Sydney, Australia – 22 - 30 June 2006
Summary
The first two days we truly relaxed at Palm Beach, a suburb north of Sydney, in a beautiful house exchange on the water. We then took a three hour flight to Ayres Rock in the red desert in middle of the Australian continent and it felt as though we were landing on Mars. We joined a tour for three days that filled almost all our time with hikes around the Ayres Rock, the Olgas, a champagne barbeque under the stars (with kangaroo on the menu) and a nine hour bus ride across the high red desert from Ayres Rock to Alice Springs interrupted by a beautiful challenging hike at King’s Canyon. After flying back to Sydney we went quickly changed and rushed to see the opera Lakme at the beautiful Sydney Opera House. We spent our final day in Sydney walking through the city and had lunch with Dave and Kathy’s friend Diana. Today we’ll to our final Australian destination, Cairns which should be warm and tropical.
Palm Beach
We left our cozy exchange home in Cremorne and arrived at the Hazell’s Palm Beach water front home on a drizzly morning. To reach the house, which is right above the high tide level we had to take an inclinator, which is a diagonally operating elevator. Pretty cool!! We had tea with Rod and Yvonne who gave us an orientation and then left for the mountains. No sooner did we settle in and the sun came out, treating us for the most idyllic afternoon. We ate lunch on the deck watching the cormorants, seagulls and pelicans on the small rock island just in front of the pool. Dahlia took endless pictures of the birds and their little rituals. It was hard to tear ourselves away. It was so beautiful watching the moving clouds and birds reflected in the smooth pool and the ripples on the water of the bay.
To take advantage of the sunny afternoon we decided to take a walk along the nearby beaches which are beautiful, sandy and almost orange in color and stretched for miles with only a few people on them in winter. Colorful pink grey and red birds flew by us many times. A brilliant rainbow stretched across the sky meeting sailboats on their way back into the harbor, a nice light breeze, and lush tropical vegetation on the hillsides. It was very close to heaven indeed. As it started to drizzle we headed back and set out on the deck to read, but who could read with such a beautiful view??? Instead we enjoyed watching the birds on the rock some more and a magnificent sunset. As the sun was moving behind the hillside, its reflection kept sliding across the pool, and finally slipped off into the bay. It was hard to let the sun set that evening. The minute the sun faded behind the mountains, the birds, as if on signal, all took off and left the rock lonely and silent. We had dinner at the “Beach Road” café and listened to heavy tropical rain furiously banging on the roof. The next day was another glorious sunny day and we decided to just kick back and enjoy the beautiful surroundings.
On Saturday morning we headed back to Sydney and had lunch with our lovely hosts Ray and Margaret at the Watermark café at Barmoral beach. It was another glorious day, with sail boats crowding the beautiful bay and people out in droves walking along the beach promenade, children playing in the sand, all enjoying the nice warm sunny day. It was splendid indeed.
Ayres Rock (Uluru) Olgas and King’s Canyon
The next morning we took a three hour flight from Sydney to the Ayer’s Rock airport, at Australia’s “Red Center” which is well named. As the plane flew in it looked like we were landing on Mars. As soon as we arrived at the hotel we were whisked away for our first tour at the Olgas, or “Kata Tjuta” (Aboriginee name) a huge formation of about thirty-five red rock domes extending over a several square mile area. Our guide took us on a break neck speed hike for a couple of hours in the area called the Valley of the Winds. The terrain was interesting with narrow gorges and steep hills with sage color desert vegetation on very red background. At the end of the hike we went by bus to an area where we were served champagne and were able to view the sun setting on the Olgas and painting these enormous domes in from fiery orange to red, to purples to browns. Dinner was a barbeque under the stars with free flowing champagne and a choice of several meats, including kangaroo (the kangaroo meat wasn’t bad, but we kept thinking of the poor little cuties). The sky was extremely clear and breathtaking with the Milky Way streaming from horizon to horizon and our guide gave us a star talk, pointing out various constellations and planets. It was just an amazing sight.
The following morning we met the bus at 6:00 am for sunrise at Ayres Rock which is only some 20 miles from the Olgas. It is a huge single rock formation jetting up from this endless flat desert plane. We arrived at the viewing area in the dark and were served coffee and cookies. It was quite chilly. The sunrise was beautiful, a bit of a repeat of the sunset on the Olgas, but in reverse. We took a lot of pictures and tryed to keep warm. Lucky for us, the climb to the top of the rock was closed due to wind, so we had a valid excuse so we chose to take the 9 km, 3.5 walk around the base of the rock. Although it looks monolithic from the distance it is very interesting up close. The rock is sacred to the Aboriginal people that inhabit and own this land. It has a couple of spring/well areas that were probably the sole source of water for these people for thousands of years and many interesting rock formations including caves, huge cracks, gigantic fallen rocks and a number of dry waterfalls. The sun was low in the sky and the shadows were beautiful. The sparse, lacey, desert plants in various shades of sage and grey contrasting with the red soil was also very pretty.
The next morning we met the bus at 5:00 am for the trip from Ayres Rock to Alice Springs with a stop for a three hour hike on the rim of Kings Canyon. We took our pillows and slept on the bus until about 7:30 am when we stopped at an outback “station”. This was the only inhabited place we had seen for the last two and one-half hours of driving through red desert with scrubby trees. This station had a restaurant where you ate in a tent; a petrol station; offered helicopter rides and had penned kangaroos and camels for riding. After a hearty breakfast (“brekky” in Aussie) we were off again for Kings Canyon, a deep U shaped canyon with sheer, red cliff walls and interesting rock formations some of which appear like riverbed waves locked into the red sandstone.To enter the canyon we had to climb a very strenuous 500 step hike (dubbed cardiac hill). We had some doubts but we managed to make it to the top, (huffing and puffing) and spent the next thee hours following our guide around the edge of this amazing canyon. After lunch at a resort near the canyon we had another five hour bus ride to Alice Springs though 500 km of fairly boring red desert.
Alice Springs is the only real town within a 500 km radius. It is quite small but an interesting little town with good tourist facilities and shops. We spent a couple of hours the next morning looking at Aboriginal art. It seems that it is becoming quite valuable, and many of the artists are branching from the traditional to very modern styles. We bought a couple of small paintings and some Bumerangs, about all we could fit into our bags. The trip to the Red Center was pretty amazing and, after spending all our time in Australia up to this point in the big cities of Melbourne and Sydney, we got to sample the outback parts of the country, and grasp the desolation and emptiness of the center of this vast continent.
Return to Sydney
After arriving back at the airport at Sydney we rushed back to our hotel, changed clothes and took a taxi to the Sydney Opera House for the opening night of the season, for a performance of the opera “Lakme”, an interesting opera set in India during British occupation. Some people were very dressed up, some even wore tuxes (which you would never see in LA) and some came in jeans; we still had red dust on our walking shoes. The opera was enjoyable and we even saw Dame Joan Sutherland in the audience. (The person sitting behind us pointed her out)On our final day in Sydney we met Diana, a friend of Dave and Kathy’s for lunch, visited an art exhibit and did a little shopping before going to our hotel to pack for the next leg our trip to Cairns in the tropical north coast of Australia.
The first two days we truly relaxed at Palm Beach, a suburb north of Sydney, in a beautiful house exchange on the water. We then took a three hour flight to Ayres Rock in the red desert in middle of the Australian continent and it felt as though we were landing on Mars. We joined a tour for three days that filled almost all our time with hikes around the Ayres Rock, the Olgas, a champagne barbeque under the stars (with kangaroo on the menu) and a nine hour bus ride across the high red desert from Ayres Rock to Alice Springs interrupted by a beautiful challenging hike at King’s Canyon. After flying back to Sydney we went quickly changed and rushed to see the opera Lakme at the beautiful Sydney Opera House. We spent our final day in Sydney walking through the city and had lunch with Dave and Kathy’s friend Diana. Today we’ll to our final Australian destination, Cairns which should be warm and tropical.
Palm Beach
We left our cozy exchange home in Cremorne and arrived at the Hazell’s Palm Beach water front home on a drizzly morning. To reach the house, which is right above the high tide level we had to take an inclinator, which is a diagonally operating elevator. Pretty cool!! We had tea with Rod and Yvonne who gave us an orientation and then left for the mountains. No sooner did we settle in and the sun came out, treating us for the most idyllic afternoon. We ate lunch on the deck watching the cormorants, seagulls and pelicans on the small rock island just in front of the pool. Dahlia took endless pictures of the birds and their little rituals. It was hard to tear ourselves away. It was so beautiful watching the moving clouds and birds reflected in the smooth pool and the ripples on the water of the bay.
To take advantage of the sunny afternoon we decided to take a walk along the nearby beaches which are beautiful, sandy and almost orange in color and stretched for miles with only a few people on them in winter. Colorful pink grey and red birds flew by us many times. A brilliant rainbow stretched across the sky meeting sailboats on their way back into the harbor, a nice light breeze, and lush tropical vegetation on the hillsides. It was very close to heaven indeed. As it started to drizzle we headed back and set out on the deck to read, but who could read with such a beautiful view??? Instead we enjoyed watching the birds on the rock some more and a magnificent sunset. As the sun was moving behind the hillside, its reflection kept sliding across the pool, and finally slipped off into the bay. It was hard to let the sun set that evening. The minute the sun faded behind the mountains, the birds, as if on signal, all took off and left the rock lonely and silent. We had dinner at the “Beach Road” café and listened to heavy tropical rain furiously banging on the roof. The next day was another glorious sunny day and we decided to just kick back and enjoy the beautiful surroundings.
On Saturday morning we headed back to Sydney and had lunch with our lovely hosts Ray and Margaret at the Watermark café at Barmoral beach. It was another glorious day, with sail boats crowding the beautiful bay and people out in droves walking along the beach promenade, children playing in the sand, all enjoying the nice warm sunny day. It was splendid indeed.
Ayres Rock (Uluru) Olgas and King’s Canyon
The next morning we took a three hour flight from Sydney to the Ayer’s Rock airport, at Australia’s “Red Center” which is well named. As the plane flew in it looked like we were landing on Mars. As soon as we arrived at the hotel we were whisked away for our first tour at the Olgas, or “Kata Tjuta” (Aboriginee name) a huge formation of about thirty-five red rock domes extending over a several square mile area. Our guide took us on a break neck speed hike for a couple of hours in the area called the Valley of the Winds. The terrain was interesting with narrow gorges and steep hills with sage color desert vegetation on very red background. At the end of the hike we went by bus to an area where we were served champagne and were able to view the sun setting on the Olgas and painting these enormous domes in from fiery orange to red, to purples to browns. Dinner was a barbeque under the stars with free flowing champagne and a choice of several meats, including kangaroo (the kangaroo meat wasn’t bad, but we kept thinking of the poor little cuties). The sky was extremely clear and breathtaking with the Milky Way streaming from horizon to horizon and our guide gave us a star talk, pointing out various constellations and planets. It was just an amazing sight.
The following morning we met the bus at 6:00 am for sunrise at Ayres Rock which is only some 20 miles from the Olgas. It is a huge single rock formation jetting up from this endless flat desert plane. We arrived at the viewing area in the dark and were served coffee and cookies. It was quite chilly. The sunrise was beautiful, a bit of a repeat of the sunset on the Olgas, but in reverse. We took a lot of pictures and tryed to keep warm. Lucky for us, the climb to the top of the rock was closed due to wind, so we had a valid excuse so we chose to take the 9 km, 3.5 walk around the base of the rock. Although it looks monolithic from the distance it is very interesting up close. The rock is sacred to the Aboriginal people that inhabit and own this land. It has a couple of spring/well areas that were probably the sole source of water for these people for thousands of years and many interesting rock formations including caves, huge cracks, gigantic fallen rocks and a number of dry waterfalls. The sun was low in the sky and the shadows were beautiful. The sparse, lacey, desert plants in various shades of sage and grey contrasting with the red soil was also very pretty.
The next morning we met the bus at 5:00 am for the trip from Ayres Rock to Alice Springs with a stop for a three hour hike on the rim of Kings Canyon. We took our pillows and slept on the bus until about 7:30 am when we stopped at an outback “station”. This was the only inhabited place we had seen for the last two and one-half hours of driving through red desert with scrubby trees. This station had a restaurant where you ate in a tent; a petrol station; offered helicopter rides and had penned kangaroos and camels for riding. After a hearty breakfast (“brekky” in Aussie) we were off again for Kings Canyon, a deep U shaped canyon with sheer, red cliff walls and interesting rock formations some of which appear like riverbed waves locked into the red sandstone.To enter the canyon we had to climb a very strenuous 500 step hike (dubbed cardiac hill). We had some doubts but we managed to make it to the top, (huffing and puffing) and spent the next thee hours following our guide around the edge of this amazing canyon. After lunch at a resort near the canyon we had another five hour bus ride to Alice Springs though 500 km of fairly boring red desert.
Alice Springs is the only real town within a 500 km radius. It is quite small but an interesting little town with good tourist facilities and shops. We spent a couple of hours the next morning looking at Aboriginal art. It seems that it is becoming quite valuable, and many of the artists are branching from the traditional to very modern styles. We bought a couple of small paintings and some Bumerangs, about all we could fit into our bags. The trip to the Red Center was pretty amazing and, after spending all our time in Australia up to this point in the big cities of Melbourne and Sydney, we got to sample the outback parts of the country, and grasp the desolation and emptiness of the center of this vast continent.
Return to Sydney
After arriving back at the airport at Sydney we rushed back to our hotel, changed clothes and took a taxi to the Sydney Opera House for the opening night of the season, for a performance of the opera “Lakme”, an interesting opera set in India during British occupation. Some people were very dressed up, some even wore tuxes (which you would never see in LA) and some came in jeans; we still had red dust on our walking shoes. The opera was enjoyable and we even saw Dame Joan Sutherland in the audience. (The person sitting behind us pointed her out)On our final day in Sydney we met Diana, a friend of Dave and Kathy’s for lunch, visited an art exhibit and did a little shopping before going to our hotel to pack for the next leg our trip to Cairns in the tropical north coast of Australia.
posted by Dahlia and Lance Riley @ 6:08 PM
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