of thunder rolled through the peaks above us. It was rather intimidating but made our journey much more fun.
We managed to stay remarkably dry as the layers of trees protected us from the downpours above. It turned out to work in our favour as we hoped to see the Wentworth falls, which had apparently been less than spectacular due to the dry weather. We bought ourselves tickets to Scenic World, which meant we could travel on their cable cars and hillside train. The views of the waterfall and Three (and a half) Sisters rock formation from the cars were great. We walked our way down to the falls to get a closer look and found ourselves on the cheap replica set of "The Secret Stairs" in the LOTR, in which Samwise is forced to descend them after his heavy rejection. We were certainly glad not to have been going the opposite direction.
The walk eventually lead to the train. By train, I mean something that is pretty much a roller coaster carriage and in most senses. The line used to be used to ferry men up and down the hillside to the mines below and the track was the steepest thing I've ever travelled. The seats had the option to move forward or back, therefore increasing or decreasing your angle on the track and in turn making it more uncomfortable or more uncomfortable. We did the ride three times, it turns out it didn't really matter where your seats were, it was still horrendous.
You can pay to go on a tour to the Blue Mountains. They vary in price but most of them charge over $80 to visit. We couldn't help but laugh to ourselves at the misfortune of the hoards of (mostly) Asian tourists who had handed over hard earned dollar to visit at the same time as us, as on the second day of our being in the mountains, our views were somewhat blocked by the densest cloud possible. I'm not going to beat around the bush, it was hilarious and we were thankful for already having seen them.
Our journey to Sydney is one we thoroughly enjoyed making. It was great to be able to meet up with friends and make a couple of trips back to Bondi (I tried "surfing" again, it wasn't quite beginners' conditions but it was more practise I suppose!) and managed to just about navigate our way through the toll-free roads of the city to be able to drive across the Harbour Bridge. It was wonderful and although the views were obscured by the huge metal bars, it felt like an accomplishment anyway. We felt half way there.
Kommentare