South Coast Tour

Stacy's mom arrived on Thursday morning and after giving her a day or two to recover from the flight we got right to the sightseeing. Saturday morning we took an early train to the CBD to walk through town toward the Opera House for a very interesting tour and history. After the Opera House we walked over to the Rocks to have lunch at one of Steffi's favorite cafes. Following lunch, the ladies shopped at the street fair while Jack and I went for drinks at the Glenmore Hotel. We had beer (a pilsener for me and a ginger for Jack) and watched cricket on the telly. Next we walked across the Harbor Bridge to Luna Park where we rode the ferris wheel, which the kids have been waiting to do since November. The day was perfect aside from the Queen Victoria being docked in Circular Quay and spewing thousands of extra tourists into our beautiful city! We're not sure why everyone in Sydney is so excited to see the Queen Victoria?!

On Sunday we traveled from Cronulla along the south coast past Wollongong and on down to Kiama. We have been many places north and west and seem to have explored every square inch of Sydney itself, but have been very neglectful of the wonderful scenery to the south. We took the scenic drive where we stopped at several beaches and scenic lookouts along the way. Our final destination for the day was the Kiama Blowhole. A blowhole is an area of rock carved into a hole with high cliff walls that as the waves crash into it, it gives the effect of a whale's blow hole. Check out the video.

More pictures to follow...

The Blue Mountains

OK, back to the more recent past. After our very early morning on Australia Day we decided to get the kids up early again and took a road trip two hours west to the Blue Mountains. They have this name because of the beautiful blue mist of the evaporating oils from the gum trees (eucalyptus trees). I could not see the blue mist, but Mike says it was there. The views were beyond extraordinary. The sky was crystal blue and walking through the mountain paths was cool and crisp. And walk we did!

After a quick stop for Belgian waffles and a flat white (from the same waffle shop Mike went to back in October), we began our trek along the Prince Henry Cliff Walk. The children had been promised spending money at the gift shop (by Mike) if there was no complaining along the way. Shortly after the walk began Jack tripped over a root a did a flying spread eagle that required use of the first aid kit which I brought along even though Mike told me not to. Anyhow, we walked to many lookouts and gazed out over hectares (acres) of hills and trees and waterfalls which thanks to all the rain were flowing beautifully. The kids had a ball tromping through the woods and making tons of noise, which thankfully scared away any deadly wildlife. The hike down into Fern Bower from the top of the cliff took at about an hour down wooden, natural stone, and metal stairs. Just getting down the thousands (for real) of stairs was quite a feat. It hadn't really occurred to me that while we were going down these many stairs, at some point we were going to have to go back up. Mike seemed to take some pleasure in reminding me of this fact. When we reached the floor of the valley it was cool and filled with the sounds of the native birds. There were parrots colored red and blue and miners that sound like tree frogs. We could also hear the waterfalls in the distance. We tried to play the "if you're quiet for thirty seconds what can you hear" game, but after a few seconds all you could hear was Steffi chatting. She was very excited about everything we were seeing, and the gift shop at the end. We had our lunch in the valley and continued along the valley floor on our way to the top. So by this time we walked about two hours and were looking at least another one or two hours before we would reach the bottom of the Giant Stairway. The Stairway would take us to the top of the Three Sisters. Three giant hunks of stranded sandstone in the middle of Echo Point. The walk was beautiful. We saw birds, and lizards, and beautiful ferns and gum trees everywhere. By the time we arrived at the Stairway we had been hiking just short of four hours and the kids were still going strong. I however was beginning to fade. There are over 900 steps going pretty much straight up - no gentle slopes here. I saw old people, large people, and young children doing this so I was pretty sure I would be OK. I was almost wrong. I huffed and puffed to keep up with Steffi and Jack as they were running up the stairs, heckling me all the way. I decided to send Mike and the kids ahead of me and I would take my time and meet them at the top. I arrived shortly after them to loud cheers as if I had just achieved an amazing feat. It really was beautiful aside from the smell which Steffi pointed out was from all the sweaty stinky people at the top.

Just a little aside that Mike and I found amusing, from Bill Bryson's Down Under: Apparently white men tried for years to forge a path through the mountains only to be met time after time with dead ends in box canyons and many failures. "When the first settlers [finally] stepped from the wooded mountains [that they were first to settle] they were startled to find herds of cows numbering in the hundreds grazing contentedly on the tall grasses - all offspring of the one that had wandered off from Sydney Cove all those years before. The cows, it transpired, had gone around the mountains through an open pass to the south. Why it had not occurred to a human being in twenty five years to try to do likewise is a question that is rarely asked and has yet to be satisfactorily answered." The early settlers and explorers did not have an easy task settling this vast land.

December 22, 2007

It is February as we are getting around to updating the blog. We are posting events that occurred between last November (2007) and February (2008), however the order in which we post is a bit irrelevant. In any case, this is a random update to share with you our trip to see a show at the Sydney Opera House. It never occurred to me to actually go see a show at the House. I would have been quite content to walk around the outside and take a bazillion photographs of the exterior, and then once I got home I would have been upset about not going to see a show. So I have to give credit to Stephanie for coming up with the idea to go see a show.

We attended an evening show called "Christmas at The House". It was a delightful show consisting of storytelling and christmas carols performed by the Sydney Symphony and the Sydney Opera Company.

The show concluded after 10 PM, and afterwards we rode the train back to Cronulla. I won't say that public transportation is perfect, as there are always a few disrespectful people who are too lazy to dispose of their rubbish properly or bathe for that matter, but we did feel safe in riding the train home late at night. I do love public transportation. With that I will leave you with a few photos and a video of our adventure.




Aboard the train to Sydney (flat white in hand)



Before the show





Inside the House


Intermission


After the show

Steffi dancing on stage at the Opera House

This is one of my favorite pictures.  I took it at Garie Beach, which is about 30 minutes from Cronulla.  A thunderstorm was building over the beach and we made it back to the car just in time before it let loose.  After that it didn't stop raining for at least a week.

Dear Family and Friends,

We are trying to catch up on our blog and have a lot to share.  We have been up to a lot including:

Aussie Day

Surfing lessons

Bundeena and the aboriginal rock engravings

Hiking the Blue Mountains and surviving the Giant Stairway

Mosman

Bradley's Head

Sending the kids off to Cronulla Public School

Cafe Parlo going head to head with Cafe 43

And much much more...

Soon after our arrival, Australia celebrated Australia Day on January 26th.  This day can be compared to our Independence Day celebration except that Australia didn't actually declare independence from anybody, but rather it is a celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the first settlement.     We woke the kids up at 5:30 AM so that we could catch the 6:13 train to the CBD (central business district, or downtown to us Yanks).  The reason we made the trip so early was to see the Woggan-ma-gule ceremony at Farm Cove which started at 8 AM.

The ceremony includes song, dance and a smoking ritual.  Woggan-ma-gule means "meeting of the waters" and  continues the commemoration of the past and celebration of the future.  The singing and dancing is both traditional and contemporary and continues to honor the spirits of the past inhabitants.  It was a very moving performance of old and young people of Aboriginal descent demonstrating various pieces of their history and culture including hunting, gathering, and rites of passage.

There is more history than we can possibly honor in this short entry but here are some photos and if you are interested you could explore more of the history on your own.

Following the ceremony we walked through the botanical gardens and Mike suggested we stop for a treat (this is surprising because he is a notorious cheapskate).  After enjoying some tasty treats we explored the gardens and saw cockatoos eating out of visitor's hands and thought we'd have a go at it.  While no cockatoos were interested in our bits some other unknown birds were quite eager to land on Mike's and Jack's outstretched hands.  It was quite amazing.  

 

In the gardens we saw the flying foxes which are bats about the size of a fox with wings.  There are literally thousands of them in one section of the gardens, and every night around dusk, they alight from their roosts and fly off to the suburbs to feed.  We were not there to witness this event.

As part of the celebration each year there are many activities throughout the harbor and CBD including various musical artists, shows, fireworks, boat parades in the harbor, and the famous ferry races.  Each year several of the passenger ferries get dressed up, and then race through the harbor - first one under the harbor bridge wins.  Don't know if it is real or staged but it is quite exciting as hundreds of boats join the chase through the harbor.  It is quite exciting and chaotic as people line up for hundreds of meters along the harbor and watch the action. 

No trip to the botanical gardens would be complete without stopping at Mrs. Macquaries chair.  In the early 1800's, the wife of governor Lachlan Marquarie, had her servants carve a seating area into the sandstone so she would have a nice place to sit and look over the harbor.  To quote Bill Bryson, author of Down Under "You really cannot move in Australia without bumping into  some reminder of his tenure.  Run your eye over the map and you will find a Macquarie Harbor, Macquarie Island, Macquarie Marsh, Macquarie River, Macquarie Fields, and Macquarie Pass.  And that's just some of the Macquaries, by the way.  Macquarie is also the name of a bank, a university, the national dictionary, a shopping centre, and one of Sydney's principal streets.  That's not to mention the forty-seven other Roads, Avenues, Groves and Terraces in Sydney that, according to Jan Morris, are named for the man or his family.  Nor have we touched on the Lachlan River, Lachlan Valley or any of the other first name variations that sprang to his tireless mind."

Mrs. Macquaries Chair and the view from Mrs. Macquarie's Point

We haven't seen all of the Macquarie landmarks, but we have visited the shopping centre, street, university, and the chair.  Inspired by the ferry races, we decided to take a ferry trip to Manly for a relaxing day at the beach. 

 

Australia is preparing to apologize to the Aboriginal People.  There has been much debate and politicking over the contents of the message, and it is due out soon.  Many people feel that if the government makes a formal apology to the Aboriginal people for their horrible sins of the past, then billions of dollars in claims will be forthcoming.  Stay tuned...    This photo by the way was someone's attempt to apologize to the Aborigines during Aussie day.  While Aussie day marks the day white people began their first settlement, it also marked the day that Aboriginies were forcefully removed from lands that had been theirs for tens of thousands of years.

  After the beach we grabbed a delicious meal at Hungry Jacks, and took the ferry and train back to Cronulla  for an early bed time.  Cronulla itself was having a large Aussie day celebration consisting of games, music, food and fireworks.  A house not far from our apartment was having the largest house party  we have ever seen.  All of the windows from the house were removed, presumably so that nobody would break them during their fall, and so that we could hear the DJ (yes they hired a DJ).  We didn't stay awake long enough for the fireworks, but we were told that they only went for three minutes then inexplicably stopped.  The rumor is that somebody fell off a cliff, or jumped off a cliff, or something that required search helicopters to be deployed to the area to cause a premature cancellation.  Anyhow we were in bed and Aussie day was over.  Until next time, cheers!

4 February 2008

Hello everyone!!  I have hijacked Mike's blog and hope to do a better job of keeping you all up to date about our happenings.  Actually, Mike has been so busy at work that he hasn't been able to spend much time on this and it has been delegated to me.  We arrived back in Sydney on 14 January and have been enjoying the rain and clouds most of the time.  It is however quite a bit warmer than what we would be enduring in Ohio.  And mixed in with the clouds and puddles were some very glorious sunny days!  

Shortly after we arrived  we continued our sight seeing at Royal National Park where Steffi had her first go at cliff diving...actually jumping, but for pint size Steffi, a 10 foot cliff is pretty impressive!

This is the cliff!!  There is a low cliff right behind Steffi's head...that's the one.  We're gonna give the 20 ft cliff a go another day :)!  This is the end of my first blogging lesson as it is quite late here...but I will add many more updates in the coming days as the kids are now in school and I have a bit of time on my hands.

Love to all!

Mike, Stacy, Steffi and Jack