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I'm finally ready to write a little bit about what I was up to all those days in Australia. It took me almost a week to completely recover from my jet lag, but the trip was worth it. We were there for two weeks and I felt like we could've easily spent another two months looking around. Our trip was split up into three parts, which I think I'll put in three different posts. We started out in Sydney for four days, then we went to Lindeman Island in the Whitsundays, and finally we moved south to Tasmania (Tassie) for the last four days of the trip. So, I'll start with Sydney...
Yeah, so, the Sydney Opera House. It may be touristy, maybe we missed some other amazing part of the great city, but there just aren't many views better than standing on Circular Quay and looking out at the Opera House to your right and the Harbor Bridge to your left. Our hotel in Sydney was in The Rocks district, which meant that we could walk out the front door of the building, peek around the museum across the street, and see the Opera House jutting out between the trees in the park. We took a tour of the place on our first day there. It was great just to see all of the bits of the building up close, including two of the seven theaters in the complex, but we also learned a lot about the long history of it being built. It sounded like it was Sydney's Big Dig. We learned that, despite the land being on this beautiful outcropping into the harbor, before the Opera House was built there the land held a parking garage. Ugh.
Day two and we're in our rental car heading up to the Hunter Valley, New South Wales' wine country. We stopped at quite a few wineries and "cellar doors" (basically, wine tasting buildings or estates for wineries who don't have vineyards in the area) that day. We thought that we'd have to get a map and do some work to figure out where each next stop is. We realized pretty quickly that we could easily wander from one free tasting to the next without too much thinking, since there were signs everywhere pointing in every direction, and each place was separated by only a few hundred yards. Needless to say, we had a lot of good wine (me, the driver, less than the rest of my party), cheese, and just about any other food that lends itself to unlimited sampling.
Then, at dusk, right before we hit our last winery, my cousin looked out the window into the field and shouted...
...kangaroos!
There was a herd of them with maybe 50-60 just standing around in the field grazing. So, of course, I grabbed my camera, hopped the fence, and tried to get a bit closer. I got about halfway out into the field and was fiddling with my camera when I looked up and saw that all of the animals had stopped grazing and were staring right at me. I was wondering if I needed to put on my boxing gloves, but I took two more steps and they all took off in the other direction. That's when I started snapping photos, like the one above, like mad.
Driving on the left was fine except for a moment of confusion pulling into the parking garage that night. Fortunately, it looks like Avis hasn't charged me for the scratches on the front bumper.
The next day was spent in the Blue Mountains and it seems that I've neglected to upload any of those pictures to Flickr yet. Basically, it was almost like the Grand Canyon if it were covered in eucalyptus trees. There, we did some short hikes, saw some amazing rock formations, found a tree filled with cockatoos, and stopped at the Olympic Park on our way back into the city.
The last day in Sydney before heading north was spent walking around shopping, checking out the wonderful Powerhouse Museum, which features science and design, and more and more good food. So, I'll sign off here with a few more pictures of the Sydney sights. Next, it's on to the Whitsunday Islands.
And one more...
Jerad posted this in Travel | Comments (1)
I want to go back!
Posted by: M at August 29, 2007 07:07 AM
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