AnnFoszz

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Day 5: to Uluru

It's another transit day. We flew to Uluru. It used to be called Ayers Rock. The only town anywhere around was called Yulara, and its only purpose is to accommodate the tourists visiting the Rock. It had apartments (for the "locals"), lots of hotels, a campground (where we stayed), a post office, a gas station, several gift shops, a beauty parlor, and a supermarket.

Travelers' tip: The Northern Territory (Yulara) has its own time zone and it doesn't use daylight savings time. In winter (April-October), it is half an hour behind New South Wales (Sydney). In summer (October-April), it is an hour and a half behind New South Wales (Sydney).

This photo was taken out the airplane window. The rock formation is known as the Olgas. The aboriginal name is "Kata-Tjuta". It's about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Ayers Rock and is located inside the same sprawling national park.

The right half of the building was our cabin. It supposedly slept six (one double bed and four bunk beds), but I think six would have been incredibly tight. It was quite good for two, though.

This picture also shows our car. I arranged for a compact car, but Thrifty had a logistical problem and had to arrange for us to get a 4WD car from Avis. Yes, it's a right-side drive, and, yes, it's larger than I'm accustomed to driving. But I think I managed pretty well despite those challenges. It really helped that there was zero traffic on the outback roads.

All the comforts of home. There wasn't much television reception though.

Travelers' tip: Buy salt and pepper! You forget those little things when you're camping...

Shared facilities. This being a campground, I expected the showers to be pretty unpleasant. I was surprised by how nice they were. Excellent water pressure and plenty of hot water. And clean!

It gets very cold in the outback at night. The daytime temperatures probably reached into the seventies, but the nighttime was near freezing (below forty, I suspect). It made for a couple nippy trips to the loo at 2am!

Macquarie and museum

After leaving the soggy Royal Botanic Gardens we headed down Macquarie Street. (Ma and I couldn't agree on the pronunciation. MACK-ah-ree? ma-KWAIR-ee? Whatever.) It's a famous street with lots of old architectural buildings on it.

Here's Sydney Hospital (1868-1894)

And the Mint (1816). Looks like it belongs in New Orleans.

And St. Mary's Cathedral. Technically not on Macquarie Street, but close enough.

The last stop today was the Australian Museum, filled with natural history. They had a cool interactive hologram thingy where sharks or crocodiles or snakes would jump out at you. Ma's nerves are shot so she freaked a bit, but I enjoyed it.

They had some other neat displays.

I think we would have enjoyed it even more if we hadn't been so tired by this point.

Lucky for us, we didn't have far to walk home. The museum was just across Hyde Park from our hotel. This is a picture of the park's ANZAC war memorial and reflection pool. "ANZAC" stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. They fought in World War I in the famous battle at Gallipoli, Turkey, which began April 25, 1915. While valiant, the ANZACs suffered tremendous loss of life during that campaign. The battle was ultimately won by the Ottoman Turks, but it served as a "coming out" for Australia and New Zealand from under Britain's shadow. Today, both Australia and New Zealand remember their fallen soldiers on April 25, Anzac Day.

For our last dinner in Sydney, we got delicious "takeaway" lasagna from Pasta Pantry down the street, and cooked up some potatoes, too. Ma had some Greek salad.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Day 4: Penal Colony

By the middle of day three, we were pretty tired. Our hotel room was ready, so we crashed early and didn't move until day four. We stayed at the Hyde Park Inn. It's a lovely little hotel at the corner of Elizabeth and Liverpool. It also happens to be a Mecca for transit options. The kitchenette came in handy. No cooktop, but it did have a microwave, toaster, electric kettle, dishware, and a fridge which they stocked daily with tomorrow's breakfast. What a great idea!

Travelers' tip: Unlike our last trip, the guidebooks for Australia pretty well sucked. Yup. You read that correctly. They were woefully inaccurate, out-of-date, or just plain missing some critical information. One such secret: Bus #555. It's the "tourist" bus, and it happens to be free! It makes a circle (in both directions) between Haymarket and Circular Quay using the two major streets (George & Elizabeth). The best part: it stops just a few doors down from our hotel. The downside is that it only runs between 9:30am-3:30pm. Still, it's a great way to get around Sydney's CBD (Central Business District).

The morning of day four, we headed for an area called "The Rocks". As the name would suggest, the terrain undulates quite a bit. The hills weren't unreasonable though. It is adjacent to the west side of Circular Quay (where we were yesterday).

In colonial times, the Rocks had a reputation for being a hard-partying sailors' area. It conjures images of harlots and taverns and plenty of debauchery.

This structure is called Cadman's Cottage. It happens to be the oldest house in Sydney. It's had a rough life. It was originally the home of John Cadman, the government coxswain in 1816. After that it had several insignificant purposes until it became a national landmark.

This is me outside the Rocks Discovery Museum. It wasn't very big, but it did tell some interesting tales of early life in the penal colony.

Over my head is the southern foundation pylon (CBD side) for the Harbour Bridge.

After lunch at a pub in the Rocks (Ma and I both had the fish and chips; it was called The Orient), we crossed the Circular Quay and headed for the Royal Botanic Gardens. It looks like a quite a distance in this photo, but it's really just a short walk from the base of the bridge.

Besides some interesting (and sweet-smelling) plants, we encountered several of these colorful creatures. They're called lorikeets. They look incredibly exotic, but they're fairly common here.

I think these are a species of ibis.

Deep inside the Royal Botanic Gardens is a building called the Government House. It was designed by the same guy who helped design Buckingham Palace. Today it is used for parties for state officials and for tourists.

Manly

Sydney is a harbor town. It started out that way, and it remains so today.

Six years before America declared its independence, Captain James Cook sailed into Botany Bay on board the 'Endeavour'. He'd heard tell of this strange continent from others who had stumbled upon it, but he wanted to be the first to map its eastern coast and claim it for Great Britain. His passengers, mostly scientists from Britain's Royal Society, were fascinated by its exotic plants and animals. He did not stay long. He was wary of the indigenous population and unequipped for colonization.

In 1788, some eighteen years later, Captain Arthur Phillip followed in Cook's footsteps. He plunked down his motley crew along with 751 prisoners on the marshland surrounding Botany Bay. They quickly discovered that Cook's paradise was a windy unprotected bog with no clean water. Lucky for them, they poked around to the north and stumbled upon one of the most magnificent natural harbors in the world. They named it Sydney (after the British Home Secretary).

Sydney slowly expanded into the thriving metropolis it is today, spilling outside the harbor, encompassing Botany Bay (which today is home to the airport and not much else), and fronting the ocean to the north and south. It is home to 4.35 million Australians, roughly one fifth of the entire country.

Wanting to see Sydney from a distance, we took the ferry to Manly Beach. Manly is located north of Sydney, on the ocean, just outside of the harbor.

The best Opera House shots were taken from the ferry.

The Harbour Bridge and Opera House barely fit into the same frame, but I managed.

Australians have quite a sense of humor.

By the way, is Manly Ferry an oxymoron?

My first time in the Pacific Ocean! It's a little chilly in Sydney today. No sunbathers or surfers. August is winter, after all. It's probably around 60 degrees. Still, it's nice and sunny.

Manly. Beach.

Day 3: Arrival in Sydney

We arrived in Sydney before 7am, so our hotel room wasn't ready to move into yet. So, we dumped our bags at reception and hit the streets.

We headed to the wharf, also known as Circular Quay (pronounced "key"). The best sights are on display there, like...

...Harbour Bridge

This bridge was completed in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression (yes, Australia had it, too). It is nicknamed the "coat hanger" because of its single arch. It was quite an engineering feat in its day. It's never totally finished though: they've been painting it basically since it was completed. Once they finish one coat, it needs another one!

It was built from both ends. The foundations were built first, then the arch, then the road. You can climb the arch all the way to the top and back down the other side, but we opted to admire it from afar.

Here's the other iconic Sydney landmark: the Opera House. I took so many pictures of this thing!

It's surprisingly different up close. First of all, those "white shells" are covered in over a million ceramic tiles.

There are four main auditoriums and several rehearsal spaces.

We didn't tour the inside, but I did stop in to see the bathrooms.

Umm, that's no illusion. There's no drain in those sinks. The counters slope back towards the wall where the water enters a trough. Pretty cool!

Day 1 (and 2): A Long Journey

These two gals are bright-eyed and bushy tailed. They better be. They've got a 25 hour voyage ahead of them. It's going to be a long Saturday. And Sunday. Well, with the time change, we'll skip Sunday entirely and go straight to Monday.

We departed from Milwaukee and changed planes in Atlanta and Los Angeles. The LAX to Sydney leg took fifteen hours to go about 7,700 miles. I barely noticed because we had these awesome video screens to play with. Between sleeping on-and-off and watching several movies, I made it through with no problems. Ma had a few cramps, especially late in the flight. But she's a trooper!