Spit Bridge to Manly

The Indian summer continues unabated in New South Wales, so we venture down to the Spit Bridge to trek along the 9km route Manly.

The route follows the water's edge most of the way and gives access to some glorious little beaches and great views of the city.


It takes about 2 hours or so but we're meandering so it takes nearer 3. Luckily enough there is plenty of shade on the route, and the water is nice and warm, sheltered as it is from the wind and the cooler currents of the Tasman Sea.

The more and more I try to get a grip on the layout of Sydney and its suburbs the more it eludes me. There are just so many inlets, harbours, coves and lagoons that it's hard to put it all together, so that it now seems more like an archipelago than a city.

Along the trail there are signs of the previous and more ancient inhabitants of the area, with carvings depicting the local fauna.
This little bay looks out to North Head and the entrance to the Tasman. There are lots of little shingled shacks down by the waterside, but no apparent way to access them other than by boat. Which just adds to their mystery.
Reef Beach is one of the nicest and most secluded along the way. We stop to freshen up our feet in the azure waters, and Mandy picks up some obligatory seashells. Hopefully she's not thinking of making a vase with them out of plaster.


Eventually we reach 40 baskets beach and the wealthier parts of Manly.
Of course with all this walking and all the heat we just have to reward ourselves at the Bavarian Bier Cafe down on Manly Wharf. There really was no other way to end the day.



As you can see the day is further enhanced when my intial attempts at 'grafting' begin to take shape.

Kosciuszko National Park - Day 2

We head off in more glorious sunshine, this time determined to get to Tumut or maybe even Wagga Wagga, depending on the roads.

Again, my sense of direction is hopeless, and my heart sinks when I see the sign for Khancoban again. This isn't right. Maybe the whole place is geared to force tourists to Khancoban. To be safe, we turn around and head back on the road to Cooma.

We stop in Cooma to draw out some cash but all of the ATM's refuse my card. Turns out that after 3 months of being in Australia my bank finally thinks there might be fraudulent behaviour going on and have decided to put a stop on all transactions. So after dialling about 9 different numbers I reach someone who lifts the 'stop'.

We then head on the long and dusty road to Canberra. We're passing the capital anyway, and despite all the 'not very good' things I've heard about it, we decide to drive in anyway so I can see for myself.

Canberra all looks very new and clean. But unfortunately it's one of those grand-plan architectural cities, which tries to organise how people should live. It doesn't take into account the organic nature of how settlements grow, and it has a kind of soul-less atmosphere akin to somewhere like Milton Keynes. There is no obvious town centre, which for a tourist is an absolute nightmare, there are lots of roundabouts, and large civic sculptures and buildings, and some more roundabouts.

Fortunately it's not too difficult to get out of and we head for Goulburn and the Hume Highway.

Goulburn is a nice mining town, but it's very quiet, especially for a Saturday. The main attraction is this massive Merino sheep, or maybe it was just very far away. Although I am slightly disappointed in its lack of 'dags'.

We drive around for a bit and then head back onto the Hume Highway and head for Sydney.

The strangest thing of all about holidaying here is not having that downer when you get back home, mainly because we live in a place where lots of people go on holiday anyway.

Mount Kosciuszko National Park - Day 1

Despite my own preconceptions about Australia, it does have mountains, and fairly sizeable ones too. Mount Kosciuszko is the highest part of the Australian mainland at somewhere around 7000 ft, it's nearly twice as high as Ben Nevis, so no mean mountain.

The national park that it's part of is Australia's snowboarding and skiing country, so most of the villages and towns are geared up for the winter. This means that at the moment they are very quiet, and its hard to imagine in 30 degree heat what they would look like under 8 feet of snow.

Mt. Kosciuszko Range

Our initial plan is to head to Thredbo and take a ski lift part way up the mountain then hike for a bit, but, because it's so hot, we think that's probably not a good idea and drive through the National Park to Khancoban.

At Khancoban it is even hotter, and we have some juice before deciding on heading towards Tumut at the northern end of the park. Maybe its the heat, or maybe my 'spidey' sense is confused by being in the southern hemisphere, but both our senses of direction take a turn for the worst from this point in. First of all we pause after entering Victoria, west instead of north, then turn back and find the road to Cabramurra, the right way.

After over an hour of twisty declines and inclines we end up in Cabramurra, Australia's highest town around a mile up. And a suitably quiet little place it is too. All of the buildings have steep sloped roofs and face away from the spectacular view, which suggests that the winters here are pretty fierce.

We leave Cabramurra, but unfortunately in entirely the wrong direction, nearly 2 hours of winding, twisting roads later we end up back in Khancoban. By now it's getting too late to think about finding the right road, so we backtrack and spend another night in Jindabyne.

Narooma to Jindabyne

Our plan for today is to head inland towards the Snowy Mountains. But first of all we stop at Mystery Bay, which is a stunning spot, with a beautiful beach, caves and good fishing by the looks of it as well. There is a good little camping spot here as well, which is definitely worth a return visit some day.

From Mystery Bay we made haste for Tilba, sped on by Mandy whose smile was hard to subdue after she realised it was on our route. The simple reason being that Tilba has a cheese factory, and a good one at that.

Tilba seems like a really nice little village, like Mogo it has lots of crafts shops and one really good gallery, which Mandy felt drawn to, despite the lure of the cheese factory at the end of the street.

We bought a neat selection of cheese, stuck it in our freshly chilled cooler and hit the road again.

The next stop was Cooma, which on the map looked a likely spot to stop. The inland air hit us, at a full 35 degrees, with no nice coastal wind to ease the heat. When we reached it though we decided we'd just have a coffee and move on to Jindabyne.

I think the B.Y.O. bit should be G.Y.O. (get your own) for full grump effect.

We got to Jindabyne in the late afternoon and the heat was still intense. After a wander we found a spot for a drink and then got some food to take back to the cabin to let Mandy watch a full episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares America.

Kangaroo Valley to Narooma

Our initial destination today was to be Bateman's Bay, but, after stopping there for about 10 minutes we decided it wasn't really for us. A bit too touristy and boaty.

We had heard good things about Mogo Zoo, so we decided to take a break from driving and visit it.
It might not have the scale of Taronga, but it has a good atmosphere, and plenty of rare species.

Prepare for another plethora of cute and not so cute faces.

Confused Spider Monkey

'If I only had a heart'

Something about this marmoset reminds me of 'Mad Max - Beyond Thunderdome'

After the zoo we headed into Mogo village. It's really just a single street with all kinds of craft shops on either side. Mandy smelled out a good jewellery shop, while my instincts led me to the Mogo bottle shop. An excellent selection of 'craft' beers which I bought several of. The best of which was 'Charlotte' by the Snowy Mountain Brewery, a new find for me.

Not really knowing where we were going to spend the night, we drove a little bit further south and eventually settled on Narooma. We got ourselves a little cabin for 60 bucks, which was well worth the money as it meant we could 'recharge' our freezer bricks for the cooler. The necessity of this will become clear tomorrow.

Sydney to Kangaroo Valley

Mandy had a week off so we headed out today for a bit of a driving tour of the bottom half of New South Wales.

Not a great start though as some muppet reversed into our hire car in the local supermarket car park. Then drove away. I raced across the car park shouting in my broadest scottish accent, and eventually she stopped. She thought she had only hit a shopping trolley, so it didn't matter.

She was, of course, driving a 4x4 to drive to the super market. Nuff said.

Eventually we got on the road as there was no major damage to the car, and I took out full insurance as well, luckily enough.

We drove through Kangaroo Valley, and after 'researching' a few campsites, we ended up pitching in the village campground. The weather was pretty toasty and it was nice to camp without having to worry about freezin to death halfway through the night.

The only small worry was some very strange noises in the night, but I satisfied myself with the knowledge that Australia doesn't have large predators, unless you're near the water. Turns out it was half a dozen wombats fighting over fruit. At least we know what that sounds like now.