Through some stroke of luck, we ended our 10-day trip to
Australia without a heartbreaking sting, lethal venomous bite, nor loss of
limb. We left only with pictures,
a little bit of dirt between our hiking shoes and empty wallets. I would call it a success! After reading Bill Bryson’s “In a
Sunburned Country” my knowledge of Australia was mostly of potential life
threatening wildlife, vast desert and mobs of kangaroos. Well, he talked about other things
besides this, but my mind mostly honed in on all the ways to die there. Of course, all the Australian’s that I
have met have merely batted away my fears with a “ah, no worries, you’ll be
fine” (input aussie accent here).
They generally go on to say that they themselves have been stung by a
blue bottle(s), which was “very painful”, but they usually manage to skillfully
downplay the likely amount of “pain” that they were in, leaving me with
scrunched up eyebrows and thinking there is no way in hell I am putting a
single toe in that jellyfish-polluted water. (Blue bottles, or Portuguese Man o’ War, are actually not
true jellyfish, but according to wikipedia, stings usually cause severe pain to humans, leaving whip-like, red
welts on the skin that normally last 2 or 3 days after the initial sting-google
image, say no more.)
You may think I am being totally irrational because things
like that don’t happen when you are on vacation, right? Well, that’s true, it didn’t happen to
us, but we also visited the country in their winter, so the cold weather was
enough of a bother to keep us out of the water, much less all the blue bottles
that we saw washed up on the shore along the beaches. (Yeah, we did actually spot them littering the sand on
nearly all of our beach strolls…)
But I felt fairly confident that my worries could be benched for now,
though only because we were going nowhere near crocodile territory, were there
in the winter, so all the poisonous snakes (and there are MANY) were hibernating,
and we would not be going in the water anyway (so sharks, sting rays, and
jellyfish can also be subtracted from potential life-takers as well). Now all I had to worry about was the
likely possibility of Clayton exploring too far down a cliff…
Our exploration there was via a very glamorous camping trip
as we rented a camper van, which included all the modern conveniences of a
stove, sink, minuscule bathroom, refrigerator and heater (though as we
unfortunately learned, only worked when plugged in…). So, it allowed us get a little more off track without
Clayton griping about cleaning dishes sans sink and hot water and me
complaining about how much I hate the condensation inside the tent in the
morning. So after Clayton worked
out his anxiety about driving a huge van with a plethora of blind spots on the
wrong side of the car and wrong side of the road we managed just fine! First up on the adventure packed Unesco
world heritage-recognized itinerary was the famous Blue Mountains outside of
Sydney. “Oooooh” is what we
caught ourselves saying way too much.
The area was named after the characteristic slate-colored haze from the
mist of oil exuded off eucalyptus trees.
We power hiked our way through as many “bushwalks” as we could fit in in
2 days. To quote Clayton, “it’s
just like hiking in Oregon in the spring or fall. Same, same, but different trees”.
While renting a camper van was a great idea, there were a
few mistakes that I made...
Mistake #1) Not bringing any CD’s to listen to on the
drives, having instead to bear Clayton repeatedly impersonating Elaine from
Seinfeld, “maybe a dingo ate your baby” in a terrible Australian accent, trying
to answer his favorite question of the day such as, “what noise do kangaroos
make?” (insert annoying noises here), or making up new animals: wallabats,
kookaroos, kangaburras…
Mistake #2) Assuming Australia was a warm country no
matter what season it was, and more specifically because we were on
vacation-the weather should have sensed our arrival and warmed
accordingly. My wool socks were
way overused.
Mistake #3) Assuming that the auxiliary battery in
the camper van would be fully functional when we were camping deep inside the
“bush”, instead of lasting 15 minutes, then dying. Big thanks to Clayton’s good friend Pat who gave us
headlamps (intended for use during Vietnam’s roaming blackouts, though majority
of use during our Australia blackout).
Despite visiting in the winter, we did see lots of wildlife:
owls, colorful parrots, kookaburras (NOT sitting in gum trees, nor laughing…),
kangaroos & their little joeys, wallabies, Australian monitor lizards, a
dingo, monster spiders, tiny but absurdly loud frogs, washed up Portuguese man
o’ war, jellyfish lazing around the waters of the Sydney harbor, and sharks at
the Sydney aquarium (okay, so that last one was not actually in the wild, but
we had to do at least one tourist trap while we were in Sydney!) My one disappointment was not seeing a
koala. We had the chance to stop
in a koala reserve on our way north, but Clayton vetoed the idea annoyingly
commenting, “I don’t want to see them in the hospital”. Oh well, maybe next time, Australia.
After the Blue Mountains, we meandered through the back
roads, made a stop in Hunter Valley (wine country) for some awesome Australian
wine, stinky cheese, fresh fudge and views of the beautiful country side. Then we headed up the coast, stopping
for a night on the beach, followed by some more bushwalking through Dorrigo
National Park rainforest and a tour drive along the famous Waterfall Way, then
ended our camping trip with a couple more nights along the coast. The last of our money was spent in
Sydney, where on our last day we power toured our way through the Sydney
Aquarium, the Sydney fish market (second in the world only to Tokyo!), sampled
way too much deep fried seafood, briefly stopped in the Maritime Museum (mostly
because it was free…though there were some great exhibits), walked around the
Sydney Harbor, took a ferry to Manly beach, saw harbor views of the Sydney
Opera house and bridge, then lastly had a nice dinner at a small French
restaurant. Whew!
Complaints aside, we had a great trip, did lots of
“bushwalking”, marveled at orange trees still holding strong despite the
freezing temperatures at night, got up close and personal with nature, sans
injury and re-grouped before returning to steamy, sweaty, loud, unorganized
Vietnam. Rest much needed!
