I'd set my alarm for 7:30am and when it went off, I wasn't happy. I grabbed it quickly before it disturbed the other people in the room and began to get ready. By 8:20 I was out the front of the hostel and immediately greeted by a small Scottish man with a clipboard who led me to the small bus which would take me to the actual tour bus. He chattered away to me whilst weaving through the morning rush hour traffic through the city and around Darling harbour and eventually into a suburb leading out to Glebe. He was a very weird man, asking about my boyfriend and why I didn't have a boyfriend and how I should find a boyfriend on this trip. He even went down the list of people who would be joining me on the tour trying to pick out which males were potential boyfriends. Luckily, it didn't take too long before I arrived at a YHA hostel where I could get out and breathe whilst I waited for the second bus.
I wasn't very enthused by the whole day, especially when the bus turned up and I was the last person to get on, meaning I was left with the small single retard seat at the very back of the minibus that didn't have a headrest but did boast a couple of extra seat cushions from where I assume the actual seat had broken. This wasn't why I wasn't exited though. I had no idea what the Blue Mountains was about. What was there and what to expect from the day. I'd really only booked it because I'd overheard people saying that it was something you just had to do whilst in Sydney. Also too, I think that the Great Ocean Road trip I went on raised all of my expectations for future days out that I have over here.
We drove through the Western suburbs of Sydney heading out to the Blue Mountains which was about an hour outside of Sydney itself. The view out the window was motorway and industrial sites and derelict houses for most of the way. We made a pit stop on the Nepean River which was a long wide river with some grassland on one side decorated with picnic tables, and quaint residential houses nestled on the other side of the river bank. The tour company set out some biscuits and juices whilst the driver went about checking who had paid and who was yet to pay. We stopped here for about fifteen minutes before pushing on. I was upset to hear that our first stop, which was in a clearing and had a lot of wild kangaroos lying about the place, had been flooded with the previous days rains and so we wouldn't be able to get there. Instead we were going straight to our second stop, Scenic World, but first we were going to make a stop at a look out point.
The road the bus took was basically a duel carriage way motorway, with a train line running beside. It passed through towns and passed by houses and shops. The driver explained that all of the communities based themselves around this one road, and just a few kilometres behind on each side was wild bushland. I could feel my ears beginning to pop with the gradual rise in altitude, but to look at the road outside, you would think you were just driving through Sydney still. At the first stop, we parked up amongst a lot of other cars who were there to see the sights and followed the driver through the bush and down some steps until we reached the top of a hill with a small fence around. This was amazing. The view was incredible, and especially for me with my complete lack of knowledge for what I was out there to see. The sky ahead was a hazy blue colour with low cloud congregating over the hill tops which looked like smoke from a chimney. The hills below, far below were textured with trees of varying shades of green all at different angles and layers with the clouds laying vast shadows over the canopy. I was suitably impressed.
*The Blue Mountains, are so because it is in fact a huge, maybe the biggest eucalypt forest and the heavy eucalyptus oil hangs in the air causing the sky to turn a hazy shade of blue, hence the Blue Mountains.
From here, we went to a cable car which would take us across and down to Scenic World, which from what I gather is a large tourist attraction built into a permeable rainforest that lives in the shelter of the huge cliffs around. The first cable car provided an opportunity to see all of the stunning views from a great distance, whilst the second, the steepest in Australia gave you a great sense of height. The way the trees looked below reminded me of broccoli florets. You could also see the Three Sisters, which is an eroded rock formation much like the twelve apostles, however their destruction has happened much more gradually as there is no ocean constantly attacking the structure. The Three Sisters is proclaimed by the Aborigine people to be a place of great healing, and apparently this notion of three or five or seven sisters represents healing and transformation in many tribal people all over the world which I found quite interesting.
After the driver took us on a guided tour around the rainforest and pointed out various trees and plants that had special significance to Australian culture, we headed back to the bus and drove to a little town called LeuraKatoomba Falls which donned a glorious rainbow over it's waterfall. Unfortunately, we were looking at it from over a valley and there was on way to get close to it as it was hidden away within all of the overgrown wilderness. We made the hike back up the hill stopping every few minutes for the elders and the unfit to catch their breath. The bus driver then drove a few minutes around the outskirts of the valley to another point, a place without tourists as the dirt track that lead to where we parked the bus was too narrow for a large coach to get down, and I thoroughly enjoyed that it was just our group here. This location did not have a name, but it was in fact a sheer cliff leading straight down into the leafy forest below, maybe 300 metres up? The first thing I did was ask one of the fellow passengers to take a photo of me as I nervously teetered towards the edge to dangle my legs in the air. The panoramic views were spectacular and I spent most of my time here just taking photos of everything I could see.
Before heading to the final stop, we make a quick detour into a residential area that sported a small clearing and in this clearing was a piece of solid stone with an aboriginal carving depicting a kangaroo that had possibly been speared. We had a discussion about what the artist was perhaps trying to portray before piling back into the bus and heading for the river's edge. It was late afternoon and the last part of the trip was to sail down the Paramatta river back into Sydney harbour on a large casual cruise ship. This took an hour and I got a good view of all of the lucky houses that backed onto the river, with varying architecture and most boasting private boat ramps straight into the water. The coastline was very consistent the whole way back to first Darling Harbour, and then Circular Quay in Sydney Harbour, broken up occasionally by private sail boats gently floating on the water.
After grabbing some fries from one of the vendors around the quay, I took the train back to the hostel and spent the evening watching a film before putting on my eye mask and falling asleep. Looking back, I believe that one of the main faults I can pick with this trip to the Blue Mountains was that it wasn't full of activity and the guide was not very passionate about his subject matter, but fingers crossed the next trip will be more enjoyable.
Bondi Beach.
I took the train to Bondi which was relatively easy. I'm quite lucky that this hostel is situated to closely to the main train terminal in Sydney. Three stops I think from Central to Bondi Junction, where I followed the crowds and caught a bus to the actual beach which was a few kilometres away. Another fortunate thing is my weekly ticket I bought covers all of my ferry, bus and most of my train travel too. I do like that I have the ability to just ride the rails like a hobo if I felt like it. The bus stopped right on the beach front, with newsagents and beach shops on one side, and a large grassy lawned area with some steps leading down to the beach front. There were lots of bars and cafes too, and a pavilion that held an art gallery, cafe and the toilets and showers. It was a glorious day, and luckily the beach wasn't too busy with it being a weekday (it was still busy mind!). The sand was quite pale in colour, but the general outlook was just like it was at Manly with the big aggressive waves and patrolling Baywatch style lifeguards. It was a lot smaller than I'd imagined as it was hemmed in by large walls of rock either side. After dipping my toes in the water keeping a careful watch for jellyfish and the sharks you often hear about, I lay down my things in a nice spot and spent the next few hours getting brown and I stayed there until the sun went in.
Coogee Beach.
I'd heard people talking about Coogee beach and I wasn't sufficiently happy with the colour of my skin yet, so I walked to Central and managed to jump on a bus that read 'Coogee' on the front. The bus took quite a long time to get to it's destination, driving though street after street of residential area, and I wondered if I was going the right way. But sure enough, the last stop was right on the beach front. It was a similar set up to Bondi and I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that all of these beaches are pretty much the same. Coogee was a lot smaller than Bondi though and a lot less busy in some areas, with most people congregating around the lifeguard area where you were actually allowed to swim. I stuck to the quieter area and lay backing in the sun for a good four hours before escaping to the nearby McDonalds and trying to bring my body temperature down with a large strawberry milkshake.
This morning, I woke up a little tired as I'd been out drinking with one of the chaps in my room in an attempt to socialise a little. I sat on the internet for an hour whilst I gradually woke up and I booked myself a ticket to see an opera at the opera house and I am greatly excited about this. It cost a fair amount of money for a rubbish seat three rows from the back, but the thought of actually seeing an opera performed at this majestic building and not just having my picture taken outside of it. Well, I will be able to boast wont I?! I also booked myself a ticket to go to the Sydney observatory on Sunday evening where you get to spend an hour and a half with an astronomer and again, I'm quite looking forward to this as it's something I've always wanted to do. Having spent all of this money, I decided that i wouldn't spend any money on my days activity and so I took the subway from Central to Circular Quay and spent a good forty minutes trying to get onto the harbour bridge as a pedestrian. I walked round and round the streets filled with cute Australian style houses looking up at the skyline and trying to follow the bridge above. I gave up in the end and took the train to where my hotel was back in Kirribilli and sure enough, the train landed me right on the bridge itself. I exited the station and walked the entire length of the bridge stopping to take photos every so often. My Dad had remarked on how wide the bridge actually is and how everyone sees it from the side but nobody sees it from the drivers point of view.
From here, I walked past the ferries and towards the Opera House to take a few more pictures from different angles and to examine where the box office ready for my ticket collection on Tuesday, before taking a turn into the Botanical Gardens. Again, they were a lovely piece of tranquil heaven in amongst all of the cities noises and smells and sights. I sauntered through slowly stopping to take a few pictures, before I walked into an area densely populated with trees and I heard a terrible screeching sound from up up above. As I looked, I saw a large bat hanging upside down from the very top of one of the trees and the more I looked, the more bats I saw dotted about, congregating upside down on their branches. Hundreds of them, all squawking. I took a couple of pictures and hurried out.
So I've just gotten back to the hostel. I bought a sandwich from a shop at Circular Quay and so I'm going to have that and watch a film tonight. I want to be up bright an early tomorrow ready to go and work on my tan a little more. I've just got to find a new beach to visit.
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