New South Wales part 1 - Sydney time

Well… this blog post kicks off in Kangaroo Valley… which seems about as Aussie-sounding a place as a post can start! This blog post finishes in Sydney, which is about as Aussie-sounding as a post can finish! Strewth… better read on mate.

Tuesday 25th Feb: Kangaroo Valley to Appin

We woke up after a silent night to the sound of a wombat mooching around the outside of our van and a misty morning. Our first stop of the day was Kangaroo Valley: we crossed an epic bridge in yesterday and managed to get a good picture this morning. We went for a stroll around the village to the Sweet As Valley Shop for some lollies. We found some sweets called ‘Clangers’ but we were not sure what they were. We asked the lady in the shop who described them as ‘clinkers’ but that also wasn’t much help! We decided to go for it anyway and try them out. It turns out they are scrumptious! They are pink/green/yellow in the middle kind of like a crunchy pineapple lump surrounded in chocolate, and there’s a good chance they might be our new travel snack! Whilst in Kangaroo valley we popped into a bottle store to look at beers and Mike found so many crazy ones that suddenly we had an extra stop later in the day!

Hoping the mist would rise as we drove, we headed to Fitzroy Falls which is an 80m waterfall promising lovely views and a walk around the rim. Alas the mist had risen but we did manage to see the impressive falls. We saw plenty of signs saying that Lyre birds, the infamous Planet Earth bird that can mimic just about any sound, might be spotted along the walk. We followed the rim track to get ‘the best views’ but in thick fog it was a wasted journey, and not a Lyre bird to be seen (plenty of other bird calls so maybe we heard one, but how would you know!) The grotto however was a cool find along the way.

On the drive to our next stop we took a rather wiggly and steep road, much to our disliking, to Berry Town and the ‘Treat Factory’. Unbelievably, we saw an actual Lyre bird on the corner of one of the turns which promptly galloped off into the forest and out of view. Too fast for a photo, so feel free to call us lyres… Our stop at the Treat factory was an unintended stop as we had to turn around mid-route due to a low clearance bridge, but our silver lining was a delicious hot chocolate and a thick and creamy chocolate milkshake.

We found a new route to our original stop to view the Kiama Blow hole and go for a rock pool swim. The blow hole is apparently famous (don’t worry, we had never heard of it either!) but it is the biggest in the world. We expected big things from the blowhole, but when it’s virtually low tide and the sea surprisingly flat this video was the best we got after waiting 10 minutes!! The rock pool down the hill made up for it though and we had a lovely cool off swim and a shower before continuing our drive to Wollongong.

Our final destination of the day was Five Barrel Brewing, spotted in the bottle shop that morning, to have a tasting tray. The 4 beers of choice were Night Cap (a milk stout), Fowlers Jam (a raspberry sour), Not so Humble (a banoffee pie pastry stout!), and Forty Love (an Oat Cream IPA). They were all incredible, even Chloe didn’t mind the pastry stout! However, with only a small fridge and already having a beer backlog we were limited to just the Fowlers Jam this time. A bit of a drive later and we pulled into the small village of Appin for an overnight stop.

Wednesday 26th Feb: Appin to Sydney

Wednesday was an early start as we headed up the Coast to meet Mum and Dad one last time before they headed back to the UK. We took a photo with an “unofficial” Big Koala, and we drove along the pretty cool Sea Cliff Bridge which is a 670m long bridge with cracking views across the ocean on the Grand Pacific Highway.

Our destination was the iconic Bondi Beach. We parked up on Marine Parade in Maroubra where we knew you could park for free all day, a bonus in Sydney! We arrived and went to the Iceberg pools to start, met up with mum and dad, had a delicious chicken toastie, and a swim in what turned out to be some pretty cold water. We then decided that no visit to Bondi could be declared complete without a swim in the actual sea! All four of us headed to the beach and straight into the water. We had a whale of a time and everyone one of us was barrelled over by a wave at least once. A new core memory is having to warn dad of the impending huge wave which was a good foot taller than him while he was facing the other way!

All this swimming made us hungry again, so we headed to the strip of shops and Anita’s Gelato for a yummy ice cream, but such hot weather means you have to eat without taking a picture, so you’ll just have to believe us when we say how delicious they were! Ice creams in tow we went for a walk along the sea wall/path and got a photo with the Bondi Beach wall art before heading to Curly Lewis Brewery, brewed directly in Bondi and then heading to Hurricanes Bar and Grill. Recommended by one of Mum’s friends we stuffed ourselves silly on ribs and steak before parting our ways until Breakfast.

We headed back to the van and explored the Maroubra Caves. Unless we were meant to abseil down the edge of the cliff we didn’t find actually cave! Instead, we went and had a swim in the Mahon Pool less than a 5-minute walk to the Van. A lovely end to a lovely day!

Thursday 27th: Sydney

Mum and Dad left today so we bussed to their hotel and had a buffet breakfast treat with them. Delicious food but the highlight was definitely a real shower in their room! We said our goodbyes and then decided to stay in the city for the day and do the tourist spots.

On our walk towards the Sydney Opera House we came across a free museum called Hyde Barracks. It was an audio guided tour through another convict centre, but this time encompassed 3 different stories: the convicts, the first nation peoples, and the women who were sent over ‘for a better life’. Pretty eye opening at times especially the bunk style hammock room where the convicts slept. The stories from the women were also incredible - how they were taught trades on the boat over but also how Australia differed to what they were promised. The stories from the aboriginal Australians were heart breaking and so very similar to what we have learnt about Māori history. At the end there were recordings of people linked to the stories we heard along the way, and also the elders in the Gadigal/Wiradyri community who are the local mob of Sydney. These stories brought tears to Chloes eyes but were words of hope of getting their stories, cultures and history shared.

After this we continued our tourist era down Macquarie Road (a road initially built by the convicts!) to view the famous opera house and Harbor Bridge. Although a mighty building we were somewhat underwhelmed by the opera house, although the information about how they settled on the shape of the house was cool. There are 10 sails in total, split into 3 sections, each of the main back 2 have 4 sails and the smaller front entrance way has 2. Fun to walk round and look at but definitely tourist heaven and tourist prices! The bridge was awesome to look at, especially when you realise it’s a 6-lane motorway, a train track, and you can walk along it too!

Next stop on our tourist walk was Macquarie’s Seat. A beautiful walk through the botanical gardens around the side of the opera house we saw some crazy Ibis birds, and epic trees with more than 10 trunks. Mrs Macquarie’s seat itself was carved by convicts in 1810 for the wife of the Governor. It’s not really a chair but rather some steps in a rock. Crazy to think the prisoners built the road and the chair but we mostly enjoyed the walk even with the HUGE spider webs and funky coloured spiders. Safe to say we couldn’t live in this part of Australia full time! That being said the chair did have pretty stunning views of the harbour and the opera house!

We headed on to the Queen Victoria Building to see the Queen Victoria clock and the Great Australia clock which shows heaps of animations and times for various cities. The shops themselves were most definitely out of our price range, but the Dr Seuss gallery was fun and the guy in there gave us some lovely tips for our next week or so towards Brisbane/Gold Coast!

We headed on our way back to the van to drive across the bridge. After a little bit of a stressful drive involving 5km tunnels, and google maps directions that can’t cope with the 3D nature of the roads, we made it onto the bridge in rush hour traffic and headed on to our campsite. We settled into our new site for the next 3 nights (bargain deal - 3 nights for the price of 2!) and planned our next couple of days. We even saw some Brush turkeys, soon to be a common sight for us in NSW.

Friday 28th February: Sydney

Today was a trip to the Blue Mountains about 90 minutes outside of central Sydney. We had planned to do a couple of bigger hikes but storm and bush fire damage meant that these were unfortunately closed. Instead, we decided to head to Scenic World to view the Three Sisters and Katoomba falls. The Skyway and the Cable way were not our cup of tea: very busy and noisy although they did give great views. The railway was by far our favourite, especially tilting your seat into the cliff hanger position! We had a lovely walk down and around Furbers steps into the valley to see the falls from the bottom and around the scenic walk which showed the history and ‘leftovers’ from the mining era!

We headed out of the Echo Point region and onto Wentworth falls. We wished we had headed here earlier to walk to the base for a swim as the Sydney humidity is brutal at the moment but alas, the view from the lookout was the closest we could get! All in all we should have spent longer in the blue mountains!

We headed back into the city to a new area - Leichhardt to meet up with May, a good friend from my PhD days in Leuven. We went to Spice Town and shared some Bao buns, dumplings, and steam buns - a delicious meal and wonderful catch up. For dessert I had a pistachio and rose ice cream from Abu Dhabi and Chloe decided to try some Mango pancakes. Ice cream had a big thumbs up andthe pancakes were VERY heavy with the yummy mango. Back to the campsite we headed, and boy were we grateful for power to turn the aircon on for half an hour or so before bed time!

Saturday 1st March: Sydney

An early start to head over to Waterloo and collect a new zoom lens for my camera, hopefully now I can get all the animal pictures and maybe even a better platypus picture!

Our first main stop of the day was a catch up with an NZ friend - Mike McColl Donnelly and a peruse around The Rocks markets. If you are into art/fashion then first half of the market is for you but if you know us then a good market is all about the food! We both got a gozleme - a Turkish friend bread thing with cheese/salami/egg/mushroom for Chloe and spinach/chicken/salami/cheese for me. We were however incredibly jealous of the hot and spicy snag that Mike M got which looked incredible.

A lovely bonus catch-up, we parted ways and headed to Manly Beach for our Surf Lesson. Manly beach was beautiful but was SO busy. Our Surf lesson was awesome with Sebastian at Manly Surf School - thanks to Chloe’s fabulous Deaning team last year for her gift! Both of us stood up a few times in the 1.5 hour lesson and thoroughly enjoyed the surfing. No photo proof but hopefully we will be able to get some photos when we try and surf again soon!

A walk along to the northern end of the beach and we explored the Manly Wormhole: a man-made tunnel for the fisherman. To get to the tunnel you have to venture across the rocks, and once through it gave stunning views across both Manly and Dee Why beaches. We sat and chilled on top of a rock and headed round to view some big crabs in the rock pools!

A massive coincidence for our stop in Sydney was Mardi Gras so we headed back into the CBD for dinner at Toki Italian - some delicious pasta/arancini. We then walked to the start of Oxford street to watch the parade. It was so awesome and as you can expect it was colourful, loud, and so much fun. We loved it and here are a few clips from the parade. It only goes about 2.5km but takes around 4 hours for the 200+ floats to make it through the route. Such a once in a lifetime experience, we loved it!!