Someone left the gate open

This may be the last blog for a little while. While on the cruise of 16 days, we don’t know what our internet access will be, other than expensive on the ship. So we leave Sydney on Fri 12th, cruise for 16 days around the top end of Australia and end up in Perth on the western side. From there we have a motorhome rented for a month, to drive the west coast north of Perth and the southern peninsula. Where all we go will depend on the weather, as we are heading into the “wet” season. And the temperatures may become too much for us the farther north we go. Guess we will just see.

So continuing after Lightning Ridge, we drove and drove on the edge of the outback, through Dubbo and down to Katoomba. There are several mountain towns in the Blue mountains, west of Sydney. But it’s not like being in US mountains, these “forest” are mainly gum or eucalyptus trees. But the cliff views are sensational. We met up with some friends we made in the Cook Islands (5 years ago we crashed their wedding at the Rarotonga bungalows). They now live in Katoomba and have a new family. It was great just catching up with them. We also took a couple of hikes in the area, the best being the National Pass. This trail was built in 1908, chiseled out of the cliffs, steps made of natural stones, down, over, through numerous waterfalls and cut across the cliffs, halfway up from the floor. It was magnificent, sometimes scary with the edges and heights. And a workout climbing all the stairs back up.

After 5 days in Katoomba, we decided to make a road trip to Adelaide, South Australia. Pretty much drive drive drive, pass a road train, drive drive drive. Lots of agriculture, mostly bright, yellow canola growing, sheep, rolling hills. Then all of the sudden nothing. We hit the outback. As we were driving, I noticed there seemed to be a fence running all along the edge and I started thinking silly thoughts. Like maybe this is the gate to the outback. Sure enough, we came across a gate labeled Hells gate, could be the same thing. Then an actual sign to the outback! We couldn’t resist.  

Driving the back roads provides some amusing pictures and signs. In a small town along the Murray river we saw the Chookman and his indescribable house boat. And the road signs are interesting, even if we don’t know what they are talking about. Town names and street names are funny too. At one point, Bill got bored so he decided to see how fast the car could really go. He hit 154k, =96mph. Luckily, no kangaroos jumped out. Zoom, Zoom, little Hyundai.

Adelaide was the farthest west we drove and it seemed to be a large, pretty mellow town. Did some shopping in the city, drove along the coastal towns and beaches. At one beach, we stopped for a minute and happened to watch some boaters load their boats on the trailers. The tide was out and they had driven the car and trailer to the water, now they’re loading back up but no boat ramp. One guy lost his trailer on the beach, walked it down, winched the boat  up onto the trailer and guess what? The trailer front end goes up and it’s getting tougher to load the boat. It was pretty hilarious watching him. He did succeed, threw a rope around the hitch and drove off. I thought he was going to tow the trailer like that but he finally did hitch it up properly. Too funny.

Lightning Ridge

We’ve made it to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney in a roundabout way.  A few days ago we left Newcastle and had a little time to kill so we decided to make a little detour.  We spent 2 nights in Lightning Ridge.  This is one of the few spots in  Australia where they mine for Black Opals.  So we thought “why not?” and off we went.  

Once we got outside of Newcastle it didn’t take long for us to get into the bush. We went  through hot spots like Quirindi, Gunnedah, Narrabi and Wee Waa! Not quite to the outback but we were definitely in the bush! Our travels took us through a lot more farming areas.  In fact, we went right past the Australia Cotton Research Center.  It seems that cotton is grown a lot more here than I ever would have expected.  In addition to huge farm fields, we saw lots of Eucalyptus trees, Koala signs but, no real koalas.  We also saw quite a few emus and kangaroos.

Folo the colored doors

Lightning ridge is quite a quirky little town.  It’s built around a ridge that is mined for Black Opals.  Most opal have a bluishness to them, black opal have red flecks in them and are pretty rare. We took a tour of a worked out mine that was actually quite interesting.  At the deepest we were only about 30 feet below the surface.  Of course the gift shop at the end really got our (Gails) attention.  The owner did give us a volume discount. 

Most of the mining in the area is small privately owned and financed by rugged individuals.  They are a hearty lot. :)  They start by digging a shaft down about 30’ to where the soil and conditions are right for the formations of the opals then find a seam of potential ore and then they commence to digging tunnels along the seam.  Most of the digging is done with picks, shovels and a small jack hammer.  The digging is mostly through sandstone and clay so no real layers of hard rock.  Then they use a wheelbarrow to haul the ore back to the shaft where it’s dumped into a bucket on a rail that will take it to the surface and dump it into an old cement truck mixing tank where they will wash out the silt and dirt and hopefully left at the bottom is the rock with opal.  Nothin’ to it. Quite a lot of discarded cement mixers around too. Surprisingly there are only a few open pit mines. Lots of “tailings”, piles of whitish rock, are pretty much everywhere, mostly clay remains. You can go fossicking (digging around) on these piles in hopes you will find your own opal.

Hoist

This area is also on the border of Queensland and probably has a lot of wet weather come summer time. Farther north, it’s called the wet and so much rain falls that many roads are impassable. Most of the vehicles are high clearance, SUVs or a sort of a pickup with a small bed and in pretty rough shape. Most of the miners we saw looked like a typical miner, long beard, mish mash of clothes or overalls, dusty desert rat. Camps (or their homes) were the same cobbled together whatever could make a wall. Pretty funny actually.

Miners camp

G'Day from Down Under

Well, After many months of planning we've finally made it back to Australia.  We've been here a week now and currently are in Newcastle.

United Airlines cut our connection time from Sacramento to San Francisco down to almost nothing due to a really late departure from Sacramento.  We did make it though and then had to suffer through 13.5 hrs cramped 3 across on a 747.  Thank goodness for Tylenol PM.  Suffice it to say that this will hopefully be our last international flight on a domestic US carrier.  Enough whining and on to the fun stuff.

Our first few days were spent in Sydney at the Victorian Court Hotel.  A small but comfortable room that was within walking distance of most of the neat Sydney attractions.  Once we got rested up we went out exploring and just left our rental car in the hotel car park.  We were able to walk to the Royal Botanical garden and Mrs MacQuaries Park just across a small bay from the Sydney Opera House.  Had a great view of the Opera House with the Harbor bridge in the background.  We cut across the arboretum and headed for downtown Sydney.  At one point we were checking our city map and a lady stopped and asked if we needed help.  We explained that  we were looking for an Optus mobile phone store and she lead us right to it.  I love these people they are so friendly!!

Got our mobile phone re-ignited and then we were off again.  We found a coffee shop, had a smoothie and used their wifi.  Pat and Norm we're sorry we couldn't Skype.  We then spent a couple of hours just sitting in Hyde Park watching people and reading.

Ocean pool

We have found that things are quite expensive here.  The exchange rate is right now about $1.05 American to get $1.00 Australian and they have a General Sales tax of 10%.  There must be some serious "sin Taxes" because a bottle of beer cost $7.90.  I can get a 6 pack of Blue Moon back home for that!

The next day we did venture out in the car and went to the famous Bondi Beach.  It was a beautiful beach and it's famous for the surfing and the Lifesaving club.  Didn't get to see any surfers get saved but they did have a John Deere towing a machine that cleans the trash out of the sand.

The last day in Sydney was pretty much a carbon copy of the first day but spent more time at the Arboretum.  There was a "spring flower" display.  Beautiful and lots of flowers were in bloom.


On Friday we were able to get out of Sydney and head to our friend Deb's house in Newcastle.  We took the scenic route and I'm sure glad we did cuz we went right through Bucketty.  We can now cross that off our bucket list. :)

We've had a wonderful weekend with Deb and her daughter Sophie.  In addition to showing us around her town she introduced us to friends of hers, Steven and Carrie, who showed us a wonderful afternoon in the Hunter Valley which is the areas premier wine country.  We had an wonderful lunch at an Italian (I mean REAL Italian) restaurant and winery, then to a little shop that specializes just in desserts.  WOW!!  Steven and Carrie are members at one of the winerys so we got to have a special wine tasting in the "Members Only" room.  Pretty cool for "trailer trash" like us, Huh?

We don't have any plans for a couple of days after we leave Newcastle so we've decided to head up to Lightning Ridge, a Black Opal mining area.  It's about an 8.5 hr drive northwest of here.  We'll be getting close to the outback.  More on that adventure later.